What Really Happens After the US CLARITY Act? [ft. Gate founder] #CHAINREACTION

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01]founder of Gate. How you doing, Len?

[00:00:03]Good, good. How are you, Kieran? I'm very well, thanks. Now, look, I think it's really cool to have someone that's been around in the space for, you know, 13 years cuz we can look back. I think a lot of people are very confused as to what's going on, not just in the market, but the wider industry as well in 2026.

[00:00:21]You know, the the price of a lot of assets haven't been as people thought they would be and I think people are wondering what's going on with this cycle. So, I guess from your experience, you've been around since, you know, 13 years now. You've been around for the ICO boom, the 2020 20 2022 collapse, and now obviously today as well. So, how does the cycle today feel comparatively to the previous cycles for you?

[00:00:50]Um yeah, I'd say I think things changed a lot already these days. You know, yes, I started business in 2013 in April.

[00:01:02]You know, just 13 years from today.

[00:01:05]So, it's quite interesting that at that time actually the price of Bitcoin is quite low for sure.

[00:01:11]It's only like $20.

[00:01:13]Yeah. So, yeah, so it's also a very small user base of crypto. Uh for all the world, it's only like 1 million users. Only 1 million.

[00:01:24]So, a small group of people they talk in some forums, a Bitcoin talk. And you know, they trade on only a few platforms, including our platform at that time.

[00:01:34]So, you know, the beginning is only Bitcoin and then Litecoin, then Dogecoin, and then a lot of other coins.

[00:01:41]You know, people know that.

[00:01:43]So, you know, the trading activity actually quite low. It's almost no institutional clients. Only like early adopters, retail users.

[00:01:55]And then, you know, I can see that actually the price going up quickly, uh, up and down. So, actually, this thing that thing attracting a lot of users. Until today, you can see that we have more than 600 million users. Uh, so, it's very large user base. You can talk with anybody, uh, like uh, outside, you know, Bitcoins, you know, cryptos.

[00:02:19]So, you can even hold uh, cryptocurrencies.

[00:02:22]Uh, so, things changed a lot. Uh, yes, you you mentioned [clears throat] that there are several uh, cycles. We we saw cycles before, but nowadays, you can see because of the market cap of Bitcoin crypto, it's very large. Uh, you know, Bitcoin more than 1.2 uh, trillion dollars.

[00:02:40]Uh, so, it's comparable with uh, the very large uh, companies in the world. So, you know, it's actually not like before. Before, you know, uh, you know, like 2 5 years ago. So, crypto Bitcoin actually they still have uh, their own cycle. So, it's going up and down. Uh, you know, uh, the cycle actually is also related uh, with uh, the Bitcoin halving. All right?

[00:03:05]So, but today, things changed. Now, with Bitcoin, it's more related with uh, micro ecosystem of the the world. Right?

[00:03:13]So, US stocks going up, Bitcoin going up. US stocks going down, Bitcoin going down. So, it's related to very well, uh, now.

[00:03:22]So, it's like a mature asset already.

[00:03:24]So, it's different uh, like before.

[00:03:26]And, you know, a lot of people want to know, is retail ever coming back? You know, retail excitement feels very quiet right now. I mean, you've been around, you've seen the the retail hype, and, you know, everyone going crazy over the meme coins back, you know, only several years ago. I mean, are we going to get that retail flood come back in, or has that changed now? Has the industry matured to the point where there isn't going to be this rush of retail coming in at certain points anymore.

[00:03:54]Uh from our analysis from the data we can see now, I think you know we are you know as the very deep winter of a crypto.

[00:04:03]Uh so we are at the bear market. You can see see you see that that you know the traffic of retail users for crypto actually getting lower and lower during the past few months. Mhm. Especially in this month it's even lower than last month. We can see this uh this trend. So you know uh meme coin is not quite hot as before uh for sure, right? Yeah. Uh so you know it's now it's more harder and harder to attract new retail users.

[00:04:33]Um with pure crypto asset. But you know the good news is that you know now people also are very interested in the RWA transfer asset and also stablecoin payment. This is a good this is good news for us.

[00:04:49]Yeah, you were obviously around in 2022 when there was the collapse of FTX and then the numerous crypto lending platforms as well. I mean do you feel like that itself, those events around that point in time did definitely impact the trust for retail users and maybe that they don't still have the the trust in the crypto industry to flock back in like they had previously.

[00:05:14]I don't think so. I think you know things changed a lot already compared with four years ago. Four years ago the infrastructure is not good enough and also people don't know how to evaluate the safety of a platform. But nowadays you know we have like more transparency.

