Zhao Changpeng Appears at HKU: Discussing RWA, Exchanges, and the Future of AI

1. Stablecoins: From 'Safe Haven' to Core Tool for Dollar Globalization

Zhao Changpeng pointed out that stablecoins are the core track of crypto finance, and their development has gone through three stages:

1. Early Exploration: The birth of USDT in 2014 was initially stalled due to low regulatory acceptance and market acceptance until platforms like Binance introduced it as a fiat currency substitute in 2017, driving a surge in trading volume.

2. Compliance Breakthrough: In 2019, Binance partnered with Paxos to launch BUSD, which reached a market value of $23 billion within two years, but was phased out due to regulatory pressure. Nevertheless, the compliance phase-out of BUSD proved its transparency.

3. Strategic Value Highlighted: The U.S. has restricted the development of CBDCs through the GENIUS Act, effectively paving the way for stablecoins.

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2. RWA (Real World Asset Tokenization): Triple Challenges and Concurrent Opportunities

Zhao Changpeng proposed three major barriers to the realization of RWA:

1. Liquidity Dilemma: Tokenization of non-financial assets (such as real estate) leads to insufficient trading depth, easily falling into a vicious cycle of liquidity exhaustion.

2. Regulatory Complexity: Ambiguity in asset classification (such as securities and commodities) requires multi-departmental approval of licenses, limiting business flexibility.

3. Mechanism Defects: Current stock tokenization products (such as xStocks) have not achieved price linkage, and arbitrage mechanisms are ineffective.

However, he affirmed the success of the stablecoin model and pointed out:

• If the U.S. promotes stock tokenization, it will consolidate its financial dominance; Asia needs to accelerate its layout to avoid being marginalized. Hong Kong should seize the policy window.

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3. Decentralized Exchanges Will Surpass Centralized Exchanges (CEX)

Zhao Changpeng predicts that in the next 5-10 years, DEX will dominate the market for several reasons:

1. Technical Advantages: DEX has no KYC restrictions, high transparency, and lower long-term costs.

2. User Experience Upgrade: With the popularization of wallets and improvements in MEV attack protection, new users will shift to DEX.

3. Regulatory Benefits: The U.S. has lenient regulations on DeFi, while CEX faces higher costs due to historical compliance issues.

He also pointed out the challenges of developing exchanges in Hong Kong:

• Independent operations require huge investments (such as security systems), and the limited local market size makes it difficult to support liquidity.

• Global exchanges reduce costs through deep order pools, which is key to protecting user interests.

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