Binance's CEO on the New Binance Vision | Richard Teng

So we begin the year with 170 million users. We ended the year with 250 million users. So 70 million new users on board. So if you think about it, essentially more than 40% of our users are new to the platform that just came on board last year. The number of institutions onboarding have more than doubled. This cycle, unlike previous cycle, we have seen institutionalization. We have not seen that in previous cycle. With the ETF that was approved, earlier on in 2024. And then throughout the year, you know, you have different institutions coming on board, becoming believers instead of skeptics, from the likes of BlackRock to Charles Schwab to Fidelity.

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All right, everyone, back with another episode of Empire. We got Santiago here. We are also joined by Richard Tang, the, uh, I guess not new anymore, but the, uh, CEO of Binance. So Richard, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah. Um, Richard, I actually wanted to start with a, uh, with a story. I'm sure we'll ask you a lot about Binance and product lines and geographies and stuff like that. But I wanted to ask about a story about CZ. I think a lot of people know CZ as this kind of like ruthless operator and expanded really quickly. But I've actually heard that his— from people at Binance that his superpower is recruiting and convincing people to join Binance. And I'd love to hear the story of how CZ convinced you. I think you were in some, some high-powered roles before Binance, and I'd love to hear how he convinced you to actually come to Binance?

Well, I think there's a public perception of CZ and, you know, on the private basis that we deal with CZ, he's quite different, right? He is an extremely, extremely humble person, very down to earth, very relatable, very convincing, right? He's very persuasive and convincing. So I think you're talking about that side of him, very, very convincing and very persuasive. So I met CZ through a mutual friend of ours. Right about June of 2021. At that point in time, Singapore was during the COVID period. So there's a lot of restrictions in terms of public meetings. So I met him on his yacht. And there's only two of us. We discussed and initial one-hour meeting turned out to be at least a two-and-a-half, if not two-hour and 45 minutes meeting, where we discussed, where he discussed his vision, the future of Binance. And by the end of that conversation, he asked me to join him within the company in some capacity, initially as a director, and then subsequently say, why don't you just come and join the team, right? I thought about it, discussed further in my family and went up to him and said, why not? I've been very, very— I'm a believer of crypto since 2017. So I said, you know, having the chance to work with the largest crypto exchange and working with this legend before me, having the chance to work from him, you know, you can't miss such an opportunity. Yeah.

What was that vision that he laid out?

Well, he was very simple and clear, right? So his vision is to build the largest crypto ecosystem, which Binance already is, but continue to serve users to the best of our ability, always putting users' interests front and foremost in everything we do. And that covers many things, right? In terms of product features, in terms of putting users' interests first, safeguarding user assets, etc. So he was very, very passionate about that. He's very passionate about this industry. At that point in time when I met him, again, it's a much smaller industry compared to what you see today. I mean, today crypto adoption is what, between close to 7%? At that point in time it's much lower. And he wants to continue to support the deployment of crypto globally. He wants to continue to support deployment, adoption globally on that front. And he believes strongly, strongly that it has a long, long way to go. And we want to be significant players on that front.

Yeah. Okay. So you joined Binance. A year later, CZ tweets out about dumping FTT. A year later, you have these like KYC, AML sanctions. A year later, there's this like $4 billion fine, I think $4.3, which I'm pretty sure is one of the largest in history. CZ goes to jail. Just on a, I'm sure on an executive level, it was like, you know, just you had to do what you had to do and you had to get through, but maybe on a more personal human level, like, I just very curious what the last couple of years have felt like.

