Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, participated in a fireside chat at Consensus 2026 today, titled "When DeFi Expands into TradFi: Designing a New Financial Platform for the Next Decade," sharing his observations and insights on the maturation of cryptocurrencies. The chat was moderated by Aoyan Ashraf, Global News Manager at CoinDesk, and covered the complementarity and challenges of decentralized systems and traditional finance at various levels. Ben stated that over the past decade, cryptocurrencies have gradually evolved from investment products into "pipelines" for the future financial system. From stablecoins to RWA tokenization, crypto orbits are characterized by being 24/7, borderless, and programmable. The role of cryptocurrencies is not to replace banks, but rather to reduce friction in the financial system. From a customer perspective, Ben believes the major trend for crypto orbits will be at the infrastructure level, ultimately becoming the new "back end" of the financial system, silently changing the financial landscape. Customers are results-oriented, and so are institutional applications. Therefore, the financial system is undergoing a technological revolution, but the innovation in operating logic may not necessarily bring about a significant difference in the end-user experience. "Just like cloud computing services, users don't say 'I'm using cryptocurrency,' but care about 'I can transfer funds instantly' and 'I can access global markets.'"