OKX Star Token2049 Speech: The Future of Finance Is in On-Chain Wallets, Not in Vaults

Oct 07, 2025

Author | @star_okx, Founder & CEO of OKX

Compiled by WuBlockchain

On October 1, OKX founder and CEO Star Xu was invited to attend the Token2049 summit in Singapore and delivered a keynote speech on the main stage titled “Everything Onchain, Self-Custody Is the Future.” He argued that the next era of finance is not about institutions safeguarding assets on behalf of users, but about users truly controlling their assets on-chain. Just as the internet evolved, finance is moving from closed systems to open protocols, and the infrastructure for on-chain finance is now fully in place. He emphasized that as the age of “trust first, verify later” ends, finance is shifting to “verify first, then trust,” and against this backdrop, self-custody is the future — the future of finance is not in vaults, but in your crypto wallet.

He later reiterated his viewpoint 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 TOKEN2049, I shared our vision: everything on-chain, self-custody first, verify before trust. In the OKX ecosystem, we are building this future block by block and transaction by transaction on the blockchain. Now, everything is just beginning.”

Let us step into Star’s perspective to glimpse the face of future finance: Why will everything move on-chain? Why is self-custody the future? And how is OKX participating in building the future of finance? Below is the full text of Star’s speech at Token2049 (organized):

Why will everything go on-chain?

Good afternoon, everyone. Twelve years ago, when I founded OKX, Bitcoin felt like magic beans from a fairy tale or tokens in a video game. We even held events like Token2049 back then and gave away hundreds of bitcoins — something we clearly can’t do now — today, the market cap of Bitcoin ETFs has already surpassed that of gold ETFs, and public chains such as Ethereum and Solana have become infrastructure for decentralized applications.

The next era of finance will no longer have institutions holding assets on behalf of users; rather, users will hold and manage their assets on-chain.

Looking to history, if we review the development of mobile devices, we find that the mobile communications industry also had open systems and closed systems. Those traditional giants — Nokia, Motorola — produced their own devices, developed operating systems and apps. However, when a new generation of companies with open systems emerged, such as Apple and Android, it ultimately caused these incumbents dependent on closed systems to decline rapidly within a few years, almost vanishing into thin air.

Now, if we turn our gaze to traditional finance, we find that most of it is still a closed system, whereas decentralized finance (DeFi) is completely different — it is an open system: transactions are transparent, rules are verifiable, and anyone can build their own applications on top of it.

So what constitutes 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 this system (driving unlimited innovation). Third, it cannot rely on any single service provider; users should be free to migrate, switching from one provider to another. Fourth, all of this must be global.

I believe that in the not-too-distant future, we will see more and more assets move on-chain. Today, there are cryptocurrencies on-chain, as well as tokenized securities. In the future, various financial elements such as bonds, real-world assets (RWA), and payments will gradually migrate on-chain. In other words, everything will go on-chain.

How far are we from on-chain finance?

So, how far are we from on-chain finance? I believe the infrastructure is fully ready.

Twelve years ago, the Bitcoin network could process about 7 transactions per minute. But today, we see many L1 blockchains already able to process thousands of transactions within one second, and Ethereum-based L2s can process tens of thousands of transactions per second.

At the same time, crypto assets themselves continue to develop. Bitcoin has become “digital gold,” while stablecoins have proven to be one of the most successful crypto applications over the past twelve years.

More importantly, we see more and more crypto companies learning how to grow healthily within regulatory frameworks. Countries around the world are actively advancing crypto legislation — for example, the United States proposed the GENIUS Act, the European Union launched MICA, and Singapore’s MAS has likewise made many efforts on the legislative front.

Why is self-custody the future?

Throughout thousands of years of human history, we worked hard to earn money and then kept it at home — sometimes even under the mattress. Back then, we didn’t rely on agents to custody assets. Yet in the modern financial system, we face a large number of “agents,” and must consider which of them are trustworthy. The usual logic is that we first choose to trust an “agent,” and then verify whether they are reliable. Once this “agent” goes bankrupt, users often can only recover part of their assets, if they are lucky.

In the blockchain world, self-custody changes all of this.

It allows users to “verify first, then trust.” Users can research these decentralized applications themselves: How much in 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 “verify before they trust” (rather than the previous “trust first, then verify”).

At the same time, self-custody does not mean unsafe or non-compliant. Today, we already have many advanced on-chain monitoring technologies that can help crypto companies perform AML tasks, even better than traditional financial institutions. Traditional financial companies can only see data on their own platforms, but in the crypto world we can leverage AI and big data to capture all transaction information on-chain in real time.

In addition, we have technologies such as multi-signature and account abstraction that make 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 is OKX participating in building the finance of the future?

As a twelve-year-old company, 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, Australia, and others.

Second, we have always placed self-custody of user assets at the forefront of our vision. OKX Pay is a compliant self-custody wallet that lets users transfer funds as simply as sending a message.

In addition, we have built the L2 network X Layer, which supports processing on-chain transactions for OKX Pay, helping users around the world realize true peer-to-peer cross-border transfers, and more.

Not only that, we have also formed partnerships with many industry players to jointly promote 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 have established collaborations with industry companies such as Circle, Mastercard, Tether, and Paxos; at the same time, we work closely with many crypto-native enterprises, such as 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 and share hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue with nodes each year. To support innovation, we established the OKX Vision Fund to help more startups deploy their products on X Layer, accelerating the implementation and development of on-chain finance.

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

The future of finance is not in vaults; it is in your crypto wallet. This is a beautiful future.

Thank you all!

Wu Blockchain

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