Edit | Wu Says Blockchain

This issue is sourced from a Cointelegraph interview at the Paris Blockchain Week 2026 event featuring Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou. The discussion mainly focuses on the current crypto market cycle, the convergence of AI and Crypto, RWA and institutional adoption, and Bitcoin’s future positioning. Ben believes that compared with the market’s peak period, retail participation has declined somewhat, but this does not fall outside the usual patterns of past crypto cycles. What is truly worth watching is the next round of market catalysts—AI may be one important direction: in the future, AI agents may not only help everyday users trade and do arbitrage, but could also autonomously complete payments and economic activities. Meanwhile, Crypto has the opportunity to become the natural underlying currency and financial infrastructure for AI agents.

At the same time, RWA is changing traditional financial institutions’ perception of crypto exchanges. Ben Zhou says more and more banks want to tokenize traditional assets like fixed income and gold, and use exchanges to reach global investors. Some family offices have also begun allocating assets across different countries and regions through RWA. For traditional financial institutions entering Crypto, on the one hand it’s driven by fear of missing the trend; on the other hand it’s also a defensive consideration: if next-generation users gradually shift to on-chain finance, traditional institutions may face outflows of customers, liquidity, and pricing power.

When it comes to Bitcoin, Ben Zhou believes its long-term positioning hasn’t changed. But for traditional financial institutions, the current volatility is still high, so it’s still some distance away from becoming a mature “digital gold.” In payment scenarios, he believes stablecoins are more suitable than Bitcoin. Looking ahead to 2030, he hopes Crypto can break down regional barriers in global financial markets in the same way the internet broke down information barriers, giving users from different countries and regions more equal opportunities to invest. On the question of whether it’s too late to buy Bitcoin now, his answer is: as long as you truly understand the long-term impact this technology could bring, it’s never too late.

The guest’s remarks do not represent Wu’s views and do not constitute any legal or investment advice. Please strictly follow local laws and regulations.

Has the market bottomed out? AI could become the catalyst for the next cycle

Host: Where exactly is the crypto market right now? Has the market already bottomed out? From the exchange’s perspective, compared to the peak period, has retail lost some interest in Crypto already? If the market is going to get excited again, what kind of catalyst would be needed?

Ben Zhou: Most people I’ve come across believe the market has bottomed out, and I’ve also seen Bitcoin rebound recently. But compared with when the market was most active, I think retail participation may have dropped by about 30%. This is actually pretty normal. We’ve already been through multiple cycles. Whenever the market is at a low point, something similar happens. When the market rises again, everyone gets excited again, so I don’t think this time is fundamentally different.

The real issue is that we need new catalysts. In the past, catalysts in each cycle often came from new technology or innovation—for example, the last cycle brought something new like Meme Coins. Maybe this cycle will be AI, but I can’t be sure right now. About a month and a half ago, I attended a conference in Hong Kong, and I even felt like I was at an AI conference, because everyone was talking about AI. In the future, there may be a lot of synergy between AI and Crypto, and that would be very interesting.

Host: In the Crypto industry right now, many people are talking about AI, but many of them actually don’t know how the two will ultimately come together. How do you think AI will help further develop the crypto market?

Ben Zhou: If we specifically talk about AI agents, I think there are at least two very direct points of connection. First, in the future, AI agents will need to use money, and Crypto is very likely to be the easiest underlying form of currency for them. Second, AI can help ordinary users accomplish intelligent trading that was difficult to do before—for example, you can simply ask the AI to find market inefficiencies and price spreads and do arbitrage. In the past, doing this required a lot of capital and infrastructure, but with AI, it becomes much easier for ordinary users to participate.

Of course, as more and more people use AI, these market arbitrage opportunities will gradually decrease as well. What I’m talking about is more about what may happen in the coming years: when AI truly starts automatically trading—even buying goods for users and completing all kinds of economic activities—Crypto is very likely to become a bottom-layer financial infrastructure that fits it perfectly.

How Bybit uses AI: make agents follow the job, not the employee

Host: Speaking of AI agents, do you personally use them? Now many company executives are trying different application approaches. How does Bybit do it internally? Is the improvement in productivity obvious?

Ben Zhou: It’s not just me using it. In fact, we provide an AI agent for every employee at the company. The information an employee can access corresponds to the AI agent’s corresponding information access capability. When you ask the AI a question, it may even remember things more clearly than the employee themselves.

A big pain point in company management is employee turnover. When one person leaves, a lot of knowledge they accumulated leaves with them. When a new employee joins, they need to understand everything from scratch. But with AI, this knowledge can be preserved. For example, a new employee can directly ask: “How did the conversation with this partner go before?” AI can tell them what happened previously and how things progressed.

So our idea is to have AI agents follow the role, not the specific person. People can change, but the AI agent associated with that role stays. It’s like a butler who has been serving that role for the long term. When a new employee joins the company, it’s as if there is already a butler that has worked in that role for ten years and has all the knowledge accumulated over time. In addition, AI can also take on many tasks that used to require humans, such as entering customer information, finding materials, searching historical information, and more. So we really do see a very clear improvement in internal efficiency from AI.

RWA is changing exchanges: moving from a crypto trading platform to a global asset distribution channel

Host: If we look at the market over the past 12 months, from Bybit’s perspective, what do you think has been the biggest change in user behavior or market focus?

Ben Zhou: The biggest change is that people are no longer discussing Crypto in the way they understood it just two or three years ago. In the past, everyone would talk about a specific project, or assets like Ethereum and Solana. But in the past few months, almost everyone has been talking about RWA: Can gold be tokenized? Can U.S. Treasuries be tokenized? More and more traditional financial assets are moving on-chain, including gold, oil, and other assets. They can all use Crypto as a vehicle to trade on-chain. We’re also seeing trading volumes of traditional financial assets increase on exchanges.

