[Regarding stablecoins] CZ reflects on his changing perspective:
Initially, CZ thought stablecoins were just a transitional product between fiat and the cryptocurrency market, wondering why people didn't directly hold USD.
Binance initially only traded coins. When Bitcoin's price dropped, many users withdrew their coins to other fiat exchanges to convert them to USD, causing a large outflow of capital from the platform. This led Binance to launch stablecoin trading pairs.
Gradually, he realized that 1U of stablecoin was equivalent to 1 USD, making it easy for ordinary people to understand. Cross-border transfers on the blockchain were much faster than traditional banks, and in the last 3-5 years, stablecoins have become a highly profitable business model.
[RWA Real Assets] A year and a half ago, CZ was skeptical about RWA, believing that those who could invest directly in US stocks didn't need to trade on the blockchain.
Practical Pain Points:
① Most ordinary people globally cannot open US stock accounts.
② Few users open accounts, and trading is concentrated in the middle of the night, making long-term participation difficult.
RWA can help global users trade US stocks, stocks from other countries, and government bonds 24/7. Low cost, transparency, and global liquidity in the assets of small countries – this is an irreversible trend.
[AI Race] CZ says his previous prediction that AI payments would land in the short term was wrong.
Leading AI companies are currently focusing on optimizing the intelligence of AI itself, not prioritizing payment functionality. Currently, users only use AI to strategize transactions; the actual payment process still relies on traditional credit cards. Payment is not the core bottleneck of the AI industry at this stage. Therefore, CZ assesses that the landing time for AI transactions will be sooner than for AI payments, and the related landing work will be led and driven by local coding teams.
Binance has also launched a related AI transaction product. Regarding AI transaction infrastructure stages such as identity verification, privacy protection, access control, security protection, settlement and payment, etc., it is currently impossible to predict which stage will be the first to present hidden risks.
CZ offered a very practical reminder for startups: Starting a startup a little later, entering the market a little later, won't necessarily lead to the company's downfall. However, if the product hasn't validated market needs and cash flow isn't sufficient, blindly expanding the scale will very likely lead to the company's collapse. Google and Facebook weren't among the earliest entrants in their respective races; as long as they created a differentiated product, later startups could still achieve success.
CZ's life message for entrepreneurs: When you're at the bottom of the startup cycle, the most difficult stage of your life, persevere with practical work and steadily move forward. When he was in his early twenties, he once heard a saying: when people are in the most difficult situations, only by constantly moving forward can they rise from the abyss. For the founder, the most important quality is resilience, not intelligence, emotional intelligence, or product capabilities. The bigger the company grows, the greater the challenges and pressures it faces; only with sufficient resilience can the business go the distance.
