Binance Co-CEO: What's Next for Binance in 2026? Richard Teng on Milestones, Trends & Market Outlook

Now, you might recognize the guest sitting next to me. I’m joined by the one and only co-CEO of Binance, Mr. Richard Teng.

me. I’m joined by the one and only co-CEO of Binance, Mr. Richard Teng.

The financial institutions are now doing a lot of deep dives. [music] They’re all trying to introduce their own stablecoins as well, because stablecoins solve a fundamental architectural problem within the financial landscape that has existed for decades. And now,

with this technology, we’re able to overcome that.

I would say that stablecoin usage will continue to grow from strength to strength. We see a lot of momentum, so I do think that more and more governments around the world will provide clarity.

If you look at it, I mentioned crypto and blockchain exist to solve problems. There are a lot of fundamental problems. You rethink the world, the future world, and you rethink finance going forward. Everything can be rebuilt [music] using blockchain technology and AI technology.

going forward. Everything can be rebuilt [music] using blockchain technology and AI technology.

We have partnerships with the likes of [music] BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and many others are approaching us. These are big positive developments for the blockchain and crypto industry.

The crypto community is the most passionate community with the most passionate users. We want to make sure we keep that passion going,

passionate users. We want to make sure we keep that passion going, and what better way than to bring people closer through dialogues, chats, sharing of ideas, brain shares, and many new ideas. Good ideas come from all those idea generations. The more

we can support each other, the more robust the growth of this industry.

Hello and welcome back to Binance Studios.

Now, you might recognize the guest sitting next to me. I’m joined by the one and only co-CEO of Binance, Mr. Richard Teng.

me. I’m joined by the one and only co-CEO of Binance, Mr. Richard Teng.

Richard, great to see you back in the studios. I can’t believe it’s been one whole year since we’ve had you here.

Thanks for having me, mate. Always such a pleasure, and it’s very exciting for the community to hear from you.

We are well underway into 2026, and I think someone that’s at the helm of Binance and gets to see all different regions of the entity moving forward. 2025 was such a milestone year.

We saw regulatory maturity and saw adoption from institutions coming in at scale.

Now that we have had January 2026 out of the way and are moving ahead, how is 2026 shaping up for crypto, and how do you expect it to evolve?

Well, I expect 2026 to see even greater momentum. You mentioned

regulatory maturity — we’re not quite there yet. We are still at a very early stage of regulatory clarity in many parts of the world.

The US came out with the Genius Act last year, and that gave clarity to stablecoins. You can

see stablecoin volume skyrocketing last year because of that. Hopefully, the clarity act can be passed in the US; that will be another key milestone for us within the crypto industry.

With the US being such a big ecosystem — the most dominant economy in the world with the deepest capital markets — it will have outsized influence on the rest of the world.

Last year has been a milestone year, as you mentioned. There are several key milestones on the Binance front, and we’re very thankful to our users for their continued support and trust.

Firstly, we reached 300 million users. To put that into perspective, one in 20 adults globally is now a user on Binance.

Secondly, we achieved our global licensing with our global market. None of the other global exchanges currently are regulated in the fashion that we, under ADGM, regulate from an end-to-end basis — covering everything from listings to security, compliance, risk management, governance frameworks, co-wallet management, etc.

It’s a very comprehensive regulation, and all our users are subject to that high level of regulatory scrutiny and protection.

We also achieved $34 trillion in trading volume.

None of these milestones would have been possible without our users’ support, and we continue to push ahead with many new product features launched last year.

AAnd you mentioned a few things that we will hone in on—we’ll touch on ADGM a little bit later, as well as the 300 million users milestone.

Before that, you mentioned stablecoins. Looking back at 2025, stablecoins were truly the winners of the year. We saw stablecoin transaction volume outperform those of traditional financial rails like Visa. There were huge milestones in adoption and traded volume—it seemed like the killer app of 2025.

I’m curious because you work with Binance as an entity, overseeing our 300 million users, and also having conversations around integrations such as Binance Pay and governments worldwide.

Why do you think stablecoins have reached this pivotal point now? Based on your conversations, how do you see their role evolving globally?

Well, stablecoins have existed for some time now because they solve many fundamental problems that had not been resolved.

