The Wolf Of All Streets - The Bitcoin Shift That Will Change Markets Forever | Haider Rafique

Episode Date: March 15, 2026

Will Bitcoin Survive The Shift That Will Change Markets Forever? Tokenization may be a lot closer than most of the crypto industry thinks. Haider Rafique joins to explain why the old financial system could be on borrowed time, why the OKX and ICE partnership matters, and how the next phase of markets may bring stocks, futures, and other assets fully on-chain and tradable 24/7 worldwide. We also dig into crypto’s penny stock era, the role AI agents could soon play in finance, and the biggest question of all: what happens to Bitcoin in a world where everything is tokenized?

People in crypto talk about tokenization like it's going to happen in the distant future. But Haida Rafiq from OkX says it's coming a lot faster than people think. In this discussion, we get into why the old financial system may be on borrowed time. Look, there's enough case studies on when companies don't innovate, they don't welcome change, they get obsolete, you just look at the streaming business or blockbuster is a great example of it. Why OkX partnering with ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, could be one of the clear signs yet that Wall Street and crypto are about to collide and why the next phase of markets may be about bringing stocks, futures, and everything else on-chain, making them tradable

24-7 around the world. We also talk about how AI agents could soon be managing portfolios, moving money, and building financial apps with almost no human input. We're probably going to launch a new AI or a genetic product almost, if not every week, you know, every two or three weeks. Most of the company is going to end up running with the genetic tools with people monitoring these tools. And through all of that, one huge question hangs over the entire conversation. If everything becomes tokenized, programmable, and always on, where does Bitcoin fit? This one is a deep look at the future of finance, AI, tokenized equities, crypto regulation, and the next evolution of global markets. What do you make in this market?

It's been mayhem. I don't know. Yeah. You usually have like strong conviction. an idea of where things are going and even myself, I could see anything happening at this point. It's true. It reminds me a little bit of the COVID days when there was a bit more fear in the market. But that didn't last too long during COVID. I feel like this may last a little longer. Yeah, I mean, I think markets in general are exceptionally confusing. There was a couple weeks ago and the S&P was an all-time high and the fear and green index on stocks was like a four. It's like the most fearful the market had ever been, but with it at an all time high. And I think that pretty much sums it all up. But I mean, everything's trading like a risk asset now. It is. Oil, gold, silver. They're all just mean stocks. It's might as well.

Okay. So speaking of meme stocks, then obviously you guys presumably have a roadmap that's going to be tokenizing and trading everything. Right. So OKX obviously has been at the forefront of all those kind of products and you're making move in the United States. So what kind of behavior are you seeing, I guess, on the exchange that would give us more information on what people are looking to trade and how the market's behaving? You know, it's fascinating. The parallels of when every crypto exchange is sort of on the same trajectory, so to speak, everyone's trying to build the everything app. And it started with the super app concept of years ago, I think you and I were talking about it. I think we were in Singapore. And you fast

forward to today, and I think when you look at the top five exchanges, everyone seems to have the same strategy, which is around two main things as we see a backdrop of market softening in crypto. One is the idea of tokenization, and the other is agentic tools and how agentic AI can add more value to the services we provide customers. I think on OKX, we're, of course, pursuing both. You probably saw the announcement. We didn't say much about tokenized assets before this announcement because the reality is we were working on this. And it was too premature to say anything because it really determines the strategy of the company.

How do we build this out? Do we build it out in the synthetic form that a lot of other companies are doing it? or do we focus on issuer-based tokenized assets? And naturally, I think you know a lot about our company. We tend to build native technology. And our preference has always been, if we're going to add tokenized assets, at least the majority of it should be issuer-based.

We may have cases or use cases where we choose to have sort of the synthetic version of an asset, but the preference is always issuer-based. token. I don't want to take for granted that everybody understands what that means. Can you just give the brief TLDR and what the difference would be there? I think the layman explanation for issuer-based is when there, if you look at the SEC definition, and don't quote me, I think this is my understanding, which is to be an issuer-based token or tokenized asset, it either needs to be issued by one of the exchanges.

So let's say, for example, NIC or NASDAQ. Or it needs to be directly from the company that issues the stock, but that requires them to have their own distributed ledger and then issued that tokenized security, which you're likely not going to see that behavior for some time until exchanges adapt this technology and there's consumer interest. And then I think there could be an argument that some brands would probably want to take on that innovation and distribute that value back, that they don't have to pay to the exchanges back to their holders

in forms of dividends or what have you. But that's issuer base, which is either it's issued by the exchange, which is the listing venue, or it's issued by the company that issues the equity in the first place. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So where are you on the path to offering everything? Well, look, I think, So there are plans of us launching tokenized equities, tokenized perps, tokenized futures in the United States, in Europe, in the markets where we are regulated or self-regulated markets.

