Changpeng Zhao outlined his vision of the future financial system in a recent interview. According to him, within five years the word “crypto” will drop out of everyday use, much like TCP/IP and HTML did.
“Today, no one says ‘I use the internet via the HTTP protocol’ — people just open a browser and don’t think about it,” he explained.
He believes the distinction between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies is artificial. Blockchain is a new technology for finance, not a separate world in opposition to the old one. Tokenized assets will eventually become just assets — without any special label.
Why AI Will Accelerate This Transition
Zhao also highlighted the role of AI. In his view, AI agents will use blockchain for payments even more actively than humans. Banking infrastructure has been built over decades for people — with identity verification, limited working hours, and correspondent banking chains. For autonomous agents that need to transact globally at any time, this setup is inefficient. Crypto, by contrast, solves this problem natively.
Development speed will also play a role. AI has already dramatically accelerated coding, which means new global applications requiring cross-border payments will emerge much faster.
Integration With Traditional Finance
CZ also spoke about his conversation with Larry Fink of BlackRock, whose quote appeared on the cover of his book Freedom of Money. According to Zhao, Fink openly admitted he was against Bitcoin in its early years but later completely changed his stance and now actively promotes the tokenization of real-world assets.
“This is a clear sign of a broader trend: major financial institutions are no longer resisting blockchain — they are integrating it into their operations,” Zhao said.
In his view, the end point of this evolution is a world where anyone, anywhere can buy shares of any company without intermediaries or restrictions. That is not possible today, but blockchain makes it technically possible.