Author: Lawyer Liu Honglin
I have a slightly different perspective on understanding blockchain.
We have been envisioning blockchain as the infrastructure for the next-generation internet, discussing it as a technology or application that changes生产关系. But I think this might be too grand a vision.
From a time perspective, the actual implementation of this technology could take decades or even centuries. Each generation has its own tasks to focus on; we cannot spend our time on things that our grandchildren should be dealing with.
So, standing at this very moment, blockchain technology has only been around for a little over a decade — counting from the release of the whitepaper, it's merely the time span from 2008 to now. While we question, doubt, and worry about the application value of blockchain, I personally think such worries are largely meaningless.
The reason is that, within the entire lifecycle of our generation, the application value and adoption speed of blockchain will likely not be as fast as we imagine. It's similar to when the internet or computers first emerged; the first generation of entrepreneurs and internet practitioners could hardly imagine that today we could use the internet to hail taxis, watch videos, or make instant payments.
Back then, people simply thought the internet was a cutting-edge technology for sending and receiving information, browsing news, and reading e-books.
Therefore, it's not that I doubt the real value of blockchain, but from a historical and temporal perspective, there is still a long way to go before blockchain applications enter the homes of ordinary people, or achieve大规模 adoption.
Many people's anxiety about blockchain today essentially stems from compressing a technological evolution that takes a decade or longer into an expectation of three to five years. This in itself creates cognitive dissonance and cognitive anxiety.
However, at the current stage, the application of blockchain technology is definitely about using the best steel for the blade's edge.
Certain characteristics of blockchain technology, such as tamper-proofing, decentralized ledger, traceability, and its inherent financial attributes, lead me to believe that over the next decade or even two decades, it might remain largely confined to the field of fintech.
For example, currency payments, whether it's stablecoin payments or tools for large-value value transfer represented by Bitcoin; and the very important blockchainification of traditional financial markets or financial transactions, including the on-chain representation of assets like securities, funds, and bonds.
Another incident I recently experienced reinforced my belief that the value of blockchain, compared to traditional centralized solutions, could truly be a tenfold or even hundredfold creation and enhancement.
Previously, Lawyer Honglin also spent a few years working on internet products, leading product and R&D teams, and was once a mobile internet entrepreneur. My experience in product development and entrepreneurship gave me an intuitive judgment: if a technology or application doesn't offer a tenfold improvement over traditional methods, it is not a breakthrough or disruptive innovation.
And over the past year or so, I have experienced two things that convince me that blockchain in the financial field, especially its integration with traditional finance, truly offers a tenfold or even greater improvement.
First Thing: The Efficiency Chasm in Cross-border Payments
The first thing was my previous experience of trying to wire money from a mainland Chinese bank card to an overseas account.
Firstly, the amount was limited due to foreign exchange controls. Secondly, I had to go to a physical bank branch to submit personal documents to complete the remittance. Thirdly, the handling fee for the entire remittance was several hundred RMB, with both time and monetary costs being very high.
And this was just limited to transfers between mainland China and Hong Kong. If I were to send money to South America or other smaller countries, the cycle time and costs would be even higher. Behind this is the result of the traditional cross-border payment system, such as the SWIFT network and the multi-tier correspondent banking mechanism — each layer of institutions adds time and fees.
In contrast, if we look at internet blockchain-based crypto payments in 2026, such as using USDT or other stablecoins, the fees are basically $0.01, at most $0.1, and the transfer speed is just over ten seconds, at most one minute.
Therefore, conducting cross-border fund transfers within a legal and compliant framework offers a tenfold to hundredfold efficiency improvement compared to traditional methods. This improvement is not theoretical; it is something any real user can directly feel.
This is why I am so optimistic about and recognize crypto payments as the future, and why we at Mankun, represented by lawyers like Lawyer Shao Jiadian, continue to delve into the global legal compliance of crypto payments, and persistently offer legal compliance training courses for the payment industry — precisely because, as users, we have personally experienced its real commercial value.
Our choice at Mankun to focus deeply on the blockchain industry is based on our recognition of the commercial and social value of this matter, not on a grand technological narrative.
Second Thing: The Slowness of Securities Trading and Settlement
The second experience happened just last night. The Nasdaq index (QQQ) has been surging recently, and I remembered that earlier, on a friend's suggestion, I had bought some Nasdaq ETFs and held them in a securities account.
Then, last Saturday, I opened my account and chose to sell. The system indicated I would have to wait until the following Wednesday — a gap of 5 days — just to know how much my sale was for. Coinciding with the May Day holiday, I wouldn't be able to withdraw the money from my account until at least May 8th.
This means, from the trade to the funds being available, the whole process takes almost ten days. I find this absolutely astonishing. For a user accustomed to the instant feedback of the internet, this delay is highly counterintuitive.
And we also know that a direction which has been noticeably exploding since 2025 is the so-called "on-chain US stocks," or more broadly, RWA (Real World Assets). These can be traded 24/7 instantly, and theoretically, on-chain settlement synchronized with asset delivery is achievable. Let's not discuss the spread issue for now, as that is mainly a matter of user scale and liquidity.
From this comparative perspective, you become deeply convinced that the tokenization of US stocks, or more broadly, global assets and global financial assets, is an inevitable trend within the blockchain world.
All the on-chain anti-money laundering issues, KYC issues, and regulatory issues that everyone is currently concerned about haven't been fully resolved yet. However, from our compliance business perspective, these problems are solvable; it's just a matter of technology, compliance frameworks, and institutional confirmation.
Just like in the early years, when everyone doubted various issues, but now, more and more sovereign states have come to understand blockchain as an alternative asset class. Simultaneously, they are gradually understanding stablecoins, especially compliant ones like USDC, as a payment method that can be incorporated into the regulatory system.
Therefore, the compliance regulations, work requirements, and guidance rules for on-chain US stocks will also gradually mature. We can essentially leave this issue to time.
But what I want to express is that, from the perspective of user experience and social value creation, this is, similar to crypto payments, a tenfold or hundredfold innovation.
Blockchain: The Elephant in the Room
From this perspective, the value of blockchain is indeed enormous.
Because we must understand that the efficiency of traditional financial institutions, whether in payments or securities, is constrained by the existence of numerous intermediaries, centralized service providers, and data transaction processes that require repeated review, reconciliation, and confirmation through technology and manual effort.
Blockchain, known as the "Internet of Value," allows value transfer, rights confirmation, and fund settlement to occur within a unified ledger system, thereby significantly reducing intermediary steps and improving efficiency and transparency.
Thus, from this perspective, regardless of whether blockchain is the infrastructure for the next-generation internet, at least within the current state of the internet society, blockchain has practical application scenarios and demands in fintech that offer tangible social value.
The commercial value and social efficiency created by this integration represent a tenfold improvement or more.
Conversely, the application of this technology should, in principle, know no national boundaries. For US stocks, China's A-shares, or Hong Kong stocks, whoever can truly and quickly embrace blockchain, rapidly bring traditional financial securities on-chain, and dramatically improve trading and settlement efficiency to achieve future 24/7 or even higher-frequency trading capabilities, represents a highly certain future trend.
Within the current, still relatively inefficient traditional financial system, blockchain is no longer a "storytelling concept," but a tool that is genuinely creating efficiency and genuinely changing user experience.
We may not care whether blockchain becomes the infrastructure for the next-generation internet, but it has clearly, at this stage, become a visible and continuously magnifying elephant in the room within the financial sector.
