In this fast-paced and exhilarating conversation, Changpeng Zhao, aka “CZ,” tells the pivotal business decisions that led users to flock to the brand-new Binance in the summer and fall of 2017, catapulting it from obscurity to become the world’s most popular crypto exchange within five months. He also describes his regulatory stance, why he focuses on small jurisdictions and why he lets token teams hire their own lawyers to determine whether their coins are securities or not. He explains the company’s insider trading and market manipulation policies and how BNB coin works. Plus, he disputes the notion that stocks have better information due to disclosure rules, lays out Binance’s current mission and delineates the differences in the crypto communities in North America, Europe and Asia.
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Episode links:
Binance: https://www.binance.com
CZ: https://twitter.com/cz_binance
Binance white paper: https://www.binance.com/resources/ico/Binance_WhitePaper_en.pdf
Unchained interview with Bobby Lee: http://unchainedpodcast.co/bobby-lee-ceo-of-btcc-on-why-the-chinese-probably-arent-using-bitcoin-to-evade-capital-controls
Unchained interview with Da Hongfei on China bad on ICOs: http://unchainedpodcast.co/from-blockchains-to-mooncakes-two-chinese-crypto-founders-on-the-ico-and-bitcoin-exchanges-ban
Epicenter BTC’s interview with CZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaxQneanIY
Binance’s “creative” approach to regulation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/crypto-s-billionaire-trading-king-has-suddenly-run-into-problems
Unchained interview on crypto regulation in the US: http://unchainedpodcast.co/the-chamber-of-digital-commerces-perianne-boring-and-amy-kim-on-why-us-crypto-regulation-is-complicated-and-confusing
Unchained interview with Coin Center: http://unchainedpodcast.co/how-coin-center-is-helping-define-the-big-fuzzy-gray-area-of-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency-law
Binance’s purchase of TrustWallet: http://fortune.com/2018/07/31/binance-trust-wallet-acquistion/
Binance’s $1 billion investment fund: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/01/binance-1-billion-investment-fund/
Forbes cover story on CZ: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamelaambler/2018/02/07/changpeng-zhao-binance-exchange-crypto-cryptocurrency/
Transcript:
Laura Shin:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. Your no hype resource for all things crypto. I’m your host, Laura Shin. If you’ve been enjoying Unchained pop into iTunes to give us a top rating or review. That helps other listeners find the show. Looking to advertise your production Unchained and Unconfirmed, reach out to Raylene at LauraShinpodcast@gmail.com to find out about sponsorship opportunities. Again, that’s LauraShinpodcast@gmail.com to find out about sponsorship opportunities on Unchained and Unconfirmed.
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Laura Shin:
My guest today is Chengpeng Zhao, Founder and CEO of Binance. Welcome, CZ.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Hi, Laura. My pleasure to be here.
Laura Shin:
Binance seems to have come out of nowhere to become the world’s top crypto to crypto exchange, but in a way it was actually years in the making. Describe how you learned about Bitcoin, started working in the space and eventually came to launch Binance.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Sure. So I first came across Bitcoin in 2013. I think around Septemberish. That’s when my friend, Bobby Lee, who used to be the CEO of BTC China. He introduced me to Bitcoin and his investor Ron Thao, both of them are good friends of mine. I looked into it and then I went to a conference and Las Vegas in December 2013 and that’s when I really…after that conference I quit my job and said I’m going to do this full time.
Laura Shin:
Wait. What were you doing at that time?
Chengpeng Zhao:
So I was running my other startup that I’d been with at that point for eight years. So six partners. The company’s still there but I actually wanted to run a Bitcoin exchange as part of that startup but the other partners were not interested, so I said that’s fine. I’m going to…I know I was going to do block chain, what we called Bitcoin industry back then full-time. So I just said, okay, I’m going to leave. That’s it.
Laura Shin:
And that startup was actually focused on doing trading software, is that correct?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes. What we call ultra-low latency trading, ULL.
Laura Shin:
And so at that point, I know you started working in this space. What were you doing and how did you eventually come to launch Binance?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yeah. So at the previous startup we were providing ultra-low latency trading software for mostly top investment banks. All the top global like the names you know like Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank all use our system but it’s a very niche, high-frequency trading tool for those guys. I’ve been working in the financial trading technology space for my entire career but when I discovered Bitcoin I just knew that was the future so I just said I’ve got to be doing something in this space. I left my previous job without knowing what to do next but I know where I want to be.
Laura Shin:
So you eventually went to…I think you started working at Blockchain.info, right?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes. I bumped into _____ 3.47 in Tokyo end of December, early January 2014 and then we talked. At that time, Blockchain.info was just the founder Barry Reeves and Nicholas Carey who joined a couple months earlier. So I was the third person to join. And Blockchain.info was built up by one 22-year-old at the time and then a lot of users, very good feedback, very good community reputation, so I was very lucky to be able to join that company.
Laura Shin:
And then you went to OKCoin?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes. So Blockchain.info is focused on mostly a wallet and a block chain explorer, so my background has more experience in trading systems and exchanges. So OKCoin, I was talking with my now cofounder Yi He. She joined OKCoin a couple months before I did. She said all your experiences are in trading systems, why don’t you join us as an exchange? We talked about it for a little bit. I thought it was a pretty good opportunity and Blockchain.info was growing very quickly at that time as well and they were getting venture funding from the US. The team grew to be a larger size. I just said it’s probably better…OKCoin at that time looked like a better fit for me, so I joined OKCoin.
Laura Shin:
What were you doing there and then how did you eventually launch Binance?
Chengpeng Zhao:
So I was the CTO of OKCoin and I was also helping them with the international side because out of the three cofounders, myself Yi He, and the CEO I was the more sort of international one. But then we had a few culture differences. My background is more international, more Western. I would say almost US centric. Where there’s a lot of, I would say, different style of thinking, different style of value systems. So that didn’t really go well. I just thought that was not going to work long-term, so I left in just under a year.