Well, it has been phenomenal in terms of maybe on what you have just said. Yeah, maybe if I bring you back to 2017, right? So I think it's easy to look at developments in the last few years and say, you know, a lot have developed. But if you look at what— when Binance started the journey in 2017 July, right? And it's still a relatively young company. We're going to celebrate our 8-year anniversary this year. So it's a 7.5-year-old company. So in 2017, than no institutional adoption, no corporates believe in this space. Crypto adoption was less than 1%. CZ started this company with the vision of supporting crypto adoption globally. Regulators are not devoting time and energy on this, right? So they're essentially, you know, it's blue skies, regulators not regulating this space. So in those very early days, in those very nascent days, where regulation was unclear, right? We have made certain mistakes. We have underinvested in things like compliance in those early days. As a fast-growing company, I think CZ didn't expect the company to grow within the first 90 days, first 180 days essentially, to become the largest crypto exchange globally. So the size of the pace of growth was phenomenal for him. So as with all fast growth, there are certain things that will be lacking. So there are certain things that were lagging, we underinvested. So what happened, what you mentioned, some of those things was because of the underinvestments of those critical areas in those very early days, and especially where rules were unclear. In the last 2 years, I think rules were starting to develop. There's much more clarity around the world on how crypto will be regulated. There's much more to— I mean, this, you're seeing a lot more mainstreaming now. So the narrative, the discussion is totally different. But if you bring you back then, you know, nobody gave much regard to this space, right? People don't think that crypto is going to survive for the long term, etc., etc. So I have to put things into context on that front first, right? So it's important. But we have again made very heavy investment into the compliance area in the last few years. You mentioned about KYC, KYB. We are one of the first global exchanges to make KYC, KYB mandatory for our clients, right? And still some exchanges don't do that. Yeah. So we have come a long way and we continue to invest greatly into this space. We are very confident that, you know, of our compliance area now is headed by Noah Perman, you know, very, very experienced in this space. He has a team of professionals with him now. And we, I mean, last year alone, the number of licenses that we have grew from 14 at the beginning of the year to 21 by the end of the year. So you continue to see that we continue to get licenses globally, continue to develop, deploy globally, and work very closely with both regulators globally as well as law enforcement agencies globally on that front. So we continue to mature as a— Yeah.

So, I mean, having you in the seat makes a lot of sense because I was looking at your background and you're a regulator. You seem like one of the nice regulators, I will say. But you guys, it's interesting because I thought you guys would have to stop doing a lot of the things. I mean, Binance got to the place it got to by, you know, listing things early, getting out to new markets early. And I thought a lot of that would slow down. But, you know, you guys are still listing a lot of meme coins. You're still very early to listings. You have new launch pool projects in the last couple of months. I mean, you guys have given users a lot more trading opportunities, I would say, just in the last couple of months. And it kind of goes against what I thought would happen when you put a regulator as the CEO. And I'm just— can you talk about this maybe dynamic between like having to slow down growth because— or slow down these things that kind of got you to where you are because the regulators are kind of looking down your back? I mean, I saw you invested $200 million in compliance.

That's a good question. Again, I was is opportunity to correct your perception, which is so.

Okay, okay.

So if you look at the number of coins that we list, we are the most stringent exchange globally. We list far fewer coins compared to many of our competitors globally. And you know, a listing on Binance, many in the crypto industry will regard that as the holy grail because of our deep liquidity, right? So we have the deepest market liquidity the most number of users, most number of traders on our platform. And any trader will know that having the narrowest bid-ask spread results in substantial savings for the clients over time. So that's part of protecting our users as well in terms of protecting user interest. So if you look at the number of coins that we list, I think it's less than 600. So you compare to many other exchanges, we list much less coins. We are very, very stringent with the coin selection process on that front. We have published, you know, the listing criteria and we ring-fence the listing team so much so that we give them the time and space to do their independent due diligence, right? We don't allow them to, you know, in many instances connect with external parties because you know how this space operates. You know, there could be temptations that we don't want to subject them to. So we ring-fence them. We have very clear criteria. That we publish to marketplace. People that wish to contact us, you know, send, they want to list their coins, they send in a form with all the information that's needed. The team can contact them to get further clarification. And there are a lot of criteria that we go through before we list a coin. But listing itself is not the end of the journey. We always tell our projects, right, that we list, it's the beginning of the journey, right? It is where you start, continue to develop your project and to repay the faith, the confidence that user place in you. And that is the very important thing. And we continue to drill that message to all the tokens, to all the projects that we list. And we hold them very clearly to high standards. So if they— we don't only list tokens, we also delist tokens that don't pay attention to all these reviews, right? That don't continue to build, don't continue to develop, enhance the offering, repay user interest, etc. We delist projects, as you know, and you'll see all those announcements that we have delisted projects that have not performed so well over time. So we continue to take those very seriously, and I want to correct perception on that front.

