Binance’s CZ: We’ll Never Know Satoshi, and That’s Good

CZ, how are you?

I'm good. Good. Thank you.

Thank you so much for hopping on. Tell us about the book. What was the goal? Is this an attempt to set the record straight or just tell your story? What motivated you to write a book at this moment in time?

I think it's really just to tell my story. And then I was bored for— I had nothing to do for a couple of years. So I started writing a book when I was in prison. Okay. And then I just finished when I got out. So I thought, it might be an interesting story to share and let people know what my view is.

What do you think people get wrong about your story?

Well, I think a lot of traditional media have many misconceptions about crypto, Binance, myself, et cetera. So I think there's a lot of media that's not accurate about crypto. So I think this is a very good chance for me to share my perspective. And help people understand crypto better.

What specifically do people get wrong about crypto, or you, or Binance?

Sure. I mean, from 2013, people think that Bitcoin is only used by drug lords or for illicit activities. The truth is actually, if you look at percentage-wise, illicit activities in crypto is actually much, much less than in traditional finance. And then by extension, a lot of the crypto players, a lot of crypto platforms get hit. Recently, there's more attacks about, just random attacks on me about how I do business, who I have connections with. So I'm a simple tech guy, so I just wrote the book the way I wanted to tell it. It's a pretty simple language, pretty straightforward book.

He's a simple guy. He's a simple guy.

I think I'm a relatively simple guy.

Yeah, how have you been processing the new regulation that's been proposed in the United States. What do you think needs to change in the crypto industry? Because I take your point about, you know, the amount of illicit activity might be lower than in cash or the traditional financial system. But, you know, the goal, I think, for everyone that would agree is to get that to zero. And so what do you like about the new regulation? What do you think is reasonable to ask for?

Well, I think right now the US is making really good progress on crypto regulation. The Genius Act was passed last July. But I think right now there's still quite a lot of debates based on my layman understanding. I'm not an expert. I'm not a lawyer, not a regulatory guy. But seems like there's a lot of debates about stablecoin interest rates. So I think it's a big important issue. But from my perspective, any clarity is better than none. So I think the current iteration of regulations will not get everything right on the first try. So there'll be some collaboration over time. So I think it's more important to make progress and move forward.

How are you thinking about the broad trade-off between decentralization, anonymity, and then oversight and regulation? It feels like we've been moving towards more oversight, more regulation, more KYC. We've heard from some crypto leaders that that can lead to data breaches and other problems. But where do you sit on the level of regulation in the crypto industry broadly?

So I think right now the crypto industry is, to be honest, too transparent. It's actually extremely easy to track crypto funds. Like, the blockchain is a public ledger. And then if you couple that with a few centralized exchanges' KYC information, you can track most of the transactions pretty accurately. So I think right now there's a lack of preserving of privacy. But right now, the problem is many of the regulators and law enforcement people don't know how to use it yet. Some people do. I think some of the US law enforcement actually knows it quite well. In other countries, they know it much less. So hopefully, we'll get to a balance where— I don't know where the optimum balance is, but there should be an optimal balance where we satisfy all the regulatory requirements, but we also need to protect individual privacy. For example, I'll give you a couple of examples. Please. For example, if your company pays everybody in crypto, and if you get one payment today on the blockchain, you can just trace to the address that paid you and see how many addresses that address paid in the last week. You can figure out everybody's salary. So that's a privacy issue. If you stay at a hotel, you pay for the hotel, then people know where you— if people know your address and the hotel address, people will know that you're going to stay at that hotel. Which for some people may create security issues, right? So there's little problems like those that are not solved yet. So we need to strike a balance. It's hard to say exactly where the balance is, but I think over time we'll get there.

How are you thinking about the interaction between AI and crypto generally? There's been a lot of excitement even from people in AI about crypto and the intersection. But I'm curious if what your overall view is and then if it's positive, some maybe specific examples of where you expect to see it manifest first.

