EN | Crypto in 2026 What Comes After the Four Year Cycle | MERGE São paulo

So our first session of this morning uh on the merge stage is uh about crypto in 2026 what comes after the four-year cycle. Um our moderator uh is El Caba head of marketing at Mergy. So welcome to the stage and our speakers uh Vivax Shane Carlos Netu and Glenn Nazar. Welcome

question. What games after the four years cycle? So it's like a spoiler. So we now suppose that is we are ending the four-year cycle. So but I need to make like a um a big picture a first question as a big picture to everyone.

Um so crypto was traditionally related to uh the four-year cycle the bitcoin hing all here we know that so are we still in that momentum in that cycle or you think we are entering a new phase I will start with me from binance

being a good friend and also a good partner uh look first of all thanks thanks for having me real pleasure to be here at Mer S Po.

So to your question, uh about the four-year cycle, so I think the the in terms of like cycle, I think we can split between price appreciation and adoption, right? Sticking starting with price, I for one have I found myself part of the group that believes the four-year cycle had nothing to do with the four-year Halvin cycle or at least very little to do. And why do I say that? Sure, like the the the the Halvin cycle is definitely important for Bitcoin and Bitcoin as the main as the main token, right? as the as the big boss of all cryptocurrencies continues to to lead the way.

But I think the four-year cycle, the haven cycle coincides with other cycle with other cycles which is much more related to liquidity which is much more liquidity to the business cycle. So I think what people thought oh it's because of the haling. So that's why prices now will go up and then after 18 months or so prices will go down and we're going to have a bare a bare scenario. Uh I think has very little or almost nothing to do with the hovering and much more related to the liquidity cycle. Um so that's one and are we on a four-year cycle?

I don't think we we are anymore. I think this year we well let's see by the end of the year if I which version is correct but I think we we broke the four-year cycle and I think it will be a fiveyear cycle but wait hing continues to exist every four years so what has changed if hing hasn't changed what changes is the liquidity cycle so the I think it's much more related to the the the financy of the US debt uh I I think that's pretty much the key macro driver, microeconomic driver uh that drives liquidity and we're going to see throughout this year if this additional liquidity knock on wood that or knock on table that it will happen will drive prices to go up. Of course, um circumstances such as the war in Iran and like the consequences it doesn't help at all. It creates uh uncertainty. uh but but that's my belief.

I am part of that group that believes uh we have broken down. We have it's that the four-year cycle is done and we are migrating to a fiveyear cycle and it has never nothing to do or very little to do with the haling and much more related to the uh liquidity. In terms of adoption then I kind of agree the like the hinging and the speculation from the past uh 15 years has definitely helped a lot with adoption and bringing people to crypto because they like most of the time of that that our industry exist buying and selling cryptocurrencies has been the main use cases. But if we take into account the last couple of years with a little bit more of regulatory clarity with products such as the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs uh the arrival uh so where was I? Um so I think with the the last couple of years right with more innovation, more use cases, with the arrival of certain institutional players, with um with the infrastructure becoming more and more uh real um I think adoption will be driven will continue to be driven some uh by by some uh for speculation.

But the more institutional investors come, the more we touch on infrastructure, the more we evolve on regulatory clarity, this those will be the main drivers for adoption and not anymore just speculation and uh betting on leverage assets. That's what I think.

Okay. Thank you. Uh now your turn. Uh Carlos, what do you think

about next the cycle of four years? I don't know. I believe the next four years are going to be very different from every other four years we had in the past. You know, um adaption of great terms of wars. The big barrier for me is cultural barrier.

People don't understand. They don't understand till now. Uh you talk, you talk talk, they don't use it. You keep talk about blockchain so forth. They don't have a single account on Binance or any other exchange.

