You sold your apartment in 2014 to buy Bitcoin. What is the 2026 equivalent of selling your apartment to go all in?
I would not tell anyone to sell their apartment to go all in if the apartment is the majority of their wealth. There are fluctuations in crypto prices, well, there are a lot of fluctuations. So people should understand the risks and I actually recommend a DCA, dollar cost averaging. I'm very optimistic on RWAs, but DeFi is not going away. Perps, DEXes, they're not going away. So I think basically everyone will use AI. So I think instead of like trying to fight against it, we should actually go along with the trend. Traditional finance, the best way to not be threatened by crypto is just to adopt crypto.
Okay. So now we have the man that needs no introduction joining us virtually for Binance Clubhouse at Binance. CZ, thank you so much for joining today. How are you doing?
Good, good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Great to be here and sorry that you couldn't make it in person, but this is absolutely the next best thing. Now, we have a big basket of questions from the community. I'm going to dive right in with some of the messages and questions the community have submitted. So, first up, we have a question from Andreas, and he says, 'CZ, you're definitely one of the legends in the industry. Your contribution through building Binance, as well as many other things, will be remembered for generations ahead. I have a few questions that I'm really looking forward to learning from you. Number one, you sold your apartment in 2014 to buy Bitcoin. What is the 2026 equivalent of selling your apartment to go all in and would you actually tell a 25-year-old to do it?'
Well, I would not tell anyone to sell their apartment to go all in if the apartment is the majority of their wealth. I think people should make that decision on their own. There are fluctuations in crypto prices. Well, there are a lot of fluctuations. So, people should understand the risks and learn what are the downsides. And for me, I had very strong confidence about Bitcoin's long-term growth. And also my own lifestyle does not depend on the Bitcoin price. So, even if Bitcoin price went to zero, I would still be okay. Not everybody will be in that position. So, I would not say that, but I think long-term crypto will continue to grow, Bitcoin will continue to grow, BNB will continue to grow, other strong crypto projects will continue to grow. So, but I would recommend for most people, I would actually recommend a DCA, a dollar cost averaging, like basically take a small portion of your income, say 1%, 5%, 10%, whatever doesn't affect your life, and buy some crypto that you like every day. But not any crypto, just buy the top crypto like every month, right? So I would recommend that strategy to most people.
Okay, great. Next question is from Albert here. He says, 'Looking back over the past decade, what is one belief that you held about crypto that has completely changed and what new belief do you think most people underestimate today?'
Actually, there were quite a few. I didn't think NFTs would be popular, but they became popular. I didn't think memes would be that popular. It became very popular. I still don't understand the logic behind those. I didn't think RWAs would be very big even like a year and a half ago. But now they are quite big and now I see the attractiveness of RWA. You know, you can trade 24/7, it's transparent, low fees, accessible to the whole world, etc. So now I know there were many things that I didn't see at the beginning but then once they turn out to be popular then now I understand them.
And next question is from Michael Wan. He says, 'Do you think the four-year cycle holds or is that pattern still breaking? And then a follow-up question of, and if it is breaking, what will actually drive the next market cycle? Is it RWAs as you've just mentioned, tokenized equities, or does it come from somewhere else like perps, DEXes perhaps? And where would you put your own money in the next 3 years?'
Well, I think first part of the question, I think the four-year cycle still holds very strongly actually. If you look at the four years, four years ago we were kind of in a bear market, that's kind of where we are now I think, and so far the four-year cycle has been very strong. What's the next thing? That is very hard to predict. So far, I'm very optimistic on RWAs, but I'm not sure if that's the thing that will take all of crypto to the next all-time high. I'm not sure if it's some other thing, but that's very hard to predict. Like even in 2020, I would not have predicted DeFi. Like 2020 was a DeFi summer. So like those specific things are quite hard to predict even six months earlier. So we'll just have to see. So we're just monitoring trends and then we'll see.
Okay, that's great. And the next question is quite similar but maybe there is a little bit more in terms of different trends in the industry. I think everyone's asking in CZ's crystal ball where the future's heading. The next question is from Arif. He says, 'With the rise of AI agents, RWAs, DeFi, what sector do you believe has the highest potential over the next 5 years and for developers and community builders, where would you advise them to focus their attention?'
Okay, so I think all those three things are very related. I think number one, DeFi is not going away. So perps, DEXes, blockchains, they're not going away. In the last, I would say, from the last six to last two years, like there was a four-year period where the US administration was quite openly against crypto. So there wasn't a lot of innovation and everyone was doing memecoins. So now I think we actually see more innovation, but if you want to build a new blockchain it takes a couple years, right? So we're actually seeing that there's actually more innovation on the technology front but the price-wise it doesn't reflect it yet. RWAs is happening. The TVL is growing on-chain and is actually growing very quickly on BNB Chain. Agentic AI, agentic payments, AI-ready blockchain is growing very quickly as well. And AI will pay for us. It doesn't pay for us just yet, but it will trade for us, it will pay for hotels for us, etc. That will come. And there will be thousands of millions more transactions than today. So I think all of those things will come. I'm not sure which one is the next trigger or which one is the biggest for the next five years. That's just very hard to predict. I think all of those things will grow. I don't have a crystal ball. So yeah, I don't really know for sure but we encourage everybody to build.
Great. And you mentioned AI agents there and actually around 50% of the questions that we had submitted from the community are AI and agent related. So we're going to dive into some of those questions. Now the next question is from NWN Labs. And the question is, 'CZ, you've said that crypto must be agentic ready and AI agents will soon make payments for us. Given that AI can front-run trades and find vulnerabilities faster than any human, how do you prevent the agentic future from becoming a chaotic manipulable nightmare for retail traders? Will Binance build safeguards to protect humans from being outmatched by AI bots?'
Well, I think the question has an assumption that AI is only available to some people. So I think basically everyone will use AI. While AI is fast at helping to find vulnerabilities, but if developers use that specific capability, it allows the developers to find the vulnerabilities faster and build safer systems. So things will just happen faster but it doesn't mean it's always bad. Some people will use AI to trade and earlier than others and they will use it better than others, but then other people will learn from it. So I think most people will use some type of AI just like today everybody uses the internet and everybody who trades has some kind of technical analysis or stuff like that. Those are all just tools. The tools will be used by everybody. Hopefully, my expectation is not for Binance to build safeguards to protect humans from other people using AI bots. We should just make AI bots available to everyone so that everyone can use it. It's like, look, once the tool is out there, some people are going to use it and it's going to be hard to detect who's using AI, who's not, especially on a trading API, right? So on a trading API you just see orders coming in, you don't know the decision engine behind it. But what we should do is basically make AI trading available, AI decision making for trading available to everyone. This is already happening, right? CoinMarketCap has an AI agent that you can ask why is the price going up, why is the price going down. Now, I believe Binance rolled out a version of AI Pro which helps people trade. I never used it myself. I don't really trade. But I think that feature will just iterate over time for sure. So I think instead of trying to fight against it, we should actually go along with the trend, just like crypto, right? Traditional finance, the best way to not be threatened by crypto is just to adopt crypto. So it's the same mechanism, at least in my view.
Yeah. Absolutely. Just embrace the new technology. So Vivet is also asking in terms of the AI agents. He says, 'As AI agents become capable of owning wallets, making payments, but also interacting with smart contracts, what role do you think crypto infrastructure will play in enabling the AI economy? And then on top of that, from a founder and visionary, what's one opportunity in the space that you think founders could still be missing?'
