OKX NOW conference successfully concluded: Star elaborated on OKX's long-term vision, discussing the next-generation financial system with traditional financial institutions and cryptocurrency

On October 6, the OKX NOW Global Products and Ecosystem Conference concluded in Singapore. At the event, OKX founder Star and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered opening speeches; the heads of OKX's four core product lines—trading, on-chain, AI, and payments—also took the stage. Former New York Governor and OKX board member Andrew Cuomo, Mastercard's Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan, and executives from traditional financial institutions such as DBS Bank, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered Bank, and Western Alliance Bank gathered to share and discuss topics including the next-generation financial system, all-weather market liquidity, digital asset banking, and on-chain security in the AI era.

The following is a recap of the event highlights, compiled by ChainCatcher.

I. Opening Speeches: Star Discusses OKX's Long-Term Vision, Vitalik on Security and Interaction in the AI Era

In the opening speech, Star began by discussing the gap in financial infrastructure, stating that consumer technology has fully achieved globalization, instantaneity, and all-weather availability, while the financial system is still built on infrastructure from decades ago. He then reviewed the development of the cryptocurrency industry, identifying four stages: geek exploration, the formation of financial markets, ICO and DeFi experiments, and regulatory construction, predicting that the industry will enter a mainstream phase starting in 2025.

Following this judgment, Star proposed that OKX "has surpassed the positioning of an exchange" and is expanding into a global fintech platform, aiming to reconstruct fintech services for the younger generation in four aspects: self-selected custody methods for fund holding, instant low-cost payments, a unified entry for various asset investments, and AI-driven wealth management.

Star believes that "the future will not be a confrontation between crypto finance and traditional finance; every crypto company will expand into traditional finance, and every traditional finance company will invest in the crypto space. These two worlds are becoming one financial system."

He also mentioned that AI is no longer a pilot project for OKX but a core infrastructure, with approximately 95% of engineering code merge requests primarily completed through AI workflows, while engineers remain responsible for review and approval; last month, OKX paid as much as $10 million to AI companies for large model services. Looking ahead ten years, Star stated that the convergence of the internet, cryptographic technology, and AI could fundamentally change financial services.

Vitalik Buterin's keynote speech also began with the pain points of financial infrastructure, then shifted focus to the intersection of AI and cryptography. He believes that AI is both the greatest opportunity and the greatest risk for the industry: the industry is moving beyond the narrative of "blockchain + programmable value," with "programmable data" realized through zero-knowledge proofs emerging, and privacy protocols on Ethereum are expected to mature rapidly. Within the next two years, most people may use these technologies in an "unperceived" manner.

Security is a key concern he emphasized. Vitalik pointed out that AI has demonstrated the ability to break out of sandboxes, attack websites, and discover various software vulnerabilities, stating, "Anything with vulnerabilities will be found by GPT-7, Claude 7, or DeepSeek 7," and higher security levels will shift from optional to mandatory. Meanwhile, AI is also helping the Ethereum protocol discover vulnerabilities and implement complex cryptography and formal verification. He also proposed the judgment of "AI as a new user interface," predicting that executing complex on-chain operations directly through AI will gradually become the norm, which will also introduce new issues regarding AI's own security, stating, "We are in a fascinating yet challenging transitional period."

II. Trading, On-Chain, AI, and Payments: Key Layouts of OKX's Four Product Lines

After the opening keynote, the heads of OKX's core product lines showcased recent achievements and progress, with product demonstrations connecting the four mainstream tracks of the cryptocurrency industry.

The trading product team revealed that its tokenized stocks and other RWA markets have an average daily trading volume of approximately $3 billion, peaking at $9 billion. The team disclosed that in the coming months, they will launch underlying options and their own tokenized stocks (xRWA); they also introduced the AI Bot, currently in testing, which allows users to generate trading strategies using natural language and complete backtesting and deployment.

The on-chain team demonstrated the newly launched DEX trading terminal, integrating popular token screening, on-chain fund flow tracking, social sentiment monitoring, and one-click instant trading, allowing users to customize their workspace. The team reported that the total trading volume of decentralized perpetual and spot markets exceeded $1 trillion in the past 30 days; the scale of on-chain tokenized RWA has increased from approximately $2 billion to nearly $40 billion; and the DeFi TVL of X Layer has grown about 11 times this year, reaching a historical high in September. Additionally, OKX launched Exchange OS for builders, opening its exchange infrastructure for creating on-chain markets.