[00:05:30]You know we have more measures how to tell user how to educate user to choose the best platform they have. For example we have a proof of reserves. We publish the proof of reserves every month. Mhm.

[00:05:41]So people know that we hold asset we don't move asset for the users.

[00:05:45]You know this it's not like before FTX moved a lot of assets from the users to for the other stuff and nobody knows.

[00:05:52]Uh, so but nowadays, I think you know, we solved this problem you know, already not totally but you know, yeah, in some intention.

[00:06:01]But you know, I think you know, we still need to like more work to build the trust for the users. Especially you know, it's see now people promote web 3, promote you know, self custody services, right? But actually some people they want to try to custody their own assets to do, you know, meet some difficulties like they lost their keys.

[00:06:24]They don't have like a good infrastructure to do that. You know, they move back to CX. They move back to that, right?

[00:06:31]So I think this is still some, you know, work to build up a better infrastructure for the users, the application for the users.

[00:06:38]You know, but it's not like 4 years ago.

[00:06:40]We, you know, have a lot of progress today.

[00:06:43]And then aside from the infrastructure aspect as well, what do you think needs to happen within the crypto industry to attract that flood of retail users back?

[00:06:53]I mean, like you said, it's you know, it's a bear market and there's less and less retail in the market by the month.

[00:06:58]So what do you think needs to happen to attract those same users back into the industry?

[00:07:04]At the very beginning you can see that most of the user they are attracted because of the they want to earn money because of the speculation. Uh, so right? So especially for meme coins.

[00:07:18]So you know, it's just meme coin rush. A lot of people get into it.

[00:07:24]You know, they want to find the meme coin which can reach like 100 times, right?

[00:07:29]But now we don't have a lot of opportunity like before like that anymore. So the reality is that you know, you need to look at the details of the value of a crypto asset. All right, find the uh, you know, asset which has the long longer, you know, uh, value uh, for the future. So, I think you know, it's better than before. And you know, but don't think we can attract the similar uh, people uh, it's the similar uh, people from retail users, but you know, we can actually attract like um, like a uh, another group of people. For example, you know, the people who trade the uh, uh, transfer asset like uh, stocks, uh, metals, commodities, indices, you know, they traded in the other platforms before, but now they actually move to blockchain. Because uh, on blockchain we can provide the 24/7 uh, and we can provide like better liquidity after market. Uh, for example, in the weekends you cannot play in the other platforms, but you can still trade on on CX market.

[00:08:34]So, then do you see, I mean, the big question, I know from an exchange obviously it's it's great because altcoin season that a lot of people are buying a lot of different coins, right?

[00:08:43]But um, the question that has been asked over the last 12 months is will there be a return of altcoin season and obviously seeing Bitcoin in October reach highs and now it's been in a downtrend at the start of this year, a lot more people are starting to say well, maybe this year is the bear market, so we might not see an altcoin season. I mean, Lynn, are we going to see an altcoin season again or is it going to be completely different next time round?

[00:09:09]I I think it's going to be very different. Uh, you know, uh, you know, the reason because uh, you can see that now we are viewing the blockchain more like uh, infrastructure to not only for crypto asset, but also for uh, traditional asset. Uh, but before actually, when the infrastructure is not good enough, so we tried a lot, you know, the whole industry tried a lot to build up the infrastructure. For example, people invented the you know layer one blockchain, layer two blockchain, right? They are trying to come up with a scaling you know a method you know they are building up like privacy method you know put a lot of effort for the infrastructure because because the infrastructure not you know um efficient enough. It's not fast enough. There's no enough capacity for the transactions of the applications. So we spent years to you know work on that. But today actually we actually solved most of the problems.

[00:10:15]You can see that you know some of blockchain layer one layer two blockchains their TPS transaction per second is already very high. It's even higher than Visa, higher than MasterCard, right? So actually now we can put a lot of you know applications on the blockchain already.

[00:10:33]So you know that means the infrastructure is is already is a mature enough and we need to find a good application infrastructure. Before actually a lot of people they have speculation about the you know new project regarding the infrastructure you know buildings. But now actually we don't have a lot of that kind of opportunities. Before you know there's lot of new ideas like NFT, like meme coin, right? Like a game file. You know we tried some already during the past few years, right? Some were some not.

[00:11:10]So I don't think we can we have you know new stuff like that before. But you know the good thing is that you know for the future we can move like the long term asset on the blockchain and to solve the real world problem for the users.