So it's going to be a combination of some markets getting sort of the non-issuer-based asset. But our majority of our engineering efforts are going to be focused on unlocking the U.S. market. and the European market where our preferences, of course, we can distribute NICES tokens in these markets and, you know, have a direct consumer relationship, so to speak. Right. So when you talk about the exchange issuing these tokenized equities, you guys just did a massive partnership, obviously, that was news last week, which was an investment from internet exchange, they get a board seat to my understanding, and you're effectively plugged in now to the company that owns a New York Stock Exchange, right? So is that

part of the strategic vision of doing a deal like that? Absolutely. It took us, you know, any deal takes time. And we've been at this for a good bit. I think it dates back to last year, at least as early as, you know, when we started talking to them in the summer. So I'm glad we got it done, number one. Because can you imagine doing a deal like this in the conditions of the market that

we're living today? So I'm very happy that it's completed. And now the hard work is the two technical teams are getting together. And we're figuring out how to build this product the right way and how to seek the regulatory approvals required. And then not just offer this technology on the OKX app, but also make this technology available for other participants to access. So we're not going to guard rail it. I think the idea will be we let. we let it be open and let others use that technology.

So collectively you're building a way to issue these tokenized equities and then for them to be tradable on multiple platforms. 100%. And not just tradable, but imagine tomorrow there's an IPO. Well, in today's world, for you to access that equity, you'd go on your fidelity account or your Charles Schwab account or so on and so forth. But you're not going to see that equity immediately make it to crypto platforms unless they're issuer-based platforms.

In this case, when we complete our product, what's going to happen is you see an IPO, the company gets listed, you open up your OKX app, and the idea is that you have that stock available for you to trade just like you would on Fidelity or other brokers. There is a key difference, though. On our platform, it will be tradable 24-5 or 24-7 minus 1.2. one hour for maintenance or what have you.

And it will be accessible globally in the markets where local laws allow us to distribute this product. So that's the core difference is you're getting instant access and you're getting always on access. I don't really understand how the existing system survives. I know that's hyperbolic and I'm a crypto guy, but every part of this is a better way to do business. It is, and it's interesting you bring that up because I always debate in my own mind the different generations of investors.

And you look at our age group, perhaps we got into 30. 30. In our age group, you know, we discovered the world of investments through perhaps like you and I got a 401k account with our first or second employer. and then you create a account with a brokerage platform, and now you have access to the equities market, and maybe you're learning about certain companies, and you start adding up positions. And in our generation, that was the way in.

And then the crypto wave came in and we adopted crypto. When you look at people who are younger than us, their first investment experience actually happened on a crypto. platform, whether it was a wallet or whether it was an exchange app. And so for them, they're actually used to and grew up in this concept of 24-7, I can trade this thing anytime I want, anywhere I want. So for them, when they experience, when they welcome equities, they're going to want the same access that they're used to on crypto. I keep asking my hedge fund friends about what happens when they're forced 24-7-365 or 24-5, and they can't even fathom the idea of

their companies having to do that. I'm talking about Friends of Citadel and Millennium and the biggest shops in the world. How do these guys who are used to being in the Hamptons all summer and taking weekends off and they're done with work before 5 o'clock, how does a company adjust to having to be present 24-7-365? I think I speculate that there's going to be a lot of consolidation in the market, whether it's led by partnerships or whether it's acquisition led. But you're going to see a lot of trade-fired companies partner up with crypto companies, because that's the best path forward for them. Look, there's enough case studies on when companies don't innovate, they don't welcome change. They get obsolete. You just look at

the streaming business or, you know, the blockbuster is a great example of it. So I don't think we're going to see the blockbuster-like moments here, whether it's brokerage platforms or banks. I think these institutes are quite smart and they're going to make their plays. And crypto companies need them as much as they need the crypto companies. I would, you know, argue. And, you know, your point of what happens to the brokerage platforms, I think they're absolutely going to be in the game and they're going to have these services. The reality is they have trust that arguably crypto companies don't.

crypto companies have the tech, but not the trust, not at least at the same level as the brokerage platform. So I think there's a bit of give and take here. And the consolidation is good for the consumer. Doesn't that make the approach that you've taken with ICE, the superior approach? Because we know if you accept that they're not going anywhere, Schwab or, you know, Morgan Stanley, any of them, but that they're going to want to avoid being Blockbuster to Netflix coming in, that means they're going to have to adopt the superior technology and put everything on those rails. And they'd rather probably do that in a partnership to keep up rather than try to do it themselves. Look, I have a huge amount of respect for ICE and NYC folks.

They are quite advanced. Before us, they invested in polymarket. They've made other bets. So I think they embrace this technology. They understand it. they, I think, will be ahead of others. So I really do think that a lot of folks in TradeFi are thinking about this and they understand that the younger people want this technology.

So depending on who shows up first or who gets a product out first, I think in five years you're going to see a lot of cross-pollination and you're going to see a merging of crypto companies with TradeFi companies. Yeah, that's exactly the path, but you're the first ones I'm seeing really do that because there's even a corollary, I think, in stablecoins, right? So you see you have obviously native stablecoin issuers and then you have every bank now post genius saying we need a stable coin plan. Some are trying to create their own, but most of them now seem to realize that that's reinventing the wheel and they should just partner with somebody. Right. And either like white label their own private stable coin.

And so that seems like the same kind of multiple paths that everyone's going to have to choose. It's very true. I think crypto needs a little bit of a cleanup. I think I've had that point of view for a while. It's the reason why we created this piece of content called a Mile Mile West. So if you look at the markets today, the public markets, you have like less than a dozen companies, crypto companies that went public. this is no dick to anyone that went public, but the reality is I don't see a lot of shareholder value, you know, being returned.

