The CEO of Gate, Lin Han, stated that traditional banking has lost its dispute against stablecoins. During an exclusive interview at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, the leader of the world’s fourth-largest exchange explained that financial institutions now view these digital assets as efficient payment rails to modernize their own global services in today’s fast-paced economy.
According to the founder of Gate, the traditional four-year cycle linked to Bitcoin’s halving has become obsolete. The digital market has matured into a cutting-edge financial infrastructure that now moves in sync with the global macroeconomy and U.S. equities, reflecting a total integration with traditional finance that no one can stop at this particular moment in time.
This new economic reality suggests that internal supply shocks are no longer the primary driver of prices. Lin Han maintains that current growth is driven by convergence with artificial intelligence and the stock market, positioning crypto platforms as fundamental pillars of the financial system, leaving behind their old image of being purely speculative and volatile assets for retail.
Likewise, Gate has executed an ambitious global rebranding to the Gate.com domain to capture the next wave of adoption. The company seeks to lead the tokenization of real-world assets, known as RWA, allowing stocks, metals, and commodities to be traded on a 24-hour network, surpassing the efficiency of traditional stock exchanges that still operate with limited and obsolete hours.
Will native exchanges manage to surpass traditional stock exchanges soon?
On the other hand, Lin Han ruled out his platform’s intention to launch its own stablecoin, preferring to remain a neutral venue. Instead, the exchange focuses on strengthening the cutting-edge financial infrastructure by integrating existing tokens like USDC, facilitating the massive migration of traditional assets to the blockchain in a safe, transparent, and efficient way for all users.
Nonetheless, the American Bankers Association has pressured Congress to ban yields on payment stablecoins. This regulatory resistance is seen by Lin as a desperate attempt to maintain competitive balance, while digital platforms prove to be transfer rails that are much faster, representing an undeniable technological advantage over conventional banking systems in place today.
In this way, banks are shifting from being competitors to becoming potential clients of crypto technology. Many banking executives no longer show hostility toward the sector, but instead seek to use stablecoins to accelerate their own internal processes, recognizing that the efficiency of on-chain liquidity is the inevitable future of the global economy, regardless of the temporary legal restrictions imposed.
Additionally, the boom in artificial intelligence acts as fundamental support for the growth of digital assets this year. The intersection between both technologies is lowering barriers to entry for new users, driving real-world utility that goes beyond simple speculation, consolidating a much more robust financial ecosystem and making it accessible to the entire world population.
To conclude, the resilience shown by the sector’s believers ensures a solid foundation for the next upward movement. Despite volatility, the growth of crypto-based payments has multiplied fifteen-fold, confirming that real applications now dominate the sector’s narrative, establishing a new standard of transparency and speed for the exchange of value on an international level.