If you look at the traditional financial architecture globally, cross-border transfers often go through slow processes like SWIFT correspondent banking. A typical cross-border remittance transfer can take two to three days for

banking. A typical cross-border remittance transfer can take two to three days for the recipient to receive the funds, with very high costs—even for large corporates.

Once people realized the beauty of crypto and stablecoins—that you can do instantaneous transfers, and the recipient receives the money almost immediately at just a fraction of the traditional cost—traditional financial institutions have begun to switch over.

It’s not only retail users anymore. For the longest time, retail embraced stablecoins.

But now, with developments like the Genius Act, financial institutions are doing a lot of deep dives. They are all trying to introduce their own stablecoins as well.

A few major banks have highlighted stablecoins because they solve fundamental architectural problems within the financial landscape that have existed for decades. Now, this

technology is finally able to overcome those.

So I would say that stablecoin usage will continue to grow from strength to strength. We’re seeing a lot of momentum.

With agentic AI emerging, crypto and stablecoins will become the mode through which agentic AI facilitates activities such as booking hotels, making payments, and more.

I think more and more governments around the world will provide clarity. Some are

actively supporting stablecoin issuance and working on creating more use cases.

I’m very bullish on the use cases.

What’s really interesting is the convergence of agentic AI and crypto—executing payments and other use cases we probably haven’t seen yet. We’re really just scratching the surface.

I held a live stream with the Binance research team last week. They said that for 2026 trends, crypto is entering an “invisibility era,” where we use crypto without even realizing it.

That’s really one of the moves we’re seeing ahead.

So, we’re asking you, Richard, COO of Binance: what does true mass adoption look like to you?

Indeed, it has to be part of everyday life. It has to be invisible.

It has to be part of the entire financial and economic landscape.

And those building blocks are already taking place.

For example, today, if you use a smartphone, you don’t realize all the underlying technologies that power it, because it has become a natural part of everyday life. We take these things for granted.

The same goes for the internet, which has been around for ages.

We take its presence for granted, but it’s part of what we do daily.

In time, blockchain and crypto will become the same—they will become invisible.

It has to be part of the entire financial and economic landscape. Right?

Those building blocks are all taking place, as you can see. For example, today, if you use a smartphone, you don’t realize all the technology and separate computing that goes on behind it because it has become part of our everyday life. We take these things for granted.

The internet has been around for ages, and we also take it for granted; it’s part and parcel of what we do daily. Blockchain and crypto will eventually become the same—they will become invisible.

We are moving towards that.

If you look at it, as I mentioned, crypto and blockchain exist to solve problems. There are a lot of fundamental problems. If you rethink the world, the future world, and rethink finance going forward, everything can be rebuilt using blockchain technology and AI technology.

It’s not only the financial sector; most economic sectors can do so as well.

For example: Financial transfers and remittances are being transformed by stablecoins.

Investment, hedging of risk, divestment, etc., will be done by tokenization and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Crypto payments have taken off significantly and continue to gain momentum globally. You can see that the entire financial landscape,

in terms of the fundamental building blocks, is going to be replaced with this fundamental technology. Over time, you will make use of it without even realizing it.

technology. Over time, you will make use of it without even realizing it.

We’re also seeing countries getting on board with this.

Most recently, Kyrgyzstan embraced a stablecoin strategy.

Do you think more countries are going to start following this path? And what do you think will need to happen from a regulatory standpoint to make sure this is done responsibly?

Well, I would say the first thing everyone needs to realize is that there still needs to be a lot of financial education.

Educating policymakers, regulators, law enforcement agencies about what this technology represents and how it can transform and solve problems is essential.

The entire future architecture and landscape will be totally changed by using this technology.

You mentioned Kyrgyzstan, but many other countries will also embrace it.

They’re going to put all the asset classes they have on-chain, which provides a much bigger universe for people to originate, distribute, trade, invest, hedge their risks.

It also allows governments around the world to monetize assets more effectively.

CZ has mentioned having many governments talking to us about these projects.

We would really like to push forth on that agenda to help countries, governments, and policymakers gain a much deeper understanding of how to use this technology for value unlocking.

We are moving ahead full steam.

I’m always amazed by how much relentless work you guys are doing—the travel, the hours you’re putting in.

We mentioned stablecoins as one of the key buzzwords of 2025, but another key buzzword was tokenization.