Maybe one company out of all of them has had a decent run in the last earnings. But you look at majority of the basket, and they're sitting in the red from the time they actually went public. And I don't think that's a good thing for the category. when any company goes public in our category, it's our responsibility back to their shareholders, whether it's institutions or retail, that we return shareholder value. So when you have a market of crypto companies

that haven't returned that value, what do you think happens? Doesn't it create even a bigger opportunity for these crypto companies to either get acquired or partner with TradeFi? because a consumer doesn't want two or three applications. They think of markets as a singular, whether it's gold, silver, commodities, crypto's, you know, equities.

And so this convergence of trade-fi and crypto is inevitable. Some companies may resist it. Some companies might, you know, continue to fight for their independence. But I think what's better for the category is sort of the convergence and perhaps that's just my point of view. Yeah, I was making the argument last year when people were so frustrated that tokens weren't moving, like crypto, all coins, that we basically had alt season

that just happened in the stock market instead of in crypto. And you can see it's like the, you know, the joke, Burge Khalifa pattern on the chart, it's straight up one side and straight down the other side at the Christmas tree, whichever one. But that basically happened to every one of those that issued and then every treasury company. So basically anywhere that people went to get exposure to crypto

in the market or by and large, they ended up doing the same thing that they did participating in an ICO or a pre-sale, which is buying the top and then watching it bleat. There's the good and bad here. The bad is we call it the alt markets, but another way to look at it from my vantage point is, you know, penny stocks. Yeah, that's right. You know, you look at a lot of the speculation in the equities markets and it's, you know, typically in the penny stocks.

base. It's the, you know, pharmaceutical companies getting FDIC approval, you know, their stock shooting up and then sort of, you know, going down. So you saw a lot of that happen in the crypto markets. We issued a lot of tokens. There was a time when, I think in crypto markets, you were seeing 3,000 plus tokens, you know, published every single day or listed every, not listed, but, you know, concepted or created every day. The good on the other side is the, the, the platforms, whether it's the exchanges, the networks, meaning the chains, or the governance or tokenomics, everything got stress tested through this process of pushing so much volume of newly created tokens out there in market. So there is the bad side, which is, you know,

I think these are penny stocks and they don't have, most of them don't have long-term value and they go to zero, which is not good for the consumer, not good for the market, not good for the category. But the good is that we did develop a lot of great tech on the back of it. And that tech is now going to be commoditized. It's going to be used by trade fi to then tokenize everything else in the world. And we now know how to do that because we know how to stress test the systems and what works, what doesn't work. Yeah, I always kind of ask myself when we see that at its full potential. obviously all of this commoditized, all of these blockchains being used, whether private or public and everything's tokenized, whether that's captured in some way by institutions in Wall Street and uninvestable by individuals or whether there's going to be a way for individuals still to participate. You know, when it comes to tokenization, I think five years from now, we can assume that most assets are inevitably going to get tokenized.

I definitely see that future. And I think the backbone of that tech is going to be one we developed over the last five, six years. Yeah, I agree. It just makes me wonder if the things, we've already seen it. So I think stocks, obviously, having crypto adjacent stocks moved a lot of liquidity out of crypto, prediction markets have moved a ton because if we're being honest that most people are just gambling, they can go gamble on the weather tomorrow. Yeah.

They don't need a meme coin. Yeah. Right. And they can do it pretty much 24-7, 365, anywhere. And now people are going to be able to trade everything else just like they trade crypto. So you've got to wonder where the bid comes for, or maybe now we just have a real return to utility. And some of those, the few that actually deserve it actually rise. And we start creating our own indices of, you know, a great basket of crypto assets that have long-term value.

Yeah, I think that that's exactly where it heads. Yeah. Now, the equity side is interesting because you look at, you know, the global, equities market, or actually you look at the U.S. equities market, which is the dominating one, I think, don't quote me, but in 2025, the market was valued between $60 to $70 trillion. About $18 trillion of that is foreign investors. But the reality is to access U.S. equities outside of the United States is extremely difficult. You can be in U.K., you have access to it.

However, the challenge is, the U.K. is a different time zone. So you really got to play with time zones to make sure, you know, if you're trying to place a trade after markets for anyone who's not, you know, sophisticated investors, unable to do it. And then when you go to different time zones like Brazil or APEC, what have you, it becomes even more cumbersome. The value of tokenized equities to the United States is, I believe, it opens up the U.S. stock market to the rest of the world. and if you've got 16 to 18 trillion of volume being done by foreign investors,

I think you see that jump over a period of time because the reality is when American innovation becomes accessible in public markets and you price them in public markets, there's a whole world out there that is looking to access those assets. And they currently don't have access to it. So I would argue tokenized assets bring a complete new inflow of money and investments into the U.S. stock market. And I think that's great for American economy. It's a great unlock for us.

And I really think our government should continue to support it because it's going to be great for everyday Americans. I want to talk about that at the minute, I guess the progress of clarity and how you see that legislation sort of pushing forward. But on the regulatory side, obviously we have Atkins at the SEC pushing project crypto. And he made a comment a couple months ago that he effectively thought everything would be tokenized by the end of 2026. And that sounded insane, just so people don't think we're insane for having this vision. And then the DTZC, which clears four quadrillion in volume a year. I mean, I think four or seven. It's something insane, basically the entire stock market.

