Crypto industry executives at Cointelegraph’s LONGITUDE conference in Hong Kong stressed the importance of addressing Bitcoin’s technological risks and said that clear US regulations can’t come soon enough.
Co-hosted by crypto exchange OneBullEx, the Feb. 12 event opened with a fireside chat featuring Tron founder Justin Sun, who discussed what the industry needs to prioritize — including preparing for artificial general intelligence (AGI) — which many expect to arrive within the next few years.
“We need to create a very easy standard for AGI to use blockchain,” Sun said.
Sun’s fireside chat was followed by three panel discussions covering the quantum computing threat to Bitcoin, the potential impact of the US CLARITY Act on the industry, and the progress of crypto infrastructure toward a trillion-dollar scale.
Despite a volatile crypto market at the end of 2025, industry players expressed optimism about the industry’s future.
Bitcoiners should ‘discount the value’ until quantum solve
Quantum computing, which some in the Bitcoin community see as a serious potential threat, sparked a debate among panelists.
Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards said the risk should be priced into Bitcoin until the asset becomes quantum-resistant.
“Today, you kind of have to start to discount the value of Bitcoin based on that risk until it’s solved,” Edwards said. He pointed to growing fears about quantum computing as a primary reason Bitcoin’s price ended the year lower than it started.
“If you just look at the data, 2025 should have been a great year for Bitcoin,” Edwards said, explaining that quantum became a “non-zero threat” and US-based Bitcoin ETF issuers began adding risk disclaimers for quantum.
Meanwhile, Matthew Roszak, Bloq chairman and Hemi co-founder, wasn’t as worried about how it might play out:
“To look at this as a movie trailer and what’s ahead for Bitcoin and quantum. Just the preview here. It’s a two-step process. We’re going to upgrade and chill. That’s it. That’s the process.”
Maelstrom managing partner and co-founder Akshat Vaidya admitted that quantum is an “existential threat,” but it will be met with a “coordinated response that’s proportionate.”
US CLARITY Act will be significant for the industry
White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks said in December that the US is “closer than ever” to passing the US CLARITY Act, which aims to provide the industry with clearer regulations.
Although the bill hasn’t passed, industry panelists agreed that the US has become noticeably more friendly toward crypto since President Donald Trump took office.
Sean McHugh, senior director at Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, who previously worked in TradFi in the US, said one of the main reasons he moved to Dubai was its more crypto-friendly regulatory environment than the US.
“I think one of the reasons why I moved to Dubai is because, you know, they were committed to clarity when I left a year and a half ago,” McHugh said, adding:
“The US was in a very different place than it is now.”
Grayscale Investments’ chief legal officer, Craig Salm, pointed to past conflicts over crypto between the two US financial regulators during the Joe Biden administration.
“There used to be this whole turf war between the SEC and the CFTC,” Salm said, adding:
“Your regulator fighting over jurisdiction just isn’t productive for anybody.”
Salm also noted that the environment has changed. Instead of clashing, the SEC and CFTC are meeting together and coordinating to bring much-needed clarity to the asset class.
“Which is exactly what I think we all need,” Salm said.
Doubts over crypto infrastructure readiness for big flows
When asked whether crypto infrastructure is ready to handle trillion-dollar institutional flows, the panelists expressed some doubts.
“I would say probably not yet,” Offchain Labs chief strategy officer A.J. Warner said.
Monad Foundation head of institutional growth, Joanita Titan, echoed Warner’s sentiment. “Billion-dollar payments or billion-dollar processing is not a problem, but trillion dollars, I don’t think we’re there yet,” she said.
Warner argued that the largest bottlenecks are “continuing to scale, resiliency of networks, and user experiences.”
Cointelegraph’s exclusive LONGITUDE events will continue in 2026, with editions planned for New York, Paris, Dubai, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.