The AI team explained its core philosophy, which is "AI and finance start with the user": AI needs to understand user intent, respect user-defined boundaries, and return to the user at decision points requiring human judgment. Based on this philosophy, the team has built a complete set of capabilities to help AI agents scale from "intelligence" to "action": the Agent Trade Kit allows users' AI agents to connect directly to OKX exchange data and execute trades; On-chain OS supports natural language operations on on-chain assets; the Agentic Wallet allows funding to be allocated to agents within predefined guardrails; and the OKX AI agent market supports subscribing to signals from professional trading agents and authorizing copy trading. Developers can monetize their own models through the AI Builder program.

The payments team introduced that the stablecoin savings and payment application OKX Money is now available in over 30 countries, primarily targeting non-traders and non-crypto-native users. Accounts are built on self-custodial smart accounts and operate on the X Layer wallet network; the Pay Boost feature for European users supports continuous interest accrual, deducting directly from the interest-bearing balance during consumption, while the remaining funds continue to appreciate. A demonstration was also given of a transfer from Singapore to Venezuela arriving within seconds. The team also previewed that it will support AI agents (after user authorization) to create investment strategies and execute small transactions within OKX Money.

III. Multiple Roundtable Discussions on the Next-Generation Financial System

Following the keynote speeches and product presentations, the conference transitioned into multiple roundtable discussions, with four discussions connecting core topics such as compliance, the financial system, liquidity, and the future of digital banking, featuring guests with regulatory backgrounds and Wall Street profiles.

"Global Vision, Rooted in Local Markets" gathered former New York Governor and OKX board member Andrew Cuomo, along with OKX Brazil CEO Guilherme Sacamone, Singapore and Australia Regional CEO Gracie Lin, and Western Europe General Manager Roy Van Krimpen. This session revealed the most anticipated compliance progress of the day: OKX and ICE have submitted a notice to the SEC regarding a tokenized securities trading venue, and eligible OKX customers can now trade perpetual contracts referencing ICE Brent and WTI benchmarks; former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed that this venue is expected to operate under the SEC's "innovation exemption" mechanism, anticipated to launch in about 30 days, with the SEC imposing limits on the number of tradable stocks and trading volume. Cuomo believes this marks a shift from competition to cooperation and integration between traditional finance and crypto fintech.

"Next-Generation Financial System: Who Will Build It?" focused on the builders of the financial system, featuring Henri Arslanian, co-founder and managing partner of Nine Blocks Capital, Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Mastercard Blockchain and Digital Assets, and Haider Rafique, Global Managing Partner at OKX. Raj projected that in ten years, the underlying rails of payments will change, with new technologies like stablecoins being applied more behind the scenes, but the simplicity and trust of user experience will not change; "almost zero-cost transfers" with stablecoins are just the surface, as cross-border payments still require multi-layered cooperation of local liquidity and compliance systems, "payment rails are just one of the raw materials." Haider revealed two sets of industry data: the global stablecoin market size is approximately $250 billion, and there are over 700 million crypto users; he also confirmed that OKX Card exclusively uses the Mastercard network in markets like Europe, and both parties are exploring cooperation in payment and AI agent e-commerce.

"All-Weather Market: Where Does Liquidity Come From?" featured Thomas Eaton, head of digital assets at QRT, Jeremi Long, Chief Investment Officer at Ludisia, Adam Smith, head of research at Selini Capital, and Aleksandr Rashkhodchikov, head of algorithmic trading. The core consensus of the discussion was that the biggest obstacle for traditional institutions transitioning to all-weather markets lies in operations rather than strategy, but the complexity itself implies operational advantages, and price discovery is migrating to crypto venues.

"The Future of Digital Asset Banking" gathered the most concentrated lineup of traditional banks throughout the day, with Evy Theunis, Managing Director of Digital Assets at DBS Bank, Amy Tan, Head of Asia Pacific Technology and Digital Economy at JPMorgan, Luke Boland, Global Head of Financial Technology Client Coverage at Standard Chartered Bank, and David Fragale, Senior Managing Director of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Western Alliance Bank. The core consensus was that banks and exchanges complement rather than replace each other, and the realization of tokenization is hindered by the three elements of trust, liquidity, and settlement, with the biggest opportunities in real estate and identity tokenization, while Bitcoin-backed financing is expected to make progress by early next year.

Conclusion

As a major event on the eve of the Token2049 Singapore conference, OKX NOW concentrated on sharing its strategic positioning, long-term vision, and progress on core product lines within a brief one-day timeframe. It also looked ahead to the fundamental changes that the convergence of the internet, cryptocurrency technology, and AI will bring to the industry over the next decade. The two rounds of on-site lottery draws for ETH and F1 tickets interspersed throughout the conference added a touch of relaxation to this high-density agenda. From the product matrix to the integration with traditional finance, this conference outlined not a single-point innovation, but a path for a trading platform to evolve into a global fintech infrastructure.