MarketsExchangeOpinion
|7 min ReadCZ Sees A $40 Trillion Future For Crypto
Jax Morales
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
For Changpeng Zhao, the past two years have swung from a criminal conviction in the United States and a multibillion dollar settlement to a high profile presidential pardon and a return to public stages. At Binance Blockchain Week he sounded like a man who believes both his own story and the industry are still in the early chapters. He called the United States an “emerging market” again for Binance, argued that real world payments remain the missing piece for mass adoption, and sketched a world where crypto’s total value reaches at least thirty to forty trillion dollars. The twist is that he insists the uncertainty around how we get there is the main reason life, and markets, stay interesting.
From Prison Term To Pardon And A Reopened US Game
CZ did not dodge the obvious topic. Under the previous US administration he pleaded guilty, paid a forty three billion dollar package of penalties and saw his freedom sharply restricted. One year later, under President Trump, he received a pardon that lifted those constraints. He celebrated publicly on social media and privately treated it as a green light to move again.
He framed the pardon as more than a personal win. During the worst of the enforcement push, Binance systematically pulled back from the US, treated the country as a hostile jurisdiction and watched Binance US shrink from roughly a third of spot market share to a marginal player with broken banking links and licenses lost in many states. Now he describes America as a fresh frontier. In his view, the country still dominates talent and artificial intelligence, yet many flagship crypto companies built their headquarters elsewhere. His pitch is to help reverse that, by giving US institutions better access to BNB and the broader BNB Chain ecosystem and by rebuilding regulated infrastructure onshore.
CZ also used his own exit from day to day management as a message. He praised cofounder He Yi’s move into the top job, called regular leadership rotation healthy, and said he now prefers to focus on ecosystem work such as BNB Chain, Yzi Labs and policy advisory roles. The subtext for traders is simple. He is no longer in the hot seat at Binance, but he still plans to influence the direction of the industry and the regulatory frameworks that will shape it.
Payments, Regulation And The Next Billion Users
If you strip away the storytelling, CZ’s core product thesis is old school: use crypto for payments. He reminded the audience that Bitcoin’s white paper described “electronic cash,” not perpetual trading instruments. In practice, most on chain activity today revolves around speculative finance. Stablecoins exist, but turning them into smooth, mainstream payment tools has proved harder than the theory suggested.
One route he still believes in is bridging card networks and crypto balances. The Binance Card model, where users swipe a Visa or Mastercard and merchants receive fiat while the backend converts digital assets, is his preferred example. Regulatory pressure and policy shifts under the last administration killed much of that business. CZ’s hope is that a friendlier US environment, combined with clearer laws like the recently passed Genius Act and the in progress Clarity Act, will revive similar hybrids over the next few years.
He is realistic about the timeline. Setting rules is only the first step. Banks need to adjust their risk frameworks, accounting standards must decide how to treat corporate crypto holdings, tax authorities need workable guidance, and auditors must be comfortable signing off. None of this is glamorous, but in CZ’s view it is the plumbing required before casually paying with a token becomes boring and ubiquitous.
He repeatedly stressed how small the sector still is. In his numbers, the entire market floats around three to four trillion dollars, a rounding error compared to global equities or real estate. For him, a path toward thirty or forty trillion in value is not a moonshot but the base case once payments, tokenized finance and on chain infrastructure mature. That is the lens through which he frames current volatility. If you believe the destination is an order of magnitude larger, then today’s swings are just noise on the way to scale.
DAT Structures, BNB Yield And Institutional On-Ramps
CZ also weighed in on the rise of what he and others call DAT companies, vehicles that hold crypto on behalf of traditional investors who cannot or will not buy directly. MicroStrategy’s balance sheet strategy is the reference point. He expects more versions of that model to survive, especially those with simple mandates and low fees.
His preference is for transparent structures that hold a single asset, such as Bitcoin or BNB, rather than actively managed baskets. In his telling, BNB linked products can become particularly attractive if they tap the exchange’s full toolkit. He pointed to launch platforms, staking and airdrop programs that, when combined intelligently, can push annualized returns into the low double digits, which looks compelling compared to many equity portfolios.
That framing matters for institutions in the US and elsewhere. Many corporate treasurers are allowed to buy shares but face internal or regulatory barriers to buying tokens. DAT style entities give them legal exposure without rewriting their governance. CZ’s message is that if the US wants to be a hub for this capital, it needs a regulatory regime that treats such wrappers as legitimate rather than suspect.
Emerging Markets, Education And CZ’s Second Act
For all the talk about Washington, CZ argued that some of the strongest real world use cases still sit in emerging markets. He cited letters from users in poorer countries who used crypto to replace multi day trips to pay bills, or who slowly compounded small holdings from tens of dollars into sums large enough to change their household trajectory. In high inflation economies, he still believes Bitcoin and dollar stablecoins offer better protection than many local currencies.
That view feeds directly into his philanthropic choices. Giggle Academy, his flagship education project, is deliberately non profit and aimed at children rather than traders. The platform already counts close to ninety thousand young users, adds several thousand a week and offers hundreds of lessons and storybooks, with content translated into dozens of languages. The original funding came from CZ himself, followed by a community memecoin that channeled roughly eleven million dollars into the initiative. His goal is to turn it into a user generated content platform where teachers everywhere can create courses, while keeping access free for kids.
Outside education, he is still experimenting. He described small donations to prison education, orphan support and environmental projects like soil restoration. What he wants long term is a fully on chain donation stack where every unit of value can be traced from sender to beneficiary. The constraint is adoption. Many of the people he wants to reach do not use wallets, so he is testing different partners to see who can deploy capital effectively in the real world.
On the personal side, CZ reduced his philosophy to two habits and one conviction. The habits are to learn something new every day and to treat physical health as a non negotiable asset, since entrepreneurship is as much a stamina game as a mental one. The conviction is that uncertainty gives life and markets their energy. If outcomes were scripted in advance, he argued, there would be no reason to push, to build or to care. That same uncertainty runs through his view of crypto. He does not know the exact path the industry will take. He simply believes that if builders keep shipping products real people use, the sector can grow an order of magnitude larger while still retaining the unpredictability that keeps both games and markets worth playing.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.