Binance CEO: 4 Months in Prison, $4 Billion Fine, and What Comes Next

CZ, welcome to the All-In podcast.

Well, thanks for having me here.

It's really, really great to see you.

It's a pleasure, Hannah.

I want to go all the way back to the beginning because I think a lot of people don't really know your background the way that they probably should. The part of the background that I really care about is there's parts of your early journey in Canada, which is very similar to mine. You worked at McDonald's. I worked at Burger King.

Okay.

But before that, your parents were able to immigrate from China right around Tiananmen Square, right?

My father went to uh Canada to study in 1984. That's five years before Tiananmen Square.

How did that come about? So your father stayed in Canada once he went there or no?

Uh, he, he could visit us every twice a year, basically, but he was most of the time he was in Canada.

And, um, yeah, so.

And he was a teacher in China.

He was a teacher, professor. He was a professor in China and then he went to do an exchange program at the University of Toronto first.

Uhhuh.

And then, uh, a couple years later, he moved to UBC, University of British Columbia in Vancouver. And then he was there. We were applying back, back then it's actually very difficult to get a passport. It takes like three or four years to get a passport. We started applying in 1985-ish. It took like two, three years to get a passport and then, uh, after you get a passport.

Meaning a Chinese passport.

A Chinese passport. Yeah. So, um, and then it takes like another few years to get a visa. Like that's just how long the process takes back then. And then, uh, yeah, so we got it shortly after, uh, in '88, uh, 1989.

When you look back, it almost seems fortuitous. Isn't there a version where post-Tiananmen, they kind of just shut everything down and say, "Okay, let's just reset and then maybe they wouldn't have approved the visa or..."

No, actually, after that, the visa got easier. The passports, like that, got harder. So they, they don't, they no longer issue new passports, like the reissue of new passports got harder. But we, we were lucky. So we got the passports, like, you know, like maybe a year before that, and then we're waiting for the visa, and then afterwards, the visa got easier. So in some ways, that actually kind of helped us to get, to get the visa.

Wow.

Yeah. In some really weird way.

Did that event shape your perspective in any way, shape, or form, or not really? Were you too young, or no? You were what, 12?

I was 12. So I think consciously, no. Uh, this, it didn't change me that much, but subconsciously, I think, you know, there were discussions about, you know, democracy versus, um, so there's some discussions. I was actually living on a university campus back then, uh, the China, the Chinese, the China Science and Technology University, one of the top four universities in China. So there were a lot of discussions among the university students, which were older, like, which were probably seven to nine years older than me. So there were some discussions, but I'm, I was 12, so, um, I wasn't really clued into it, but I think subconsciously, it may have some kind of a subconscious impact. I don't know.

And what was it like when you, you moved to Vancouver?

I moved to Vancouver. Yeah.

So you land in British Columbia.

Yeah.

In Vancouver. It's like a different.

It's just different.

It's very different. It's very different. Um, it's just a completely new country and then, uh.

Did you know English at all, or no?

I studied English for like, a couple of years in, in school, but, you know, I was not fluent at all. But, yeah, Vancouver is great. Canada is, you know, nice green, nice greenery, um, open space. Uh, everything's pretty, uh, the living standard is high. Everything's pretty, pretty good. Um, everything is very clean. Uh, the fruits are bigger. Um, so.

It's, it's just a really nice environment. Yeah.

Did both your parents work when the family was reunited? What do they do?

Uh, so my father stayed, uh, was like assistant professor in the, in the, in the university. He gets like a thousand Canadian dollars per month of, like, I don't know, what do you call it?

Like a stipend.

Like a stipend.

Yeah. We get some like really low-cost housing with the faculty housing from, uh, UBC. So we lived on campus. Uh, we, I think on the third day of our arrival in Canada, my mom went to a factory, sewing factory, to work, like sewing clothes. Uh, she was a math and history teacher in China, but she doesn't speak that much English. So she couldn't get the same level of jobs and she basically can only work at a minimum wage factory.

Yeah.

Uh, she did that for like, seven, 10 years. Um, and, yeah, so she, she just worked there.

My mom was a nurse in Sri Lanka and when we immigrated, when we got refugee status,

My father was unemployed.

Yeah.

And my mom became a housekeeper.

And that's what she did. And then she became like a nurse's aid. And and then I think when I was like 14, is when I got my first job.

Yeah. Yeah. I got my first job at McDonald's at, I think it's 14 or 15. I think it was 15.

14. Yeah.

We're the same age, so it probably would have been 14. I don't know what the. Do you remember what the minimum wage was in British Columbia?

I do. Uh, the minimum wage was $6. But McDonald's.

Oh, that's incredible. In Ontario, it was $4.55.