After I left OKCoin, I actually started a different technology company with two of my friends. Then we were doing exchange platforms as a cloud solution for other exchanges. There were about two thousand culture exchanges in China at the time and we were providing systems for a number of those, so we were just a system provider. So we built a system from scratch from early-2015, yes, and then when Binance started there was two-and-a-half years of development on the system that’s already happened. So Binance’s platform was not built in one month.
Laura Shin:
Just to go back to how you were saying before that your background is more Western. As far as I understand, I think you moved to Canada when you were a teenager and then you went to college in Canada and worked in New York and stuff like that.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yeah. So I was born in China and then I moved to Canada when I was 12. I spent high school in Vancouver and university in Montreal and I did an internship in Tokyo as a summer job and then when I graduated the same company gave me an offer that I couldn’t get a better one, so I went back to Tokyo. I really liked Tokyo so I worked in Tokyo for four years and then went to New York, also worked in New York for four years and then went back to Shanghai in 2005 and then worked for eight years in the previous startup that I mentioned before and then the rest of history connects.
Laura Shin:
So the story about Binance is sort of incredible. You heard about ICOs at a potluck on June 14, 2017. Had the white paper written in both English and Chinese within three days after that. You began your ICO nine days after that. Then you wrapped it up a week later and had 15 million dollars in the bank. Then within five months you turned Binance into the world’s number one crypto exchange. I heard that at one point you guys had 240 thousand new users in one hour. I heard that it took you three months to get to 120 thousand users, another three to get to one million, and the one week after that to reach two million. Correct any of this if any of that’s wrong. How did you handle this explosive growth and this really fast pace?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I think handle is the right word. I think we were just lucky at the right time doing the right thing. Most _____ 8.33 stuff happened to us not that something we actually drive or wanted to do, so I think basically it was very lucky for us that we had the system ready to be able to handle that growth near last December, early January. The other stuff was more random chance. I learned about ICO around last April, Mayish. I heard about the word ICO but I never participated in one. I never read any white papers. Again, I saw another friend of mine doing an ICO right in front of my eyes. I think it was May 30 to June 9 and he raised 15 million dollars, US, within 10 days. At that time, that was the largest ICO in China.
I know him quite well and I was thinking if he can do it I probably could do it too. Given his background, given what he has done, given his experience and reputation, etcetera I was thinking maybe I have a good chance as well and then I talked to _____ 9.36 the founder of _____ 9.39. So he was very, very encouraging at that potluck dinner on June 14 in China last year everyone’s like you got to do an ICO. You got to do an ICO.
The founder of MCO, now they rebranded to Crypto.com, he was there. He was doing his ICO. He said it only took 15 days. He’s still raising it but he’s already reached like 13, 14 million dollars. His target was 20. He’s like his preparation was only eight days. He said, no, look, you can do it. So it was that kind of environment. I said, okay, fine and I had a team already. So I had a team of 30-something people from the technology provider startups. So we had a team and it’s an international team as well. So we had what we call native English speakers, we had a larger number of them. So we just said let’s start a Google Doc, write both versions at the same time. We changed the versions. We basically didn’t sleep very much in those two or three weeks.
Laura Shin:
And then once you launched how did you handle that massive growth in five months? What were some of the kind of crazy moments during that period?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Oh, man, there were so many crazy moments. Initially, our growth was okay. It wasn’t too bad. Initially in the ICO stage the growth was so quick that our little website couldn’t handle it. We were just buying servers and buying servers and buying servers but that was during the ICO stage. Once we launched the growth actually slowed down a little bit because at that time everybody is chasing ICOs and once we launched we were a small, new exchange. We didn’t have that many trading pairs. We didn’t have that many coins. The growth was actually average. It was just normal.
Then September came and there was a lot of panic. There was panic selling and panic buying even when the market goes panic the selling goes really way down the volume picks up because everyone’s trying to sell. The trading volume actually goes up. And then last September, around this time, there was a lot of fud or negative news about China, so we actually moved our servers from outside China into China first in July because we had a large number of Chinese users and that was a very painful thing. Then in September I told my team we’ve got to move them back out again and they were like you’re crazy. Now we have a lot more servers but they did it. They did it overnight.
Laura Shin:
And that was why because of the ban on the crypto exchanges?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yeah. I got increasing more amount of convincing information that the ban was coming. I said, look, there’s enough information to make a decision already so I’m going to make the decision. It’s a really hard decision. I’m going to ask the team to move it out. The team, after some hesitation agreed and we moved it out. We moved all of our infrastructure out of China a week before the ban came out, like the news came out, so we actually did it before. But that really helped because now we can say we’re no longer in China and we were moving the team out of China as well. We said that doesn’t affect us anymore. When the China ban happened, guess where all the users went? Or at least all the Chinese users went? They came to Binance.
A couple weeks later we got pressured so badly we had to restrict our Chinese IPs, so we did that. It was just a crazy ride. There was so many crazy stuff happening.
Laura Shin:
Any other crazy moments that you want to mention?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Oh, sure. I didn’t know how long you wanted me to go on that. For example, during that time, the Chinese government asked anybody who issued ICOs return the coins to the…return it, just do the refund, just do the reverse swap. Of course, our coins, okay because the Binance coin is now six X the ICO price at that time and so nobody wanted to return it for their original Bitcoins. Not that many people wanted to return the Binance coin but we facilitated a couple ICOs on our platform like five of them and a number of them have dropped below the ICO price. Of course, for all of those users they all want to get their original BTCs back. We made a very hard…and the project teams already spent a little bit of money, they can’t return the full amount anyway.
We made a really tough decision. We said Binance is going to cover the difference. We did a calculation. It’s going to cost us about six million US dollars. At the time, that’s a lot of money for us. We raised 15 million dollars. We spent a bunch of it already. We had a little bit left in the bank. That was like a large chunk of money for us but we had a very quick meeting. I remember, I was on a train outside of China. We had a call saying, look, what are we going to do?