Got a no action letter from the SEC and then made the announcement that with Canton Network and then future other networks, they're going to be looking to tokenize everything and basically go to T plus zero or less settlement. So we're not crazy talking about that this is inevitable. I don't think it's a crazy idea that by the end of 2026, we don't see most assets trending in that direction. Now, of course, the regulatory side is still needs to mature, and we need to get there. We need to get approvals to be able to do this at scale. But once it begins, then it's just a matter of adding additional assets.

I think it starts with equities and futures and what have you, and then, you know, you see the snowball effect, so to speak. So I have to imagine it's great for the American economy. And I think it's great for American investors because they're now going to have this demand that we historically couldn't unlock and now we can unlock it. So I would have to imagine that the deal that you just got done would have been much more difficult in the previous regime. And now, is that fair to say?

No comment. Okay, no comment. But you were able to get it done now. Yes. And you're getting it done in a time when we still don't have complete legislative clarity, no pun intended. Right. So we're everybody's eyes on the Clarity Act. We know that the regulator is going to be favorable for the next two and a half or three years. But we still need something on the books, I think, to make sure that we don't see the pendulum swing back the other way in the future, right? So how do you handicap that when you're building in the United States? Well, first off, I think for any policymaker listening to this, I think they've really gotten close to a lot of the companies in our category over the last one year period. And I hope that every policymaker sees that what these companies are not trying to do is break the law. What they're trying to do is focus on the tech and the access to people. So I really do think regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, this is in the interest of our. are, this is a national interest for us and we should support it.

And I hope that Democrats are going to continue to support it. The Republican side is going to continue to support it. And, yeah. But I mean, it's ridiculous that it's even a political issue. It is, it is ridiculous. And I think, I think we, it's really important that we continue to keep all the innovation in the United States. We have to maintain that environment. Why do people feel compelled?

Founders, investors, you know, feel compelled that they want to come and start one of the greatest products in the world here in the United States. Because we have the right environment. We have the right capital markets to be able to do this. And I think it's in our national interest to make sure that that continues to be the case because capital is now democratized. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you needed to be in Silicon Valley to raise money to start a startup. that is not the case anymore. You can raise money in Singapore, you can raise money in Hong Kong,

you can raise money in Dubai in Abu Dhabi, you can raise money in parts of Europe. So I think we have real competition. And with AI coming in, knowledge is getting commoditized, skills are getting commoditized. So it really begs the question, how do we protect our national interests

and how do we make sure that the incredible founders continue to find, you know, our country as the place where they want to establish themselves and create these great innovations. I want to move on ZAI next, but just curious, not nonspecific, but do you think the companies right now have to have like two plans? Like a clarity gets past plan or a clarity does not get past plan or do you think everybody's just full steam ahead and hoping for the best?

Look, clarity does, no pun intended, clarity does have a lot of sort of resolution on market structure at many levels. Now, I really hope that clarity is going to pass, and we should talk about that. But if clarity did not pass, it does not mean that crypto companies are suddenly going to have to shut their business in the United States. State laws support crypto companies, and I think we can continue with state-level MTLs and offer these services. But naturally, if we want to sit with the big boys and big girls,

on Wall Street, the market structure bill is what's going to allow that convergence to happen. Okay, so let's talk about it, right? Clarity, specifically why it's so important that it gets done. I think you know this, that I always say a deal is better than no deal. It's the most important thing. Because when you have something in front of you, I always believe you should take it. because the world is quite uncertain. I don't think Brian Armstrong or Coinbase anticipated than that fighting for crypto people at the time on rewards against banks would have jeopardized the bill.

I don't think they intended for that to happen, but no one can predict a global conflict. And I think now that's a great example of why you should take what you have in of you and then work on amendments, then work on modifying the bill and optimizing it over a period of time. So we, none of us in the industry disagree with the stance Brian took, but I don't know if we needed to die on that hill. And I hope we haven't. I hope there's a compromise. I hope we see this bill pass before midterms because it is really important for everyday Americans. Well, I was going to say, Patrick Witt at the White House had a great tweet at one point.

It was right after Brian Armstrong made the, you know, no bills better than a bad bill comment. Yeah. And he basically said the same thing you're saying. And added, in addition, if we have regime change, we get a clarity act written by the anti-crypto army rather than crypto supporters. So it's not even binary. It's not like this clarity or no clarity.

It could be some terrible legislation in the future from an unfriendly regime. Yeah. Yeah. And there are things that are out of our, day-to-day control. And like I said, I think, you know, hindsight is 2020. Let's move on. Let's work. All of us work really hard to push this bill through. I think I commend Brian and Coinbase. They've put in a great effort. And, you know, who knows? Maybe their resistance to accept the bill as it sat back then may end up in a great place in terms of, you know,

rewards for consumers and all crypto companies in the United States. being able to offer the right services to people. Now, I also think when I think about banks, I think they're, I don't understand why they're resisting, giving rewards to people, because they should be in this game. I want to see a JP Morgan coin.

I want to see a Bank of America coin. I want to see a Wells Fargo coin. And I wanted to have really competitive yield products. Today, if I have money in my, you know, I have my primary bank, If I put it in a money market account, I barely get any value back. If I put it in a CD, I might get single digits, lower single digits, but then there's a lockup period.