So, but in McDonald's, they paid $4.50. That's below minimum wage.

Because the McDonald's somehow had like a special exemption because they, a lot of young kids work there.

Yeah.

So, um, so, uh, I think it was on my 14th birthday that I applied for the job and then a week later, I was flipping burgers there. Um, and it was the first income I had. You're not like this precocious technical wonder kid who's coding 24/7 and learning computer science, or were you?

Uh, no, I wouldn't describe me as that. I think I'm, I'm a technical guy. Uh, I started computer science. I was learning, I was interested in programming even in high school. Um, but I wasn't a programming wizard. Uh, I wasn't like, you know, one of those really genius coders.

Yeah.

I think I'm a decent coder. Uh, I think I, I wrote some decent code in my, in my career. And then, um, when I was like, third, 28, 30-ish, I moved away from coding. I was like, doing more business development, um, sales, and etc. So there was like, maybe I would say, eight years of my career.

So you're a normal immigrant kid learning to adapt in Canada.

Yeah.

Did you have a lot of friends?

Yeah, I had a lot of friends. I had a, um, my.

Only Asian friends, or no?

Both. I actually had like, both Asian and non-Asian friends. Uh, but, uh, uh, I was actually, in our school, most of the Asians hang out with Asians, but I was actually one of the exceptions that I had like Caucasian friends. I had all kind of, uh, uh, different friends.

Yeah.

My teenage years in Canada were great. It was like some of the best years, like, I think those years really shaped me to be a happy person. I'm generally a happy person.

How did it feel when you weren't able to get into my alma mater, University of Waterloo, and so had to settle for McGill? How did that make you feel? Does it make you feel stupid?

So actually, uh, I was deciding, my sister went to Waterloo, so I was, I was, uh, deciding between Waterloo and McGill and maybe UT. Uh, I knew I wasn't going to go to UBC. I wanted a different city.

Yeah.

And actually, UBC gave me an offer, but I just knew, I, I don't, I don't want to go, go there. Um, at the, at the time, I, uh, my friend's, uh, mother, who I really respect, uh, uh, she said, well, you might want to become a doctor because doctors have a good living, good, a good lifestyle. Um, I took her advice. I studied biology and what is not much of a biology school.

True.

So, uh, I went to McGill. Uh, but then, um, one semester later, I said, "No, no more biology. I got to, I'm going to move to computer science."

Was it a typical kind of college experience for you? Did you have great jobs in the summertime, or were you just like an average, normal university kid? How'd you pay for school, by the way?

I worked every summer. Uh, I worked every summer, and I also worked part-time during the school year. Um, so.

So no debt. You were like, "I must graduate without debt."

Yeah. I didn't take any student debt. Uh, the first year, I actually still took about $6,000 Canadian dollars from my dad. Uh, the second year, I was still a bit short. My sister gave me $3,000. And then from that point on, I never took money from, uh, uh, at all. I just, I was self-sustainable.

Wow.

Yeah. So no student debt. Very lucky. Uh, and, uh, but I just worked every summer, every, like, yeah.

You know, the best thing about Waterloo, which was a savior for me, the co-op, the co-op program. Yeah. And I had these incredible co-op jobs. I still graduated with about $30,000 of debt.

But I was also a pretty prolific trader.

And equities.

Okay.

And my boss, this guy, Mike Fischer, did this incredible kindness to me where I was working at a bank. And I was a derivatives trader. That was my day job. But I was trading equities and I had made him enough money. And he said, he called me Sherman. Didn't call me Chimathi. He said, "Sherman, how much debt do you have?" And I said, "It's about 30." I said, "Fish, it's about 30,000." 32,000. And he said, "Go downstairs right now to the CIBC and pay your debt and I'll write you a check."

Wow. You should have.

And he wrote me a $32,000 check.

I should have said 3,000, 300,000.

But Canada is incredible because you can get this education and it doesn't saddle you with this.

Yeah.

Debt that you can't overcome.

Which is not true in the United States for many people anymore.

Yeah. Even in McGill, there were people from the United States going to McGill, paying international student, uh, tuition, and it was still cheaper than the US. I was like, "That's crazy."

That's crazy.

Yeah. So, yeah, we were lucky that the US, the Canadian tuition was okay.

So you graduate from McGill in computer science.

Yeah. In computer, actually, I didn't graduate from McGill. Um, I went there for four years and on my third year, I got an internship. On my fourth year, I got my third year, I got an internship job and then, um, uh, extended, extended, extended, and I didn't go, didn't go back to McGill. So I didn't graduate from McGill. And later on, I found out I still need a bachelor's degree to apply for work visas in Japan. So I went to one of, this is like the doc, this is 2000, this is the do, like, height. Um, so I went to an online education, uh, program called the American College of Computer Science, uh, and got a degree there.

