Consensus 2026: Bybit CEO Shares Insights on Crypto "Experiment" Moving from Sandbox to Traditional Financial System

Odaily News: Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou attended the fireside chat at Consensus 2026 today. Under the theme "When DeFi Expands into TradFi: Designing a New Financial Platform for the Next Decade," he shared his observations and insights on the cryptocurrency sector entering a mature phase. The session was moderated by Aoyan Ashraf, Global News Lead at CoinDesk. The discussion covered the complementarity and challenges between decentralized systems and traditional finance across various levels.

Ben stated that over the past decade, cryptocurrency has gradually evolved from an investment product into the "pipeline" for the future financial system. From stablecoins to RWA tokenization, the crypto track features 24/7 operation, borderlessness, and programmability. The role of cryptocurrency is not to replace banks but to act as the friction coefficient of the financial system.

From a customer perspective, Ben believes the major trend in the crypto track will be at the infrastructure level, ultimately becoming the new "backend" of the financial system, silently reshaping the financial landscape with its underlying power. Customers are results-oriented, and so are institutional applications. Therefore, the financial system is undergoing a technological revolution, but the innovation in operational logic may not bring a significantly different user experience for end-users. "Just like cloud computing services, users won't say 'I'm using cryptocurrency'; they care about 'I can transfer instantly' or 'I can access global markets.'"