Uh, Richard, uh, maybe I'll take this opportunity to ask you a little bit more about that listing process. I mean, I've seen portfolio companies of mine— I, I think you guys probably have the most stringent, almost like going to register with the SEC if you go do an IPO. Like, the amount of information disclosures that you guys require is extremely stringent in a good way, and I think that could in fact become the de facto standard. Uh, like, twofold of a question. The first one is, can you walk us more into how you think about the, you know, in traditional finance, allocators like lead underwriters get a certain allocation of the stocks and they charge fees. How do you, what's the structure for Binance? Like I've seen all over the map kind of how much percentage of the token supply that you get. How do you come up with that fee? What is the rationale? How does it vary by project by project? Like how do you come up with that?

Well, so let me just highlight some of the things that we do that's, you know, very, very stringent compared to what industry does. In fact, there are many areas, just to use this point to expound on other areas, right? So if you think about it, there are many areas that we go way beyond what industry standards are or what regulators require from the very early days, right? So we came up with SAFU fund. And that is in the instance of possible security breach on our platform. We use that to compensate users. Touch wood, we do have— we have invested very heavily in security measures, and we are very confident of our security measures on that front. But that is just an instance where you really go beyond regulatory and industry standards, right? And the list goes on, right? We help our users recover funds that they transfer wrongly. We have anti-scams initiative where we detect malicious wallet. We have blacklisted 47,000 wallets in the last year alone, help to prevent our users from getting scams. We send out 15,000 e-messages, we call users, you know, to alert them of such scams. So I just want to use that to expound the point. In terms of those details, I I think I do not, we do not discuss them publicly. I mean, those already depend on dynamics because you have to understand we do have different products that you're talking about, right? You have things like Mega Drop, you have, you know, Launch Pool on that front. And you have Binance Alpha that we are looking at. So there are various things. What I will discuss a bit more is in terms of the criteria that our team use for their research and evaluation, right? These are non-exhaustive, but they look at, you know, the project team, the quality of the team who's behind, what are the innovation they're looking at, what's the roadmap they're trying to build, the community engagement that they have currently, right? Have they managed to build that up? What's the market demand? You know, for most of the coins that have use case, what's the utility, what's the practical applications, as well as security and compliance. I think those are very important. Things like how they do their tokenomics, how they have done their distribution initially, etc. Those are different factors that we look at, right? So other than that, a lot of things really, we also want to support small and medium projects. So there's no one size fits all, I would say, on that front, because what we treat for some projects are not what we apply to some of the smaller and medium-sized projects that we really wish to continue to support as part of supporting the growth of the industry.

Got it. How do you, um, I'm gonna maybe just as a follow-up to that, um, do you always, like, when you, when you go and engage with the project, like, um, I'm just sort of curious, the Launchpad, there's a lot of successful track records there, projects like your distribution is unparalleled. How to, like, I mean, when you think about the overall fees, like, is it like a dollar amount or a notional amount? Is it a token supply amount? And when it's a token supply, like, I'm curious, like, how that has evolved over time.

I'm not going to discuss that. I think we can move to another subject matter because these are very specific. These are not general. Maybe interesting to our general audience. But we were happy to discuss with any projects.

Maybe we can evolve into the product lines in general, Richard. So Santiago's talking about this launchpad and like the distribution of the exchange. How do you think about— so I mean, you guys are a massive business right now, right? 5,000 employees. I think the last I saw was roughly 230 million users, hiring thousands of people. You have launchpad, institutional business, retail. Venture labs, you have a big research arm. How do you think about the revenue breakdown and like how to spend your time and how to like spend, obviously you can't share, I'm sure, the revenue breakdown of each of the lines, but like how do you think about weighting the priorities of these different, of all these different things that you guys do?

So if you think about it, we do less launchpad, we do a lot more launchpool. Nowadays, right? And at the end of the day, if you drill down fundamentally, look at us, look at Binance.com as a crypto exchange. It's a crypto exchange to allow people that are interested to buy, sell, trade, hedge their exposure in crypto to trade. So that's what, that's essentially what we do. Among that, you have different products. Different features that we try to develop time to time. You have things like, you know, we experiment on things like, you know, Mega Drop, Binance Alpha, etc. On those fronts, but you know, you have spot, you have futures, you have earn, you have super earn products, etc., etc. And those represent all the product suites that we have across the board, right? What we want to do really is to continue to understand where the sector is growing in terms of demand going forward. We want to, and we get a lot of feedback from our users, areas that we have done well, where they applaud us, areas that we have not done so well, areas they want us to go into. And we evaluate those clearly, very closely. As and when it's possible, we'll try to develop and roll those product features out as fast as possible. Last year, we introduced Web3 Wallet. We got feedback on that. We enhanced the wallet on that front and we are going to see further enhancement, right? So we will continue to push out new products features, if not necessarily new product, as well as product enhancement throughout the year. We have things like Binance Square that came in last year as well. Mega Drop came in last year. Binance Alpha came in last year, etc. So we'll continue to sometimes experiment and sometimes, you know, pushing out new product features that we see that our users are interested in.