And I can't do anything with that asset once it's in that lockup period, right? Because I'll have to off-ramp from it, and then I'll have to reinvest it into or move it into a position or in the markets. That's not a great experience. That's very archaic. So can you imagine when Bank of America customers or any of the banks that we have here, federal banks or local banks, when they're able to offer that yield product using this great technology, using blockchain settlement and its efficiency, and taking that value and giving it back to the people?

Can you imagine the sort of retention they will experience in their institutions? They already have the trust to some degree. I think some of them lost the trust along the journey. But I think that should be intriguing for them. And they should be developing this technology, not fighting it. Well, they're never going to give people the same yield that a stable coin is going to because it cuts into their bottom line. And they're obviously, like we all understand fractional reserve banking and they make their money on giving you less than they can lend it out for. But maybe there's a happy medium where actually because of volume and the amount of business they would bring in by even offering one and a half or two percent or something much.

better than they do, that they can thread that needle and actually win this battle. Well, Scott, I think you're right, but think about it this way. In our generation, banks might succeed with that idea and they might resist it, but how are they going to do this with younger people? They can't, yeah. You have self-custody wallets, which I call, you know, banking software on your computer, right? Be your own bank. You and I know that for many, many years now.

So fine. They can do this, resist this change for five years, for 10 years. What happens after? The boomers die. That's what happens. That's exactly it. And the young people, they're going to go be policymakers. They're going to be working at these future banks.

They're going to be working at the future fintech companies. And they're going to end up evolving the entire industry and the consumer experience. So I think the smart thing to do for banks is stop being dinosaurs, adopt it, and be competitive, and show up at the baseball field and, you know, swing the bat. Yeah, instead they're trying to get the entire game shut down. Yeah, exactly. We want to play at all, right? It's not going to work, even if they kill this bill in some way, shape, or form.

Like you said, people still have freedom of choice, and we know what young people are going to choose. But that just puts on a slightly longer timeline. Yeah. And look, I love the president for this because, you know, no matter what criticism you have for the president, the reality is he sees this stuff. He's extremely intelligent when it comes to this industry.

And I really was very happy to see his message after the meeting with Brian. He understands it. He came out swinging fast. And I think he gets it. I think, yeah. So let's talk about the AI side because that seems to be the prevailing narrative at the moment and for good reason, right? I think we kind of had an AI wave in crypto before that was just one of our classic, two early bubbles. but now you can't ignore the agentic side.

I mean, even a guy boomer like me is running open claws as a part of my business and trying to optimize things and it's just incredible. Isn't that how everybody's going to do everything financial in the future? So we talk about all these self-custy wallets and everything, but it's pretty clear that you're going to probably have a superior intelligence managing your portfolio and transacting for on your behalf. I mean, you guys are preparing for that.

at another announcement there. AI, obviously, tools for developers and all these things. Maybe just break down how you're looking at that and what you're building on that side. Well, look, the exciting part is when everyone's doing it and everyone's pushing the limits. And I think if you look at the exchange space or the sort of legacy crypto companies, everyone's pushing forward, which I think is really exciting because that's what develops the best, best product, services, and user experience. So our view is we've got 120 million plus customers, people who use our apps, you know, around the world.

And the thing we're trying to do now is create the developer layer first. We want to create as many developer toolkits across our centralized exchange, our Dex markets, our wallet, all of these things to be programmable. So, you know, engentic tools can operate on top of it. And what we're going to see, what we're expecting will happen is these developers will take these tools and they'll create applications on top of our platform. And so you're going to see a marketplace of apps develop very quickly on top of each of the platforms in our category. And these are tools that people can then use to do personalized trading or portfolio building or, you know, many different use cases or programming it with their e-commerce, you know, platforms or, you know, projects so that transactions can just happen seamlessly in the background without them having never touch anything.

In addition to that, deploying the developer layer on our platform, I think what we're also doing internally is incubating native apps ourselves. So we're looking at how the developers are using our toolkits, but we're also experimenting ourselves. And I think in the next three months, six months where you're going to see is OKX is going to deploy a number of these developer toolkits. We're going to keep advancing them. And then soon enough, we're going to come up with two, three, four, maybe native apps.

And you saw that when the Web 3 self-custody wave came in, you saw how quickly we jumped in. And it sort of felt a bit odd to many people because they said, well, you guys are a centralized exchange. Your monetization is on... You're disrupting yourself. You're disrupting yourself. But I think we're absolutely going to do that.

I think we're probably going to launch a new AI or a genetic product almost, if not every week, you know, every two or three weeks. And I think that's a velocity at which we will approach this over time. And Star, our founder, says this. He thinks that centralized exchanges or crypto companies as we see them today are going to inevitably get disrupted. They're going to look very different. The size of companies is going to look very different. the way we operate and serve our customers is going to look very different.

The way we do compliance is going to look very different. And most of the company is going to end up running with the Gentic tools, with people monitoring these tools. And then on the user experience side, on the QA side, the end service that we give to people who use our apps, I think they're all going to get extremely personalized and extremely customizable and unique. And I'm also very excited about what developers,

and technical people do because they're going to, you know, use this to have frictionless transactions in the background that people haven't been able to program over the last 10, 15 years. I mean, it was just a crazy story from Amazon. A few thousand of their engineers were basically told to, you know, over a few month period, record everything that they were doing. Yeah. Amazon used it to fire all of them and like 12 guys in Bangalore, I think, was the number. I don't want to quote it exactly. are now running what those multiple thousands of engineers are running. And that's today in 2026 at the beginning of the year.