Sure, absolutely. Yeah, I think what both AI and blockchain are big, recent, new, big industries. I think there's really three big technologies in my adult lifetime, right? There's AI, there's blockchain, there's internet. It's on those levels. I think AI is going to use crypto for payments, for transactions. They're not going to use— they cannot KYC through a bank. They cannot do a selfie. They don't have a passport, et cetera. And also payments in every country is a little bit different, whereas crypto blockchain is the same across different countries. So when you integrate with the blockchain once, it works globally. And it also handles microtransactions, large transactions, et cetera. And also crypto is going to increase the amount of transactions significantly. So the traditional payment rails may not be able to handle that. I think blockchain also have a lot of benefit from AI. I think right now a lot of the applications are in blockchain quite difficult to build. I think with AI, we can probably build safer tools for people to do self-custody and safer tools for people to transact. So, and I think so today, the two industries, to be honest, have not really leveraged each other that significantly. But I think in the future they will.

How are you thinking about the risk of quantum computing to the cryptocurrency ecosystem broadly?

I think there's some risk, but I think overall though, any technology improvement is always going to be good. More computing power is good for crypto. So quantum may break the existing encryption mechanisms, but with quantum computing, there's probably new— well, there will be new encryption algorithm. There are already quantum-proof encryption algorithms that quantum computers do not have an advantage to crack. So we just need to upgrade the protocol to use those encryption mechanisms. Also, more computing power with quantum, there's probably newer encryption mechanisms we have not even thought about that we can use quantum to encrypt, and decryption is always going to be much harder. Sure.

What about non-quantum hacking? Throughout the crypto boom, there's been so many upstart projects. Many of them have been able to get to escape velocity and they're still around today. A lot of them have had to go through hacks and adapt. And it feels like with the moment that we're in, in terms of AI's effect on cybersecurity, we could potentially be looking at maybe a bifurcation between the projects that have the resources to actually harden themselves against new cybersecurity threats and those who are maybe smaller upstarts and don't. How do you think that effect plays out?

I actually think AI is going to improve security for most projects, like Anthropic Cloud. So now they're— I think if you play like that, you could potentially discover many flaws at least they claim in many projects. But I think projects can also use their tool to fix their security problems. I think a big company like that, they already make a lot of money. They don't need to exploit smaller projects to hack, to do illegal stuff. So I think right now with AI tools that's available, the developers can use those tools to find their own problems. But of course, if you don't do that, then the hackers may do that for you, which is a typical problem we have today anyway. So I think with AI security is actually going to become better. I don't think it's going to become worse. So I'm pretty confident about that.

Do you know who Satoshi Nakamoto is?

No, unfortunately, I don't. Even if I did, I would have said no. But I honestly don't.

OK. Do you have— how have you processed that question of who is Satoshi? Have you wrestled with it? Have you done a bunch of research to try and figure it out? Have you had various suspects at various points in time, favorite pet theories, wildcard theories, or Has it sort of been a quick ride to sort of process that and then let go of that desire because it's the unsolved mystery?

This is an interesting point. I should have put this in my book. Maybe the next edition. But I've come to peace with it. I think, I'm curious obviously. And if there was one person I really wanted to meet in the world, that would probably be him. But I think there are negative consequences if we find out who he is. For example, if I couldn't lie on the oath, If people say, look, have you met Satoshi? If I say yes, then all hell's going to break loose. I think it's better if we don't know who he is. It's better if we— and without knowing him, we don't have a founder centralization. For example, if you look at Ethereum, Vitalik's there. So there's a founder centralization. What makes Bitcoin unique is that we don't know— well, the founder's no longer participating. He may not be around. He may not be participating. So that makes it more decentralized. I think that's a good thing. I wish you'd come to terms— I came to terms with it quite a while ago. So, even though I'm curious, I'm not actively looking. Yeah.

