After an absence of over two years from the U.S., Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) took the stage at the Consensus conference in Miami, Florida on Thursday. Addressing a special side chat session, CZ outlined his stance on hot industry topics like liquidity, AI economy, and the agentic future of the BNB chain in the coming times.
Starting the conversation, CZ candidly reflected on his avoidance of the U.S. these recent years. Between April 2024 and September 2024, the crypto mogul served time in a U.S. federal prison after he pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. He attributed his return to the U.S. for Consensus to the progressive crypto stance that the U.S. has cemented in the last year.
As per his own admission, “for the last few years, I’ve been trying to avoid the U.S. I’ve been trying to stay out of sight, out of mind. But I think, obviously the U.S. policy towards crypto changed in the last year and a half or so I have to actually make up for the absence.”
CZ on U.S. lacking liquidity
CZ, 49, was all praises for U.S.’ crypto regulatory overhaul in the last year and a half. He pointed out that founders and developers who were once fleeing the U.S. to more tech-savvy markets like the UAE and Hong Kong, are beginning to find their way back to the States.
While these developments have kicked-in visible momentum into the U.S. crypto ecosystem, CZ said, that the liquidity gaps in the country are glaring and critical. Commenting on the situation, CZ went on to say that the best liquidity in crypto is outside of the US market.
“I think in our ecosystem, Binance has the best liquidity in this market, and we would love to be able to provide that in some way, either bring back Binance or somehow provide the U.S. the best liquidity in the world and the best prices for the consumers,” CZ noted.
He added moving forward, Binance plans to fix its lack of engagement with the U.S. regulators and clear existing market misconceptions about him and about the overall Binance ecosystem.
“I think there was a lack of engagement in the with the US communities. I’m here to spend more time, to engage with more of our community and try to hopefully fix that,” CZ added.
BNB’s agentic roadmap
Under the Biden administration, Binance became one of those crypto businesses that decided to limit its operational expansion in the U.S. This resulted in the crypto exchange losing touch with American developers and snags in introducing products like BNB ETFs in the States.
As per CZ, a lot changed during this gap and Binance slowed-down engagement with the U.S. market. Now that Donald Trump is bullish on making the country the crypto capital of the world, CZ said, regulations-wise its a more conducive time to re-accelerate BNB’s ecosystem exposure in the U.S.
Making BNB’s on-chain ecosystem AI ready and supportive of agentic payments is the need of the hour, he stated.
“Now’s the time to build the infrastructure for AI. There’s many other people building language models, all this other stuff, which is great. We just want to make the BNB Chain about the money for for agents,” CZ noted describing what lies in store for Binance’s on-chain network.
The BNB Chain evolved from the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), was officially launched in September 2020 as a low-cost alternative to Ethereum. In the last five years, the BNB chain ecosystem has amassed over 4.7 million daily active users and around $45 billion TVL as of early 2026.
Source: Binance
CZ on agentic AI
CZ has predicted a future where “agentic commerce” would dominate the crypto as well as the broader financial fabric. He said AI agents would soon start making millions of more transactions than humans.
Reflecting on the “crypto will be the currency of AI” statement that he made during the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, CZ said he maintains his stance.
He argued that while AI agents would not be able to swipe traditional cards for transactions, they could initiate and process microtransactions using crypto.
“In the future, it should just be agents trading, right? So all the exchanges now needs to be agent-ready,” CZ suggested.
CZ-backed YZi Labs has decided to invest 20 percent in exploring AI while keeping the majority 70 percent chunk for blockchain improvements. CZ also said YZi Labs could shell out 10 percent investments around biotech R&D.