I’m currently in Paris and I’ve also spoken with some banks here. They ask: “We have some really good fixed-income products. If we tokenize them, can you help us distribute them?” So now some traditional financial institutions are no longer just viewing exchanges as a platform for trading crypto assets. They’re also seeing us as a global asset distribution channel—where they can tokenize traditional financial assets and reach users worldwide through the exchange.

There’s another interesting example. Recently I spoke with a family office that wants to use Bybit, but not for the purpose of participating in Crypto. They want to reduce the regional risk of their portfolio by allocating assets from different regions—Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, and so on—into their portfolio at the same time. They asked us whether we can do that. Because the platform has RWA from those regions, we can help them make that allocation. So they use Bybit not because they want to buy Crypto, but because they want to use this platform for global asset allocation and risk diversification. I think this is a very interesting shift.

Why banks enter Crypto: partly fear of missing out, partly fear of being replaced

Host: You mentioned that many traditional financial institutions have already started entering this market. Do you think banks are genuinely interested in Crypto now, or is it more because it has become a hot trend and they’re afraid of missing out?

Ben Zhou: I think maybe 30% is FOMO—fear of missing out. They don’t want to miss this trend. They want to understand what’s happening right now, but they haven’t fully figured it out yet. So at least they participate a bit first and start building some investments and connections. You’ll see some traditional financial institutions start investing in Crypto companies, and the amounts relative to their own size are actually not that large. I don’t think all of them already have a very clear strategy and know exactly what they must do next. Some institutions may just feel: “Let’s participate first—don’t miss out.”

Also, maybe 50% of it is a defensive strategy. If traditional financial institutions don’t participate in tokenization and don’t enter this market, they’ll gradually realize that next-generation young users may directly use Crypto. If they do nothing, they may lose their ability to set prices in the future, and they may also lose liquidity and customers. So I think traditional financial institutions moving into Crypto is actually driven by multiple factors working together.

Host: From the perspective of the broader market environment, do you think the next phase will be an important stage for the large-scale adoption of Crypto? What conditions are still missing for traditional institutions to enter in a truly large scale?

Ben Zhou: I think this could be a very important stage for large-scale adoption. Regulatory bodies are genuinely starting to understand and accept this technology, including directions like stablecoins and tokenization. In the United States, if relevant market-structure legislation becomes clearer, many things will be defined more precisely, and I believe this will have a huge impact. We’ve been in discussions with big banks like Goldman Sachs. Even though these institutions can already offer Bitcoin ETFs to customers, their own investment portfolios may still be unable to directly participate because the regulatory definitions for Crypto are not clear enough. Once the rules are truly clarified, I believe there will be a large amount of institutional buying.

So from the perspective of adoption, compliance, and licenses, I think this is a very important stage. Of course, for retail investors, “a good year” usually means the price goes up by many multiples, so people’s definition of “good” may be different.

Bitcoin is not yet fully mature as “digital gold”—stablecoins are more suitable for payments

Host: Traditional institutions are clearly interested in blockchain and RWA now, but they haven’t fully embraced the entire Crypto market yet. How far is Bitcoin from truly becoming “digital gold”? Do you think it will be more like a store of value in the future, or like the original idea of becoming a kind of everyday currency?

Ben Zhou: Of course, we hope Bitcoin can eventually become “digital gold,” but right now Bitcoin still has fairly obvious volatility. For example, in the most recent downturn, Bitcoin briefly fell to around $60,000, then returned to around $70,000. For very traditional financial institutions, this level of volatility is still too high, so it’s currently difficult to treat Bitcoin fully as a store of value. I believe it will eventually get there, but not today. However, Crypto—i.e., blockchain technology—has already started being used by traditional finance in other ways, which itself means adoption is taking place. Once the next real bull market arrives, these institutions may start allocating part of their portfolios into Bitcoin and other crypto assets.

From a long-term perspective, I don’t think Bitcoin’s role will undergo a fundamental change. Gold itself also has significant volatility. Whenever Bitcoin drops, people feel disappointed. After it rises, sentiment changes again. And Michael Saylor is still continuing to buy. But if we’re specifically discussing the use of “money,” I’m more inclined to see Bitcoin as a store of value. For daily consumption and payments, stablecoins are more likely to be used in the future.

Crypto Finance in 2030: Giving global users more equal choices of assets

Host: If you look ahead to 2030, what changes in the Crypto industry would you most like to see?

Ben Zhou: To date, there is no truly global financial platform in the world. There isn’t a single platform that can simultaneously offer users assets from the U.S., Indonesia, Japan, Europe, and various financial products from other regions. The reason is that today’s financial markets are still fragmented. Different countries and regions have their own financial systems, and they’re also influenced by factors like geopolitics.

But after the internet appeared, it broke down many barriers to information dissemination. On the information layer, global users are gradually in a more equal environment. I believe Crypto will eventually do something similar to financial markets, giving people in different regions more equal opportunities to access financial assets. A user from Nigeria can get the same asset choices and investment opportunities as users in New York or London. There isn’t a truly global financial platform like that yet. I hope it will appear in the future, and we also want to move in that direction. If we can achieve that, then I think that’s true financial freedom—everyone can freely choose the assets they want.

Is it too late to buy Bitcoin now?

Host: Last question. Is there a “cruel truth” about Crypto that many users might not want to hear right now?

Ben Zhou: It’s never too late. Whenever I talk to someone about Bitcoin, they always say: “It’s too late—Bitcoin is too expensive.” Previously, I told a friend they could buy some Bitcoin when it was at $3,000, and they said it was too expensive. When it rose to $10,000, they still said it was too expensive. But if you truly understand the technology—understand the scale it could bring in the future and how it might change our world—then I believe it’s never too late.