Yeah, from where you sit, you probably have some of the best, if not the best, uh, data around user engagement, and that might lead you to understand where we are in the cycle in terms of just by analogy of like prior cycles. What, um, what's your estimation around like, uh, activity in the platform? Have you noticed a more like a meaningful uptick? How does that compare to, you know, prior years or prior cycles, any noticeable differences in user behavior or interest in particular sectors?

Well, every cycle is different. So, but 2024 has been a good year, I think, for everybody involved in the crypto sector. So we begin the year with 170 million users. We ended the year with 250 million users. So 70 million new users on board. So if you think about it, essentially more than 40% of our users are new to the platform that just came on board last year. The number of institutions onboarding have more than doubled last year. So you can see, so this cycle, which is why I say every cycle is slightly different, is this cycle, unlike previous cycle, we have seen institutionalization, right? We have not seen that in previous cycle, right? With the ETF that was approved earlier on in 2024, and then throughout the year, you know, you have different institutions coming on board, becoming believers instead of skeptics, from the likes of BlackRock to Charles Schwab to Fidelity, and, and that list goes on, right? And then everybody has a crypto agenda. If you look at the top 200 financial institutions, either crypto blockchain agenda, uh, or have trading desks that trade aggressively, or they allow their wealth managers to advise on crypto, right? Today I saw news that Morgan Stanley is contemplating on that front. And then you see corporates in the US and around the world starting to think whether should they allocate part of their treasury in crypto. US is thinking of a strategic Bitcoin reserve on that front. And that makes a lot of difference, right? It's not only the US that's thinking about it. Many countries around the world are starting to think, you know, of the same issue. And I understand that Brazil is really pushing ahead on the agenda on some of this front as well. So 2024 has been very different compared to previous cycles. So you have seen huge institutionalization, you have seen mainstreaming as well. So this cycle feels a bit different, especially the first 9 months of last year. You know, you see a lot of institutional interest. Retail activity wasn't as robust initially, but it has since come back. So when I was interviewed beginning of 2024, I said two things. I think the first thing I was asked about the price prediction before the end of 2024, I said Bitcoin should reach more than $80,000 by then. There are many skeptics when I say that Bitcoin was at a lower price. Again, I think the market has been proven right. And Bitcoin is one of the best performing asset class, if not the best performing asset class last year. If you look at the whole crypto industry has grown hugely in terms of market capitalization. So I think those are big positive. MicroStrategy was included in NASDAQ 100. Again, those are big game changer, I think, for everybody involved in crypto. We have a pro-crypto president in the States, which I believe all of you will be very, very happy. Again, setting the agenda, regulatory agenda, giving more clarity. So we are seeing a lot of that. We are seeing innovation. Stablecoins has gone mainstream with adoption. You have seen a lot of payment institutions supporting crypto. You have seen DeFi gaining more traction other than your traditional centralized exchange, centralized products, DeFi getting more traction, DP in discussion, you have seen RWA. So I think innovation is pushing ahead, which is important for the sector to continue growing.

Yeah. Double-clicking on that, a lot of exchanges have launched their own Layer 2. You guys have had the Binance chain for a long time. How do you think about the relationship with the user when they are in the exchange? Then they might, you know, you also mentioned Web3 wallet. How do you think about the dynamic between centralized world and transitioning to Web3 and like curating that experience for the user and the relationship with the user and the ability to, you know, build a sustainable, continue to build a sustainable business model?