I said let’s just cover it and so we returned the full amount to all the investors that borrowed through our platform. That created such huge, positive publicity for us in China. Every Chinese user is like Binance is the most trusted platform. Then when the shutdown for the other exchanges happened around September 30 all those users came to us. So there was a lot of really tough decisions, really crazy times. So we basically made a lot of tough decisions and things worked out okay in the end.
Laura Shin:
We’re going to keep talking about that because I’m really curious about how you do make decisions, but one thing I wanted to ask you is right now, how many employees do you have?
Chengpeng Zhao:
So I think today or tomorrow we’re going to cross the number of 300, 300 warriors.
Laura Shin:
Oh, wow. And how many users do you have?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I haven’t checked for a while but the growth rate has slowed down recently due to the market conditions. I think we’re a bit north of 10, 11 million users.
Laura Shin:
And there’s been a lot of news at different points this year about how much you’re on track to make in profit this year. So right now, at the moment, what are you projecting?
Chengpeng Zhao:
If we stay at the current rate, if nothing goes too crazy or too low we should target somewhere around 500 to 800 million dollars this year in profit.
Laura Shin:
All right. So I think that means volumes must be down because earlier some said it could be high as a billion but maybe you’ve seen slower traction on the platform. So something else I wanted to ask you about was regulation and this goes back to what I meant about decision making. Regulation has been this huge theme in crypto. I was just wondering in general what your philosophy regarding regulation is and how you’ve been approaching it as you’ve been building the business.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Okay. I think my philosophy on regulation is probably different from many of the what we call retail investors, I think especially people in the US. They seem to be very heavily focused on regulation in the US. We are actually really not that focused on the US. We are focused on everything else other than the US. So in the US there’s Coinbase and Gemini and a bunch of other exchanges dealing with regulation over there. The rest of the world is a bigger market for us, and the regulations differ by different countries. For most countries how to regulate this space that we’re in is not very clear yet. Most of the regulators admit they’re still learning and adapting and adjusting or creating regulations. So it’s kind of unchartered territory for most countries and most jurisidictions and we’re working very closely with a very large number of them, although most of the countries we work are relatively small in terms of population.
What we’ve found is smaller countries are much easier to work with in terms of regulations we can meet with very senior people and the decision makers directly and they don’t think they are above us. It’s more of a cooperative working relationship, but I do see that the regulations are becoming…there’s now competitions on who has the most favorable regulations at least in many parts of the world. I think this country has realized that having a more favorable regulation will ensure their long-term success from an economic development point of view.
So my view is basically we want to work with people who are willing to work with us. It’s a very simple model where we are not really chasing this is the most developed market. That’s where all the money is, we’ve got to get this money. We’re not thinking like that. I think if you think like that it’s got to be US market, China market, and wherever else, but we’re more into let’s look at this long-term. Let’s look at this five, 10, 20, 50 years from now where we’re going to be. That’s kind of our view.
Laura Shin:
But when you say that you’re looking that far in the future then I don’t understand how you could imagine that the US and China won’t figure in.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes. They will definitely fit in but those larger countries are harder to navigate from a regulatory point of view because they’re more complex. There’s many, many different regulatory bodies, departments, states, provinces, federal. It’s just a very complex environment. So our approach is let somebody else figure it out first. So for that point in the US, let Coinbase and Gemini figure it out first. They’re very strong. They’ve got the culture background, they’ve got the connections, they’re fully embedded over there so let them figure it out first. So long-term we would very much be interested if we can but I think we’re not the most fitted for taking the initiative and being the first step in those jurisdictions, whereas we are taking the lead in a lot of other jurisdictions such as Malta, such as _____ 20.07, Bermuda, Uganda, and other parts of Africa and some parts of Asia.
So it’s really more about who takes the lead now. From a regulatory point of view, I think the regulations will probably settle within a year or two to three years. So we’re focused on where we can add more value where we will let other people add value where they can.
Laura Shin:
So I find your philosophy interesting but I guess to my mind some of the things that you’re doing are pretty obviously in violation of securities law. For instance, Binance’s coin B&B is pretty much the definition of a security at least according to US securities law because it’s an investment of money. I like that you’re laughing. In a common enterprise which is Binance and the profits of that are dependent on an identifiable party, which is in this case Binance. So you’ve got that. Then you’ve got the fact that Binance is probably also likely listing other unregistered securities, so in that regard do you try to have controls to keep US residents from using Binance or from buying B&B because I tested this myself and it took me all of three seconds to create an account on Binance from here in the US.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Right. I think that’s a very subjective view what things are. I think that’s your view not my view, to be honest, and probably not shared by most of the community.
Laura Shin:
Just to clarify, multiple sources said to me that they viewed it as a security token combined with… because there are other aspects, obviously it’s a multi-faceted coin but I just wanted you to know it’s not only me. I discussed it with multiple people.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Right. So the way I view it is basically just because multiple people around the world have a view. It doesn’t mean that we all agree. There’s no legal definition that a certain coin…at least Binance coin is at least not defined legally by anybody as a security. Many people may think themselves or they may be even _____ 22.28 it may or may not be. I think for every person that you find that thinks that way I can find 10 people who think otherwise. So I think it’s a difference in opinion but it’s definitely not classified legally or anywhere as far as I know.
To be honest, even if it’s classified legally in some countries it’s probably classified differently in other countries. And the whole discussion about whether a coin is a security or not only came within the last six months or so. Before that there wasn’t any discussion about whether a crypto coin, a _____ 23.01 coin is or is not a security. Nobody cared.
Laura Shin:
Just for the record, I’ve been discussing this issue with sources since mid-2016 so people can listen to the podcast I did in September 2016 with Coin Center. We talked about that.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Okay.
Laura Shin:
I mean this is kind of a known thing. I mean do you try to enforce controls to keep US residents from using Binance or buying B&B?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Not that I know of. So basically so far no one has told us that Binance coin is a security other than yourself, to be honest. Many people…some people may think that but I think the definition of security itself is debated among different parts of the world. I think you are taking a very US-centric view and we actually really do not focus on the US.
Laura Shin:
Yeah. I’m saying it’s really the US.
