By Star Xu, OKX

Have you ever wondered what the future of finance will look like?

On October 1st, OKX Founder and CEO Star Xu was invited to attend the Token2049 Summit in Singapore and delivered a keynote speech titled "Everything Onchain, Self-Custody Is the Future" on the main stage. He believed that the next era of finance will not be one where institutions hold users' assets, but one where users truly control their own assets on-chain. Finance, like the internet, is evolving from closed systems to open protocols, and the infrastructure for on-chain finance is already in place. He emphasized that with the end of the "trust first, verify later" era and the shift to "verify first, trust later," self-custody is the future in this context. The future of finance lies not in vaults, but in your crypto wallet.

He later reiterated his speech's message in a post on the X platform: "The future of finance won't be decided behind closed doors—it will be built on-chain, openly and transparently. At the TOKEN2049 Summit, I shared our vision: everything on-chain, prioritizing self-custody, and verification before trust. In the OKX ecosystem, we are gradually building this future with every block and every transaction on the blockchain. Now, everything has just begun."

Let's step into Star's perspective and peek into the future of finance: Why will everything be on-chain? Why is self-custody the future? And how will OKX participate in shaping the future of finance? Below is the full (edited) transcript of Star's speech at Token2049:

Why will everything be on the chain?

Good afternoon, everyone. Twelve years ago, when I founded OKX, Bitcoin was like magic beans in fairy tales or tokens in games. We held events like Token 2049 back then, giving away hundreds of Bitcoins. Now, it seems we can no longer do that—today, the market capitalization of Bitcoin ETFs has surpassed that of gold ETFs, and public chains like Ethereum and Solana have become the foundational infrastructure for decentralized applications.

In the next era of finance, institutions will no longer hold assets for users, but users will hold and manage their own assets on the chain.

Looking back at the development of mobile devices, we can see that the mobile communications industry also has both open and closed systems. Traditional giants, such as Nokia and Motorola, manufactured their own devices and developed their own operating systems and applications. However, the emergence of a new generation of open system companies, such as Apple and Android, ultimately led to the rapid decline of these traditional giants, which relied on closed systems, within a few years, almost to the point of disappearing.

Now, if we look at traditional finance, we will find that most of it is still a closed system, while decentralized finance (DeFi) is completely different. It is an open system: transactions are transparent, rules are verifiable, and everyone can develop their own applications on it.

So, what is a true on-chain system? It has four core definitions: First, it must be open and transparent. Second, it must allow anyone to develop on top of it (driving unlimited innovation). Third, it cannot rely on any single service provider; users should be able to migrate freely from one provider to another. Fourth, it must be global.

I believe we'll see more and more assets moving to blockchains in the near future. Today, we already have cryptocurrencies and tokenized securities on-chain. In the future, bonds, real-world assets (RWAs), payments, and other financial elements will also gradually migrate to blockchains. In other words, everything will be on-chain.

How far are we from on-chain finance?

So, how far are we from on-chain finance? I think the infrastructure is already fully in place.

Twelve years ago, the Bitcoin network could only process about 7 transactions per minute. But today, we see that many L1 blockchains can already process thousands of transactions per second, and Ethereum-based L2 can process tens of thousands of transactions per second.

Meanwhile, crypto assets themselves have continued to evolve. Bitcoin has become “digital gold,” while stablecoins have proven to be one of the most successful cryptocurrency applications of the past twelve years.

More importantly, we're seeing more and more crypto companies learning how to thrive within a regulatory framework. Countries around the world are also actively promoting crypto legislation. For example, the US has proposed the GENIUS Act, the EU has introduced MICA, and Singapore's MAS has also made significant legislative efforts.

Why self-hosting is the future?

For thousands of years, we worked hard to earn money and then kept it at home, sometimes even under our beds. Back then, we didn't rely on agents to hold our assets. However, in the modern financial system, we face a multitude of agents, and we must consider which ones are trustworthy. Conventional wisdom suggests that we first trust an agent and then verify their reliability. However, if the agent goes bankrupt, users often only have luck in recovering a portion of their assets.

But in the blockchain world, self-custody changes all that. It allows users to “verify first, trust later.”

Users can research these decentralized applications themselves: How much reserves do they have? How many transactions have they processed? If it’s a lending protocol, is its collateralization ratio healthy? In this process, users can “verify first, then trust” (rather than the previous “trust first, then verify”).

At the same time, self-custody doesn't necessarily mean unsafe or non-compliant. Today, we have many advanced on-chain monitoring technologies that can help crypto companies perform anti-money laundering tasks even better than traditional financial institutions. Traditional financial companies can only see the data on their own platforms, but in the crypto world, we can use AI and big data to capture real-time information on all on-chain transactions.

In addition, we have technologies such as multi-signature and account abstraction, making users' crypto wallets as secure as bank accounts. This year, OKX also developed a real-time monitoring system that can prevent hackers from using our wallet services.

How does OKX participate in building future finance?

As a company that has been established for twelve years, OKX has also made many contributions to the construction of on-chain financial infrastructure.

First, OKX CEX has become one of the most liquid exchanges in the world and has obtained regulatory licenses in multiple major jurisdictions, including the United States, the European Union, the UAE, Singapore, and Australia.

Secondly, we prioritize self-custody of user assets at the forefront of our development vision. OKX Pay is a compliant self-custody wallet that allows users to transfer funds as easily as sending a message.

In addition, we have also built the L2 network X Layer to support the processing of OKX Pay on-chain transactions, helping global users achieve true point-to-point cross-border transfers, etc.

Furthermore, we've partnered with numerous industry partners to advance the development of on-chain finance. In sports, we sponsor the McLaren F1 team and Manchester City Football Club, bringing the crypto dream to hundreds of millions of sports fans. In finance and technology, we've partnered with industry players like Circle, Mastercard, Tether, and Paxos. We also collaborate closely with crypto-native companies like Aptos, Sui, Uniswap, and 1inch. Through OKX Pay and X Layer, these partnerships make our ecosystem more open and efficient.

In addition, we collaborate with influential individuals globally, sharing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue with our nodes. To support innovation, we established the OKX Vision Fund to help more startups deploy their products on the X Layer, accelerating the implementation and development of on-chain finance.

Therefore, I believe that the "on-chain financial era" does not only belong to OKX, it belongs to everyone and should be built by each of us together.

The future of finance isn’t in a vault, it’s in your crypto wallet. And it’s a beautiful future.

Thank you everyone!

Disclaimer

This article is for reference only. It represents the author's views and does not necessarily reflect the position of OKX. It is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or recommendations; (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of this information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) carries a high level of risk and may fluctuate significantly. Past returns are not indicative of future returns, and past performance is not indicative of future results. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is appropriate for you based on your financial circumstances. Please consult your legal, tax, or investment professionals regarding your specific circumstances. You are solely responsible for understanding and complying with applicable local laws and regulations.

OKX has launched an independent Web3 wallet app "OKX Wallet"

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