They never made a transfer before. So there's a a gap of knowledge that's incredibly is I spoke with a a fed person and the fed person in Chicago told me no forbidden to have an account with crypto. So how can we learn about that? So there is a huge gap between us regulators and whoever is doing this and they are ahead of us and they're taking advantage of us. uh one thing that's I believe is going to change is AI with uh in the past you need a mainframe to make software main was very expensive they had the micro computer and people start making companies in their house Amazon Google and uh Facebook they started in their garage with computers they could buy that were not accessible before now to open a company you need a lot of money you need like 10 any developers.

You don't need anymore. A single guy can go to his room and have like 10 cloud agents and they're going to make incredible things. And what's the point when they can when one single guy can do a huge thing? They can enable people to use that in a way they're going to learn by using. I believe that adoption is going to be much more driven by adoption and that low friction adoption.

So uh once you put a better user interface, a UI that's not clunky embedded in real business process is going to make better adoption. You can see what happened with cast for example. Everybody's using cast to save some tax and to to spend less money traveling abroad. Everybody's learning crypto. Everybody's learning crypto to use cast.

No. And the interface is very clunk. You need to to say the right blockchain, the right address. I I lost $100. I was transferring to Polygon.

I transferred to base by accident. Thank god the other address was belonging to Cast ecosystem. They do a good service. They recovered my money. But I'm experienced guy and they sent to the wrong blockchain address.

Then I asked my daughter to make a trip using cast and she said, "Dad, it sucks. Uh, why don't you do like I do in my bank C6. I just press a button." And they told her, "You're right, but you have an option. You pay 5% of the trip."

No. So for 5% saving, I'm going to the clunk interface. But I told her good to know that you you you believe it's a it's a bad experience because my goal is to provide a better experience and once you have a better experience and efficiency to be done and now is easy. So uh I believe the next four years is going to be very different from every other four years in the past.

Right. And what do you think uh

so kind of uh piggybacking from what Carlos said and Ger from the BSV association standpoint the fouryear cycle um you can see it's been uh driven by speculation and not by usage and you can tell that means the h havinging matters but I don't think for the exact reasons what people actually think means the it defies the economics of u bitcoin. So miners no longer can um sustain themselves from block rewards itself, but they actually um need transaction volumes. They need usage in order for this to be sustainable for them. And touching upon on the a AI agents means again it's become a frenzy. It's become viral overnight.

But what does that mean? Means agents no longer will be thinking for themselves. It will be more about transactions. So they'll be transacting agents paying agents, machines paying machines, which at the end of the day means more transactions like tens and thousands of transactions per second. And at the end of the day, what you actually see is like this is again not science fiction.

It's happening. People are building it. So what does this need from the rails perspective? I would say like uh instant settlement like the 10 minutes at Bitcoin, the 12 to 15 seconds on Ethereum with that sheer volume and scale no longer cut it. What you're looking at right now is the necessity of um I would say uh basically like those 15 seconds can actually become a bottleneck and then the gas fees in itself just makes the model uneconomical.

Right? So when people talk about the fouryear cycle, I think it doesn't really relate to us in that way because what we are looking at is more around the technology, the the infrastructure and how that can withstand to what is actually going to come you know moving forward right. Fantastic. So uh when we created this panel uh our goal was always to have like different points of view so that we we be invited in a chains uh uh technology provider for banking and in blockchain infrastructure. So uh now I'm going to make you like a more targeted question for each one of you.

I'm starting with um eermy um payments because Binance obviously related with payments and stable coins. So what um what do you think what what needs to happen for stable coins to be a mainstream uh um a mainstream current uh mean for payments rails? What what do you think about stable coins and payments and blockchain also?

Sure. So um I'm a big fan of stable coins. Um, and I think initially when like the the first few USD denominated stable coins were created, the the main purpose for those were away so traders could realize gains or stop losses and without the need to go offchain, right? They could they they kept their their money, their funds on chain, right? Um and and it's still the main case for some some examples of stable coins.