Chengpeng Zhao:
I think yesterday, even after you created your account, you probably could not deposit US dollars in. So you probably did not do a trade. I would probably guess if you created the account yesterday you do not have any Binance coins right now. Am I correct?
Laura Shin:
Yeah. No, I didn’t go that far.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Right. So it’s a very contentious topic but at the end of the day I think you’re taking a very US-centric view on things where that’s a market we’re really not focused on. We don’t take the US dollars. We don’t touch US dollars. I’ve purposely avoided doing any promotion at any events in the US just so that we’re not viewed as a US company. We don’t actually target that market.
Laura Shin:
I’m just curious, would you come to a conference in the US? Would you plan to step foot in the US? Is that something that you’re trying to avoid or do you have no fear?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I’m pretty sure I would not get into trouble by going to the US but number one, it’s kind of far. Number two, I don’t really want people to view Binance as US centric or focused on the US. We’re really not focusing on the US. We’re doing promotions everywhere else other than the US. To be honest, I’ve actually turned down a lot of interview requests including Yahoo Finance and a number of other media outlets in the US that were very centric talking about US markets precisely because of this reason because all of the questions are about US and I am not an expert. I lived there before. I know the market, I know the language, but that’s not where our core focus is.
Laura Shin:
Just out of curiosity, where do you live? Do you have a home anywhere?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I don’t have a house. I don’t have any real estate property. I rent everywhere. I do spend quite a bit of time in Singapore, Taiwan, Malta, Switzerland. So again, people have this view like you’ve got to have somewhere in one city or you’ve got to have a place. I don’t have that problem.
Laura Shin:
Also, if you’re a billionaire then you can maintain multiple homes.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Actually, I think economically I can afford it but time-wise I can’t. It’s just such a headache all the time.
Laura Shin:
I agree with that. So one thing I want to ask you about though just to go back to the regulatory question I’ve seen other interviews were you’ve said things like, “We’re okay to do things very creatively to avoid unnecessary regulation.” Another quote, “We don’t want to be in one place right now because of regulatory uncertainty.” Obviously, you have this history of moving Binance’s offices and servers partly I think because you don’t want countries to be able to easily determine if they have jurisdiction over Binance. Those times when you moved out of China you also moved out of Japan. I think you also had regulatory issues in Hong Kong. Those three moves I think were due to regulator issues.
Some people that I spoke with said that to them it seems like you are flouting the law. Do you ever worry that you are putting yourself on this path to clash with regulators and that you could end up in jail?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Again, I think you are making some random people’s opinion to be like a legal ruling or something. I could think about anything. I could think Donald Trump’s violating the law but what I think doesn’t really matter. I think the reverse. I fully respect the laws of every country, every jurisdiction but most people have this mindset that you’ve got to stay in one place and work with one government. But why is that? Why can’t you go to a place to work with a government that you choose instead of always being stuck in one place and working with a government that may or may not support what you want to do.
In a brand new industry where I am very…there are fundamental laws. Laws are different by country but there is fundamental stuff you can’t do like hurting people, stealing, scamming, stuff like that. There are other thing like how do you classify a crypto currency, is it a security, is it not? This kind of thing, different countries do it differently so what’s wrong with going to a country and choosing to live in a country where those things are viewed favorably for you. Why do you have to be stuck in a country that is not good for this kind of stuff? This is like saying if you don’t like hot places why don’t you stick yourself in Florida in the sun all the time. You just don’t like I, why don’t you go to a different city?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong or illegal or even unethical about it. I mean it is opportunistic but why don’t you choose good opportunities for you? We live in a world where we seek in _____ 29.19 freedom. So why don’t you use the freedom you have. You can choose to be in whichever country, whichever city, whichever place and you can choose to do whatever profession you want to do within reason. I think basically cryptocurrency is a new thing. We’re not doing anything strange. We’re not doing anything that’s hurting people. I’m not worried about it at all. I don’t know why people think in such narrow minded ways.
Laura Shin:
Well, just for the record, some people that I spoke with did kind of go down that line of thinking and then other people said…by the way what I did was I talked with a bunch of lawyers who are involved in the crypto space because I was kind of curious and you’re right. They didn’t all have the same opinion. You know, one of them was like this is a business guy and in fact, frankly it was kind of funny. He’s a lawyer and he was like don’t talk about the regulatory stuff too much it’s going to be boring. But anyway, he was like I view CZ more as a business person sort of in the model of Uber, which obviously didn’t follow all the regulations in its early days. So I was just kind of curious, how do you see yourself? Or maybe you don’t have some view of yourself in relationship to regulation but I was just kind of curious, are you trying to make some kind of a point? Do you have any particular purpose to your regulatory stance?
Chengpeng Zhao:
So I don’t really have a stance with regulatory, but our whole point is to increase the freedom of choice. So we fully believe that the cryptocurrency block chain is a new technology that helps the world. Because of the new technology it has a few uncertainties in terms of regulations or what the regulators want to do with it but I’m not against or for regulation. We just want to help increase this adoption of crypto around the world where we can. There are certain parts of the world which the tax becomes very hard so we don’t do that. We focus on parts of the world that are easier. We do work very closely with many, many regulators and trying to help them. If they want a device from us we will give them. If they ask us what’s important to us we will say it very openly.
If they ask us what other parts of the world are doing in their regulations we will give them what we know. So my stance is we want to help the regulations become healthier. I wouldn’t even use the word right. I just want to use the word appropriate for more growth, for healthy growth, so we want to help. I also don’t view regulations as against us. I think some regulation is good probably and over-regulating will kill the industry at least in those jurisdictions where those things apply. That would be bad for them long-term. So it’s actually bad for them not bad for us. We will go elsewhere if that happens.
So I’m not against it. I just think it’s a brand new game and we already started playing the game and now we’re trying to figure out the basic rules of the game. It’s basically like a bunch of kids playing games. So you first start playing and then you try to figure out some rule. I think that’s okay. That’s just how the world works. I’m not against or for it. I just want to help people make better regulations if we’re focused on regulations. But our real focus is actually just help people get access to crypto.
