Binance co-chief executive Richard Teng says the world is now “at the start of a five to 10-year period of huge transformation” in financial services, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence, blockchain and the rapid uptake of stablecoins.
The momentum behind these technologies, he said, is now strong enough that both governments and global corporations are accelerating adoption to maintain their competitive edge.
“We have come from anti-crypto … to now [US] President [Donald] Trump saying that we are the crypto capital of the world,” Mr Teng told The National on Thursday at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, pointing to a shift that has drawn in institutions, sovereign entities and family offices.
“Everybody needs to reposition themselves to maintain their competitive edge.”
Crypto flash
Mr Teng's comments come during one of the most volatile months the industry has faced this year. The latest sell-off, during which Bitcoin fell more than $18,000 in November, rattled both seasoned investors and newcomers.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency, traded at $93,193,82 at 1.13pm on Thursday and is down more than 30 per cent from a peak above $126,000 set in early October. Ether and other major tokens also edged higher.
The move marked a deep institutional move away from risk, as leveraged positions unwound in tandem with a global pullback from risk assets. Liquidity evaporated quickly across digital tokens, mirroring reversals in artificial intelligence equities and other thematic trades.
Mr Teng said the turbulence reaffirmed that crypto is now tightly intertwined with global market cycles.
“For any asset class, you go through cycles. What happened in November doesn’t just happen in crypto. It happens in US equities as well,” he said.
He pointed to the US government shutdown and shifting expectations over Federal Reserve policy as drivers of short term uncertainty.
“We have to take a long-term look here. Anytime somebody says crypto or Bitcoin is dead, and you buy, you’ll be in a very, very comfortable position right now,” he said.
On the Binance stage on Wednesday, MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor urged investors not to recoil from uncertainty, insisting that volatility “is not something to run away from”.
His comments, delivered during a session that drew thousands physically and virtually, echoed his broader view that turbulence often precedes long-term value creation.
The message resonated against a backdrop of accelerating institutional influence. Bitcoin is increasingly moving in line with institutional portfolios, reflecting the influence of funds, corporates and sovereign strategies rather than the retail-driven activity that defined previous booms, Yevgeny Bebnev, chief investment officer at Pelican Investments, wrote for The National last week.
At the same time, thematic trades, whether in AI equities or blockchain tokens, have increasingly shown how quickly liquidity can evaporate when leverage unwinds, a pattern seen across global markets this year.
Stable shifts
Despite November's correction, Mr Teng argues the structural trend is unmistakably upwards as demonstrated by Binance's sharp rise in users.
“We started 2024 with 170 million users. Today we are 300 million users,” he said. Institutional onboarding at Binance has doubled in the past year, he added, as corporates, asset managers and even governments deepen their exposure to digital assets.
“You see now, with embracement by institutions and corporates, a broadening and deepening of the market,” he said. “It makes [the market] much healthier and more sustainable.”
A major driver of that shift, he said, is the rise of stablecoins, tokenised assets and real-world utility for crypto payments. “We have seen sharp adoption, strong allocations by institutions,” he said. Crypto payments are expanding rapidly, he added. “We started this year with 12,000 merchants, now it stands at 21 million,” he said.
The UAE’s introduction of a dirham-backed stablecoin and the development of a broader regulatory framework for digital settlements, he said, will accelerate both remittances and cross-border commerce.
“If you do a typical remittance today, the cost can be as high as 11, 12 per cent. If you do it by crypto, you get it done at a very, very small fraction,” he said. “More and more people are asking to be paid in stablecoin.”
Binance, he added, is positioning itself to support this convergence between traditional finance and web-3 infrastructure.
“We are pushing ahead very strongly with supporting all the innovation coming through,” he said, citing collaborations with Franklin Templeton, BlackRock and major institutions globally.
“We want to build ourselves as the Super App and the CeDeFi [centralised decentralised finance] exchange, bringing together the best of centralised exchange and decentralised finance.”
One example he pointed to is Bhutan, which recently launched the world’s first nationwide crypto-payment system in partnership with Binance. “Anybody with a wallet, tourists travelling there, can pay for anything. It’s so convenient,” he said.
Looking ahead, Mr Teng said developing nations will play a growing role in driving adoption. “The journey is still early. We are [at] eight per cent crypto adoption globally. Given all these fundamental key drivers, the pace of adoption is very fast,” he said.