Oh my god.

Yeah. So you're technically a graduate from that school.

Technically. Yes.

Okay. So which internship did you get where you started to work there?

Uh, so, uh, I got an internship, uh, at, to in Tokyo. Uh, so I always, uh, in from first year college, I always worked on a programming job. So I worked at a company called Original Sim, writing some simulation software. And then, um, third year, I got into a company in Japan, in Tokyo, called Fusion Systems, um, Japan, and then, uh, they were writing, uh, order execution systems for brokers of, uh, the Tokyo Stock.

Sorry, that's a Japanese company with an office in Montreal, or an office in Canada, or no?

No, no. I, I went to Tokyo.

You went to Tokyo.

Yeah. It's actually an American, uh, a bunch of American guys' company that's in Tokyo. Uh, so it's like a bunch of guys were.

And you're thinking, "This is an adventure. I'm going to go and live in Tokyo for a summer."

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was a college student and living in Tokyo is like a, you know, it's fun. It's a dream. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and the first time you go there, it's like, it's.

From the future.

It's, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

And what kind of software did you write?

Mostly order execution software. So the same software like that moves orders and buy, what drives Binance today.

Pretty much, pretty much. So it's the same, same style. Like, actually, all the software I was involved with have no decision-making.

So when you first, and were exposed to this, it was not like, "Oh wow, I love this. This makes sense." Or was it more, "Okay, I'm asked to write this code and I understand the concept, so let me just do it." Were you attracted to the subject matter, or you just did it because it was your job?

I first did it was because it was my job, right? I was so young, I didn't know what all the different industries are. And actually, when I got to the company, the company was giving me a project on working on digital imaging storage systems, like, you know, this basically iPhone Photos app, but for for medical imaging, for for Nikon. But very soon, the company's main, main product is the order execution system, right? So I was involved in that, and then that became the thing over my career. And I like it, uh, because, um, it's, it requires quite a lot of technical expertise. Everything is about efficiency, making it go as fast as as possible, process as low latency as possible, right?

Um, that kind of appeals to me. I'm an efficiency kind of driven guy. Like, like subconsciously. And just to double-click on that, when you look at high-frequency trading organizations, the Susquehanna's, the Jump's, they go to such a degree to basically optimize for efficiency and low latency, all the way down to it's their own circuit breakers, it's their own physical fiber infrastructure. They're willing to sort of pay the price to just shave off a handful of milliseconds on either end.

Yeah.

How does that manifest in the software? So when you're writing that kind of software, how do you actually optimize for those boundary conditions in code?

Yeah. Yeah. So, well, there's quite a few levels, right? The first level you do is basically you write software to be efficient and fast, like no, no slowness. Uh, uh, you want to remove all the database lookups. So you want to do everything in memory. And then, um, you want to reduce any sort of additional computation. Uh, you want to simplify the risk checks, pre, especially pre-order, pre-pre-trade risk checks. And then the more advanced versions, you move on to like the FPGA, which is a network chip card that's on the on the on the on the network card, on the, what we call the ether, ether card.

So that you don't have to go all the way up to memory and come all the way back down to the processor.

So back then, when I was like, still writing code, like maybe 10 years ago, that round trip is about 100 milli, 100 microseconds.

Microseconds, yeah.

And then, um, by avoiding that, you reduce down to 20 microseconds, right? And then you move it to physical infrastructure, you want a collocation, right? You want to.

Why haven't these organizations, like in the AI world, for example, with Grok, our big observation even 10 years ago when we were starting the business, was this exact idea, which is it's really inefficient for to sit in a GPU to go all the way up to HBM to come back down. So let's just take SRAM and just do everything here on chip, right? Manage it with C. To that technical problem, it made a lot of sense and very, very fast for the decode phase of inference. Makes a ton of sense. Why, when so much money is on the line for high-frequency trading, why did they never try their own custom silicon? I understand FPGAs, but nobody really went to the point of actually saying, "Here's a specific ASIC," or did they and we just don't know about it?

I don't think it exists on very large scale. Um, the, uh, I think the algorithms change too often. So when you go to hardware, like you want to design your own chip, uh, it, it is very efficient. It is highly, it is very fast, but when you want to change it, uh, it takes a long time, right? So when, when you want to reprogram it, I think FPGA already offers kind of the best.

Best of both, the both worlds. Even FPGA, you want to reprogram it, the programming cycle is much, is 10 times longer than software.

The company you worked at in Japan, was it successful?

It's successful. You got that company got sold to a NASDAQ-listed company just before 2000.

For a lot of money.

For like $52 million back then. So that was decent money, yeah.

