One of the most memorable crypto gatherings I’ve attended was the @yzilabs summit in Bhutan this week—not only because of the people in the room, but because Bhutan itself changed how I think about where crypto and frontier technology can take root. Thank you @cz_binance, @ellazhang516, @JaneSparking, @jeffrey_hu, @cathyIncubates and @yunna025 for the invitation and thoughtful hosting. It was also great spending meaningful time with @tarunchitra, @tomhschmidt, @arthur0x, @sandeepnailwal, @davidtohyh, @SpartanBlack_1, @pet3rpan_, @gordonliao, @omidscheybani and many of the Easy Residency founders. The people made the week. A highlight was CZ’s fireside chat. He said he was initially skeptical of RWA, but changed his mind after seeing how many people without access to U.S. equities were buying bStocks. That stayed with me. Crypto matters most when it gives people access they otherwise would not have. It also made me think more seriously about agentic trading. AI agents can already navigate websites and execute actions, but every platform has a different security model. Every new login, permission system and execution surface creates another point of failure. Asking an agent to move across dozens of fragmented financial platforms may be possible, but it also expands the security risk. If most assets eventually move onchain, the environment changes. Ownership becomes verifiable, permissions programmable, settlement unified and execution available around the clock. Instead of giving an agent broad access to many disconnected accounts, we can build a more consistent security layer around how it holds, trades and settles assets. This could make onchain RWA the natural market for AI agents. RWA may not simply bring existing assets onchain; AI agents could become one of the strongest reasons to do it. Agentic trading, in turn, could become a major driver of onchain RWA adoption. CZ also spoke about the most important quality in a founder. Not intelligence. Not network. Resilience. When you enter the valley of death, just work. Don’t remain trapped in frustration. Keep working and keep moving forward. Simple advice, but probably exactly what many founders in the room needed to hear. The composition of this @yzilabs cohort also showed where the market is heading: 9 companies focused on stablecoins, payments and FX; 7 on onchain trading, liquidity and RWA; and 6 on AI, applications and enterprise. Payments are clearly becoming a major priority for the Binance ecosystem, with onchain markets and RWA close behind. Then there is Bhutan itself. Gelephu Mindfulness City ( is one of the boldest national development experiments I’ve encountered. GMC is a highly autonomous Special Administrative Region inside Bhutan, with its own laws and institutions, Singapore common law as part of its legal foundation, and a new international airport targeted for completion in 2029. My shorthand for GMC is: Bhutan’s Layer 2. It remains rooted in Bhutan, but creates a new execution environment—different governance, legal rails, capital formation and global connectivity—designed to move faster while inheriting trust from the base layer. Meeting His Majesty (@king_jigme) made the ambition feel much more real. He was deeply fluent in frontier technology, remarkably clear about the plan, and visibly committed to making it happen. The gap between my first image of Bhutan and the sophistication of this vision was striking. I also spent a long time talking with a local taxi driver. What stayed with me was how deeply people seem to trust and love their King. Vision alone is not enough. But vision combined with legitimacy, social cohesion and patient capital can build something unusually durable. I arrived knowing very little about Bhutan. I left thinking I’ll be watching it for years. This trip reminded me that the next important ecosystem may not emerge where everyone is already looking. If you’re curious, go see Bhutan for yourself.