- Zhou questioned the accepted notion of how consumers engage with financial services. He proposed that users may not engage with platforms at all in the future.
- At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Ben Zhou, the CEO and co-founder of Bybit, spoke at a fireside chat.
What will it take to create a financial system that billions of people can depend on and hardly notice?
At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Ben Zhou, the CEO and co-founder of Bybit, spoke at a fireside chat titled “Trust, Technology, and Transformation: Building the New Financial Platform for a Tokenized Economy,” setting the tone for a future in which finance becomes more intelligent, more accessible, and eventually invisible.
Zhou described the industry’s next phase as a fundamental redesign of financial infrastructure, driven by the convergence of programmable assets, artificial intelligence, and regulatory certainty, rather than price cycles or transient trends.
From Interfaces to Intelligence: The Rise of Agentic Finance
Zhou questioned the accepted notion of how consumers engage with financial services. He proposed that users may not engage with platforms at all in the future.
“We’ve introduced AI agent accounts that allow clients to create sub-accounts for AI to interact, execute strategies, and access market data,” Zhou shared. “Agentic payments are becoming a major theme — and we’re just at the beginning.”
Users may assign jobs to AI agents—systems that analyze data, make judgments, and optimize results in real time—instead of manually traversing marketplaces. These days, data access and analytics are the main emphasis of these apps. They could redefine execution itself tomorrow.
The conclusion is significant: intelligence replaces the interface.
The Quiet Transformation of Finance
Although “crypto” continues to dominate most of the public narrative, Zhou said that a more subtle but significant change is already taking place. Conventional financial institutions are incorporating blockchain as infrastructure rather than entering the market via speculation. In particular, stablecoins are becoming the bridge that allows for quicker payments, more effective settlement, and access to global liquidity.
Zhou pointed out that these organizations often built on crypto rails without adopting the term.
This marks a paradigm shift: cryptocurrency is becoming an integral component of the foundation rather than an alternate system.
Trust Is the Real Product
Zhou believes that trust, rather than technology, is the defining restriction and opportunity. In recent years, the regulatory structure has grown much more transparent. By aggressively embracing innovation and offering structured development routes, jurisdictions like the UAE are setting the standard.
Regulatory clarity is becoming a stimulus rather than a hindrance, as seen by the United States and the United Kingdom’s changing positions and Europe’s organized approach. Institutions obey rules as they become more established. Additionally, the system starts to develop when institutions are added.
A System That Works Without Being Seen
Zhou concluded with a viewpoint that reinterpreted the industry’s ultimate objective:
“This is not about replacing existing financial systems, but enhancing them. Our focus is on building infrastructure that makes financial services more accessible, efficient, and intuitive for users globally.”
He proposed that the ultimate scenario is one in which financial services are effortlessly integrated into daily life, rather than one in which consumers consider blockchain, wallets, or even platforms. In that future, technology becomes invisible, intelligence functions in the background, and trust is ingrained in the system.
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