Imagine what that looks like down the road. I guess my fear is that we like to move fast and break things in crypto. And I know how you do business and I know how some of the reputable companies do. But I have a definite fear that people are going to release a lot of these things into the wild. And we're going to see quite a bit of mayhem on the path to what you just described. I think so too. anytime you have speculative markets, you know, there's always bad actors. And I think if anyone, you know, is looking for an idea, I would say create governance

agentic tools so that we make sure these platforms, the markets, you know, have great governance and we don't abuse the things that we've built with a lot of hard work over the last 15 years. I think you saw that compromise with what I call penny stocks. You know, arguably we had an unhealthy amount of tokens being published with zero value. Where a pump fund was doing like $6 million a month. I don't, you know, maybe I'm isolated in my camp, but I don't think that was great for the industry. And I think we got to be careful that, you know, we don't continue to damage our reputation with things that in the pursuit of, you know, technology. It's interesting, though, that Star has the foresight to, I should actually reframe it, he's always had the foresight to disrupt yourselves, as you said.

So with the wallet, the decks, the centralized exchange, you guys have always been ahead of that. So I'm not surprised he's thinking ahead. I just think he always sees where the puck is moving, and he's a technologist first. And so I think he understands that. I think it's that. I think if you look at most crypto platform today, at least ones at our scale, you'll notice that Star is the only technical founder and CEO running the company today. So, you know, when we were in discussions with ICE, it became really apparent to them that the

thing that they were buying was our engineering strength. So, and that comes from top down, I think, you know, Star is an incredible engineer. He's a, you know, incredible product person. And so I think that's where my bet is that OKX is going to continue to be very superior I think we know this. Like, founder-led companies are amazing. And then engineering founder-led companies are even more superior in nature. Yeah, I mean, it's clearly definitely the reason why you guys have stayed ahead technologically.

And I think he's just incredible at seeing it a few years ahead. Yeah. Yeah. It consistently has done that. So you've also been building social tools. Right. So you have another announcement from, like, last week.

So maybe talk about shipping a lot of products. It's ridiculous. It's like you guys have like a decade happen in a week. Yeah. Although I don't think O KX is great at, we typically are not the first to launch things. We typically sometimes I feel like we're, we have the Apple approach where we'll, we'll watch and see what the industry is doing, learn from it and then try to to launch the right product.

Yeah, the better version of what everybody tried. Look, self-custody wallets had been around for many, many years, and then you saw the defy rise, and you saw every defy network have their own wallet. And rather than launch our own wallet very quickly, we waited, we studied the market, and then we ended up launching a wallet that was sort of a consolidation of all wallets, so you can read, write, and transact on this wallet, on our OKX wallet, making everything singular. and cross-chain interoperability. So I think you're going to continue to see that pragmatic approach.

Now, even with AI, with all the other initiatives, you're talking about the social community. We're not the first ones to launch it. We might be the second or third to launch it. But I've always wanted a product like stock twits within crypto platforms. And I think we're approaching it more like stock. talk twits than just a, you know, town hall, online town hall. And the unique things in our product, which by the way, is called orbit is you're going to have live streaming tools.

You're going to have a bunch of tooling in there so that it's not just about, you know, comments and a thread, text-based thread. You have more interactive tools so you can share the insights, you can share the knowledge and the utility with the community and interact with them, not just on knowledge, but also economically on different incentives and what have you. So very early innings on orbit, but that's at least the long-term view. I didn't see the lie. I read the whole announcement, I reported on it, and I didn't see the live streaming side, but that's incredible.

So can I take my YouTube stream that I'm doing every day anyways, and we just go live on there as well? Now, it's rolling out very slowly. You're catching it at a very early innings, and I believe we haven't shipped it in the U.S. yet. I think we've started to roll it out in different parts of the market. we're at testing stage and I think once we feel like the product is stable, then we'll bring it into the United States. Can't wait to do that. Yeah.

So, and then you obviously have accountability for performance, which I found to be such an interesting part of it is that someone can say something, but they also have to show it to some degree. Or they can choose not to, but then you don't believe them, but there's accountability. If someone says they took a trade or something, you actually attach your portfolio and your performance, you can see that. and then that takes a much more, I think, sensible approach to copy trading.

It's not like Instagram and other social media networks where there's no way for you to verify your trades. So that's a big piece of being on OKX's orbit, the social community, which is you know that the information people are sharing, especially around their trading strategy or what have you, is the has to be transparent. And I think that's the key unique value that people are going to find is, you know, we're going to have strong governance, strong community rules, strong detection, so that when content is not correct, it does not fit our community guidelines, we're going to ban that content very quickly. So I think that's very, very important is for people to verify that what they're seeing is actually, in fact, true and they're not being duped in any way.

So I want to talk about expansion into the United States. I don't even know how to phrase it, right? Because obviously you've always been here. Yeah, in some ways. In a way, shape, or form, we had the OK Coin days. I know you were very passionate about leading the effort to rebrand everything here to OKX and make it a seamless product. So where would you say you're on a percentage basis of where you want to be in the United States?

