Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou attended a fireside chat at Consensus 2026 today, speaking on the topic "When DeFi Expands into TradFi: Designing a New Financial Platform for the Next Decade," sharing his observations and insights on the maturation of cryptocurrencies. The chat was moderated by Aoyan Ashraf, Global News Manager at CoinDesk, and covered the complementarity and challenges of decentralized systems and traditional finance at various levels. Ben stated that over the past decade, cryptocurrencies have gradually evolved from investment products into "pipelines" for the future financial system. From stablecoins to RWA tokenization, crypto orbits are characterized by being 24/7, borderless, and programmable. The role of cryptocurrencies is not to replace banks, but rather to reduce friction in the financial system. From a customer perspective, Ben believes the major trend for crypto orbits will be at the infrastructure level, ultimately becoming the new "back end" of the financial system, silently changing the financial landscape. Customers are results-oriented, and so are institutional applications. Therefore, the financial system is undergoing a technological revolution, but the innovation in operating logic may not necessarily bring about a significant difference in the end-user experience. "Just like cloud computing services, users don't say 'I'm using cryptocurrency,' but care about 'I can transfer funds instantly' and 'I can access global markets.'"

Odaily reports that the Thai cabinet has approved amendments to the Derivatives Act, allowing cryptocurrencies to be used as underlying assets in regulated derivatives products. The Thai SEC will revise relevant licensing rules, develop derivatives contract specifications, and collaborate with the Thai Futures Exchange to ensure that the risk profile of contracts aligns with the characteristics of digital assets. This reform aims to promote market growth, diversify risk management, and bring digital asset activities into a clearer legal framework. (Decrypt)

According to official news from Odaily, YZi Labs' EASY Residency S3 interviews are now open. YZi Labs is seeking Web3 developers in the following eight areas: next-generation oracles, on-chain forex and stablecoins, dedicated AMMs (Prop AMMs), traditional risk crypto insurance, sovereign privacy infrastructure, everyday DeFi applications, prediction market perpetual contracts, and Exotic Real-World Assets (Exotic RWAs). YZi Labs welcomes applications from developers across all ecosystems, aiming to support visionary and driven founders through this program.

Huoxun Finance reported on February 12th that, according to CoinDesk, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson announced at the Consensus Hong Kong conference that its long-developed privacy blockchain, Midnight, will officially launch in the last week of March, operating as a partner blockchain for Cardano. Midnight is based on zero-knowledge proof technology and employs a "selective disclosure" privacy model: user transaction data remains private by default, disclosing specific information only when necessary to authorized parties. This design aims to balance the privacy protection and compliance needs of blockchain, supporting data access views with different permission levels, including public, audit, and regulatory perspectives. Hoskinson revealed that Google and Telegram have participated in the collaboration. The concurrently launched MidnightCitySimulation testing platform will be open to the public on February 26th, using AI agents to simulate real-world transaction environments and verify the network's proof generation and processing capabilities in large-scale scenarios.

Huoxun Finance News, February 12 - According to official Solana news, Citibank announced that it has tokenized a bill of exchange and completed its entire lifecycle (from issuance to settlement) on Solana.