[00:11:26]Now I want to talk to you about regulations as well because like we said before you have been in the industry since 2013 and it's only been in the last couple of years that we've really seen regulatory developments come into play in the US and most recently obviously the US Clarity Act which everyone is looking forward to and there's a lot of anticipation that it might even get passed within the next couple of months. So how does that look for the industry? If the US Clarity Act does pass, everyone's pointing to more innovation, potentially more crypto companies moving back to the US as well. But how does that look for the overall crypto industry even globally? Like does this have a a domino effect into other regions as well?

[00:12:08]Oh yeah, I think you know definitely it's a positive thing for the industry from my point of view.

[00:12:14]I do have the experience before.

[00:12:17]You know, it's a it's good thing for the project teams. It's also good thing for the exchanges like us.

[00:12:22]So really because you know, before actually there's no clarity about the regulation.

[00:12:28]It's very hard hard to find any place to get this kind of regulation clarity.

[00:12:33]But you know, in US now we we do have it. It's very soon, right?

[00:12:37]I think it will be at the end of this year. You know, good thing is that you know, when you want to launch your own product, now you have clear rules.

[00:12:44]You know, who are regulating you as the first stage. SEC will regulate you and then you grow, you know, you pass the mature blockchain test and then CFTC regulate you, right? You have the clear, you know, regulation rules and everything's good in life and then you can design your project plan and then you can, you know, raise funds as as planned. So you know, I think it's very good for the you know, teams who want to get into this industry, build up stuff for crypto.

[00:13:16]Good thing for the project teams. But for you know, blockchain exchange like us, you know, I do have the experience like before. We operate uh in US as a separate entity. we have get US. We will operate it for 4 years, but before that actually, we don't have any clear rules. We don't know if which project we can list, how we can promote in US, you know, can we do like staking or not? No clear rules. But now we can follow that. It's very good for us.

[00:13:47]Yeah, so can you give us a little bit of more information? I mean, for somebody that's watching right now, not really sure on how the Clarity Act is going to impact them as a retail user. Maybe they're wondering, well, what does that mean for my crypto exchange that I use?

[00:14:03]I mean, what what sort of things can we expect once the Clarity Act passes from a crypto exchange? Are we going to see more, you know, innovative projects being launched on exchanges or maybe tokens that we never saw launched on exchanges now launching or what does that mean now more broadly for exchanges after the legislation passes?

[00:14:24]I think, you know, um last thing is the from from project teams. I think more and more project project teams, you know, I think you will be more likely to build up from US.

[00:14:35]Uh because they have all the clarity uh act, you know, they can follow. Uh but before you see that, most of the project team, although you know, some of them they actually they are based in US, but they launch their project outside of US, right? So now they are more confident to launch their project in US is good thing. And they know for for the exchange like us, yes, we have clear rules and we can a good project list on our platform.

[00:15:01]This is one thing. Another thing is that, you know, uh actually, you know, on the platform we can also provide the like more services like staking services. We can do Ethereum staking now, but before we have a lot of counters, right? And also we can do more promotion of the stable coins.

[00:15:17]You know, there's clear rules about, you know, how you can, you know, provide the for the to adopt a stable coin, but now it's clear.

[00:15:25]Although you cannot give people incentive for for nothing, but now you can give the activities for them, right?

[00:15:31]Another thing is that, you know, for DeFi project before, you know, DeFi project is not clear. Now, I think, you know, we are at some stage, you know, we we we can know, you know, some of kind of DeFi project projects they can launch without, you know, any problem. But, you know, for the DeFi interface, like a Uniswap, like, you know, Huobi Liquid, I do think this is not You know, you know, some problem we need to solve in the act. I think, you know, people will argue about that. Do they need to do KYC, KYB KYT or not? You know, the people are arguing about that. But now, you see that compared with them, for the exchange like it, we need to, you know, like, all the people do KYC do for the brokerage. But for for them, I think they don't need to people to do KYC. But I think in the future, they'll be at the same same line.

[00:16:22]Yeah, I think that that will be changed.

[00:16:25]And you know, we're seeing a lot of institutional interest now in crypto, especially over the last 12 months as well. Do you see the the Clarity Act really pushing that forward with more institutional interest? Like, do you think that there is a lot of institutions on the sidelines waiting for this bill to pass?

[00:16:43]I Yeah, I think, you know, for we we do have a lot of institutional customers already.

[00:16:49]I from Although you see now it's a bear market, we don't have a lot of retail users anymore like before. The number getting down quickly, but we do see more and more institutional activities.

[00:17:02]Uh not only for major asset like Bitcoin, Ethereum, but for the for the other asset for the other like projects.