Have you ever thought about doing an anonymous project, or do you have a reflection on why we haven't seen more projects effectively run, at least to my knowledge, the Satoshi playbook of maybe it requires some crazy OPSEC to go anonymous for a couple of years, but if it worked for Bitcoin, I would imagine that somebody would have thought, I'm going to do the same thing for this new project with slightly different opinions about how the technology is built. I haven't seen it happen, but what's your take on the idea of a new attempt at a Satoshi-like founder in the crypto industry?

I actually really want to see that too. I think that's a really, really cool idea, to be honest. But I think it's also very hard to do. Most projects fail, even with the founders heavily promoting it, we know who they are, et cetera. For a new project, without knowing the founder, there's less trust in the community. Bitcoin was the first one. Somehow, it started very slowly. It took many, many years for it to get to where it is today. And for new projects to do that is very, very difficult. And there have been anonymous projects that are basically rug pulls. So there are also the other side of it. People lose trust with anonymous project. To do what Bitcoin did is very, very difficult. I would actually love to see more anonymous, fully decentralized projects. But what you mentioned is the OPSEC is also extremely hard. It's so hard today to not leave any trace, both digitally and physically. So the fact that nobody has really announced who Satoshi is means that his OPSEC is crazy. I think 99.9— nobody else can do it really at this point. Yeah.

What do Americans miss about crypto adoption globally? It's here. I mean, so many, at least younger generations, almost everyone has some exposure to digital assets or some experience buying, selling, maybe not using it functionally for payments, but obviously it's very different in other parts of the world with less centralized financial institutions?

Yeah. I think America, for the last few years, before the Trump administration, was fairly anti-crypto. So many of the founders left. Many of the projects left. And many of the liquidity left. The biggest crypto exchanges are not in America today. The biggest blockchains, the biggest stablecoins, they're not America-based. So I think America misses that liquidity quite a bit. America right now has very forward-looking regulations, and now people are flocking back. I think the talent pool is coming back, but some of the larger players are not back in America yet. So I would love to see that changing. I think right now, crypto— if you buy crypto, Americans are probably paying the highest fees in the world, whereas if you buy anything else, America is usually paying the lowest price. So the cost to American consumers today for accessing crypto is quite high. So that's a disadvantage that America has today. But America is a large economy, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of VCs, and good liquidity in traditional markets. And I think America definitely has the ability to catch up very quickly.

You were born in China. How are you thinking about geopolitical relations between the US and China? Tensions seem to have been rising for years. There's trade tensions, there's all sorts of geopolitical tensions. Is there any hope for de-escalation between the two countries?

I'm not an expert on the geopolitics between different countries. And also my layman understanding is both countries have leaders with pretty big personalities. So they're very hard to predict. I think President Xi in China is easier to predict President Trump. President Trump is like a wild card, right? Which is in his advantage. You can't predict what he's going to do. But I do think both countries are large countries now with leaders who are smart and who are business-driven. They want the economy to grow. So if that's the goal, then I'm optimistic that there's sort of an outcome to be reached. Between two countries, there's usually a fairly large zone of overlap that you can reach deals. Right now, it's just the personalities and also both countries quite proud. So they're all hard negotiators. The negotiations at that level takes time. So, but I am fairly optimistic that, you know, both the two countries will work out something that's beneficial for both.

You've written the book. What's next for you? What do you think the next decade looks like?

I'm actually not too sure exactly. So I'm doing a few different things right now. I'm running investment fund. Well, I'm not really running it, but like, I support it. I do some mentoring in the space for new entrepreneurs. I run a free education platform, a giggle academy that provides free education to 240,000 kids now. And we've only been at it for like a year and a half. And then I also— yeah, so— and I also advise different governments on crypto policies. So between those 4 things, they keep me pretty busy. The book was actually a huge distraction for me. I can imagine. It took a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to write a book. But I'm glad, you know, it's out there. And there's an audio version coming out soon. And then after that, I'll put that on pause, just let it be for a while, and then figure out what to do. Yeah.