Well, I think that's an important question. My view is both. The centralized world as well as decentralized world will continue to grow. I think that's pretty clear to me, at least in the next couple of years. Will a time period come by where the decentralized world will be much bigger than the centralized world? That may come by. It will take a long time. Reason being, the user experience is much better in a centralized exchange where you do KYC, KYB. You have somebody to go to, law enforcement agencies, regulators have somebody to really liaise with for all their requests, right? The same may not be the same in the DeFi world. Your fiat on/off ramp is much easier in the centralized space, right? The payment space, the payments are much easier. Again, I mean, there are a lot of those advantages. And in a decentralized world, as you know, If you, in a centralized exchange, there's customer service. If there's something going wrong with your accounts, you can speak to somebody. Again, it's not the same experience. But my view is both will continue to grow. People that are very native Web3, they can do a lot in the DeFi world, which they are very familiar with. But you have to remember the majority of the population are not crypto native as of now. And to bring that about, there'll be some timeline. But as the generation today, the people in their 20s and 30s start to get mature, right? Time passes and the more savvy people continue to come through. There might come a time, who knows.

Stablecoins have been a killer product. You guys initially had Binance BUSD. Now you prioritized other stablecoins. How do you think about that? In that sector of the business and maybe initiatives that you have to continue to support that for your users?

Well, firstly, we are a platform that is very supportive of all innovation, all crypto innovation. We want to support innovation. And as you mentioned, stablecoin is one of the very important use cases of crypto innovation and adoption. The pace of stablecoin has continued to increase in terms of adoption. We have partnered different stablecoins that you mentioned. BUSD, very early on, there was a partnership on that front. Again, it was unfortunate what happened to BUSD. But recently we also announced other partnerships, including the one that we have with Circle on USDC. We're excited with that partnership and we look forward to continue to support adoption in the stablecoin space.

Do you think that you guys would ever launch your own stablecoin again, Richard?

At this point in time, it is not in the pipeline. We are working with, you know, we are agnostic platform. We want to support as many as possible. I mean, in Europe, we support other stablecoins as well because of MICA requirements. So we have UE and other stablecoins. We do have a lot of partnership proposal in different parts of the world, right? Yeah. I mean, us being a global player, uh, in, in every region I deploy in, we have proposal and really review those proposals to see whether it makes sense. Firstly, either for the global platform or, you know, it is something much more regional in terms of perspective for those product class, right? So, but any point in time, we get a lot, a lot business proposal.

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Do you have— I mean, as a, you know, former regulator, do you have any thoughts on, um, Tether? It seems like the regulatory risk around Tether is probably mostly gone because Trump got elected and, you know, Cantor Fitzgerald and, uh, their relationship, uh, with, with Tether there. But just curious how you, how you see Tether broadly.

I'm no longer a regulator, so you have to ask I think they probably get more information than I do. That's true. So I think it's not a question I can answer from a regulatory perspective, but from an industry perspective, I mean, Tether has continued to grow from strength to strength. You know, they continue to support users in their journey. And I'm very confident. I mean, they have their own game plan in terms of how they engage. Regulators and policymakers around the world on that front. So I'm sure they have their roadmap all set up.

Maybe one more question on Santiago's earlier stuff about Binance Smart Chain and this kind of line between CeFi and DeFi. I just saw that today DEX volume is now 20% of CEX volume, I think for the first time ever. Do you see a time when DEXs will be a serious competitor to Binance?

Well, DEX has grown a lot in the last few years, right? Again, going back to the point I mentioned now, there are certain areas that centralized exchange are doing much better. But I have no doubt that DEX will continue to grow. Will there come a time where the volume of DEX is much bigger than CX? Who knows? We will see.

Back to, you talk a lot about innovation.

Once the volume continues to grow, regulatory scrutiny and policy makers scrutiny will start to go into that space. So when they are small, again, it's like crypto. When you're small, regulators don't spend a lot of time and energy. Once you start to get a certain size, I think regulators might apply the same set of standards to ensure level playing field.

One idea I've had is knowing how stringent your listing requirements are, could that serve as a—

You're very interested in listings.

Because I did invest in banking. So I just think that you guys are in a very prime position to set the standard for regulatory clarity. Because I think the misperception— I'm not trying to be like overly critical about fees. I'm not trying to extract it. My point is, just seeing how stringent you guys are, I think the market doesn't truly appreciate on the outside in from a perception standpoint. And I'm trying to emphasize that point. I'm also asking, do you see an opportunity to set a standard from a regulatory guidance standpoint to say this is— because I think we can all agree as an industry we need standardization of what information projects disclose: token, wallet address, vesting schedules, you know, all of that. If everyone The role of regulators should be, to your point, to create market integrity and fairness for every participant. And that's it. They shouldn't have an opinion on the assets, but they do on crypto, or have historically. My point to you is, do you see an avenue for Binance playing a bigger role on regulatory clarity now that we have an incoming US administration that is more open and receptive to creating one?