And so, is that when you said, "Hey, hold on. There's something here." Or no, was it something else that happened?

No. Uh, so at that time, I was too young. I was like, 20 something.

So you're working at this place. You're just a coder.

Yeah. Yeah.

You're a salary man.

Yeah. Yeah.

In Japanese terms, right?

Salary man. Yeah.

You're a salary man. So then walk us through what happens afterwards.

So, uh, that company got sold. They acquired. There was a lot of culture clashes between the parent company versus the original company. Um, that's my first experience about, you know, how mergers may not work.

Yeah. The, the two managements were just clashing. And then, um, uh, the, the same partners went to do a different company, called Building Two. Um, but now, this partners, I didn't get any money, but the partners got quite a bit of money. Now, so they rented a very fancy office. Um, that company only lasted a year. It means that previous success doesn't guarantee future success.

In fact.

Um, so, uh, they spent a lot of money, had a very nice office, but has zero, zero, zero revenue. So that folded within a year. And that's 2001. And, um, so, uh, and early 2001, I was looking for new jobs. And then Bloomberg was hiring. And this is right before 9/11. Um, I kind of got an offer before 9/11, and then 9/11 happened. I still haven't moved. And then.

Where was this to? New York?

This was in, well, I was still in Tokyo back then. And then Bloomberg is in New York. The offer I was supposed.

The offer was in New York.

The offer was in New York. So after 9/11, I called Bloomberg, say, "Hey, is the job still there? Do you still want me to go?" And they said, "Well, do you still want to come?" I was like, "Yeah, okay." So then I went. So I went to New York in November of 2001.

Wow. What was that like?

The streets were pretty quiet. Um.

Yeah.

And, uh, but, you know, I was fine. I was, you know, um, New York is a, is, New York was quiet for a few months, but it became lively pretty quickly, I think. So I didn't feel too much, uh, issues.

Um, um, so I then went to New York and worked at Bloomberg for four years.

Doing exact, again, the same thing. You're kind of a salary guy. You're working at a big company.

Salary, bonus, maybe some options or some phantom equity or something like that.

Yeah. So, um, I joined as a senior developer. Uh, I was put into a team called, uh, Tradebook Futures. They just formed this team, and they had a system that allowed people to trade futures on Bloomberg, but it wasn't, it was like spread out. So they collected that into into one into one team.

And still no inkling of like, that entrepreneurial bug.

Not really. Back then, I was like, "Nah, I worked."

What were you looking for? Stability? Like, why, like, why Bloomberg? Being in New York, like, what was it?

I was just a young guy. I was like, I think I was like 24, 20, 24, 25. Okay. So I was just a young guy trying to get a job, you know, experience different parts of the world and get and and just find my way through. Um, I, I knew I wasn't experienced enough to do entrepreneurship myself, right? So I was, and I, I was working a small company in Tokyo. The company only had like 200. Bloomberg at the time had about 3,000 people. So to me, that was a big company.

Yeah.

And they had fancy offices, fish tanks, and free food and everything. Um, so I joined as a senior developer. I got some good bosses. I got promoted three times in two years, and then I was leading a team of 60 initially, and then kind of grew to about 80 people. Um, and that's when I became sort of a manager. Uh, I no longer wrote code and I started.

The worst transition.

The worst transition. Right. The worst.

So, um, so that's kind of my Bloomberg experience. Yeah. So that, and I, yeah. So I had to stay there for four years.

And then you quit and moved to China.

Yes.

How does that happen?

I think it was wrong, like, uh, beginning of 2005. Um, again, the same, uh, friends I had, I made in Japan, they were talking about starting a new company, a new, uh, fintech company, and they were in Asia, right? So they're talking about Tokyo, Shanghai, or Hong Kong. And they said, Shanghai is most likely the most happening place for the future of fintech. Um, we should have picked Hong Kong. Hong Kong had a lot more happening since then.

Um, so I went there in 2005. So the, it was like five foreigners from a Chinese perspective. U, five Caucasians, four Caucasians plus a Japanese plus me. I'm the only one who speaks Chinese, and my Chinese was kind of rusty back then too. So the six of us went there to do a new IT startup in Shanghai.

You, so all you guys just land there, and what was the idea?

So we thought, you know, we have all this Wall Street experience, on Wall Street trading technology experience.

So your other friends, had they moved to New York, or no? They were still in Japan doing their own thing?

Two of the friends were in New York with me, and then, um, uh, the other three were from Japan, right? They were there. They always, they were. So the six of us came together, and we wanted to do, we want our idea was, uh, let's bring the Wall Street trading technology into China so we can service the brokers and exchanges in China. Um, but then, so we went, they rented a very fancy office again. Uh.

