Solana Company Zhu Junwei: Today's blockchain finance is like China just joining the WTO

Introduction

In 2025, with Trump promoting the implementation of the "GENIUS Act," blockchain finance received endorsement from the U.S. government and recognition from Wall Street. This year saw major players like BlackRock accelerating their entry into the market, alongside an explosion in the digitization of real-world assets (RWA). The overseas crypto market is bidding farewell to its wild west days and moving towards a critical and compliant new generation of financial infrastructure. However, the sharp downturn in market conditions in the fourth quarter has once again raised cyclical concerns about the alternation between "prosperity and recession."

At the end of December, the Luohan Hall hosted a cutting-edge dialogue titled "The On-Chain Future of Financial Systems and Intelligent Economy". We invited several industry experts, investors, senior scholars, and policy advisors who are at the forefront of blockchain finance to examine and discuss the development history and prospects of this emerging field, as well as its potential opportunities and risks from multiple perspectives. For domestic observers, this was an excellent opportunity to gauge the trends in overseas fintech development. We will gradually share insights and reflections from this event.

In this wave of moving from the margins to the mainstream, the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies are emerging as a new conduit connecting traditional finance and blockchain assets. As one of the representatives of DAT, Joseph Chee's experiences and perspectives are particularly unique. He has spent over twenty years in traditional banking, then founded a venture capital fund, becoming one of the first licensed Asian institutions to invest in blockchain assets.

As an immigrant from traditional finance to the blockchain world, Joseph Chee shared three core judgments from an industry perspective during his speech:

Inevitability of Financial Evolution: Compared to the disruption of the consumer end by the internet, innovation in the global financial backend is extremely lacking. He believes that blockchain is not merely a hype but a necessary upgrade to the outdated settlement system, with the ultimate goal of achieving 24/7 global asset flow.
Analogy with the Chinese Economy: He likens today’s blockchain finance to China’s economy when it first entered the WTO—huge growth potential but little known to the outside world. This lack of awareness is precisely the best window for institutional investors to enter.
Bridge Between Old and New Worlds: To break down the barriers between traditional assets and the crypto economy, he focused on analyzing the two models of DAT and RWA. They serve as key conduits for capital introduction and asset "on-chain" processes, becoming financial innovations worth paying attention to in 2025.

Below is the full Chinese translation of Joseph Chee's speech:

Thank you for the invitation from Luohan Hall. I am very pleased to participate in this cutting-edge seminar.

First, let me introduce myself briefly. I currently serve as the chairman of Solana Company, a publicly listed company on NASDAQ. This is a "Digital Asset Treasury" (DAT) company, ranking second in terms of the scale of digital assets held within the Solana blockchain ecosystem.

I have over twenty years of experience in traditional banking. To make a long story short, my banking career can be described as "timely." I spent the first three years of my career on Wall Street in New York, followed by seventeen years at UBS Group in Asia, starting as a salesperson in the capital markets department and eventually rising to senior management responsible for UBS's entire investment banking business, overseeing the Asia-Pacific region for about three to four years before leaving to start my own venture.

At UBS, I spent ten years managing global capital markets business. The greatest value of this job was that it placed me at the center of the rise of the Chinese and broader Asia-Pacific economies. I witnessed many companies and industries grow from nothing to their current scale. Some outstanding companies transformed from unknowns to industry giants, successfully going public with market capitalizations reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, I tend to view the world from the perspective of capital markets—this is a view driven by finance and capital markets.

I retired early in 2017 and founded Summer Capital. Initially, Summer Capital was a buyout fund focused on cross-industry investments. We began to venture into investments in digital currencies, blockchain technology, and related fintech companies at the end of 2017 and early 2018. We can say we started early, being one of the first funds in Hong Kong to obtain relevant licenses and possibly one of the earliest institutions in Asia to invest in the blockchain field.

Additionally, I serve as the vice chairman of AMINA Bank. Since its establishment in 2018, AMINA is a fully licensed bank registered in Switzerland, capable of conducting various businesses related to digital currencies and blockchain. Switzerland has only issued two such full licenses, and AMINA is one of them. Other banks are often limited by licensing scope, technological bottlenecks, or legal regulations, and can only conduct partial digital financial business.

