Binance founder Changpeng Zhao joined the Bali Clubhouse AMA remotely during Coinfest Asia 2026 on Aug. 20–21, with Kite AI sponsoring the event and its team taking part in ground-level sessions alongside CZ's appearance.

On market cycles, Zhao aligned with traditionalists, saying the four-year pattern remains strong. He acknowledged uncertainty about the next catalyst, noting he could not have predicted DeFi even in 2020, and he pointed to his past misses on NFTs, memecoins, and tokenized real-world assets as a reason not to declare RWAs as the next cycle engine. Tokenized RWAs have grown to roughly $29–33 billion, with tokenized Treasuries exceeding $13 billion, yet large assets show minimal weekly activity and only about a tenth of RWA value is used in DeFi.

On AI and payments, he argued that AI will eventually handle payments as traditional rails impose human checks that software can bypass. He noted that machine-native payment protocols have already processed tens of millions of transactions in 2026. Regarding AI trading bots, he rejected the idea of additional platform safeguards, saying the tools will be used by everyone. He also observed that post-regulatory-freeze innovation is accelerating, but current price signals do not yet reflect that momentum.

In discussing Indonesia, CZ highlighted a demand-supply imbalance: strong local demand but limited off-chain tokenization of assets such as gold, oil, rare minerals, and even government bonds. He cited Indonesia's roughly 15 million users and seventh-place ranking in global adoption. He also framed Tether's Treasury backing as an indirect form of tokenized government bonds and suggested broad international access to sovereign debt would be attractive to countries seeking a large investor base.

On retail strategy, Zhao offered no price targets or token picks. He recommended not liquidating major assets to chase timing, advising 1–10% of monthly income be allocated to top assets, accepting cycle volatility. His closing practice emphasized daily learning: 30–60 minutes of focused study with questions developed three to five levels deep.