Wait, okay, so hold on, just.

So when you guys start this company, this, so this is now your first entrepreneurial, you're like, "Okay, let's do this."

Pretty much.

Did you know to even ask the question, like, "Okay, guys, what's our equity split? What's the cap table?" Did you know any of these things, or you're just like, "Great, let's go do it. I'm just assuming it's one-sixth, we're equal." Like, how did it all.

It wasn't one-sixth. It was like the top guy had like, I don't know, 39, 40%, and the, the, the rest five of us split equally. So I had about 11% or so.

Okay.

So, I knew that, but I didn't know like, you know, all the ins and outs about, you know, shareholder rights, uh, what terms. I didn't know any of that.

Yeah. Preferred versus common, none of it.

And then I.

You're like, "Great, I got 11%. I'm moving to Shanghai."

Yeah. So, I just have 11%. I didn't, I have no idea what common stock is or versus preferred. So, uh, just went and then, but so I was a junior partner in this group. And then, uh, once we landed in China, I start, because I speak Chinese, right? So I began talking to potential clients. I went to talk to brokers. I found out we are registered as a wholly foreign-owned, uh, what we call WFOE, uh, wholly, wholly foreign-owned enterprise.

Yeah.

The Chinese brokers and financial institutions are not allowed to work with a WFOE.

That's right.

Uh, so we found out after we started a company, while we were in Shanghai. And so the company pivoted towards doing, um, uh, any, any, any IT system for any, for any company. We can be like.

Work for hire.

Work for hire. We can be fix.

Devoid. You became devoid.

Uh, not, not even devoid. We can be fixing printers, or we can be writing like, you know, SAP implementations for you. We did all of that. So there's a whole spectrum of things. And so we did that for a few years, and we actually made a living.

For a few years.

Yeah. For for for a few years, like, uh, and we made a living out of that, yeah. We, we started, we had a quite a number of automotive clients. The Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai First Auto Mo, First Automotive, they were all clients of ours. And like maybe three or four years in, uh, we started having offices in Hong Kong, and then we were dealing with Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse.

So it grew. So it was, it was successful.

The company is still around. The company is still around. So I, I left in 2013 after 8 years. Um, but the company is still around.

So in the eight years, you worked at that company, all in Shanghai?

I was mostly in Shanghai, but then I spent quite a bit of time helping to set up the Hong Kong office, and then I was also doing quite a lot of work for some clients in in Tokyo.

How big did that company get?

I think even you got to about 200 people again, and it's kind of stayed there for as far as I know, even till now.

And so as a junior partner, you just take profits and you share it like.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, uh, well, actually, I, we didn't take that much profits. Um, I actually invested most of my savings back into that company, and I actually didn't cash out a penny. Um, but.

Wow.

After a few years, the company was, uh, stable enough to pay the partner salaries. That all of our kids go to international school. So we get a, we get a, we get a six-figure salary.

At that point, you had gotten married.

Yes. Yeah. So at that point, uh, uh, yeah. So at that point, I got married when I was in New York. So like, uh, yeah. So, and then, uh, yeah. So we, I had two kids.

And you had met your ex-wife. How?

Yeah. I met her, I met her in, in, in Tokyo when I first went to Tokyo. So I met her in 1999-ish, um, when I, when I was first in Tokyo, like doing the interns.

Okay.

And then, um, uh, she visited me in New York, and then, you know, we got married, and then, uh, we had kids. Now we are separated, or we're divorced in Shanghai. I had young kids, and, you know, it was enough salary to put the kids into into international school, and that was that was good enough for me.

Wow.

Yeah.

So far, again, nothing here tells anybody that you're about to go and start Binance.

No, no, nothing.

Nothing. No, I didn't know. So then 2013, 2014, how old were you then at that point? You were.

Uh, 2013, I, I would be 36.

Yeah. Mid-30s.

Yeah. Yeah. So.

So again, salary guy.

Yeah.

Junior partner at this thing. It's going well. Your kids are in private school.

Yeah. Yeah.

So then what happens?

So then, uh, I came across Bitcoin, right? So, um, well, one of my friends tells me, "Look, see, you got to look at this thing called Bitcoin." I look into it. I was like, uh, it took me about roughly six months to fully understand it. So that was from like, roughly July 2013.

And that's because you read the white paper and you said, "I need to read it again and read it again," or.

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. And then, um, because back then, there was the Bitcoin Talk forum, and then that's pretty much it.

But did you see my Bloomberg article in 2012? Is that that had any influence?

Unfortunately, I don't, I, I read a bunch of stuff. I actually don't remember what I.

I'm just kidding. But I did write this thing, and it's funny because I had a kind of a relationship with Mike Bloomberg. Was kind of not even mentor like, he was just too senior, but.

