The Next Bull Run Will Make Crypto Holders Rich - CZ Binance Founder | E189

I think for Bitcoin to hit a million dollars will be a good thing. I actually don't think we need 25 years. I think it's going to happen much quicker.

I think we need Bitcoin payments to happen on massive scale. I think we need Bitcoin to be a retirement pension fund reserve. All of those things will happen. If we're heading towards a world with billions of AI agents that can automatically buy, sell, negotiate, and transact, what money are those agents going to use? They will probably start with a stablecoin. Once you can accept a stablecoin, it's very, very easy to add Bitcoin. It's also possible some of the large AI companies, they may want to issue their own tokens. I've had discussions with multiple very large, the top tier AI companies about how to issue tokens. Some of the AI companies I talked to, they want to build hundreds of gigawatts over the next couple years, and that's going to cost trillions of dollars.

If you're allocating the reserves of a country today, what's the percentage that you recommend them to allocate to Bitcoin? My recommendation is pretty simple and it's a little bit self-serving. I usually recommend them to take the top five cryptocurrencies and just allocate according to market cap percentage-wise. That's the easiest, simplest, and most market-driven approach. So, typically it'd be like, no, 50-something percent in Bitcoin and then 20% ETH and then BNB will get in there.

Um, for, um, I think for Bitcoin to hit a million dollars would be a good thing, and it will happen.

And no, I actually don't think we need 25 years. I think it's going to happen much quicker. But more than price, I think we need more, a lot more utility. I think we need Bitcoin payments to happen, well, on a massive scale. I think we need Bitcoin to be a retirement pension fund reserve. It will get there. All of those things will happen. A lot more will happen, but, and yeah, for 25 years, I think all of those things will happen. Yeah.

I mean, you mean this whole century? This whole century is a long, long time. So I think what somebody said is very... people tend to overestimate what they do in one year but underestimate what they do in 10 years. A hundred years is a long time. So even in the next 10 years, I would say a lot of the infrastructure will get built. I think we're seeing the shift, like in the last two years, we saw a huge shift in traditional finance attitudes towards Bitcoin, right? So, and even in the, only in the last year or so, in the last few months, we're seeing tokenized stocks going up like tremendously, and this is just the beginning. We only like what, I guess, BTO, Binance BTO was only launched a couple months ago, like maybe two, three months ago, is already growing very quickly. So if you think about 10 years, that's going to be huge. And that's just one small sector. Not a small sector, but that's just one sector. So with other sectors, there's multiple other sectors: payments, AI, agentic finance, infrastructure, stablecoins, tokenization. There's a lot of things that will happen over the next 10 years. So I think, yeah, that many things will happen. So I think, yeah, we're actually at the best point in time compared to any time in history. There's so many opportunities, right? So many opportunities right in front of us. We just got to take advantage of it. Yeah.

I think they all help each other. I think the Bitcoin blockchain doesn't really handle tokenization today. So all the tokenization happens on other blockchains, but in the crypto industry, what's good for Bitcoin is good for everything else. What's good for, you know, another blockchain or another sector is actually good for Bitcoin as well. They help each other. People who learn about Bitcoin eventually learn about other, they will eventually get into other blockchains, other tokens, etc. And people who come in through a tokenization of stocks eventually will look into Bitcoin, right? So today, like say right now we're in Hong Kong, people in Asia who want to buy US stocks, it's very hard for them to get a brokerage account. And of the very few people that get brokerage accounts in the US, it's very hard, the timing is wrong, right? So you can't trade from like 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day. So once that's tokenized, you will democratize access to the stock market. But so the people who used to want to buy US stocks, that couldn't, and now able to, but through crypto, through crypto platforms. Once they're on the crypto platforms, they will probably have some exposure to Bitcoin that they did not have before. So over time, that will compound. So what's good for tokenized stocks is actually good for traditional stock markets, but also good for Bitcoin. So I think all of those things help each other. It's truly an ecosystem. It's not one project versus another.

Um, okay. I think on this point, Bitcoin itself doesn't weaken or strengthen governments. It's what governments do that strengthen or weaken them. Some governments like a lot of power. They want total control, etc. In human history, that may not always be the best for the economy, for the citizens. What we've seen is that many countries with weaker governments actually do better in the economy. So if you look at the US government, for example, the US government is actually a small... it's a large country. So it's a large government, but relatively speaking, it's a less powerful government. The people are only in power for four years and then the government changes. And then you have two parties, they debate all the time, it's inefficient, right? There's just a lot of debates, but it's actually a weak government, but the weak government may have contributed to one of the strongest economies in the world, right? So having weaker government may or may not be a bad thing. And you can see that the current SEC in the US, they said no, they gave up a lot of their power, they say we don't regulate this, this is not in our purview, and actually the industry has grown because of that, right? So when the powerful people, the regulators have less power, sometimes the industry grows better. Whereas compared to the US previous SEC administration, Gary Gensler wanted everything in his power, and that actually stopped growth completely. So, but Bitcoin itself, it's just a technology. It doesn't give power to more people here, one side or another. The technology is decentralized, so it does give a bit more power to the individual, so you have more sovereign control of your currency. But at the same time, I think Bitcoin's design, the privacy aspect of it is somewhat flawed, so it's actually very, very easy to track transactions on the blockchain, and so that aspect actually weakens some of the privacy control aspects. But both of these aspects, a government can use it or not use it. So if a government said, like in potentially, but I don't think this is happening in any country yet, if the government says holding Bitcoin is illegal in their country, whether that law makes sense or not, is fair or not, but some governments may be able to push a law through. In many countries, the government can totally push a law through like that. When the government does that, then, you know, this sector is not going to develop in that country. Or maybe a more practical example, some countries say, look, we're going to apply a 36% tax on every transaction, right? That's going to kill the industry. The government will have a lot of control, the government will be very powerful, but they will not have any tax revenue because charging 36% of zero is still zero. Whereas if you charge, like, I don't know, 6% of one trillion, that's a lot of money, right? So I think the technology doesn't dictate the government. The government decides how much power they want to have, and in countries where the citizens can vote, the voting determines that. Yeah.