Well, a couple of things. I think U.S. is a very tough market because it's a very mature market. And you have a lot of, you know, companies that are doing incredible things. They're really advanced on the user experience and what have you. So let's just acknowledge that U.S. is a very tough market. When I joined the company back in 2020, one of the key hopes I had is that I would solve for the, you know, brand fragmentation. We had a number of different brands.

I think you remember. And I've been at it for, you know, God, 2020 rebranding OKCoy coin, then re-br branding OK. branding okay EX, then convincing everyone that we should just be just one okay X, get rid of, you know, everything else. So it's been a long journey and that, of course, handicaps you in the U.S. Because in the United States, consumers do care about brand. They do care very highly about the user experience and how things look. So that's one part of it, and I think we've solved that. The second part is your product has to be very competitive and unique. And there's a huge amount of first mover advantage.

You know, everyone has a portfolio functionality in their app. And you can buy and sell crypto or at least the top three or five assets on a bunch of fintech apps. You can buy it on crypto exchanges. So people have a lot of choice. And we weren't first to, you know, get into prediction markets. Gosh, after all the regulatory work on crypto, you know, I don't think anyone had the appetite to want to go and figure out prediction markets, but good on Polymarket, big shout out to them and Kelchie. And I think these two companies, you know, are doing incredible jobs. I know both had different

approaches. You know, polymarket came from the global side. And they're still not available to us, right? Polymarket, I know they will be, but still. Soon, soon I think they'll be available. I do think they have an incredible product. So our position in the U.S. is we've sort of been playing catch up. And I don't think we've given, we've been able to have enough great reasons for why people would use the OKX app at scale. Now, hopefully with the NICP partnership, hopefully with us going into the tokenized world and be able to unlock issuer-based tokenized equities and bringing, you know, regulated perps, regulated futures to the United States, we can start to catch up. And I think that's a goal is, we build a really competitive product in the United States? Yes, we can. It takes time. Look, I'll give

you the example of chip manufacturers. You look at Nvidia. You look at Intel. You look at some of the other, you know, giants. If you look at them back in 2000, 2002, 2004, arguably Intel always had market share and superiority. Could you have ever imagined that this sort of niche gaming chip manufacturer is going to take over the world. It took them, you know, two decades to find that product market fit. So I think life is pretty long, especially the commercial side of things. And we're going to stay at it. You've seen us stay at it. We have enclosed our shop. We have stayed in the business in the United States. And we're going to continue to try and find that product market fit or be the first to do something that brings

millions of Americans really creates the urgency for them to come and download our app and give it a try. I do think we have a really compelling brand compared to others. I think younger people want radical brands. And I don't think the status quo in crypto in the United States gives that vibe. And I think we want to be that.

That's number one. And I think it's improving the product stack is it possible that in the next six months, eight months, you're going to see issuer-based tokenized equities. You're going to see prediction markets. You're going to see regulated derivatives and future products, you know, on the platform. Yes, I think that's a great possibility. And then I think let's see where the future takes us.

But we're committed to the United States. I think you're seeing ICE is not just a one-off deal. This is a very intentional deal. It's a signal to the world that we care about the U.S. very deeply. We want to be here. We want our products to be loved by people here just like they're loved all over the place. And so we're just well, let's see what we can do. And to be honest, I think when people see the big number, the valuation,

they look and they can go, wow, these guys are doing a lot of business outside. Dude, that hits students. Yeah. Maybe they didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I think the valuation is a great validation. A valuation like that in the market conditions that we have, I think is also a really positive signal.

But what's more important for us as a company is whether it's our private investors today on the cap table, whether one day it's our investors in the public markets, our focus is how do we continue to grow the company that we have shareholder value creation. And if we're unable to demonstrate that or show that, I don't think you're going to see OKX running towards the public. markets. No. I think we're going to take our time and I think we're very resilient. We're very persistent. We're very stubborn. And we're going to be here. We're going to keep chipping away. Isn't part of being that everything app, not just the offerings or the products or the assets that you offer, but also eventually offering the full suite of financial services? That seems to also be

with the Pucks moving. You know, custody, yield, lending, right? You can, I mean, I kind of envision this day where you have your Nvidia tokenized stock that's issuer based and it's next to your Bitcoin and it's next to your car title, you know, your mortgage or whatever and they're all tokenized in this one big basket and you can take a loan against it and never sell and not have taxable events, all the things that rich people are on self-custody and you have true ownership of it and self-custody recovery is a lot better than where it sits today. I mean, I think it's improved quite a bit already. But yeah, I do think that's the world where we're going to where your finances are going to be consolidated in one or two places.

They're going to be extremely accessible. They're going to be extremely interoperable with different asset types and different markets. And you can move them without, you know, permissionlessly across borders, across different networks and what have you. So I think that's very exciting. You look at the world and in many ways communications. became the basic human right in many ways. I think you're going to see access to modernize money

and access to modernized markets become a basic human right. And I think just like Internet and other things, I think it's going to be something that everyone in the world is going to eventually have access to and it's going to create even healthier two-sided marketplace. Can I ask you the most important question? What do you think of the new F1 rules?