[00:17:14]Also, we see a lot of activities from the institutional customers. It's quite interesting. I think, you know, they know they know the future of your being more clear than before. So, they have the confidence.

[00:17:26]They want to join this industry. They can find a lot of opportunities here.

[00:17:30]Uh when they provide liquidity to uh cryptocurrency changes, DeFi CFi changes, they can, you know, get good very good revenue as beginning.

[00:17:40]Later, because there's competition will be more like uh you know, intensive, you know, it will be harder to get off from uh this kind of activity. I do think it now is the still very good opportunity for the institutional customers to join.

[00:17:54]And you've mentioned bear market a few times now throughout the chat, and I think uh a lot of a lot of people watching may may think, you know, the Clarity Act, does that change the bear market from a a retail point of view and from them trying to make more money out of the market? I mean, uh how do you see the market changing once the bill passes?

[00:18:13]I I don't think so. I don't think it is real change of this market a lot. Uh as I said, you know, because the now uh crypto asset and crypto industry is not quite small before. It's already It's a a very big uh uh industry, and also market cap is getting bigger and bigger.

[00:18:29]Uh I I you see that it may be become price not as high as before. But we we do we can also though we are in the bear market, but we do can see that, you know, the application of uh blockchain more and more, especially the payment.

[00:18:43]When you see the payment, you can see uh stable coin is the largest application of the payment. You can see stable coin the market cap of stable coin uh reached the all-time high today.

[00:18:55]Right? So, the market is not good, but the market cap of stable coin is keep increasing. That's quite interesting thing. That means, you know, blockchain is getting into the real world applications. Right? More and more people they are trying to utilize a blockchain asset like a stablecoin to do payment, daily payment. Right? Not only for retail users. And the the the volume of stablecoin application for the institutional users is even much much more. That's a good thing for the future.

[00:19:28]Now, if this builder is listening as well and talking about, you know, all the blockchain applications that we're talking about right now, Lin, um for you personally, you know, if you had to start from zero today, you hadn't started the crypto exchange back in 2013. I mean, what what area of crypto would you personally build in yourself?

[00:19:49]Uh I think, you know, in that case, I I think for cryptocurrency exchange is the barrier is very high. So, you know, you need to spend a lot of money and you need to hire a large team to do that. I think I I won't I choose this option. For me, I think I will choose to start to a new business in Web3.

[00:20:08]Uh so, because in Web3, you you can utilize blockchain infrastructure already.

[00:20:15]So, you can have a like a smaller team, but you you need to come up with a very good ideas to solve the problems for the users. And another thing is that, you know, in Web3, you have less regulation and your cost will be lower. So, that will be my choice. And somebody that might be watching right now, Lin, and thinking they're going to start a crypto company or a Web3 company, and especially now in the US with the the potential passing of the Clarity Act, I mean, what have you seen over the last 12 months, some of the biggest mistakes that crypto founders are making when they're starting businesses?

[00:20:50]Uh yes, I think, you know, you see that for most of the project teams we saw before, at least also some of them, you know, I you can see that most of them actually they don't generate real revenue.

[00:21:08]They just seem like a release their token and uh they sell on the platforms.

[00:21:15]Uh so, maybe it's good for them, but uh it's easier for them, but I don't think it's good for the industry. It's not good for the users.

[00:21:23]Uh you know, I do think, you know, the builders uh all the team members all the founders, they need to take the responsibility to build up build up the real application to generate like a real revenue or they can like uh maybe they don't generate real revenue, but they need to provide to the real value for the industry, not just a project uh getting listed and pump and dump.

[00:21:47]Yeah, so what sort of questions should they be asking themselves? I mean, there's so many crypto projects right now. There's so many Web3 marketed projects that you don't know even what's valuable and what's not anymore. So, I guess should they be focusing on solutions from the get-go to issues? And if so, where do they find these these problems that they can potentially then, you know, build out solutions for in the Web3 industry?

[00:22:12]Uh I think it's a little hard to tell, you know, uh but, you know, I I I do think, you know, for you can see that in the easy easy industry there's a lot of opportunities. So, uh for some of the project teams even the founders, they actually at the beginning they already know that it's hard to build up the real project for the long term. So, you know, they actually they are aiming to just release the token dump.

[00:22:46]Cuz that's a big problem. So, it's we need to you know, recognize this kind of project.

[00:22:53]Uh but, it's it's still a lot of challenges, I think.

[00:22:57]Absolutely. And you know, looking ahead now as well, you know, we're halfway way 2026.

