Written by: Lawyer Liu Honglin

There is a slightly different perspective on the understanding of blockchain.

We've been envisioning blockchain as the infrastructure of the next generation of the internet, discussing how it can transform production relations. But I think that might be too ambitious.

From a time perspective, the implementation time of this thing may be measured in decades or even centuries. Each generation has its own set of rules and principles, and we can't keep doing things that are only for our grandchildren.

Therefore, from this moment on, blockchain technology has only been around for a little over a decade—from the release of the white paper in 2008 to the present. While we may doubt, question, and worry about the application value of blockchain, I personally believe such worries are largely meaningless.

The reason is that, over the course of our generation's lifespan, the application value and adoption speed of blockchain are unlikely to be as fast as we imagine. Just like when the internet or computers were first invented, the first generation of entrepreneurs and internet professionals could hardly imagine that we could use the internet to hail a ride, watch videos, and make instant payments today.

At the time, people simply thought that the internet was a cutting-edge technology that enabled people to send and receive information, browse news, and read e-books.

Therefore, it is not that we doubt the real value of blockchain, but from a historical and time perspective, there is still a long way to go before blockchain applications become commonplace or achieve large-scale application.

Many people's anxiety about blockchain today essentially stems from compressing a technological evolution that would take ten years or even longer into a three- to five-year expectation. This in itself leads to cognitive dissonance and cognitive anxiety.

However, at this stage, the application of blockchain technology should definitely be used where it is most needed.

I think that some characteristics of blockchain technology, such as tamper-proof, decentralized ledger, traceability, and its inherent financial attributes, will likely limit its application to the fintech sector for the next ten or even twenty years.

For example, monetary payments, whether it's stablecoin payments or large-value transfer tools like Bitcoin; and the very important blockchainization of traditional financial markets or financial transactions, including the on-chaining of assets such as securities, funds, and bonds.

In particular, something I recently experienced has made me even more convinced that the value of blockchain, compared to traditional centralized solutions, may truly be ten or even a hundred times greater in terms of creation and enhancement.

Previously, Attorney Honglin had worked on internet products for several years, leading R&D teams, and could be considered a mobile internet entrepreneur. Her experience in product development and entrepreneurship gave her an intuitive judgment: if a technology or application doesn't offer a tenfold improvement over traditional methods, it's not a groundbreaking or disruptive innovation.

Two things I've experienced over the past year have led me to believe that blockchain, especially its integration with traditional finance, could potentially bring about a tenfold or even a hundredfold improvement.

The first thing: the efficiency gap in cross-border payments

The first thing is something I've experienced before: transferring money from a mainland bank card to an overseas account.

Firstly, the amount is actually limited, given the foreign exchange control regulations. Secondly, I must submit personal documents at a physical bank counter to make the remittance. Thirdly, the entire remittance process incurs fees of several hundred yuan, making both the time and financial costs very high.

This is still limited to mainland China and Hong Kong. If you send money to South America or other smaller countries, the processing time and costs will be even higher. This is actually a result of the traditional cross-border payment system, such as the SWIFT network and multi-tiered correspondent banking mechanisms—each layer of institutions adds another layer of time and fees.

If we look at current internet blockchain encrypted payments in 2026, such as using USDT or other stablecoins, the transaction fee is basically $0.01, at most $0.1, and the arrival time is only a dozen seconds, at most a minute.

Therefore, cross-border fund transfers conducted within a legal and compliant framework are ten to a hundred times more efficient than traditional methods. This improvement is not theoretical; it is something that any real user can directly experience.

Therefore, the reason why I am so optimistic about and believe that crypto payments are the future, and why we have lawyers like Shao Jiadian, representing Mankiw, who are deeply involved in the legal compliance of crypto payments globally and continue to offer legal compliance courses to the payment industry, is because we, as users, have personally experienced its real commercial value.

Our decision to delve into the blockchain industry is based on our recognition of its commercial and social value, rather than on a grand technological narrative.

The second issue: the slow settlement of securities transactions.

The second experience happened just last night. The Nasdaq (QQQ) index has been surging recently, and I remembered that I had previously bought some Nasdaq index shares in my securities account on a friend's advice.

When I opened my account on Saturday and selected to sell, the system showed that I wouldn't know how much the transaction was worth until next Wednesday, which is 5 days later. And since it was the May Day holiday, I wouldn't be able to withdraw the money from my account until May 8th at the earliest.

This means that the entire process, from transaction to fund recovery, takes about ten days. This seems outrageous to me. For a user accustomed to instant feedback online, this delay is very counterintuitive.

We also know that one area that saw significant growth starting in 2025 was the so-called "on-chain US stocks," or more broadly, RWA (Real-World Assets on Chain). It allows for 24/7 instant trading and, theoretically, on-chain settlement and simultaneous asset delivery. Let's set aside the issue of price differences for now, as these are primarily matters of user scale and liquidity.

From this comparative perspective, you will be convinced that the tokenization of US stocks, or rather global assets and global financial assets, is an inevitable trend in the blockchain world.

The on-chain anti-money laundering, KYC, and regulatory issues that everyone is currently concerned about have not yet been fully resolved. However, from our compliance business perspective, these issues are all solvable; it's simply a matter of technology, compliance framework, and institutional confirmation.

Just like in earlier years, when everyone suspected various problems, now more and more sovereign countries have come to understand it as an alternative asset; at the same time, they are gradually understanding stablecoins, especially compliant stablecoins like USDC, as a payment method that can be incorporated into the regulatory system.

Therefore, the compliance supervision, work requirements and guidelines for on-chain US stocks will gradually mature, and we can actually leave this issue to time.

But what I want to express is that, from the perspective of user experience and social value creation, this is an innovation that is ten or even a hundred times faster than encrypted payments.

Blockchain: The Elephant in the Room

From this perspective, the value of blockchain is indeed enormous.

We need to understand that the reason why traditional financial institutions, whether in payments or securities, are limited in efficiency is because there are a large number of intermediaries, centralized service providers, and data transaction processes that require repeated review, reconciliation, and confirmation through technology and manpower.

Blockchain, also known as the "Internet of Value," allows value transfer, ownership confirmation, and fund settlement to be completed within a unified ledger system, thereby significantly reducing intermediaries and improving efficiency and transparency.

Therefore, from this perspective, regardless of whether blockchain is the infrastructure of the next generation of the Internet, at least under the current social status quo of the Internet, blockchain has real social value application scenarios and demands in fintech.

The business value and social efficiency created by this combination are more than tenfold higher.

Conversely, the application of this technology should transcend national boundaries. For US stocks, Chinese A-shares, or Hong Kong stocks, whoever can truly and quickly embrace blockchain and rapidly put traditional financial securities on the chain, significantly improving trading and clearing efficiency and achieving 24/7 or even higher-frequency trading capabilities in the future, is essentially a highly certain future trend.

In the current, still relatively inefficient traditional financial system, blockchain is no longer a "storytelling concept," but a tool that is truly creating efficiency and genuinely changing the user experience.

We may not care whether blockchain can become the infrastructure of the next generation of the Internet, but it has clearly become a visible and ever-growing elephant in the financial field at this stage.