Laura Shin:
We’re going to discuss transmining and Binance’s upcoming decentralized exchange but first I’d like to take a quick break for our fabulous sponsors.
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Laura Shin:
I’m speaking with CZ, Founder and CEO of Binance. What do you think of Shapeshift’s recent decision to implement AMLKYC? They, like you, were and still are at least at this moment a crypto to crypto exchange and didn’t have accounts.
Chengpeng Zhao:
I didn’t really know that until you told me just this second.
Laura Shin:
Oh, really? It was news last week.
Chengpeng Zhao:
I did hear very vaguely but I got distracted. I didn’t read into it. It’s a business decision Eric Voorhees and his team probably made. It’s very difficult to judge a business decision from the outside without knowing all the internal factors that went into the consideration. So I think basically if they did it they probably had some business reason to do it. I know Eric is a very smart guy. Yeah, I can’t really comment on that.
Laura Shin:
And for listeners who are interested in more information on that, I did do an episode of Unconfirmed on this decision with Catherine Wu of Messari so there’s more information there. I also wanted to ask, just going back to this question about whether or not coins are securities. I heard on the Epicenter BTC podcast with an interview that you did with them that you said that your process of legal review for listing coins is that you ask the token teams to get a lawyer to provide a statement asserting that their token is not a security. Isn’t that kind of like asking the fox to guard the henhouse?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I don’t agree with that but what else can we do. If there’s other better solutions I’m up for it.
Laura Shin:
Just why? You don’t feel like you would have a legal team that could do that kind of review?
Chengpeng Zhao:
It’s still a bunch of lawyers who are doing that.
Laura Shin:
But they’re not being paid by the team that wants to try and get their token listed. Do you know what I’m saying?
Chengpeng Zhao:
What we would do from a business perspective is we would charge the listing teams to pay to cover those costs anyway. I don’t think those are going to be hugely different. I mean basically right now nobody knows how to determine if a coin is a security or not. There’s no clear guideline anywhere. I think there’s a _____ 37.32 for most cryptos even in the US because most cryptos can be transferred very easily whereas most securities can’t. I’m not an expert in that area. We rely on experts. Whether we hire them and charge that fee back to the coin teams or they find somebody. So right now we’re just doing what we think are the most logical thing to do.
Laura Shin:
I know in general a lot of people are concerned about these exchanges, not just issues about regulation but also concerns about things like market manipulation and other things like that. So I was just curious, does Binance have its own internal policies and procedures regarding things like insider trading or auditing or any other kinds of self-regulation?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes, we do have some rules and guidelines. I mean our employees can hold crypto but when they buy it they’ve got to hold it for at least 30 days before they sell. So this is like a policy we learned from banks back in the banking days. That’s kind of our internal policy and we don’t let our employees day trade and it’s not a productive thing to do anyway for most of them. We discourage other kinds of market manipulation. We have some AI learning tools with risk management now. If a coin price fluctuates too heavily and we have now intervention processes but they’re relatively soft. We don’t have circuit breakers because crypto is traded on multiple markets. So we have some, but we’re slowly evolving them as well so hopefully with time they’ll get more and more mature.
Laura Shin:
Some people were saying that they think there’s wash trading and market manipulation happening on Binance. They mentioned that there’s often fairly high volume of trading in pretty obscure coins during short time periods that don’t seem to really be tied to news. Do you try to prevent that in any way?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yeah. So I think if you look at the market research done by independent community members Binance is probably the only they said they could not find any signs of wash trading or pumping of volumes or fake volumes. So as an exchange we’re actually very, very careful about that. On the topic of wash trading and manipulation it’s a really tricky one because how do you define manipulation? How do you define wash trading? So let’s say Bitcoin is like 63 hundred US dollars on one exchange. Some guy just wants to buy it all the way up to seven thousand US dollars. The guy just has lots of money and he wants to buy. Is that manipulation or is that not? It’s kind of really hard to define. If he just does one trade and comes back down. So it’s really had to tell at what stage does that become manipulation. Is it a volume? Is it just a percentage difference from other exchanges? What about a coin that only trades on one market?
So when you actually conceptually if Bitcoin is 63 hundred on other exchanges right now it’s trading at seven thousand in some other exchange there most likely is some type of manipulation but how do you define it? How do you prevent it? Also, wash trading is the same thing. Let’s say two accounts are just trading against each other at a very high percentage base. At what point do you define that as wash trading? If they do four orders back and forth that’s wash trading? Because they will be trading with other people a well even if they only want to trade against each other they will have to trade with other people in the market.
So at what point do you kick in and say we lock those accounts or we freeze those accounts? Let’s say we say if you trade over 100K within five minutes against each other we define that as wash trading. Guess what’s going to happen. They’re going to trade 99K ever five minutes, and they’re going to have three accounts or four accounts trading against each other. Then we can lower it again but it’s a mouse and cat game. So the problem is it’s very hard to define quantitatively what exactly it is without them able to go around the rules. So we do try. I think we are probably one of the exchanges that tried the hardest in this regard that we actually don’t advertise but people know.
So the smart traders know and the serious traders come to us and the rest follow. So that’s why we are able to maintain such a lead if you look at page views or unique views. We have such a lead right now so people know. If you look at volume, a lot of the volume out there is fake or at least has some fakeness to it. Fake is not a black and white word as I just explained before, so it’s kind of really hard to define what is fake volume. But we are definitely one of the most honest ones out there. We try. It is a problem in this industry and I think everybody should try. I think as exchange operators we should definitely all try to be ethical, to be fair about it, and to address the issue square and upfront, but also as traders or as users you should really abandon those exchanges that have suspicious behavior and go for the legit ones.
Laura Shin:
Can you go into more detail on B&B for me? As far as I understand, people can use it to pay for trading fees and they’ll get a discount. They can also participate in ICOs on the Binance Launchpad, some vendors I guess accept it as payment, and you’re going to use it in the future decentralized exchange that you’re creating. But I was just curious, what rights do holders of the B&B token have in terms of information or voting or financial rights.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Right. So B&B token is not a security. It’s not shares of Binance so those questions about rights are assuming that they are a certain thing which they are not. So the B&B token as we define have a few advantages. Number one, you do get a discount if you use that to pay for fees. So it’s more like a discount card mechanism and the discounts disappear after five years so every year the discount rate drops about half and disappears in year five.