Well, we try to. So you make an absolutely very important point, right? So regulators just pay certain attention to certain areas. And in many instances, those doesn't go far enough in our view. And we share with them, but unfortunately, as you know, there are regulatory priorities. There's regulatory resources are scarce. A lot of time they're underfunded. In many instances, they don't get the talent, they don't get the resources that we need. And I, you give a very good example in terms of listings, right? We should have more stringent listing standard. And, you know, if possible, regulators should set the listing standard, which in many instances is not being done, right? So that there is a certain minimum criteria that all the exchanges possibly need to adhere to, right? Of course, you have the flexibility to decide what to list as long as you meet those criteria, but you must clear those minimum benchmarks. And for ourselves, we said even a higher benchmark, is to make sure that our users are protected, uh, in terms of we, we, we impose very stringent criteria. But same can be said for security. We have highlighted this issue to many regulators around the world. We, we said that, look, it's not only about things like money laundering, AML issues, which should be hygiene issues by now. But if you think about security, last year alone, how many exchanges was hacked, right? So if you I mean, RazorX, a large Indian exchange, was hacked for $230 million. You have Binance, you have Indodex in Indonesia, you have BTC Turk, and that list goes on, right? Meaning that most of the exchanges have underinvested in security. And if you look at what happened to RazorX after the hack, and they have an external custody provider, and they still got hacked for that amount. He went to liquidation. User assets was not protected on that front. So you say that, look, it means that there's a problem. But again, these are not areas that regulators spend time. And these are critical areas to protect user interest, right? So if you think about how they do things like cold wallet, for instance, how do you do your wallet management? How do you preserve your assets? These are fundamental to any exchanges, but these are not being discussed enough.

Yeah, absolutely. Transitioning a little bit more, promise that might be my only last question around regulatory stuff. How do you think about geographies? Which markets are you really excited about? I've heard around like India and some of like Southeast Asian countries, but just how do you think about like prioritizing expansion?

Every region has its bright spot. So Asia Pacific, you know, as you mentioned, a few, right? India is a very big market, very high crypto adoption. We are very happy to be regulated in India there now. And you look at different parts of Asia, there are many different bright spots. Vietnam, South Korea is obviously a big market, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, etc. And those lists go on. If you look at South Asia, the likes of other than India, Bangladesh, et cetera. Pakistan is big on that. But every region, right? So if you look at Latin America, again, there are a lot of bright spots, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and that list goes on, and they're growing very fast. We have secured licenses in Argentina and Brazil to support crypto deployment over there. Middle East, North Africa, the entire African continent, again, are growing very fast. So there's no one area that we are focusing on. As a global platform, we need to know what— where are the growth areas and really push and support our user journey in those areas.

How do you think about building versus buying into some of these regions? Sometimes you bought an exchange, sometimes you've actually done the effort to get a license.

Um, I would say that it really depends, right? So in many instances, we prefer to build ourselves. We prefer to go in, you know, apply for the license, stand on our own credit. But a lot of times, in terms of market deployment, it's much faster to buy ready financial institutions, and then you just change whatever you need to change internally to get it operational. Those are much faster deployment in terms of acquisition. But also partnership is important. You have seen we partner in Thailand, Gulf, which is one of the largest Thai company there. Again, there's no one single model. That we just adopt. It really depends on local market dynamics.

Yeah, absolutely. I've heard CZ most recently just continue to adopt this narrative of really pushing the non-speculative adoption of crypto. How do you think about that? Like when you hear that, what does that actually mean to you and the organization and things that you're doing to really push that forward?

Well, I always stress that we want to support all forms of innovation. So again, the different types of Layer 1, Layer 2 infrastructure, GameFi, which is power building, SocialFi, you have seen many different narratives, right? So even things like DP, we will continue to look at those areas. And then you have a more controversial subject matter of meme coins, right? Should we be supporting that? But this is really— meme represents different things to different people. There are people that are very against it, there are people that are very supportive of it. Again, meme may not be the be-all and end-all, may not be the end state which we will see now, right? So for example, Doge started off as a meme, and I think Doge will continue to develop into something totally different, right? The roadmap is going to be very, very different on that front. So just don't take some of this at face value. But for the people that are much, much younger, it represents them a fun way of learning and being engaged in this sector, right? So it is a bit— sometimes it's also a bit of anti-establishment, right? So if you remember the anti-establishment movement on Wall Street, right, people buying into some of those meme stocks, right? It could be a bit of that. So it represents different things to different people. We are quite careful. We look at it, but we want to support our user. We want to support their interest areas. But we still continue to apply our listing criteria and listing standards to many of them.