Tokenization is a trend we’re seeing: real-world assets moving on-chain in ways that are disrupting the traditional financial realm as we have known it.

So, Binance is also expanding their support for tokenization of real-world assets including tokenized money market funds. And I’m curious how we’re using this to expand the offerings for institutional clients as well, as that is such an interesting viewpoint of a change of perception into this tokenized world that we’re moving ahead to.

Well, my view of the world is that everything will be put on-chain, right? So if you look at recent announcements by the likes of the New York Stock Exchange, yeah,

right? So if you look at recent announcements by the likes of the New York Stock Exchange, yeah, I think the rest of the exchanges will do so as well. They’re going to put all the different assets on-chain via tokenization because it allows then users, uh, investors, to do effective investment, hedging, divestment, managing their risk on a 24/7 basis. The market never stops,

right? Information and news flow doesn’t stop flowing at any point in time. Which is why crypto

right? Information and news flow doesn’t stop flowing at any point in time. Which is why crypto never sleeps. Blockchain never sleeps. It operates on, we trade on a 24/7 basis. And now traditional

never sleeps. Blockchain never sleeps. It operates on, we trade on a 24/7 basis. And now traditional financial institutions understand the beauty of that and they’re going to put that on-chain.

It creates a lot more opportunities for players like ourselves to really support them in terms of their trading. So on that front, we are actively talking to financial institutions and global traders. We have partnerships with the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, and many others are approaching us for discussion. Those are big

positive developments for the blockchain and crypto industry.

So I think that’s one. On the second matter, which is relating to allowing for, you know, tokenized assets, etc., we have many different types of clientele on our platform, ranging from mom and pops to retail to high-net-worth individuals, corporates,

family offices, institutions, and sovereigns as well.

Each category of users will have their different needs and wants, and we just have to do deep dives to understand all those needs better to fulfill them. So, for the institutional case, we have a team that looks after the institutions to understand their needs, and because of that, we are able to come up with very tailored products to customize for the needs of the institution.

So, since the last two years, we have introduced things like tri-party arrangements.

We have introduced Binance Prestige, Binance Wealth, Crypto-as-a-Service, where financial institutions can onboard their clients but use us for everything else in terms of trading activities on crypto and digital assets.

We introduced all those, and the collateral that you mentioned about is something else, right? Then the institution says, “Hey, look, this is something that

right? Then the institution says, “Hey, look, this is something that is good for the marketplace.” We want to utilize it, and we work with institutions to accept some of these money market funds as collateral for trading purposes.

So, we will continue to understand the needs of different parts of our clientele chain better and come out with dedicated products to serve them.

And you mentioned Franklin Templeton, BlackRock there, which are huge names in the financial world, and the fact that we are proud to work with them in some room is a fantastic testament to Binance and also to the crypto sphere.

For a lot of people, their perception of Binance is that Binance equals crypto. I

think that’s really a reflection of how long we’ve been in the industry and the trust that we give back to the community and our users.

What do you think crypto, for you, means to you today, and what responsibilities come with operating at such a large scale?

Well, we're very passionate about supporting our community and supporting the freedom of money. I think that is at the heart of everything we do, right? So, you know,

money. I think that is at the heart of everything we do, right? So, you know, our values: we are very user-focused, humble, cooperative, putting users at the front and center of everything we do, and that's the foundation for our success.

By really placing users front and center in every key decision that we make—to protect their interests and safeguard their assets, etc.—we continue to do so.

Binance is a super app now; I mean, with 300 million users, one in 20 adults is using it.

What we are looking to do is to really support our users in terms of their growing needs, whether in investment, trading, management, etc. If you look at it recently, we introduced a lot more TradFi products, including the trading of gold and silver perpetual contracts, which have received very robust demand and support from our community and users.

So, thank you so much on that front.

So we will look forward to again with the ADGM licensing and global platform. We look forward to really use it to push forth with a lot more innovation,

platform. We look forward to really use it to push forth with a lot more innovation, a lot more new release of product feature and a lot more products to really make it a very complete ecosystem to support our users in terms of their needs.

That was going to be my next question!

We have seen gold and silver perpetual futures contracts come through, and silver in January has reached completely new highs and is performing extremely well on the markets. We also saw Tesla perpetual contracts.

Are there any other trading products you can give a hint to today or is it a way?