[00:23:01]Um a lot of people are crystal balling 2030 and what that looks like not just for a Bitcoin's price and the crypto market, but more so the industry as well. I mean, what's your thoughts on how the next few years are going to be playing out? What's your biggest predictions that you have for the space over the next 4 years?

[00:23:21]Oh, yeah.

[00:23:22]Prediction is a very good word because I think a prediction market is also a vaccine by popular right now. I don't know, right? So, yeah, that's the Yeah, that's something, you know, we also want to get into. We are going to provide this kind of service for the users globally.

[00:23:39]We do We already tried to work with the poly market and we're attracting a lot of users already. We do see that this is a big potential on this field.

[00:23:50]So, this is one one thing. Another thing is RWA. We launched our own transfer platform services for our users, you know, at the beginning of this year. During the past you know, 4 and 1/2 month, we can see the growth every month. It's growing very well.

[00:24:07]The retail user It actually is mainly for the retail users. The The number of the retail users and also the volume of trading from the retail users is getting higher higher and higher quickly.

[00:24:21]We also trying to provide this service to the institutional customers, but I we didn't attract them a lot of institutional customers. They don't trade a lot on trade for our platform at all now.

[00:24:34]So, this is quite quite an interesting thing.

[00:24:37]But I do see that, you know, this is a very big potential for the next 2 to 5 years because the now with the AUM of RWA traditional assets on blockchains still quite small. It's only like $10 billion of uh, US stocks, $10 billion of uh, metals, right? So, it's still quite small, you know, uh, with the growth in the next 2 5 years, I think, you know, the trading volume will be like, uh, 100 times higher than now. It's going to be much higher than the trading volume of crypto itself.

[00:25:14]Yeah, and RWA's an interesting one because it is a massive buzzword now in the industry. Everyone's throwing the term around and everyone's throwing around these these numbers that it's going to hit this market cap by by this year as well. But, you know, when we actually break it down, I mean, why why are so many people giving these massive predictions to the RWA market and, you know, at at the moment, I mean, it's been going on for a while. Is there still any pain points that's going to prevent RWA from mass adoption?

[00:25:43]Right. You know, some things still there because I think the main thing is the trust.

[00:25:48]So, you can see that, you know, uh, RWA is different from crypto. From crypto, you can just, you know, believe in the algorithm, uh, the the codes, right?

[00:26:00]Bitcoin, you you you already know the algorithm, POW or, you know, POS Ethereum. You you can trust the code. But, for RWA, it's different. You need to have some, uh, company who can hold the asset for you.

[00:26:15]You need to trust them. You know, this is a big problem of that. I think, you know, some of the companies are doing very well, like Tether. They are, you know, they have, uh, USDT already. People trust trust them, uh, some kind of, uh, but we need to have like, uh, like, uh, more assets and also, you know, with the growth of the AUM, people actually need more trust of them. Now, it's small, right? It's okay, but it's getting bigger and bigger. Like, when it's like a couple hundred of billion of dollars of assets, can you trust this company? Uh, it's a big challenge, right?

[00:26:50]Uh, so, I think this is the main thing.

[00:26:51]Another thing is that, you know, you need to provide the key you know the access of the asset. But for some of the assets that we listed that we listed by trusted companies like BlackRock, like Franklin, Capital Chain. But you know the problem is that they are you know permission assets.

[00:27:16]They are not permissionless. So, they need to access this kind of asset you need to register with them. And this is a very high barrier of that.

[00:27:26]So, this is also problem we are trying to solve. We want to work with them so we can like register with them. We can work together. We can maybe we can also buy the assets uh for the users and but let the user to access the assets on CX.

[00:27:44]It is a more user-friendly way.

[00:27:46]And lastly, I would like to ask what you did just bring up before about trust as well about people trusting the projects.

[00:27:52]I mean, from your experience, like we said you've been around for a number of years now, how can people trust particular projects? What should they be looking for to ensure that the project is legitimate?

[00:28:04]Well, I think it's quite quite hard.

[00:28:07]The problem is that you know for bigger projects, yes, you can trust because they are they already proved of themselves, right? You can find a lot of information about them. But the price of the token of the project is already high enough.

[00:28:20]All right? So, for the smaller projects, even for us it's quite hard for us to find a good project at a very early stage. But I I do think you know people need to do a lot of research. They need to even they need to meet with them face-to-face offline.

[00:28:36]That's real benefit I think I guess.

[00:28:40]Amazing. Dr. Han, thank you so much for joining us on Chain Reaction.