Original Title: “Consensus HK Observations: What Crypto Consensus Emerged at the First Major Conference of 2026?”
Original Author: Joe Zhou, Foresight News
If 2024 was the “ice-breaking year” when ETFs knocked on Wall Street’s door, and 2025 was the “regulatory reshaping year” under the new Trump administration, then the recently concluded Consensus HK 2026 in Hong Kong has written an entirely new script for this year.
We are about to witness an explosion of “silicon-based finance,” a close-quarters battle over “sovereign stablecoins,” and Crypto’s departure from on-chain self-indulgence to covert infiltration into the real world.
Over the three days at the conference, when executives from the Solana Foundation and Binance shared the stage with suited elites from JPMorgan and BlackRock, an intense sense of fragmentation and integration simultaneously struck. The era of chaos has ended, replaced by a precisely operating financial machine driven by national power, decentralized technology, and silicon-based life.
By sensing the sentiments of over 11,000 attendees and tracking dozens of closed-door meetings, the author summarizes three major Crypto consensuses at the start of 2026:
Consensus One: AI Without Economic Independence Is Not True Silicon-Based Life
Debates over the definition of AGI rage in the tech world. But in this arena, a new consensus is forming: without independent financial sovereignty, lacking even the right to have its own bank account, so-called AGI is merely an advanced human tool at best.
The strongest tremor at the conference stemmed from an inversion of the subject-object relationship. The narrative axis is no longer “how humans use AI for better trading” but “how AI uses Crypto to restructure production relations”—they are autonomously minting tokens on-chain, managing funds, and even starting to pay salaries to hire real humans.
Two robots boxing at the Consensus conference
Whether it’s Rentahuman (AI hiring humans for offline errands), which went viral in early 2026, or Ethereum’s newly launched ERC-8004 protocol, cutting-edge hackers are desperately closing the loop of this “silicon-based finance industrial chain.” Today, Ethereum, Base, Solana, and even Virtuals, built specifically for AI, are fiercely competing for the same throne: to become the preferred underlying settlement network for silicon-based life.
This is not just a geek’s carnival; it has also gained official endorsement. In his keynote speech at the conference, Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po vividly and precisely depicted this vision: “As AI agents can independently make and execute decisions, we will see the early form of a ‘Machine Economy’—AI can hold digital assets on-chain, pay service fees, and trade with each other.”
In 2026, the most active on-chain addresses will no longer be human whales but tireless AI agents. Crypto is becoming AI’s “native bank account,” while humans are being reduced to AI’s “flesh API.”
Consensus Two: Stablecoin Turmoil, Hong Kong Fires the First Shot of “Onshore Counterattack”
During my on-site visit in Hong Kong, I noticed a highly dramatic contrast: physical crypto exchange shops (OTC) on the streets are sprouting up increasingly densely, but at the most prominent counters, without exception, there is a “notice to leave”—completely halting sales of USD stablecoins like USDT and USDC.
This is by no means spontaneous action by merchants but a long-planned “clearance.” On the main stage of the Consensus conference, Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po unveiled the answer: “Hong Kong plans to issue the first batch of a small number of stablecoin issuer licenses in March this year.”
Image: A cryptocurrency exchange shop in Hong Kong
This is an extremely sharp political-economic signal. Just two weeks ago, offshore king Tether bowed to U.S. regulation, launching the compliant USD stablecoin USAT, attempting to swallow Wall Street without a fight. On this side of the globe, to counter the further siphoning of Asian liquidity by USD stablecoins, Hong Kong has given its most forceful response.
This is no longer a simple issue of Crypto compliance but a battle for monetary sovereignty among major powers. From the EU’s MiCA regulation comprehensively banning non-compliant USD stablecoins, to Hong Kong’s “big move” set to land in March, to the euro stablecoin expected to be officially launched in the second half of 2026 led by ten major European banks, a clear battle line has been drawn.
Hong Kong is using both physical and legal means to cut off the circulation of offshore USD stablecoins, paving the way for its own “regular army” (HKD / onshore stablecoins). In 2026, stablecoins are no longer chips for crypto casinos but “digital nuclear weapons” in the financial games of major powers.
The intent is clear. While all of Asia is frantically scanning QR codes for USDT, Hong Kong has pressed pause early. This is “cleaning the house before inviting guests,” clearing the way for the compliant HKD stablecoins set to fully debut in March.
USD stablecoins, HKD stablecoins, euro stablecoins, yen stablecoins… a government-led stablecoin melee is about to officially unfold in 2026.
Consensus Three: Farewell to Self-Indulgence, Real Applications Leading to Mass Adoption Become the Only Way Out
Whether it’s Solana’s Lily Liu or BitGo executives, a rare consensus was reached at the roundtable: the TPS (transactions per second) competition among L1/L2 is meaningless; infrastructure is severely oversupplied.
The consensus for 2026 is: Stop building wheels that only Crypto insiders indulge in. The real winners are applications that can “invisibly” embed Crypto into Web2 scenarios.
A typical paradigm shift is occurring:
1. Seamless Integration: PayPal’s PYUSD is not an isolated case; its success lies in seamlessly reaching hundreds of millions of users through Venmo, returning payments to their essence.
2. Global Deployment: Protocols like Aeon Pay are quietly infiltrating payment networks in eight countries worldwide through on-chain QR code payments, with users even unaware of blockchain’s existence.
This trend has also gained endorsement from Vitalik Buterin. He has recently emphasized multiple times that the industry should stop “buying” user attention through token incentives and instead focus on the real utility of applications.
Many practitioners believe that sectors like stablecoins, AI Agents, prediction markets, and RWA (Real World Asset tokenization) are undertaking the early mission of Crypto moving toward mass adoption—they are not isolated speculative targets but underlying arteries connecting decentralized finance with the physical world.
Epilogue: The Winnowing Year of 2026
The sentiment conveyed by Consensus HK 2026 is calm and brutal.
Crypto is entering a new phase.
This is no longer an era where writing a few lines of Ponzi code can lead to sudden wealth. When the heavy artillery of Old Money enters the field, and when AI agents start executing trading strategies 24/7 without rest, the window for retail investors and classical independent developers is closing.
But at the same time, the great navigation era of “silicon-based finance” and “borderless compliant payments” has just begun.