I think most governments are taking it relatively seriously, but many, but today many countries still don't have crypto regulations, right? So many countries don't have crypto regulatory frameworks. It's actually only a handful of countries that does. So I think many people in governments understand Bitcoin, but they are probably still a minority. So, and also especially many countries, the government are slightly, they're run by elder people. So it's like a slightly older generation, and that generation actually logically adopts new technologies slower. And they also read more traditional news, which are usually more negative on crypto and all these other things. So they tend to have a slightly more negative mindset. But I certainly feel the shift. I meet many different country leaders, politicians in different parts of the world. The shift is definitely happening. No one's denying that, you know, this is a new technology. No one's denying that, you know, they need to adopt it. But sometimes they still have the skewed view that, oh, Bitcoin is used by drug lords. Is that true or not? But more and more people are explaining to them now that no, that's not the case. Yeah.

Actually, almost every country leader I meet are the second of the latter. They want their country to be better. So, but to be, to be, but to be frank, I think there's quite a lot of countries who are doing it just because they have to. But most of those countries, you can detect them pretty quickly. They adopt some kind of framework. It's usually overly restrictive. It's usually like, you know, just a PR job, and the implementation and the licensing takes forever or impossible, and nothing really happens on the implementation level. So of the countries that usually invite me to go, they're usually very progressive, that they're sincerely wanting to adopt crypto. So it's a pretty good benchmark. Like you see which countries I visit, those are usually the crypto-friendly countries.

Well, there's many, there's many parts, right? So number one is putting a crypto regulatory framework. That's usually, and also once you have a framework, how do you, what's good about it and what's bad about it? How do you revise it? How do you improve it over time? Most people, most of the crypto regulatory frameworks fall into a few parts. Right now, many people are focused on either the centralized exchanges, which is usually the past few years, and last year, many countries are focused on stablecoins, which is good because of US Genius, Clarity. There's a lot of debates and there's a lot of attention on that. Many countries are not doing a crypto reserve, so I usually advise them to do a crypto reserve. That's usually much better. That's usually very important for the country long term. Many countries are not issuing their own stablecoins, so we need to get their own currency onto the blockchain so that, you know, they capture liquidity in their own currency. They also promote liquidity for their own currency on the blockchain. Many countries are thinking about tokenized assets, like in addition to stocks, traditional financial instruments, but like, you know, rare earth minerals, real estate, culture, arts, IP. So there's a lot of discussions on those fronts, and many countries are very interested in tokenization because they view that as a way to attract money into the country and/or have assets that are available for people to buy outside of the country. So quite a lot of those discussions are happening. Yeah.

Different countries are moving at different, pushing different parts of the envelope, which is good. I think UAE has probably the most progressive crypto regulation today. ADGM, Abu Dhabi Global Markets, gave Binance.com a global license to operate almost all of their products, which is fantastic. And then, but UAE still have not issued major stablecoins yet. But I think I hear some discussions there, so they're progressing. I think US is moving pretty much more heavy on the stablecoin side. They're very focused on the stablecoins. And the exchange regulation is they just use the old sort of MSB, money transmitter license, etc. But right now, my impression is the CFTC is moving pretty fast on sort of a federal level, futures, derivatives, licenses, etc., which is fantastic for the industry. I think Japan is pretty forward right now. Hong Kong is moving pretty quickly. Singapore, I think, is a little bit more conservative today. So, but all of those countries are moving pretty quickly. Pakistan, I think Bilal was here earlier. I just had a meeting with him earlier. Pakistan's moving pretty quickly. But Pakistan, the regulation's moving quickly, but the implementation is not quite there yet. For example, Binance does not have a bank account there yet, like a client money bank account there yet, but I think that's underway. They haven't issued stablecoins yet. So all of those things need to happen. Kazakhstan is moving very quickly. Binance has very good banking support there. Binance Pay works with QR codes everywhere there. Kyrgyzstan is happening very, very soon. So I'm visiting those two countries next week. So there's quite a lot of countries moving pretty quickly. Yeah.