And then uh innovative creative users learn that it could be used like using like wallet wallet. It could be used to transfer money to someone either locally or or abroad. And now we see many initiatives uh like other fiat currencies nominated stable coins. We have several several examples in Brazil. Uh and also companies like stable co orchestrators, several companies building the infrastructure um building the infrastructure so stable coins can be used can be leveraged for uh crossber payments or local payments.

I think what we need more is we need we need banks to to get on board as well, right? uh let's let's not try to find another route. So in order to connect to treadfi and in order to really uh increase dramatically adoption uh in terms of like users and also volume we need we need banks to also adopt how this is going to happen. it it's hard to like yeah now we're going to top down uh this technology it doesn't work that way right the the sales life cycle or the adoption life cycle the adoption cycle it's it takes time hopefully not the 10 years example TK gave me shared with me privately one of one of his one of his use cases but it takes time for the adoption and to to sell this but I believe with regulatory clarity which we are having in Brazil which we're also evolving in the US in Europe with Mika like the other stages pretty much going through Mika uh in Asia we have several examples so with regulatory clarity with an infrastructure that it's institutional grade kind of infrastructure like that really focuses on privacy on security on AML so we need all those kinds of concepts really well established as the core tenants. Uh so then stable coins can really be used not not as a token but as a payment infrastructure.

So that's what I think I think we are on this track. Uh so I think cons uh directionally we are we are going there time wise then I think it's no one has like a crystal ball. It may virus but I think those are like the core components we need in order to get there.

Okay. Right. And what do you think Carlos because you learn me talk about we need banks. You work every day with banks. Uh are the are the banks adopting blockchain technology or do you think we will go to a parallel financial system?

Our our mission here is to help Oh, it's cutting. Sorry. is to help banks to adopt to embrace stable coins without friction. When you start talk about stable coins, they don't understand. They cannot follow.

They don't don't know why. So since we offer technology for banks, our technology is already integrated. For example, circle was the first banking technology company in the world to make a partnership with circle USC. We are in their timeline. They report on 25.

you know the single uh the only post of a company that Jeremy the founder repost so in a very good shape is there and our mission is to bring stable coins to banks here in Brazil and United States so uh and for doing that you have to remove all the friction we have to have a technology that you can like install and they can use and it's easier than other for example you don't need to integrate with AC United take to need to integrate with swift because I just need to integrate with Solana and BSV and iterium and other blockchains. It's already integrated. So feeding this technology inside a bank is not so complicated because I don't need to integrate with a lot of things and those tons of integrations in general are the show blockers are the guys that forbidden my technology to be insert in the bank and uh what you're doing also United States to endorse to embrace more stable coins. Uh in Brazil you have pics. We can trust your money for one slash50 cents of a dollar every transaction.

It's very very inexpensive. So I don't see really a reason to use stable coins for local payments in Brazil. But in the US local instant payment cost a lot of money. It can cost 25 cents or more for a bank to transfer money to another bank charging zero. uh instant payments on Fed now and uh RTP can be more expensive than cards.

So I see a huge space there in the states for using blockchains to transfer money between two banks the lack of a real time uh fiat uh rail there. So, and imagine if a small bank, a credit union, they need to connect to Fed Now, they need IBM, MQ, they need to buy a software for a company. They're going to pay a lot of money and uh they're going to make maybe 5,000 transactions a month because they're a small bank. It makes no sense to make all these investment just to make 5,000 transactions. What's how complex is this bank to integrate with ESV or Solana?

How much does it cost? Nothing. You ask a code and code make integration for you and it's done. So you don't pay anything. You don't buy a BQ.