The second thing about Binance coins, every quarter Binance will use 20 percent of our profits to buy back and destroy them. So basically taking more coins out of circulation. Financially this is a very similar effect to giving a dividend distribution but mechanically we’re not sending any money out we’re just destroying money we have or we’re just destroying coins we have. Again, there’s a limit to that. We will only destroy up to half of all the total issued amount, which is 100 million. The total issued amount is 200 million and we’re going to destroy 100 million eventually. It looks like it’s going to take a number of years based on the current rate because now the price of Bitcoin went up so much now the destroying rate is low but people are happy because the price went up.
The third thing is Binance coin will be used to pay for fees on the Binance chain, which is going to be on block chain a decentralized exchange. So in that regard it’s very similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum it’s just you can use that to pay for fees if you do choose to use our block chain later. So that should come out soon as well. So we’re very actively working on that. So those are the things we promised as part of our white paper.
In addition to that, now we’re pushing very aggressively to get B&B adoption into other people’s ecosystems. So you should be able to use B&B to pay for coffee. You should be able to use B&B to buy airplane tickets, to travel to Australia, to do all of these other thing. So B&B does not equal to Binance shares. They do not have voting rights in the company or in our team, so it’s not securities in my mind. There are people who may want to define it as is but I don’t anything any official place have defined it as is.
Laura Shin:
That’s kind of interesting to me what you said about how you want to eventually have B&B used to pay for other things because typically at least so far in the crypto space the tokens that have been used for money are decentralized like Bitcoin, Ether, Z Cash, Menaro and here you’re creating this sort of company coin that you want other vendors and for people in general to use as money, is that the vision there?
Chengpeng Zhao:
No. It’s actually not a company coin. So the Binance coin itself lives on the block chain. Right now it lives on the Ethereum block chain. Very soon we will have our own block chain which is also decentralized platform. So in that regard we’re the same as all the coins you just mentioned and it’s not a coin by the company. It’s still a community. We are the issuers. We have issued it and people have bought it and it’s been spread out and we do hold quite a large number of it but we’re not going to be able to issue any more. So we no longer have a lot of control on the coin. What we could control is basically we are still the very large shareholders of the coin. We are financially incentivized to make the coin worth more and we’re incentivized to work really hard to add more utility, to add more use cases. The more use cases the coin has the more utility value you will have and hence the price. So we are very encouraged to do that.
Laura Shin:
See, it’s statements like that that make me think that sounds like a security. It’s like XRP. It’s so similar to me. Anyway, keep going.
Chengpeng Zhao:
I think working very hard to try to increase the value of something that you hold is not wrong. That doesn’t make it a security. For example, I evangelize for Bitcoin because I do hold it. That doesn’t make Bitcoin a security. So we do not promise returns. We do not promise you will go up in value. We’re just saying what we do. We’re working very hard to try and increase the value of Binance coin and a number of other crypto coins, to be honest, at the same time including Bitcoin. So that itself does not make it a security.
Laura Shin:
I want to ask about the tokens that you list also. I know that there’s no one set price if I want to have my token listed on Binance but what is the range of fees that I might pay for that? You know, low end and high end.
Chengpeng Zhao:
It’s usually around a couple hundred thousand dollars, to be honest. It’s usually around that range.
Laura Shin:
What do those fees cover? Why is it that expensive?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Well, number one, there is a lot of work that goes on and the work is ongoing. Whenever they have an upgrade we’ve got to upgrade. Whenever there’s a security issues, there’s a block chain fork we have to do a lot of work. I will be honest, it’s not a fee for work. For us, the ROI for doing that type of work is like we basically don’t have to do it at all. I think generating revenue from our platform is a high return for us.
Number two, we provide such value for those coins. I mean that fee is basically zero. We provide such value for coins. We’re giving them liquidity. We’re giving them our large user base, giving them the credibility because now they passed Binance review. It’s worth way more but we are profitable already. We don’t want to destroy the market. We want the whole ecosystem to be healthy. So many people have actually wrong perceptions about us. Basically, if you understand the industry, if you understand how much value we’re providing to those projects we list this is why none of the projects that listed with us complain about it at all. Nobody said after the list they paid too much in listing fees.
Laura Shin:
You have a lot more coins available than the vast majority of exchanges and we’re kind of at this point in the development of the crypto space where probably only a handful, maybe at most a dozen of these are really going to succeed. How do you feel about making so much money off of at least some portion of your customers who might be speculating on bad investments and losing money?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I think that’s a very negative way to word that question and it’s a little bit of a deceiving way to do it. Most of the ICO projects are startup projects and I think everyone should know that startup projects do have a very high failure rate. It’s the same thing as if in the traditional investment world. It’s the same thing as the internet. So how many internet companies have IPO today but the internet itself did not disappear. That industry did not go away and they’re very profitable internet companies. So it’s still early stages in the industry. There’s nothing that we are doing or not doing. It’s not like we’re scamming users for their money.
Laura Shin:
You could be listing fewer coins like only the highest quality or something.
Chengpeng Zhao:
You could say the same thing about NASDAQ. Is every company they list making money for their users? I don’t think so. So why did they list so many companies? Not sure. So you’re blaming the marketplace provider for bad shop or for bad players. We’re just a platform provider. A lot of people lost money investing in internet companies but is the internet bad or is NASDAQ bad? Probably not. There are risks in investing and we’re doing our best to educate users to provide them. We’re by far the best platform out there in both selection of coins, selection of projects, our internal process, our external process, our ethical values, etcetera. We’re by far the best.
