Binance Founder CZ Admits He Missed the RWA Boom, Predicts Bitcoin at $1 Million 'Much Sooner' Than 25 Years

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance known as CZ, says he got it wrong. Speaking with Wu Blockchain and later at the Binance Clubhouse Bali 2026 Community Q&A, Zhao admitted the growth of tokenized real-world assets, stablecoins, NFTs and meme coins caught him flat-footed as recently as early 2025.

The numbers back up his surprise. The tokenized RWA market has grown to roughly $29 billion to $33 billion by mid-2026, according to Crypto Briefing, with tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone accounting for more than $13 billion of that. Stablecoins have topped $320 billion. On Binance's own BNB Chain, the number of wallets holding tokenized real-world assets hit 776,000 as of August 19, 2026, up 370% in just 30 days, according to EdgeX Exchange.

'Let's Tokenize Everything'

Zhao isn't just observing the trend, he's promoting it. On August 21, he posted on X: "Let's tokenize everything," arguing it's one of the best ways for countries and companies to attract foreign investment by selling tokenized stocks to buyers worldwide.

That pitch deserves a closer look. Foreign Direct Investment, as EdgeX Exchange noted, typically requires a lasting ownership stake, not the kind of small, liquid purchases that tokenized securities usually attract. Smaller buys look more like portfolio investment. Investor rights, disclosure requirements and cross-border legal protections still depend entirely on individual national law, something Zhao's tweet didn't address. He also acknowledged the trend isn't friction-free, citing liquidity fragmentation, regulatory fragmentation and product complexity as real structural problems.

A fair concern here: pushing every country and company to list tokenized shares globally, across multiple blockchains, without settled cross-border investor-protection rules, could outrun the regulatory frameworks meant to protect buyers. Zhao himself conceded that point rather than dismissing it. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission has already built out a framework covering tokenized products and their secondary-market trading, and had 13 tokenized products publicly offered as of March 2026, according to Crypto.news. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority's EnsembleTX pilot, testing tokenized deposits and digital-asset settlement, is scheduled to run through 2026. Whether that kind of regulatory scaffolding spreads fast enough to match Zhao's global ambitions is an open question.

Zhao made his case in person on August 27 at a book event at Exchange Square in Hong Kong, calling the city and Web3 a "powerful combination" and also naming Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the U.S. as markets positioned to benefit from friendlier digital-asset policy, per Crypto.news. He said U.S. regulatory pressure on the industry appeared to have eased.

The Bitcoin Call, and the Track Record Behind It

At a Hong Kong conference the prior week, Zhao told the crowd Bitcoin hitting $1 million is "a good thing, and it will definitely happen," adding it won't take the 25 years some have projected, according to BigGo Finance, citing video from Bitcoin Magazine. He argued Bitcoin will eventually surpass gold in importance, noting gold's market cap currently runs roughly 10 times Bitcoin's.

Bitcoin.com News put that claim in context against Zhao's own recent history. In October 2025 he predicted Bitcoin would "flip gold" with no timeline attached. This month he's saying it'll happen "in the next bull run." On the $1 million figure specifically, he's previously floated a 10-year window before shifting to "much sooner." In January 2026, with Bitcoin near $90,000, he said he had a "very strong feeling" about a 2026 "super cycle" pushing Bitcoin past $200,000. That confidence evaporated within weeks once Bitcoin fell below $70,000. By June, speaking to CoinDesk, Zhao blamed the failed super cycle on AI capital rotation, geopolitics and the four-year market cycle.

Bitcoin.com News's comparison with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shows the same pattern isn't unique to Zhao. Armstrong predicted $1 million Bitcoin by 2030 in August 2025 when the coin traded above $110,000. A year later, with the price down roughly 30%, he cut that forecast to $300,000-$400,000 by 2030. Both men remain bullish long-term, but both have adjusted their numbers as prices moved, according to Bitcoin.com News's own reporting.

Bitcoin closed below $65,000 on August 18 and climbed to $79,000 by August 28, still well short of its October 2025 peak of $126,000, per BigGo Finance. CryptoQuant's August 25 report cited a jump in its Bull Score index from 30 to 80 as a signal the market may be entering a new bull phase, though that's an analyst read on the data, not a settled outcome.

Zhao stepped down as Binance CEO in late 2023 as part of a settlement with U.S. authorities, according to Crypto Briefing, and now operates as an industry figure and investor rather than an exchange operator. He has a direct financial stake in BNB Chain's tokenization growth and Bitcoin's price. Whether the RWA market can actually solve the liquidity fragmentation and regulatory gaps Zhao himself flagged, before governments and companies rush to list tokenized assets on his terms, remains unresolved.