
Speaking at the Bitcoin 2026 conference, Changpeng Zhao stated that the most difficult period of the bear season has been overcome.
Changpeng Zhao said in his speech at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Hong Kong that the hardest period of the crypto winter and bear season is behind us.
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Changpeng Zhao made statements in Hong Kong as part of the Bitcoin 2026 conference.
Changpeng Zhao, one of the world's best-known crypto managers, continues his speeches at the Bitcoin 2026 conference. Speaking at the event held in Hong Kong today, CZ said that the most difficult period of the crypto winter is behind us.
“It was the hardest crypto winter”
Stating that the crypto world is going through a difficult period and that this bear season is the most difficult winter period, CZ said:
"We can say that we have survived the most difficult winter period. We are leaving behind the most difficult period of the bear season. There may be ups and downs from now on, but the basic structure is much stronger than before..."
“I am hopeful about RWA”
Zhao stated that he has seen great progress in three areas in the crypto world recently; He stated that decentralized exchanges, real-world assets and stablecoins stand out:

The highly anticipated Clarity Act vote in the US has been deadlocked due to disagreements over ethics provisions involving Trump and his family.

Crypto platforms lost $3.63 billion due to hacking attacks between January 2025 and July 2026. While Bybit ranked first with a loss of 1.4 billion dollars, 60% of the attacks took place on platforms that had completed security audits.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated that artificial intelligence does not pose a great danger for cryptocurrencies and that defense in cyber security will also improve.

While evaluating Bitcoin's sharp rise after a long horizontal period, Wintermute analysts stated that not only a price increase but also new and large capital inflows are required for the start of a real bull market. Recalling that ICOs, stablecoins and ETFs were capital inflow channels in past cycles, analysts suggested that real-world assets (RWA) could be a potential new channel for the new cycle. They stated that the RWA market has reached over $30 billion and continues to grow despite the decrease in the stablecoin supply, and added that regulatory obstacles have begun to disappear.

Zach Pandl, research manager at Grayscale, stated that Bitcoin's correlation with Nasdaq decreased from 60% to 33% and its correlation with gold increased from zero to 50%, adding that investors are now starting to see Bitcoin as digital gold and 'Debasement Trade' has come again.

Robinhood's network, Robinhood Chain, broke records with daily trading volume of $989 million and TVL of $770 million on Friday. The growth is driven by increasing interest in infrastructure, launchpad and DeFi tokens, as well as meme coins.