I hate them. Everyone hates them. Well, look, remember when Facebook was popular? No. Back circa like 2007, 2008, when we were still using Facebook, and they would update their interface and most people would hate it. Apple does it all the time. Every Apple update.

For two weeks or a month, we would hate it, and then we would forget it and we would love the new interface. So I think it's too new to do. tell whether, you know, we should like or dislike the F1 regulations, I think is very tricky. Everyone's learning. It's very clear from the Australian GP that certain teams have an advantage, you know, they've figured things out. But it's also very early innings.

Remember the last two seasons. If you look at the, you know, teams that were on, you know, the first two or three positions didn't end up being the teams that were, you know, winning the constructor or driver's championship. I think it's too early to tell. Look, I'm a motorhead. You know, I like the V8s and the V10s, and I like that sound. The visceral experience, yeah.

Yeah, I don't have that. So naturally, you know, it's not as exhilarated. I think quieter. I didn't even know the car. They are quieter. And that's the best part about going to a race. The first time you hear him just, yeah, I won my eardrums blasted. You know, that's why I go there for.

So, yeah, let's see. Let's see. I hope you continue rooting for McLaren. Of course, I remember, like, when I went to McClare, and with you guys to Silverstone, which was like the race that it all turned around and all of a sudden McLaren was on the podium. But there was some comment

when we were in the control room, mission control, where they said that from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, the cars are some amount faster, a full lap faster, whatever it is. Like how much innovation happens in real time from beginning of season to the end of the season?

Good corollary for OKA. It's, there's a lot of innovation. You know, Zach Brown and I've, gotten to know each other really well. And, you know, I've been learning from him. And one thing he's said is almost like 3,000 or more than 3,000 parts get completely, you know, rebuild, not even rebuilt, but recreated every season. So it's a brand new car, especially in a year where regulations have changed.

So I think there's a lot of work they do. It's incredible. And it's all very new, which makes the, which creates an even playing field. and I'm still very confident with Zach and, you know, Andre, Andreas, and I think they have the two best drivers on the grid, Lando and Oscar. I think they're going to crush it again this season, and I'm rooting for another constructor and driver championship.

Yeah, I hope so. Do you have any other big partnerships on your radar? So obviously, I mean, I know now it's been years, Tribeca Film, McLaren and Manchester City. I mean, you chose, we've talked about this at length that everyone's heard it, but like you chose three massive winners. And in the case of Manchester and McLaren, you chose them before they were massive winners. Yeah, yeah. Is there what else you're looking at and getting prediction markets and start to bet on those teams?

I don't think we're looking at anything right now. I think it's possible we will look at a U.S. property once we feel like we're ready. But right now, we're just drinking out of the fire. and the last thing we're thinking is a sports partnership. I think the good thing for us is McLaren is very much, or F1 is very much a growing sport in the United States. So it has huge penetration here. I think football is still, you know,

a sport that people really love watching. You're going to have the World Cup here this year. So we get a lot of mileage out of these two properties. Are we going to do a basketball team? I'd like to. You know, I'd love to do it. give me some money. I just saw the new soccer stadium here, football soccer stadium here in Miami.

I hadn't noticed it and all the times I landed at the airport. But yeah, you get, bring you a messy, you get a whole new stadium. Yeah, you get a whole new stadium. So I hope that we will look at new properties. But I got to tell you, Scott, the amount of spam mail you get once you do one or two or three partnerships, you know, every agency, every property is emailing you. So I definitely don't want to get that. I'm not looking at any properties for the next one year.

Please don't spam my inbox. But, and Star, if you're listening to this, I need another $50 million because I want to go shopping. Perfect. And I have to get the soundbite. Where do you think Bitcoin fits into all of this at this point, right? Because it was originally, obviously the OG. I think it has the most clarity. And it seems like crypto has definitely jumped the ship from where Bitcoin originally started.

But do you think that it still has a very important place? Scott, how much skepticism have you and I experienced in the last 10 years of Bitcoin? All of it. Every single debate you could have about the decline and the death of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most resilient crypto network, or I would argue, financial network. the best times to dollar cost average and invest in Bitcoin is when the world is afraid of where it's going. I am a long-term bitcoiner. I think it's going to continue to be the foundational layer of our markets, perhaps even trade-fi over a period of time.

There's not much you can do with gold other than have it in someone's custody. you get a paper that says you own some gold. But with Bitcoin, you have actual digital use cases. I don't think there's an asset that has been able to replace it and has maintained decentralization the way Bitcoin does. So yes, there's a lot of skepticism in the market. But did you notice today, strategy bought another $2 billion at the average price of $70,000. So I think when somebody's...

spending $2 billion to buy an asset, I think they're doing more thinking and, you know, what have you, than you and I alone. So I continue to be pro-Bitcoin. I think the resilience is is not to be with. I want Starr to give you $50 million. And if you're looking, Star, can you please send my wife $5 million for her to shopping? He knows that at least I'll get him. he knows that I'll get him a winning team. I've proven it, right? McLarence winning team, Man City winning team. Star, you give me $50 million.

I'll get you a winning basketball team. Can we get Star in the next conversation? 100%. You know, we tried it in Singapore a year and a half ago. And it was actually there. And then we just had some logistical. No, no, we'll make it happen. Yeah, I would love to have the conversation with him.

All right, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.