Binance co-founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, who pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations in November 2023 and holds no CEO role at Binance, told attendees at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong on August 27 that Bitcoin will surpass gold in market value, citing sovereign reserve shifts and the coming wave of AI agent payments as the structural forces that will drive that transition. The remarks landed at a conference held during one of crypto's more bruising stretches, with Bitcoin down 51.2 percent from its October 2025 peak of $126,080 before recovering to roughly $77,500 to $80,700 in recent weeks.

"Bitcoin will for sure become more important than gold," Zhao told the audience at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. "I think bitcoin will overtake gold pretty soon." He was also measured about the timeline, noting that gold's embedded position in global finance makes a quick flip unrealistic. "Major countries have built complete valuation, reserve, and trading systems around gold, so a shift to Bitcoin will not happen overnight," he said. He went further, predicting that Bitcoin will eventually comprise more than 50 percent of strategic crypto holdings among sovereign reserves. Gold's market cap currently sits at an estimated $29.67 to $33.5 trillion, roughly 10 to 13 times larger than Bitcoin's, depending on the price used. Gold itself has surged lately, trading near $4,647 per ounce after gaining roughly 15 percent in August alone, driven by concerns over U.S. debt levels exceeding $40 trillion and rising bond yields.

Zhao's second major argument centered on artificial intelligence. He predicted that AI agents, software programs that act autonomously on behalf of users or businesses, will generate transaction volumes that dwarf human activity. "AI agents will conduct far more transactions than humans, potentially 10, 100, or even 1,000 times more," he said in a separate ARK Invest interview.

When asked how crypto fits into that picture, he pointed to stablecoins (digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar) as the likely entry point. "I think it will probably start with stablecoins," he said, arguing that traditional banks cannot handle the throughput or the permissionless nature that autonomous agents require. In his framing, AML and KYC compliance systems, designed for human account holders, present a structural mismatch for software conducting millions of microtransactions.

This is not a distant projection. The x402 payment protocol is an open standard that allows AI agents to settle payments in USDC on the Base blockchain; both Coinbase and Stripe have adopted it, with Stripe adding support in February 2026. Coinbase reported that x402 had processed approximately 165 million transactions and $50 million in cumulative volume across 69,000 active agents by April 2026. Across the broader AI agent payment ecosystem, settlements have reached $73 million across 176 million blockchain transactions over the past 12 months.

Total stablecoin supply is on track to reach around $420 billion by year-end, up 56 percent, with agentic and cross-border flows cited as a primary driver, according to StablecoinInsider.

The conference itself reflected a broader tension in the industry. Bitcoin Asia CEO Brandon Green described the backdrop candidly: "This has been one of the hardest bear markets we've had, because this time it wasn't just the price of bitcoin that took a hit. This time, the bitcoiners' ego also took a hit." Capital and engineering talent have shifted toward AI, and at least one speaker from the mining sector was direct about the consequences. Canaan VP Leo Wang warned that "the future of bitcoin may become increasingly narrow," noting that his own firm is pivoting infrastructure toward AI computing.

For readers in South Asia and Africa, the regulatory context surrounding Zhao's remarks carries more immediate weight than his price predictions. Pakistan's Bilal Bin Saqib, a senior official at the newly formed Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), also spoke at the conference.

Pakistan signed its Virtual Assets Act into law in March 2026, ended a seven-year banking ban on crypto service providers in April, and has announced plans for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. The country has also allocated 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity for Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure, and signed a memorandum of understanding with a World Liberty Financial affiliate to explore stablecoin rails for cross-border payments. Pakistan ranks third globally in retail crypto activity, with roughly 40 million users and an estimated $300 billion crypto market. Remittances, at around $30 billion per year, represent the clearest near-term use case for AI-powered stablecoin payments.

India, which ranked first globally in crypto adoption for the second consecutive year, is equally central to CZ's sovereign reserve thesis. The country holds some of the world's largest gold reserves, making it a natural test case for the shift he described, even as a 30 percent flat tax on crypto gains and a 1 percent tax deducted at source continue to dampen domestic on-chain activity.

In Africa, Sub-Saharan markets posted 52 percent year-over-year on-chain growth in 2025, the strongest of any global region. Nigeria and Kenya both passed formal digital asset frameworks in the past year, and mobile wallet penetration across the continent makes stablecoin-native payment infrastructure a practical development, not a theoretical one.

On the regulatory front, Zhao praised the UAE as having the most progressive crypto regulations globally and described Hong Kong as moving quickly, a geographic contrast to the heavier-handed regimes that users in many other markets still face.

Zhao received a presidential pardon from President Trump in October 2025 after serving four months in federal prison following his November 2023 guilty plea. He now runs YZi Labs, a roughly $10 billion family office, and holds no CEO role at Binance.

Bitcoin has reclaimed its 1,130-day simple moving average for the first time in 80 days, a level that KuCoin's analysis associates with the end of historical bear market phases. Year-end price targets from major institutions range from Citi's $82,000 to projections near $130,000 to $200,000 from JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, and analyst Tom Lee.

Whether those targets materialize or not, the structural argument Zhao outlined in Hong Kong, centered on sovereign reserves, AI transaction volume, and stablecoin infrastructure, is one that regulators and developers in the Global South are already building around.