The biggest names of the crypto world have assembled in Dubai to be part of the ongoing Binance Blockchain Week (BBW 2025). On the first day of the event, Binance CEO Richard Teng joined Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Solana Foundation President Lily Liu to detail what they see as the next leg for the crypto sector, which presently sits atop the valuation of over $3 trillion.
During the panel discussion moderated by CNBC host Dan Murphy, the three crypto moguls established that moving forward, the crypto industry will move from being classified as “niche” to being accepted as “native”.
Regulatory clarity, capital inflow, and scale of adoption emerged among key highlights from Teng, Liu, and Garlinghouse as factors that would define the next era of crypto growth globally.
Garlinghouse on ETFs and institutional interest in crypto
Owing to the ongoing crypto regulatory overhaul stemming from major economies like the U.S., the U.K., and the UAE – Garlinghouse expressed high optimism about the industry’s future stepping into 2026.
He pointed out that the regulatory clarity in the U.S. is making a drastic pivot from being extremely hostile these past years to being highly supportive now. Under these developments, large scale institutions are rapidly beginning to catch-up with adapting to digital assets.
“ETFs didn’t exist because of the regulatory problems in the United States. They didn’t exist. And you know, in the last two or three weeks, over $700 million have flown into XRP ETFs, which is just pent up demand from institutional investors, from investors who want access,” the Ripple chief said.
For now, only one or two percent of the total ETF market is crypto Garlinghouse highlighted. Going into 2026, however, he predicted that large-scale inflows into crypto ETFs will only grow the sector.
In October this year, Ripple acquired treasury management system provider GTreasury for $1 billion. The acquisition closed this week and Garlinghouse said that GTreasury’s corporate customers have already started showing an interest in leveraging stablecoins for the flexibility and a better yield as a trusted resource which he expects will shape up in the coming year.
Solana Foundation’s Liu on crypto bridging existing lapses
Liu, who has been heading the Solana Foundation since 2021, believes that speed and low fees aren’t necessarily going to be enough to bring the next generation of users into the ecosystem.
“There’s just some really basic core requirements that financial systems financial markets require, speed and cost is table stakes. Programmability is the whole arc of 2015, up until now. I think that liquidity, of course, is the king,” she said.
Boiling it down, Liu said that the crypto industry is set to combine speed and low fees with more liquidity and utility to make digital assets more appealing to the investors and end users.
Liu said that bringing financial inclusion through on-chain tokens would be the North Star for Solana in 2026.
The aim, she said, is to create this sort of unified infrastructure, and unified liquidity that would bring maximum utility to money, and make it accessible to not just all users, but also to issuers by giving them access to global capital markets from wherever they are.
“To me, the inclusion story here is not just on what’s called the retail side, with the unbanked around the world. That story is very relevant and has been discussed a lot, but it’s also around the supply side in global capital markets,” she said, forecasting that this is what will scale up the position of digital assets in the global financial ecosystem.
Teng’s billion users ambition
Binance CEO Richard Teng repeatedly highlighted that the exchange has now onboarded close to 300 million users. The exchange is now looking at ushering one billion crypto users in the times to come.
He, however, highlighted that to achieve this milestone – uniformity and clarity in global crypto regulation is crucial.
“Latin America is moving very well fast. Different parts of Asia Pacific, this region, Middle East, again, is growing very quickly. But in terms of rules and regulations, they are still not uniform. Throughout the world. There’s a lot of harmonization that needs to be done, and many countries have still not developed that framework,” Teng said.
He accepted that Binance also took some missteps in the past, referring to founder Changpeng Zhao’s admission of having breached older U.S. regulations, calling it a tale of the early days when crypto-focussed guidelines were almost non-existent.
“If you look at our compliance account, they make for 22 percent of our global income, so about 1300 people in compliance are working across the globe to make sure that we uphold high standards. Our compliance plan has gone up 30 percent year on year in the last two to three years, and this is an area that we will continue to invest quite, quite greatly in,” he noted, advising industry players to keep their businesses in alignment with international regulations.
Teng said Binance had stepped into 2024 with 70 million to 100 million users and today it caters to around 300 million users – which testifies to the ongoing exploration of the crypto sector by investors around the world.
He predicted that going into 2026, the pace of growth for the crypto sector would be exponential – however, support from the industry and senior global leaderships would play a key role in allowing players to navigate the way forward.