Lack of Innovation in the Financial Industry

Looking back over the past twenty years, we all know that internet finance has brought tremendous disruption to many industries. Many who experienced the burst and revival of the internet bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s still remember that period vividly. The development of e-commerce is a great example. In the early 2000s, many people were skeptical about online payments and did not trust e-wallets provided by e-commerce companies or payment firms, believing that e-commerce would not work. Twenty years later, e-commerce has become a reality and is thriving globally, completely transforming the retail industry and many other sectors.

However, the financial industry itself has not seen such disruption. The reason I began to view blockchain technology positively around 2017 was that, as a seasoned banker, I witnessed the obsolescence and aging of the financial market system. Although capital markets provide various financing support for global innovation—from angel investments and VC to public market financing—the innovation within the financial industry itself is extremely lacking.

While a large number of fintech companies have emerged in the past twenty years, a significant portion has focused on consumer-end solutions, contributing little to the infrastructure layer of the financial system. Some exchanges in Europe still implement T+6 or T+7 settlement cycles, only recently beginning to move towards T+2. Even in Hong Kong, IPO settlements were still using T+5 until a few years ago, recently shortening to T+2 or T+3.

To be frank, whether in payments, settlements, or backend operations, many technologies in the existing financial system have not been updated or iterated for over ten or even twenty years. The difficulty in changing this traditional approach may stem from several reasons. On one hand, significant changes require lengthy negotiations with regulators, which is not an easy task. On the other hand, some might argue, "If the existing system isn't broken, why fix it?" For example, Switzerland and Hong Kong still retain the habit of handwritten checks, and many companies are content with the status quo. Moreover, behind traditional finance lies a complex web of vested interests. New technologies may encroach on the business of existing financial firms or service providers—such as exchanges that once held monopolies—so they naturally lack the motivation to change. This is also why financial reform has been slow to occur.

From the perspective of capital markets, what is the ideal ultimate state? That is a market that operates 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, where trading can occur anytime and anywhere, and all assets and all liquidity are interconnected, flowing freely across any region, industry, and commodity. In an ideal scenario, many transactions could even occur directly peer-to-peer without going through exchanges.

For capital markets, this is the ideal, the goal of practitioners, and the future. After gaining a preliminary understanding of blockchain, my first reaction was: some of the technological prototypes needed for this ideal state have already emerged, marking the beginning of a revolution in the financial industry. Despite many concerns regarding related regulations, taxation, fraud, and security issues, I believe this is the general direction for future development, which will make market operations more efficient and enable finance to become more inclusive, serving a broader range of groups.

Review of Blockchain Finance Development

Of course, the development of blockchain finance has not happened overnight. In its early stages, it did not attract much attention—I was no exception. As a busy senior banker, I completely missed its nascent phase. I still remember during the 2008 financial crisis, I heard about the Bitcoin white paper, but at that time I didn’t understand it well and took no action. I thought it was just a very interesting but ultimately niche idea that could not mainstream.

The second phase of blockchain occurred roughly between 2011 and 2013, when people began to view it as a technology. What surprised me was that many of the current giants in this field—such as Grayscale and Coinbase—were established during those years. That can be considered an early start, and they have come a long way to where they are today.

The next phase was from 2014 to 2016, when the traditional financial industry began to pay attention to the potential benefits that blockchain technology could bring. Then in 2017, digital currencies entered a "wild west" phase of crazy expansion, with speculators and gamblers flocking in, and exchanges proliferating. At that time, the two largest exchanges monopolized 80% of global Bitcoin trading volume, almost defining the blockchain market of that time.

Many related startups emerged during that period. Numerous on-chain funds clustered in Zug, Switzerland, which is thus referred to as Switzerland's—and arguably the world's—"Crypto Valley." The staunch belief in blockchain technology among its supporters began there. I started visiting Zug frequently from 2017 to 2018. I remember at the first blockchain finance conference I attended, the opening speaker, sporting a ponytail and wearing boots, shouted on stage: "We hate the state, we hate banks, we hate governments, we hate regulation; we want to break away from all of this." They asked me, "Mr. Chee, I heard you just founded your own company and started investing in crypto assets. What is your first step plan?" I replied, "I'm sorry, my first step is to establish a bank." So, it was evident that I was not very popular at that conference. I had to carefully explain to them: "At some stage of development in this field, you still need to stay grounded and require a bridge to the real world. And banks are that bridge."