He knew me. He liked me. He would invite me to certain things.

With Mike Bloomberg.

Yeah. With Bloomberg. And and then I got to know some of Mike's team. And in 2012 or so, they said, "Would you write an op-ed?"

Okay.

And I was like, "Yeah." And I wrote it about Bitcoin and I said, "Everybody should put 1% of their net worth into Bitcoin." And I said, "It's basically schmuck insurance." And then they published it in the Bloomberg terminal or whatever. And that's when I got red-pilled on Bitcoin, where I was like, "Man, it's the most incredibly interesting technical product that I had read about." And I think the thing that captivated me, I don't know if you felt this way, it was the only white paper that I read end-to-end where I thought, "This is one of the most elegantly written pieces of non-technical prose." Do you know what I'm trying to say? Like, it's not.

Something that is like dense and an archive that is just meant for PhDs.

You could literally give it to your sister, to your brother, to somebody non-technical, and they would understand it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's only nine pages.

And exactly. You know what an enormous amount of intellectual skill it takes to do that.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's much harder to write it very short.

Much harder, and elegantly, and simply.

Yeah. Yeah. Anybody else try to rewrite that, I think it'd be 90 pages.

So the friend that showed it to you, was he a co-worker of yours, or no? Just a random friend in Shanghai.

It's a friend. It's a, it's a, it's a random, well, not a random, he's a friend. Uh, we don't have any working relationships. His name is Ron Tao. He runs, uh, I guess now Skyline Ventures. And back then, he was at LightSpeed Ventures.

Of course.

He was a managing director of LightSpeed Ventures in China.

Okay.

So we play, we have a poker house game, like, you know, small stakes. Um, a bunch of, uh, entrepreneurs, like struggling entrepreneurs versus, like, VCs. So the VCs have all the money and all.

David versus.

Yeah. So, but, you know, it's a fun, it's a fun game. It's not a very serious game. So on, in one of the poker games, uh, Ron says, "CD, you should look at this thing called Bitcoin." I was like, "Okay, Bitcoin." Okay. So, uh, and so we talked about it a little bit. And then Bobby Lee, uh, who was at the time was working for Walmart, was just about to quit Walmart to join BTC China to become their CEO. And, uh.

Uh, as part of that deal, Bobby said he will bring Ron in as an investor, LightSpeed into.

Into BTCC.

Into BTCC. So, that's in two, uh, July 2013. I was like, "Okay, so they, two guys are pretty serious about this." So I had lunch with Bobby the next day, and Bobby said, "Put 10% of your net worth into Bitcoin." He said, "There's a small chance you will go to zero, then you lose 10%. Uh, there's a much higher chance you will go 10x and you'll double your net worth." I was like, "Okay, sounds pretty serious." So, uh, that's when I started learning about reading the white paper more carefully. Took me six months. Uh, so it was till the end of 2013. I started like, "I'm, I'm convinced now. I'm ready to go." But then Bitcoin went from $70 in mid-2013 to like $1,000 by end of 2013. So you already went more than like 15x.

How did that make you feel?

I was like, "I'm, I'm too late."

I was like, "I wish I got in early."

Yeah.

Cuz when back then, right? No. Doesn't matter when you get into Bitcoin, you always feel late.

Yeah.

Right? Because everyone you talk to has in the Bitcoin industry has bought before you.

And did you talk to anybody while you were learning about it to say, like, you have a community in in Shanghai?

There's a comm, there's a very small community in Shanghai, and then I was basically talking to anybody in the world that's that's willing to talk with me, uh, and then I had a couple of friends in Taiwan. They used to, they, they worked for TSMC back then, because, and then they were trying to do a mining chip for for Bitcoin. So two of those guys left TSMC, tried to do this startup. Startup never, never really took off. But that was one group of guys I was talking to. Um, there was, uh, another couple. They were mostly miners. There was another guy called, um, his nickname is Fish, Silver Fish, in China. He's like a big miner. He's runs the F2 pool even today.

Oh, sure.

So those guys were based in Hangzhou. Um, you know, I went, they came to Shanghai, I talked to them, etc. So there was a group of guys that you talked to. And then, uh, the biggest thing was, um, in December 2013, December 13th, 2013-ish, there was a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. I flew there, um, to meet everyone. Everyone in the industry was there. Uh, there was a 200-person conference. Uh, Vitalik was there, Matt Roszak was there, Charlie Lee was there, um, bunch of guys were there. Um, and the same, same guys still today. Um, but, and then at the time, just before that, it was the Silk Road arrest of, uh, Ross.

Ulbrich.