Laura Shin:
I think in terms of the NASDAQ comparison the only difference is of course because those are public offerings that those come with disclosures, but in the crypto space obviously there isn’t that kind of thing going on. So the quality of information is probably quite variable.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Right. But you’re assuming that…I’m not even sure if I agree with that, to be honest, but you’re assuming that one situation is better than the other, which I don’t agree with but I also don’t agree with the very fundamental statement that there’s more information disclosure than there is in ICOs for those companies because I would say there’s more structured information disclosure. They’re very structured because they have a very structure in place but how many listed companies have fudged their financial reports, moved income from the next quarter on to this quarter or this quarter on to the next? There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, which are questionable to be honest. Once you make the rules of the game people figure out how to get around the rules, whereas in the ICO space right now there isn’t a lot of rules but it’s a very crowd driven. How many telegram groups discuss about scams and other questionable behavior?
If you look on Twitter there’s a lot more information about those things that are happening in the community, in the crowd where I personally believe like five thousand people openly discuss and disclose things about a project probably more useful than a couple analysts just sitting there getting paid really highly and providing a report. The report is more structured, yes, but I’m not sure if the information quality is higher or lower. I don’t know.
Laura Shin:
A lot of people I spoke with also were so curious about your decentralized exchange. How is that going to look and why does it need its own block chain?
Chengpeng Zhao:
It’s coming along quite well, actually. It’s going to be a specialized block chain just for trading tokens. So we want speed. So speed over features so feature-wise it’s going to be very simple but that’s also why we can achieve higher speed. So I think most people think of features when they talk about something but they don’t realize in order to achieve scale you need speed. You don’t need a lot of features. So even if you look at Binance.com the number of features are quite simple but we handle large amounts of stuff. That’s also the same thing with our decentralized block chain. So that’s basically what it is.
Laura Shin:
That’s why you need your own block chain for speed?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yeah. If you adopt any existing block chain or use a general purpose block chain that can do a lot of stuff it’s very hard to optimize for speed. We took a lot of stuff out. We’re making a more specialized block chain, a more special purpose block chain that’s more focused on speed.
Laura Shin:
I know you’re probably tired of these questions but I am so curious, will your decks require KYC AML procedures?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I don’t think so. I’m not aware of any decks that does that. I mean you can’t do that right now on Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Laura Shin:
I think some of them probably have relayers that could do that but you’re right. That leads me to another question. Are you guys doing an on chain order book?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes. So the current plan is an on chain order book that’s still very fast. Yeah. KYC, when you decentralize, who’s doing it? That’s the problem. Most KYC solutions are centralized. You’ve got have some centralized party who’s doing the KYC, who’s actually looking at the passports uploaded, running criminal checks against the centralized databases and those are very costly. We use those so those are very expensive. So in a decentralized block chain, who’s going to do that, who’s going to pay for it?
Laura Shin:
You recently acquired a crypto wallet, Trust Wallet, why was this your first acquisition? You did admit that it doesn’t even have a lot of users so I was curious what you’re trying to accomplish with this purchase.
Chengpeng Zhao:
It’s a great product. So Trust Wallet is a great find. It’s one of those things where it’s a technology team and they’re very focused on building a product but they’ve done zero marketing. Only a small niche number of people know them. I have full confidence they will have a large number of users very, very quickly. The product is awesome. It’s by far the best wallet out there, the best mobile wallet out there. I met with Victor, the founder of that team. He shares exactly the same visions as we do. We talked about…I had a call with him for 10 minutes and then I met with him for another couple of hours. We got the deal done. I’m very, very bullish on Trust Wallet. I think it’s a great product. They lack a few marketing skills or ability right now, which we can fully complement, so I think that’s just a no-brainer and I think by working together both sides will benefit a lot more than working separately and we both agree.
Laura Shin:
I’m going to actually collapse my next few questions into one because you’ve been making these other moves like you are working on creating a crypto bank that will be user owned. You have this one billion dollar Binance ecosystem fund. So I just kind of want to hear…I mean you have other initiatives as well, but I just kind of want to hear what your vision is of what Binance will become and what products and services users will be able to enjoy from Binance and also really what it means for them to be user owners.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Sure. Basically our goal is just to increase the adoption of crypto. So to do that we want to provide the core infrastructure services in this industry. We want to make the industry bigger. So I think our goal right now is not to take more market share in this current space. We are already the biggest exchange by most measurements but just taking market share of other people right now doesn’t make any sense. What we should do is make the industry 10, 100, a thousand or even one million times bigger. So if we do that then all Binance has to do I provide a few infrastructure or key services in this industry and we’ll be pretty well off.
So that’s our goal. In order to grow this industry we’ve got to make investments into other areas, which we’re not experts in. So if we’re not experts we should just invest in others who are experts and let them do their job. So this includes wallets, faster block chains, payment services, even gaming infrastructures, there’s a lot of other infrastructure stuff going on. So that’s kind of our investment arm.
Also, right now, banks are a bottleneck for money flow and we want to increase the freedom there as well. So we want to work closely with the banks to increase the bandwidth, at least increase the freedom of exchange between fiat and crypto. We can work with banks, we can acquire banks, and we can try a few things ourselves. So all of those are different experiments we’re doing trying to make the industry bigger. The goal is to make the industry bigger.
Laura Shin:
Just out of curiosity for this crypto bank, how is that different from a wallet exactly? I don’t know if I know what the difference is.
Chengpeng Zhao:
That crypto bank holds fiat. That’s a fiat bank. So that’s a traditional paper money bank whereas Trust Wallet holds only crypto. That’s a wallet for holding your coins. Those two are very different things. The bank is still going to be regulated by the banking regulators, etcetera. So it’s a more crypto friendly bank but it’s still a bank.
Laura Shin:
So earlier I mentioned that I wanted to chat about transmining. This is kind of a really interesting phenomenon. Can you explain what that is for listeners and also why you’re critical of it?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Sure. Transmining is a very innovative way for distribution of their initial coins, which is a more complex or more convoluted ICO mechanism. Basically, you pay commission fees and get coins, which is the same as you pay Bitcoin and buy your coin. It’s just a slightly different mechanism. It was very innovative in concept but in reality the economics don’t work. Everybody who did it turned out to be intentionally or unintentionally turned out to be a scam. Basically, anybody who participated, most of them lost money so it doesn’t work and all the exchanges that were doing it have stopped. I’ve been saying that since three or four months ago when they started. Some people believed me, some people didn’t but the results are pretty clear now. So I think that’s a thing of the past to stay off transmining is the short answer of it.