What was the strategy for the audiobook version? Did you narrate it yourself, hire a human narrator, use AI?

So one of my friends, Michael Santos, is going to narrate it. So we had this sort of agreement verbally from a long time ago. And also, Amazon doesn't allow AI-generated voices yet. I didn't know that. So it'll be a human. Human read or audible. And then I've been playing with AI quite a bit myself. The AI cloning of voice is— I can't tell the difference from my own voice. And it's just better. It reads more smoothly. It's better than my own reading. So on certain other platforms or in certain other countries, we may use an AI-generated voice that clones my voice to try to read it. I haven't finished that yet. There's still little quirks here and there. Sometimes AI make very obvious mistakes. It pronounces Chinese names wrong, which I would not make that mistake. Sometimes you will say like when I write $400, you say $400. So I would not make that mistake. But 99% of the time, it actually reads better than me. So we'll see. So I might do two different audio versions. We're still playing around with it. Yeah.

I wonder after Jassy's letter today if he's still going to be anti-AI voices.

Yeah.

Yeah. I did have one last question. I'm curious, how did you process the prediction market boom over the last 2 years? There had been, you know, long— people had long had predictions that prediction markets would intersect with crypto and be really big. And yet there was attempts in the 2010s that didn't really reach critical mass. So I'm curious, you know, how you process that, that, that entire period.

Yeah. So I think I today I do think prediction markets has a huge potential and it's already pretty big. Like the top players are pretty big already and there's like hundreds of thousands of upcoming platforms as well. And also, if you look at the regulatory landscape, the CFTC chairman, Michael Selig, He talks about prediction markets multiple times. Every time I watch him talk, he seems to mention prediction markets. So it seems like the regulators and the traditional market is also moving in. So as you said, there have been many attempts previously, but then timing is important. Some ideas, even though the idea is very obvious, if you implement them too early, they don't get traction. You have to implement the right idea at the right time. I don't know what all the ingredients are for prediction markets, but somehow now seems to be the right time. Right time. The previous attempts struggled, and now it seems to be taking off. So I'm a big proponent for anything that's new and interesting. And I think prediction markets are very interesting. They're price discovery and truth discovery. They're kind of using price to discover truth, right? So which is actually a very— which is not usually the reverse for what we do. We like information drives trading volumes. So that's a very interesting dynamic, I think. And also the EZ Labs, the fund I'm involved with, we invest in multiple prediction markets. So we'll see which ones work. But I do think that is a huge potential and it's hot. Yeah. And it works.

Are you— how are you thinking about any of the previous crypto booms or narratives or themes coming back? Things like NFTs or crypto gaming. Are you optimistic on any projects, DAOs that had their moment in the sun and, and didn't quite really reach escape velocity? Do you think anything will have a second wind in the near future?

I do think so. I think many things will have a second wind, but the second wind will most likely be a little bit different. There'll be something that's, you know, like even prediction markets today, they're different from the sort of prediction markets 4 or 5 years ago. So every iteration, there will be some tweak. And it's usually that little tweak that makes it a little bit different. And it may be the microenvironment. So I do think that some of the things that, you know, that were there, like I think DAOs will not disappear. I think DAOs haven't really took off, to be honest. The concept being there for years. It's like even in the 2010s, video streaming doesn't really work. Even today, this type of call, sometimes internet doesn't work, sometimes the microphone doesn't work. So we get into those situations a lot. So a lot of things take a lot of time to mature. So I think the DAOs, the NFTs, again, I don't The next iteration may be slightly different, but you may still be called NFTs or NFT2. It may be a different name. But I think tokenizing art is probably going to come back at some point multiple times. I don't know when it will really hit big and stay. NFTs, I think honestly, we saw a rise and then a downward trend. So it's hard to say, but I think all of those things eventually should be much bigger than they were today. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Congratulations.

Yeah, congrats on the launch.

I recommend everyone go check it out and hear CZ's side of the story. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, George.

We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.