So the media was like, "No, this Bitcoin is only used by drug lords." Um, and when you go to the conference, it was like a bunch of kids, a bunch of geeks, geeks, and they're very nice people, right? So you talk to Vitalik, you know, you know, he's a very nice person.

Were you still working at that company while you were doing all of this moonlighting?

Yes. So this is what this is kind of the.

You tell your partners, "Hey guys, I'm just going to go to Vegas for a couple of days. I'll be back."

Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, and then when I got back, I told the partners, I, we should do a Bitcoin payment system because BitPay was kind of the big player back then. Uh, BitPay just raised $4 million US in 2013.

So they was kind of the, uh, the large player.

Actually, in the employee.

Can I tell you a very funny bit? I have two BitPay stories.

Sure.

I was very focused on trying to prove the transactional capability of Bitcoin.

Yeah.

I went to my local car dealership and I bought a car with Bitcoin using BitPay in 2012 or 13. Wow. That Range Rover is probably $90 million. And then even more stupidly, there was a real estate development in Lake Tahoe.

Yeah.

Called Martis Camp. Beautiful. And I had owned a couple of lots and I said, you know, it would be great if I actually could prove that you could buy real estate with Bitcoin. And I called the guys at BitPay and they were like, "Yeah, we can facilitate this transaction. No problem." I bought a piece of land. And then again, I thought, "This is an interesting story." And the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. And now that piece of land is a billion dollars.

But you, you cannot calculate it this way, right? So.

It's easy. I calculate it this way every day.

You can't calculate it that way because the stupidest purchase ever.

No. No. No. No. No. That's this, that's the bucket of money mentality, right?

No, no, no. It's true.

Right. So, even if you didn't use Bitcoin, you would have used some money to some.

Exactly.

Buy the land. You could have used that money to buy Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Right. So, yeah. Yeah.

So, you're like, "Hey, we should do a version of BitPay."

Yeah. Yeah.

And your partners are like, "What are you talking about?"

Exactly.

And now, at this point, you still hadn't bought any Bitcoin.

No. At this point, like I had like maybe one Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Yeah. And one Bitcoin is like only a thousand bucks back then. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, then what happens?

And then, so, but, and then, so I tell my partner, look, I think this is, this is the biggest, this is the biggest thing in my life, right? When I think there's three fundamental, back then I realized there was like two fundamental technologies in my life, this, the internet, I was too young to do too much with it, and there was this Bitcoin thing, and I wasn't, I was 35, 36, I wasn't going to miss it. The next thing that's going to come along is going to be 15 years later.

You feel old when you go to Vegas and you see all these young 22-year-old kids and you're like, "I missed it." Did you think that at any point, or.

No, 35, 36 is still okay. Okay. So, it's still like doable. Uh, you know, you don't feel super old. Today I feel that.

But I thought the next thing that that will come will be 10, 15 years later, and with that's AI, right? So, today I say like, there's three fundamental technologies in my life. But back then, like that's the, that's the, that's the thing.

Right.

So for me, it was very clear, I got to, I got to do something in this industry, right?

So, uh, and, uh, so I told my partners, look, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to quit, uh, and I'm going to do work in the Bitcoin industry. That's what it's called back then. And then, um, uh, and then I was, I also need to buy Bitcoin, and I don't have many money, so, um, I don't have, so I just, I said, look, I'm going to sell my apartment in Shanghai and then buy Bitcoin. But selling the apartment takes time. So it took me like, a solid few months to sell it, and it was, it was only.

You sold it. Where did you just get a rental apartment?

I sold it at, uh, at the time, actually, my family also moved to Tokyo. So my family moved to Tokyo. We lived in a rental apartment. Um, so.

In Tokyo.

In Tokyo. Uh, and then I was traveling in Shanghai. So that's kind of the time I started moving, started separating from, uh, from the, from the, from the family as well. So I was spending a lot of time traveling, right?

And, uh, so I sold the apartment and for roughly $900,000, like just under a million bucks. Um, and then started buying, and I got paid in trenches because, you know, you get a first down payment, you got paid in trenches, and every trench I get, I just buy. The first trench at $800, and then Bitcoin is dropping $600, $400. Kind of averaged to about $600.

Incredible. Yeah. Incredible.

So now you have your Bitcoin position, but you still don't have a job.

Yeah. Well, I was looking for a job at the same time, but you were looking for a job in the Bitcoin industry, or you were just looking for any job?

In the Bitcoin industry. That was very specific. Um, it didn't take me that long to get a job. Uh, you, like, the gap was pro, from the time I said I'm going to quit until I finalized the job was probably about two to three weeks.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

And so who hired you?