Laura Shin:
It’s like the exchange would basically reimburse you your trading fee in their coin and you were saying it was another way of doing an ICO, right?
Chengpeng Zhao:
Yes, but they do things very…there’s a few different variations of it but the most basic model is you pay for one Bitcoin in commission fees. They give you one Bitcoin equivalent in the platform coin but at the same time they also unlock 100 percent _____ 63.26 portion and they give you 20 percent extra for the guy who referred you. So now there’s 220 percent being released into the market of the platform coin but only 100 percent of the Bitcoin going in. Over time, the coin price is going to drop. That’s just very basic. There’s a bunch of other things they paint very rosy pictures around it like dividend or commission fees, etcetera, etcetera. At the end of the day, the model doesn’t work. It’s fun, it’s innovative, but financially it just doesn’t work.
Laura Shin:
This kind of goes back to the beginning of the interview when you were talking about how you have spent time both in the west and in Asia. I know you continue to do that obviously when you were saying that you keep rentals in Malta and Switzerland, and Singapore, I forget the other places, but I’m so curious to know, how would you compare and contrast Asia’s cryptocurrency scene with the American scene or the Western scene?
Chengpeng Zhao:
The crypto scene in different continents or countries are very interesting actually. I think in America it’s all about AML. So it’s like the regulations are really more about terrorists. So how do we control and stop those terrorists. So doing exchanges in the US is very, very difficult because of the anti-money-laundering laws but US is very technology savvy so there’s a very strong startup scene. So anything that involves technology innovation is highly encouraged and is quite easy so there’s a lot of new use cases in the US, different things other than exchanges. There’s only a very small handful of exchanges in the US.
Europe is quite interesting where the user adoption is probably the highest. You can pay for food, you can pay for hotels, you can register a company and pay lawyer fees all in crypto. So Europe, given that it’s a European union and they don’t view their own currency as a very strong thing and they also know cross-border transactions, etcetera. So there’s a very high adoption on usability there.
Asia is kind of divided. In China there are a lot of exchanges even though exchanges are supposed to be banned. But there are a lot of…what does that mean? So you register as a company off shore and your team is still in China and you have a thousand-people team in China. Everybody knows where they are. Everybody knows what they’re working on, but they claim to be a subcontractor of their offshore company, which they’re different of course. So then they’re okay and the Chinese mentality is very different from the rest of Asia where they have a horde mentality of following other people who make quick money.
The making quick money mentality is very, very strong in China. I guess because of the less stability economically and politically potentially. So people are more…things change too quickly and people are…if you have a 10-year plan three months later it’s going to be shattered because a new regulation comes out. So people just focus on three months. So China is a very different market, whereas China has completely banned payments and also the domestic traditional payments for WeChat Pay and AliPay are very strong. Nobody carries cash in China. It’s all electronic money. That’s also very convenient which kind of dwarves the payment needs for crypto as well.
Outside of China is very interesting. Japan is very interesting. Japan is very pro crypto but their regulations exchanges are too dense. There’s just too many rules. It’s very hard for those guys to compete. Korea has a 100 percent adoption on crypto. Everybody has crypto of some kind. Also, Korea has one of those democratic and less powerful governments. Any politician that’s against crypto gets voted down very quickly.
Singapore is kind of wait and see. They’re very strict on financial controls and it’s a smaller country in terms of the population, but it’s very open in terms of looking at ne things. So the world is very interesting. Africa is just getting started. So it’s a very interesting world. I think what’s going to happen in the future is going to be more exciting than what happened in the past.
Laura Shin:
I just want to ask you one last question. You were on the cover of Forbes last winter for the issue covering the Forbes Crypto Rich List and at that time it estimated your net worth was between one and two billion. Obviously, this happened…I guess seven months after you launched Binance. How did it feel to amass so much wealth so quickly?
Chengpeng Zhao:
To be honest, I actually don’t feel that different. I don’t spend any money. That’s the problem. I don’t have a car. I don’t have a yacht. I don’t have a private jet. I have none of those things. I buy electronics and I fly business class. So that’s the only difference it makes for me. But what’s more interesting is getting on the cover of Forbes did make _____ 69.06 I should no longer care about money, which is what that taught me, so I actually don’t think about money anymore and the most expensive resource I have now is time, which is the same for everybody. It’s very fair. Twenty-four hours a day for everybody. So time is the most limited resource and there’s no way to expand it, so that changed my thinking a little bit but it didn’t change me financially or my spending habits, none of those things. Actually, it happened so quickly it kind of destroyed my interest in money or those expensive hobbies or getting yachts. That kind of destroyed it for me. Or a Lambo. When I see guys driving a Lambo I’m thinking I can buy one if I want to but do I want to? No. I’ve never sat in a Lambo in my life and I’ve never taken a private jet in my life so far but I know if I want to I could. That’s what matters.
Laura Shin:
I totally agree with you about time being the most precious resource. All right. Thank you for accommodating that last additional question because of how precious our time is. This has been an incredibly fascinating discussion. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. Where can people learn more about you and Binance?
Chengpeng Zhao:
I think most of our stuff is pretty public. Just Google us. It’s pretty simple.
Laura Shin:
Great. Thanks for coming on Unchained.
Chengpeng Zhao:
Thank you so much, Laura. Thank you.
Laura Shin:
Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about CZ and Binance check out the show notes inside your podcast episode. New episodes of Unchained come out every Tuesday. If you haven’t already, rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. If you liked this episode share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and if you’re not yet subscribed to my other podcast Unconfirmed I highly recommend you check it out and subscribe now. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Raelene Gullapalli, Jenny Josepheson, Daniel Nuss. Thanks for listening.