From 2018 to 2020, people began to shift towards building the infrastructure of blockchain finance. Real entrepreneurs—those with vision and motivation to create businesses and drive change—began to emerge. This led to the first batch of blockchain financial infrastructure companies we know today, such as Bitwise in the U.S., which was created during that time. Additionally, many traditional companies began to enter the space, such as Fidelity and CME Group.

By 2020 and 2021, more Bitcoin companies were being established, and the ecosystem of blockchain finance was growing increasingly robust. It was also during this time that I frequently heard reports about Bitcoin and Ethereum in Bloomberg News, prompting me to tell the Summer Capital team: "Now, we must pay close attention to this sector and analyze it in depth. We need to invest heavily." This marked the beginning of our journey to where we are today.

Subsequently, stablecoins were born. Prior to this, converting crypto assets to fiat had always been the most challenging aspect. I remember around 2015-2016, some early investors in Ethereum (many of whom were from the Asia-Pacific region and were clients of UBS) attempted to convert part of their profits back to fiat for reinvestment, a process that took about nine months. Although it was ultimately completed, the process was extremely arduous.

In overseas markets, stablecoins became important payment mediums. Bitcoin was the initial payment currency but was gradually replaced by Ether, with everything on-chain priced in Ether. However, due to the high volatility of Bitcoin and Ether, they were not suitable as payment mediums. When stablecoins like USDT and USDC emerged, this sector rapidly exploded.

What followed was the recession after the boom: between 2022 and 2023, scams and scandals like LUNA and FTX emerged. In fact, in a completely unregulated industry, such projects, which are clearly "pyramid schemes" from a traditional investment perspective, are bound to appear, and their collapse is inevitable.

After the FTX incident, many believed the industry was doomed. But like any emerging industry, the cycles of boom and bust will eventually alternate. As long as a technology can solve real problems, it will eventually rise again. And now, blockchain finance is making a strong comeback and becoming even more robust. Currently, the total market value of the global blockchain finance market is about $3-4 trillion, with a total value locked (TVL) of about $120 billion. While this number is not small, it is still a very young and rapidly growing sector compared to the entire global financial market. I believe it will not disappear but is still in its early growth stage.

At the same time, this is also an industry that is often misunderstood. So you will see Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, making critical remarks about it, yet they have quickly become one of the Wall Street bulge bracket firms applying blockchain technology. Similarly, former UBS chairman Dr. Alex Weber also called it a scam. If you visit regulatory agencies in various countries, many still believe this entire industry is a scam, as there have indeed been too many speculations, frauds, and even illegal activities associated with it. For countries like China, Vietnam, and India, it serves as a convenient channel for capital flight.

Compared to artificial intelligence, the core value of blockchain technology may not seem as attractive or imaginative. As a competitive field for emerging technologies, AI has attracted a lot of attention, capital, and research power. If given a choice between AI and blockchain, many researchers would likely choose AI, as its future prospects seem limitless. In contrast, blockchain and digital currencies appear somewhat dull. However, if you examine its core value, you will find it is the infrastructure for future financial markets.

The important events of 2025—especially the series of supportive policies introduced after Trump wins the election—mark the point at which this technology, once viewed as speculative and in a gray area, finally gains recognition in the U.S. It is now acknowledged by Wall Street as the infrastructure for future financial services. Overnight, the application and popularization of this technology have accelerated significantly. From my personal observation, at least in the U.S., Wall Street investment banks and mainstream financial institutions are deploying blockchain technology at a speed of 120 miles per hour, putting assets and products on-chain. Progress in other parts of the world varies.

We can see that today’s blockchain finance map already has numerous sub-sectors and various companies. I often tell people, today’s blockchain world is somewhat like China in the early 2000s. Back then, Western investors knew that the Chinese economy was growing rapidly, and they flocked to Hong Kong, eager to invest in the mainland, but they lacked timely and accurate information. At that time, mainland China did not have reliable third-party information providers, nor were there enough companies audited by the Big Four accounting firms or rated by Moody's or S&P, and there were no research reports from major banks. So what could they invest in? China National Petroleum, China Telecom, China Mobile.

Today’s blockchain world is similar. There are already many large and small companies here, as well as many good applications, but the outside world does not understand them, leading to significant information asymmetry. Therefore, Wall Street and mainstream capital will first start investing in leading companies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. However, I believe the information gap will soon be filled, and in the next six months, they will find that many companies in niche sectors will become more investable.