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From the outside in, a lot of the criticism that we continue to hear is, hey, crypto is just a casino. You know, you just are just speculating on stuff that doesn't have real cash flow, doesn't have real tangible. And, you know, you can, you know, counteract and, you know, argue the alternative. What would you say to those people? Because a lot of our listeners might just think that like that.

Well, it is a difficult journey for us to continue to change that narrative. But we can only do it through greater awareness and effort. So as Larry Fink put it very clearly, he went from a total skeptic to a believer. Why is that the case? Because the more you take time and resources to understand and to learn about this space, you know the true value. You know the true value behind all the different layer 1s, the different layer 2s, what they're supposed to do. What do they do, the different type of sub-segments within crypto, what do they represent, the utility of the different projects on that front, right? So it really takes time, energy, and effort, right? So we, on our own, we spend a lot of time educating, not only educating our users. So we educate the public at large. So last year, I think, believe so far 44 million users have gone through Binance Academy, which is a free-to-air content, You have plenty of information, learning materials in there that you can learn anything about blockchain and crypto. Many people take advantage of it. We tie up with universities and learning institutions to roll syllabus on crypto and blockchain around the world. We conduct courses. And the same perception exists among policymakers and regulators as well as law enforcement agencies around the world. So we spend a lot of time, energy with the policymakers, the law enforcement agencies. People say crypto is used for money laundering, essentially, by and large, other than being a casino, as you mentioned. And the data is furthest from the truth. So if you look at data published by the US Financial Crime Office, less than 0.02% of money laundering takes place via crypto. The rest takes place via traditional fiat space. If you look at money laundering, last year. Some of the biggest news came from the fiat and banking space, but nobody reports to that because it's not sexy. Crypto is a new space, right? There's lack of understanding. If you look at what is being reported in traditional media, it has always been quite anti-crypto. But I hope, you know, under the new US administration, things will change on that front. There's going to be much more understanding. And now that institutions are into this space, it means that they have really done their due diligence to really understand what this space represents. Because it cannot be that all institutions just partake in this space saying that, you know, this is a bad space. They must know the benefit and the good of this space. So again, for those non-believers, take time to understand. Then you will really understand what this space is about. Yeah.

There's been a lot of discussion around exchanges becoming much more than an exchange. A bank, uh, and really just like a sort of a Tencent model. Like you just encompass, particularly for younger generations, you just capture many more business lines like Tencent did very successfully in China. Is that something that you think about? And if so, in what timeframe and part, and how does that sequence look like? Like what does Binance look like in 5 or 10 years?

Well, we always explore new areas, right? So if you, if you look at the broader landscape, you have seen a broader convergence, right? So 2024, you see a lot of those convergence. You see stockbroking firms, banks starting to offer crypto, stockbroking firms buying crypto exchanges or brokerage firms to try to merge and increase their product offering, right? I've seen many of the traditional firms that— traditional trading firms that just used to trade commodities, forex, stocks, bonds, last year adding a crypto desk. And start trading crypto, right? Adding to their repertoire of assets, right? So you are going to see a much greater convergence between what we term as TradFi and DeFi and crypto, right? On that front. So you're going to see that. What form would it take is— things are developing at a very rapid pace, right? But I would say that Our key focus at Binance is continue to be the best of what we do, which is being the largest crypto exchange globally, offering our users the deepest liquidity pool, you know, where they enjoy substantial savings over time if they trade through us. We apply very stringent standards so that, you know, we have quality assets that's being listed on our platform, and that's part of user protection, which we hold very dearly at Binance. So we continue to focus on all those things. Will we explore other things? It really depends, right?

Richard, do you think you guys will explore traditional equities trading or add equities trading to the platform as well?

