Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said he hopes cryptocurrencies and blockchain will simply become an invisible part of everyday infrastructure by 2031, just like the internet is today.
Speaking on Scott Milker’s Wolf of All Streets podcast on Thursday, Zhao said that while new use cases and developments will continue to emerge, he hopes talk of the technology will calm down as it becomes part of everyday life.
“I hope that in five years we won’t be talking about cryptocurrencies as cryptocurrencies, just like we don’t talk about the Internet anymore, we don’t talk about TCP/IP, we don’t talk about HTML, JavaScript, etc. We don’t talk about those things anymore. We just use them.”
“I think in five years, I hope we will only be using cryptocurrencies,” he added. “There will be other use cases for blockchain, for storing data, so there will be others, but I hope that in five years we will stop talking about the technology, we are just using it and it will be used everywhere.”
Money Freedom with CZ (AMA) https://t.co/ig5azu5ZcU
– The Wolf of All the Streets (@scottmelker) April 9, 2026
The optimistic vision for cryptocurrencies in 2030
Global adoption of cryptocurrencies is steadily increasing. An estimated 559 million people around the world will use cryptocurrencies in 2026, according to data and analytics firm DemandSage.
Industry insiders predicted last September that the sector may be just one market cycle away from widespread mainstream adoption.
Czechoslovakia is not alone in its lofty hopes for the future.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest predicted in a January report that by 2030, digital assets could grow into a $28 trillion market, while Tether co-founder Reeve Collins said last October that he expects all coins to become stablecoins in the same time frame.
Meanwhile, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis recently estimated that stablecoin volumes could reach $1.5 quadrillion by 2035, and a Citi survey of banks and asset managers last September found that most expect a tenth of the global post-trade market turnover to be transacted through stablecoins and tokenized securities in less than five years.
Artificial intelligence can accelerate the blockchain development process
Blockchain technology could also get a boost in adoption and development thanks to artificial intelligence, Zhao added.
“The speed of development and the speed of writing code will increase very greatly, and AI agents will use cryptocurrencies more,” Zhao said, adding, “I hope blockchain will arrive, and I also know that blockchain will arrive there.”
In March, Zhao argued that developers of AI agents should prioritize their intrinsic utility, not launch local native tokens to raise money.
Countries that avoid AI and blockchain technology will fall behind
Meanwhile, Zhao said that countries that avoid blockchain technology and artificial intelligence will be at a severe disadvantage in the future.
Related to: CZ memoir revives row with OKX founder Star Xu over contract fraud, Huobi arrested
He added: “I think there are really three big industries in my adult life: the Internet, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. Any country that misses one of these industries will be severely disadvantaged.”
Customer onboarding platform Signzy ranked Switzerland as the most crypto-friendly country in its January blog. While Arkham has marked the country as one of the world’s top innovative jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s January AI report described the US as a leader in AI infrastructure and frontier model development, although it noted that the country lags behind smaller, highly digitized economies like the UAE in actual use.
magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?
