CZ Casts Doubt on Crypto Payments, Warns of a Dead End in the Memecoin Boom

Speaking on a World Economic Forum panel on 22 Jan, the Binance co-founder struck a notably cautious tone, pushing back against industry hype while arguing that structural change, particularly in banking, is still inevitable.

Payments lagging

Zhao, commonly known by his intials CZ, said that despite more than a decade of experimentation crypto has yet to crack the mainstream payments market, a striking admission from one of the industry’s most influential figures.

"If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said Bitcoin payments," Zhao told the panel. 

"Ten years on, we’re not quite there yet. I’m still sceptical about payments – though we’re working on it and still investing in projects."

CZ, who is worth about $79 billion according to Forbes, shot to fame for creating the world's largest crypto exchange and received an extraordinary pardon from the US President last year after earlier serving jail time for offences related to money laundering controls. Within the industry he is widely revered as a pioneer.

He framed the payments topic as a classic innovation trade-off of high failure rates paired with the possibility of exponential winners. Crypto payments, CZ argued, remain technically feasible but commercially elusive, particularly when competing against entrenched fiat rails that already work "well enough" for most consumers.

The comment comes as stablecoins increasingly dominate real-world crypto usage, while native token payments struggle with volatility, user experience and regulatory friction. 

Meme tokens face survival test

CZ was even more blunt on the durability of meme-driven crypto assets, suggesting that the sector risks repeating the boom-and-bust cycles seen in NFTs and the metaverse.

"We saw this with the metaverse and NFTs - a lot of noise, and now it’s gone quiet," he said. "Memes could follow a similar path."

While acknowledging that he could be wrong, and that such views are unpopular within crypto circles, CZ described meme tokens as "high-risk areas where value is highly speculative," arguing that building genuine, long-term use cases remains difficult.

Zhao pointed to Dogecoin, now more than 15 years old with a multi-billion-dollar market capitalization, as evidence that a small number of meme assets may endure. But he cautioned that most are unlikely to survive multiple market cycles.

The remarks land as meme tokens once again dominate trading volumes, raising questions over whether speculative momentum is crowding out longer-term infrastructure development.

Banking faces structural decline

While sceptical on payments and memes, Zhao was far more confident about the future of blockchain-dependent financial infrastructure, particularly the decline of physical banking.

"Brick-and-mortar banking will decline significantly over the next 10 years," he said, arguing that advances in e-KYC, digital identity and blockchain-based infrastructure are steadily eroding the need for physical branches.

Zhao drew parallels with earlier digital banking pioneers, noting that ING’s early move online showed what was possible, but also how long it takes to displace legacy systems.

"I don’t think banks will disappear entirely," he added. "But every industry, old and new, carries risk. We should be focused on how those risks evolve."