We will. So the team is working tirelessly to look at the different types of product features, product suites, new product contracts that we can roll out. So rest assured, you know, if you have any inputs, any demand, let us know. You know, we value our users and community feedback very, very much and we take those very seriously. So if you have new areas of needs,

new things that you think we should do, let us know. We'll push ahead with them.

But the team at any point in time is working on, you know, 10 or 20 different new things, right? And as and when they are ready, we'll push them out. We need to create a proper ecosystem,

right? And as and when they are ready, we'll push them out. We need to create a proper ecosystem, a conducive environment to make sure that the liquidity is there, the product will take off, very much like how we introduced our gold and silver contracts and we see very good trading volume and very good liquidity because a lot of homework goes into many of those things.

And you mentioned the crypto ecosystem—it is so vast, and Binance is a really strong community, but there are also other communities in the industry as well. I'm curious to hear from you when it comes to other crypto communities. We have kind of Ethereum, which this year is having upgrades; we’ve got the Solana ecosystem which is extremely strong; and we've got BNB Chain

continuing with their momentum. What other ecosystems outside of Binance's community and ecosystem really stand out for you? And are there any signals this year that you're looking for?

Well, I think as a company and as an ecosystem, we want to be supportive of community development. We

want to be supportive of industry development. So all these are very positive developments, right? The more the ecosystem can develop, the different ecosystems can develop,

right? The more the ecosystem can develop, the different ecosystems can develop, the more new creations will come out—new ideas, new utility are being created.

So those are all positive and we try our best to support everybody on that front.

And, you know, we have different builders with different needs. The more we can do not only within the crypto space but also within the TradFi space, within the tokenization space, within the payment space, and how we can support all these developers and builders in terms of their new ideas and new build-up—I think the better off we are as an industry. And the industry is still very young, right?

I mentioned that one of my three guiding principles for me is working very closely because we are still at a very early stage of development. The more we can support each other, the more robust the growth of this industry is and everybody is better off—and us being the largest player, we will stand to benefit.

You mentioned the three guiding principles. Can you talk us through the other two?

Well, the first one is we continue to put users at the front and center of everything. Every key division continues to build the best-in-class platform with

everything. Every key division continues to build the best-in-class platform with the best features to serve them in terms of benefits and give them the best security, compliance, and risk management. So I think that's one.

Secondly, we work very closely with global law enforcement agencies, regulators, policymakers to formulate the right rules and the right framework to support crypto development because, you know, early adopters don’t need those clear rules, but for mainstreaming to come through, they need clarity in terms of rules, right? So we are very passionate about that. We Work very closely,

and thirdly, continue to work very closely with other industry players to support industry development because it’s only with a vibrant, dynamic industry that everybody becomes better.

Fantastic.

Now, I have three rapid-fire questions that I promised to ask for the community. So I’m going to hit them with you quickly.

Favorite crypto term in the industry?

“Keep building.”

Keep building. Love it.

And the best piece of Binance merch that you have owned or seen?

Best piece of the Binance jacket. The Binance jacket. Vintage jacket is really nice.

Yeah. Really good.

And the favorite—oh, the most countries that you visited with Binance in one week?

Three.

Three.

Okay. Can you remember the three?

I can’t remember, but I remember—it was a hectic trip. I had to fly place to place.

Richard’s passport is covered in stamps.

I think I’m happy to find that out.

Fantastic.

And now, Richard, finally, just to close.

I think 2026 is going to be such an exciting year for the industry.

There is a lot of noise and a lot of excitement that comes with a new year and new kinds of financial objectives and goals.

Do you have any words of advice or inspiration for the community?

No.

So I think people continue to focus a lot on price movement.

I would say price movement is determined by many different factors: macroeconomic conditions, interest rate environment, geopolitics, tensions, etc. But if you look at the momentum that is being built, it is very, very strong in the blockchain and crypto space.

I just came back from Davos last week, and when I talk to the world leaders and financial institutions, everybody believes in it now, right? Unlike in the past.

So the type of conversation we’re having today is very, very different, and everybody will start deploying and investing.

The momentum, the long-term foundation, and the strength are very, very strong.

So focus on the long term and keep building.

Fantastic.

Well, Richard, thank you so much.

I won’t keep you much longer, but thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

Always much appreciated.

Thank you so much.