We see that financial institutions and investors from all sides are rushing to enter the market. Various institutions from traditional finance have come, especially American companies. With the approval of the U.S. Digital Asset Market Structure Act, I believe even more traditional financial companies will flood in. Additionally, we can see that many digital finance companies that you may have never heard of are also actively entering the market. Some of these new players are significant, with billions of dollars in assets or revenues ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) and Real World Asset Digitization (RWA)

Here, I want to introduce two key concepts in the overseas market: Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) and Real World Asset (RWA) digitization. They are the bridges connecting liquidity.

In overseas markets, DAT is essentially a publicly listed company established for holding digital assets. If we look at the total scale of global financial assets, it is approximately between $900 trillion and $1,000 trillion. In contrast, the $3 trillion scale of blockchain finance is negligible. We know that to support the development of any emerging industry, the most likely source of capital that can obtain and further expand liquidity is the public stock market, which has a scale of about $120 trillion to $150 trillion. In the past, such investments were mainly conducted through private equity (PE), venture capital (VC), or investment banks, but their efficiency was relatively low. In contrast, hedge funds and large funds in the public market can commit hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in a matter of hours.

For blockchain finance to grow from $3 trillion to $10 trillion or even $100 trillion, it also relies on funding support from traditional finance. DAT is one of the pathways to achieve this. Stock market investors can indirectly hold digital currency assets through the DAT model. Currently, there are about 80 pure DAT companies. If we count all publicly listed companies holding digital assets, the number exceeds 200. The industry truly began to accelerate after April 2025. These DAT companies have recently raised $20 billion in funds. The primary focus of attention is MicroStrategy, which has transformed into the largest treasury in the Bitcoin ecosystem by financing to purchase Bitcoin. This company pioneered the entire industry.

Why does the DAT model work? First, it reduces operational risks. Most fund management companies do not want fund managers or employees to directly manage digital wallets, transferring large amounts of funds and bearing the associated operational risks. Secondly, there are authorization issues. Not all funds are authorized to invest in digital asset-related ETFs. Even if authorized, fund managers' responsibilities are to select excellent management teams and companies; if they invest heavily in ETFs, the fund management fees would be unwarranted. Additionally, DAT can bypass entry restrictions. In some regions, regulators prohibit retail investors from directly purchasing digital currencies, but they can invest indirectly through publicly listed companies like DAT.

The business logic of DAT companies is not complicated. They finance at low costs through issuing convertible bonds, selling options, etc., and then use the funds to purchase digital currencies. When market sentiment is high, they also issue stocks at high prices, continuously increasing the average number of digital currencies held per share. This is their core logic. This is also why MicroStrategy's performance during the same period can outperform Bitcoin itself, even reaching more than three times that of Bitcoin. Another important point is that, unlike Bitcoin, other digital currencies on blockchains (like Solana) can also "earn interest," thus generating additional returns.

Currently, the DAT sector is experiencing a boom and bust cycle—too many DAT companies are desperately trying to absorb all possible liquidity. But I believe this industry has found its business model. In the future, we will see more DATs emerge as mainstream holders of digital assets, which is worth close attention.

In contrast, RWA is still in an earlier stage of development. RWA refers to the digitization of traditional real-world assets and their introduction onto the blockchain, thereby increasing the liquidity of these assets. Because blockchain finance is an emerging market, assets here can achieve higher risk-free yields. This is somewhat akin to depositing dollars in Cambodia, where you would receive higher deposit rates. We see that RWA based on private credit is growing the fastest. However, RWAs based on safer instruments like U.S. Treasury bonds are also performing well, as more digital asset investors are willing to forgo some returns to diversify investments and reduce risks. This is also the reason for the accelerated growth of RWA in recent years. RWA is technically ready, and the operational processes are not complex, but the key lies in regulation and liquidity. Since different assets are at different stages of their life cycles, what needs to be done is to find the appropriate asset types, digitize them, gain liquidity, and ensure their feasibility and success. This also depends on the type of the asset itself. In the U.S., if an asset is classified as a "security," then its compliance requirements are relatively high. With the rise of asset digitization, I believe standardized products and highly liquid products will be the first to go on-chain, followed by major asset classes that require liquidity and are widely recognized. All of this is happening, and we will wait and see.