CZ, Binance's CEO, delegates daily operations to focus on bigger strategy. He's hiring former regulators and compliance experts to build trust with governments. In 2022, he's optimistic that countries like Dubai, France, and Portugal are actively courting crypto through licensing and positive regulation.
Hi, my name is Joe. I'm here today with a man who needs no introduction, CZ from Binance. Cz. Hello. Welcome. How are you doing today? Been here a couple of days and already learning French.
Actually learned French for many years, but that's always my worst course in high school.
Okay, okay. Whereas crypto, obviously very, very ahead in terms of crypto. So we've just come from your stage this morning where you were talking about the best way to handle a business is to step out and to look at it from a different perspective. How do you personally detach yourself from managing Binance, this giant that you've built?
So for Binance, anything that's operational I don't touch and if I touch it, it's going to be a disaster because it's going to be stuck all the time. So we've moved away from. But you can only do that once your team gets to a certain size, of course. So you can't do a startup that way. So once the team gets to a certain size, they actually don't want me to touch operational stuff. So I typically get involved in newer things and less certain, less procedural type of things. So anything that can be proceduralized. Investments, we have an investment team doing that. Listing, we have a listing team doing that, running the exchange, we have a team doing that. And like for example, dealing with regulations, talking with senior government officials, etc. Now I have to do some of that. Hiring the best people at the senior levels have to do some of that. So I do more of those type of, more strategic, not urgent type of things.
Okay, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just on that note of hiring executives and talking to regulators, I mean, I have a list here which I'm not going to read out today, but you know, Binance has hired execs from the Dubai Fintech Authority, the Dutch police, the irs. I could go on. I mean, what's the play here? What are you getting at?
It's very simple. Right? So number one is we started as a technology startup, so we didn't have a strong compliance background. And so the best place to hire this compliance background is either from traditional banks or from traditional regulators. And we hired many people from banks as well. But hiring people from existing regulators is good in a number of ways. They come in, they can look at what we're doing in a lot of detail, give us a gap analysis, help us how to improve, etc. More importantly, they can communicate with their ex colleagues, the regulators still today, in a way they understand each other. Many of them have the history going back 10, 15, 20 years. And then when they say something, they believe each other because they use a common language. Whereas when the regulators ask me questions, when I say something, they sometimes are a little bit skeptical. I'm a crypto guy. Do I really know my stuff or stuff like that? So the communication really improves and the trust really improves and the knowledge base for us really improves. So we find that super helpful. So in places where we were able to hire ex regulators, we see the relationship communication improve almost immediately. And so that has been a huge help.
Absolutely. Okay, and so you occupy a unique vantage point in the crypto industry. Is there perhaps a trend or an undercurrent, something that perhaps people aren't noticing at the moment that you're quite keen to talk about today?
Not so much, to be honest. Crypto is pretty, pretty transparent. We actually have to monitor the industry trends carefully to make sure that we don't miss anything. So when DEFI is growing, we're like, hey, what are we doing in the defi? Are we doing enough investments? Are we doing enough projects in the defi space? When NFTs are growing, we have to say, hey, are we doing enough? So we don't have a lot of extra information that people don't have. In fact, on the contrary, we often get too busy running binance.com that we may miss something that's popular now. Many people think I know all the coins, I have a vantage point. But the fact is I don't know most coins because I'm busy running Binance. Well, I'm not really doing much, but I still have a lot of meetings. I'm still pretty busy.
Okay, Absolutely. Okay, well let's flip the question around then. What are you most excited about in 2022?
I think 2022, we are now seeing regulators want to attract this industry now. So I think that's one of the most fundamental things shift. We see multiple countries like us issued their executive order, they want to do the stablecoin. Dubai issued the regulatory framework and issued a number of licenses to big players, which is significant. And getting licensing. Bahrain in other places. So we're seeing that. And also now we're in France, France, Portugal, Sweden, Gibraltar, they're all very positive towards crypto. So I think that really helps adoption. And the other stuff like the industry always innovating like this gamify, this Metaverse, not sure how they were shaped. Gamefi I think is pretty standard now. I think it's continue to iterate and improve Metaverse. Multiple companies are trying different things. We'll see how it plays out.
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, yeah, we're here today in La Bourse, which is the old stock exchange. And of course you're explaining the story earlier. I just thought it might be interesting to share it today. But. Yeah. So where's the. Of where we are right now? And where's the French regulator?
Yeah. So in setting up this conference, our France team asked for permission to put a banner, say Binance, we love France on the top of the building, which is the Bourse, the traditional exchange building, and also the AMF office is right across the street and they, they have a view on this building. My understanding is our team specifically got permission from them to have the banner set up so that we didn't want to surprise them with hanging our banner on top of the exchange building and surprise them. So we explicitly got permission and they're totally cool with it. Which shows that the progressiveness of the French government, the French regulators, that they are extremely confident, extremely progressive and extremely pro industry, I think just little things like that, you can tell. Yes. It gives you the indication of how comfortable we feel with the governments here and that's why we want to make heavy investments. We want to grow the industry here.
Absolutely. I mean, you don't get much more transparent than that. Do you know a big flag on the top of the boss?
Yeah. So, yeah, so I think it's just one of those little things that, you know, a little bit more promotion, etc. But it's great to have that support from the, from the regulators, the government and also the other industry players here.
Thank you so much for your time this morning, cz. It was lovely to talk to you and yeah, best of luck with the confidence.
Thank you so much for having me, as always. Yeah, thank you.
