The crypto industry tends to argue about decentralization in absolutes. On one end is Bitcoin: fully decentralized, transparent, and trustless. On the other is traditional finance, where you
The crypto industry tends to argue about decentralization in absolutes.
On one end is Bitcoin: fully decentralized, transparent, and trustless. On the other is traditional finance, where you mostly trust regulators to do their job.
Saeed Badreg, Co-Founder and CEO of Wormhole Labs, thinks both sides are wrong about how the next decade plays out. He spoke to TheStreet Roundtable at Solana Accelerate 2026.
His view: there is no single winner between centralized and decentralized finance. Different use cases get different levels of decentralization, and retail users will keep picking whichever option is faster and cheaper.
Badreg does not buy the maximalist idea that everything in finance has to be Bitcoin-grade trustless.
"I don't believe (that) everything has to be as clear and transparent and trustless as Bitcoin. Nor do I think that everything should be like traditional finance where the only security that you have is hopefully from regulators that are doing their job, with no additional transparency and flexibility for the customer."
Instead of one model winning, he sees a spectrum. The asset, the user, and the use case all decide how much decentralization actually makes sense.
The notable part of the interview is the concession. A decentralized finance infrastructure CEO is admitting that centralized platforms still beat decentralized ones on the things retail users actually care about.
"There's a lot of retail users. What they care about is speed and cost. Centralization truly helps with speed and cost, for now."
The technical gap is real. Per Arkham Intelligence, Ethereum only processes transactions when a new block is created, roughly every 12 seconds, and users pay a variable "gas" fee that moves with demand.
Centralized exchanges process thousands of transactions per second off-chain, with no per-transaction fee adjustment.
A report from AInvest found centralized lending platforms are still outperforming DeFi alternatives in 2026, with higher risk-adjusted returns and a compliance-first approach that connects to traditional finance.
But Badreg argues DeFi is closing the gap fast. Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism have cut gas fees and confirmation times sharply, and hybrid models are starting to blend the speed of centralized platforms with the self-custody of decentralized ones.
Badreg's core argument is that the industry is heading toward open competition, not a winner-take-all outcome. Users pick the trade-off that fits the trade.
"There's going to be a marketplace of solutions across the entire spectrum. The market will determine how valuable transparency, open source, trustlessness is, at what degree of decentralization."
"We'll see what the market decides to reward."
The takeaway for investors: stop trying to pick a side in the DeFi versus CeFi fight. Pick the platform that wins on the specific feature that matters for the trade in front of you.