You don't buy a server. You just connect your ledger to Solana and it's done. So you can start sending money to other banks. Other banks also connect same blockchain. and uh CUSOS they can have a pools of USDC to make uh to serve all the banks under that credit union association.

uh another thing and for this to make this vision happen United States we believe that you need a use case and the use case in United States is bill payment I'm not sure if you know but uh paying a bill in United States is a pain in lack know it's very bad tap to pay works you tap your phone uh cards are expensive retailers are pissed off with uh with cards but it works And who is going to pay in a very bad user interface just to save 1%. 1% is a lot of money for Walmart. But I will not change my behavior to save 1%. But I will change my behavior to avoid paying a bill having to enter a portal, finding the password that I forgot, type in my RO number, my account number, confirm the payment, and pray for that to happen. By the way, I paid the bill yesterday.

It's terrible. It's terrible. So, what's going to put a QR code on the the bill on the voice? You just scan and pay. So, the friction is going to be much lower.

So, you're going to get a use case and that QR code that's going to be the standard cure code for United States. It's going to be the official one is blockchain friendly is stable coin friendly different from Brazil Pure code that's just for pigs. This US standard cure code has an array of options. So the biller is there and uh say you can pay USD um AC but you can pay USDC on Solomon okay

or other blockchain and by offering this blockchain is going to be there for real and into it quickbooks they're going to put this code on every invoice they have that's 90% 90% of all invoice in the country it's a market baker

okay

so it's going to happen and I hope you're going to have there at three billion three billion transactions a month on the blockchain.

Then your turn VC about blockchain infrastructure uh for enterprises and uh large scale enterprises and um real world use cases. Uh what do you think? Um, so kind of like taking on what Carlos uh mentioned, um, if you talk to any kind of like fintech founder or enterprise CIO, all of them are looking at when do you ask what do you look for in a blockchain, they're looking at very boring stuff, right? like millions of transactions, fast settlement, super low fees, and something that plugs into their uh systems very easily. So, it has little friction.

And what you see is like at the end of the day, many of these uh blockchains uh were built for asset trading and scarcity. They were not built for purpose. And at the end of the day, what actually drives uh this kind of adoption is for those um chains at least like for example from our side from BSV you can have those microp payments done onchain directly seamlessly without any friction whatsoever. So it's actually something simplistic to use which is the nature of what it should be and at the same time um what we are trying to achieve over here is remove all of those barriers where there are like you know blockchain basically uh block sizes limitations or the transaction uh transactions basically not going as quickly as it should be. So that affects that user experience and ultimately it doesn't drive that adoption.

But I do agree like we need to take these steps little by little and then showcase how this is done. And I actually think like how BSV is literally built for this kind of use cases, right? And actually makes sense for moving uh all these institutions, enterprises and whatnot into that direction.

Yeah. So unfortunately we are running out of time. Um sorry for the time we lost at the beginning but I would like to close this panel also with uh okay we we we talk about past about the past cycle. So we are entering a new era so to an unknown era. So what in your opinion what what will define the new era we are entering like you have to choose like quantity meaning enterprise adoption uh regulation uh change of liquidity uh enterprises app so with you so infrastructure and institutional participation will drive stability and long-term confidence in digital assets that's Uh I'm very a lot on this cure code United States for stable coins.

I mean three billion transactions a month I believe it's available and we are doing Brazil 4 billion a month on cure codes of big since the step since the blockchain is going to be the cheapest way for money to be moved to United States. Why not same number? They have a lifeation. And just for you to know guys, that is the standard US circ address and all the blockchains the single code. So I'm not going to mess up numbers and blockchain anywhere in my life because here's the pairs blockchain address blockchain address blockchain address one single code.

I scan and my Apple like can pay whatever is best for them. I don't know. I don't need to know which blockchain was used. I just need to know that my view is

I believe it's going to be working.

Fantastic.

Vic, what do you think?

I think it would be a combination of both what Kier and Carlos said and see how that uh technology translates into something scalable. So something cheap, fast, invisible rails. And to be honest, that's where we are headed towards.

Thank you. So thank you again. Sorry for the sorry. So, thank you you all. H I wish you enjoyed this panel and well have a a nice day and enjoy the rest of the conference and please super your applause to this top speaker.