At this point in time, we have no intention to do that. Again, we are not expert in that space. Will we partner with somebody else? At this stage, you know, it's too early to call. As I read, you know, if there are any proposals out there that we think is interesting enough for us to consider and we come to a conclusion on that front, we will let the market know. But it is different because if you think about it, crypto trades 24/7. We're very used to this product class. Traditional equity, you know, trades the instant of the day. The technology is very different. The operational aspects are very, very different. Are you going to see a lot of synergy between the two? Not that much. Yeah. Essentially, they are two standalone platforms. You are just offering, you know, greater products for those people that wish to trade.

And I guess on that note of Binance in 5 or 10 years, would you guys ever reconsider a US expansion? And I guess on that note, Would you ever think about taking Binance public?

Never say never to any of these things. I think I'm old enough, right? I'm old enough to say never say never, right? But these are things that we constantly think about. Where should we continue to deploy? Are there any issues that we need to overcome globally? Any regulators that we need to engage and convince, et cetera, et cetera, right? So US, under the Trump administration, be very, very pro-crypto. You're going to see a lot more innovation coming out from the States. I think there's a new dynamism coming out. So crypto renaissance is coming on that front. I think some have termed it as a golden era of crypto. We possibly will see that. We have very clear rules coming out with pro-crypto regulators being put in place. And I believe both the House of Representatives as well as Senate are very pro-crypto on that front. So you're going to see a very good 4 years ahead where you're going to see a lot more innovation being pushed through, a lot of new product features, and it could be TradFi firms issuing, coming out with some of these new product features on their own platform, etc. So we're going to see a lot more of that. So never say never, we will continue to explore possibilities. Yep.

Richard, so let's go back to that time where you were having a discussion with CZ on the yacht. What would you tell yourself knowing what you know now and what you've lived through? What would you have told yourself? You can only tell yourself one piece of advice or one piece of information. And what would you have told that older— I mean, younger version of Richard before stepping into the role that you did now?

If I can be much younger and I want to be 10 years before I met CZ, is to put a lot more exposure into crypto. Right. So, but I mean, I don't think I'll tell myself anything that's quite different. Right. So, you know, I have a very good relationship with CZ, you know, very good rapport with him. And I mean, I don't know whether you, You guys have met CZ, you know, he's a very straightforward— I don't see this everything, I see he's extremely transparent and he's extremely straightforward person. You can ask him the same question at different occasion, in different setting, and his answer will always remain the same. So he is a very straightforward, he's a straight talker, he's extremely transparent about his views of different things. You can ask him, maybe it's very, very— widely read, as you know, and he will be totally transparent about his position. And those positions don't change through time, right? That's something that I realized. He doesn't change. Um, I mentioned several other things about him— extremely humble in a social setting, you know. Um, he's, he's a great leader. I'm quite fortunate to have worked with him. Yeah.

Richard, um, thank you for the time. I know you're busy. Um, is there anything else just as we wrap this podcast. Any other misconceptions about Binance that you want to set the record straight or any thoughts on 2025 that you want to cover that we haven't discussed yet?

Well, we are the most regulated crypto exchange globally. So we have license in 21 or regulatory approval in 21 different places around the world. So there's still a perception that, you know, put some somewhat negative, some from time to time that when I talk to people, right, is from the days where Binance was growing at a very, very fast pace, as I mentioned, very nascent, underinvested in some things. But we have corrected a lot of things, right? And last year we put in corporate structure on that front. We appointed board of directors with 3 independent directors. So through our engagement with the regulators, I think those perceptions are starting to change quite rapidly. In terms of our engagement. We work very closely with policymakers around the world, and we have always, always placed user interest at the forefront of everything we do, every decision that we make. So we always make sure that you— our users are protected on that front. I think those are underreported, be it in terms of listing policies or security, uh, etc., etc., and the list goes on. So hopefully over time We will continue to push the agenda. We are still at a very early stage, right? So if you look at crypto adoption is less than 10%, the next 10% will come through very quickly. If you look at what happened during the internet age, right? The first 10% is very slow, but once you reach that threshold, the adoption will come through very quickly. So you're going to see that very fast adoption coming through. But we are still very early stage. We want to continue to support innovation. So we are still early in the game. We are going from early adopters to mainstreaming, but it's still going to be very exciting, right, for everybody that's still not involved. Start to learn about the space if you have any misconception. A lot of institutions, a lot of bright brains around the world have changed their perception of crypto. It's time that you spend some energy on it. Yeah, indeed.

Good way to end it. Richard, congrats on everything. I think most folks in the industry are rooting for Binance in '25, and I think you guys will have a big year here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Keep it good.

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