I first discussed with BTCC, Bobby. He wanted to hire me. And then, um, uh, but then, uh, Blockchain.info came along. Uh, I bumped into Roger Ver, so, and then he, at the time, Blockchain, Blockchain.info was, I was the third person to join the Blockchain.info team. There was a, uh, Ben Reeves, who's a founder, and there was Nicholas Cary, who was just the CEO. Uh, and I was like, the third guy in, so I was like, VP of Engineering because Ben, we want to reserve the CEO title for Ben.

So, uh, uh, so, yeah, I joined, I joined, uh, Blockchain.info. I flew to, uh, York in London, like three hours north of New, uh, London. Um, uh, I spent some time there, you know, figuring out what to do. Yeah.

And how did that go?

Uh, that didn't go very well. We expanded the team to 18 people, and then, um, Peter Smith joined as a CFO, wanting to raise money for Blockchain.info. Coinbase just finished raising at, raising a round at 30, raising $30 million. Um, and that was a big one in the industry back then. Um, Peter Smith somehow maneuvered himself into the CEO position, pushing, like, Nicholas Cary to the product manager kind of role. Um, but the culture kind of changed a little bit. So, um, uh, I left. Um, a bunch of the developers I hired left. Um, and then, um, Ben Reeves, Ben Reeves sold quite a lot of his position, also left in a few months later. So that was that was my, so that was only like a few, I think I was only there for like, uh, six, seven months. So that didn't work out too well. Uh, but I learned a lot from that experience.

Yeah. You learn what not to do. No, they all know, like Blockchain.info, when I joined, the, the Ben Reeves said, "Look, we have no company, we have no office, everyone works remotely, we just pay everybody in Bitcoin." And that's something I learned from that company, and I still look, that's still very heavily used in Binance today.

So I learned a lot. I also learned that, you know, that company, the whole marketing, they, at the time, Blockchain.info was the largest user platform in the industry, right? So they had about two million wallets, more than Coinbase at the.

And.

The entire marketing was one thread on bitcointalk.org, one thread. The thread is 150 pages. Um, Ben Reeves just replies to that thread, and that's how you grew to a 2 million user platform. I was like, "Okay, so you can do some, you can do quite a lot of guerrilla marketing to be successful."

Wow.

So I, I learned a lot. U, but the culture changed a little bit. It wasn't fit for, for me. And then I, I left. And then that was when, um, uh, hired me into into OKCoin. Yeah. So I, he said, "Look, why are you working for this wallet company? Your experience is dealing with order execution exchanges." So, so he hired me there.

As a developer?

As a CTO.

As a CTO.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, yeah, so in the process, I think BTC China helped me again. Uh, so, you know, I was kind of looking for a job again, right? So I left, and then, uh, uh, was talking to me, and Bobby Lee found out, and Bobby Lee meant, so OKX, OKCoin back then.

will offer me 5% equity. Um, and then for, uh, sorry, uh, BTC China came along and offered me 10% equity. And then OKCoin matched it within three hours. And then I was debating between Shanghai and Beijing, and I decided to go to Beijing to join OKCoin. Back then, uh, Hu, at that time, had 1% equity. Uh, so she hired me to be like the, the, the bigger sort of partner in the business.

>> Wow.

>> Um, so that's, that's how I went to OKCoin, um, for about 8 months or so. Um, that didn't last long either.

>> Yeah. Because

>> I think there were also culture differences, um, at OKCoin. Um, uh, there were some stuff that I didn't agree with. Um, both in terms of like, you know, simple examples like how they run promotions, how they, how they do fee discounts, uh, where you have to ask for it. Like, they, they advertise a fee discount, but you have to ask for it to get it. It doesn't apply to everybody, even though they advertise as such.

>> So small things like that. And then, um, so yeah, so that was in early 2015. I said, "No, I'm, I'm going to leave." Um, so that's kind of a, uh, so that lasted for a few months, uh, in 2015. Yeah. 2014 mostly. Yeah.

So how do we get from there to Binance?

>> So 2015, um, I, I, with a couple of my old colleagues, said we're going to do a Bitcoin exchange in, um, in Tokyo, in Japan, because this is, uh, a year after,

>> after Mount Gox and all that.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So there's a vacuum in Japan. So, um, we got two developers that came to me on the same day I decided to leave OKCoin. They came to me, said, "Look, we somehow, they also quit their respective jobs." Um, I said, "Okay, well, why don't, with the three of us, do something?" And so I, we said, "Okay, so I will, I will be the CEO, and then I'll be the big guy, uh, with more equity, and then I'll be, uh, responsible for raising." And I was paying them a salary out of my own savings, um, and I wasn't taking anything. So the two developers, uh, we, we whipped up a demo very quickly. We downloaded an open-source software for an exchange, and then, uh, we tweaked the UI to be a little bit sexier, and then, uh, we hooked up.

>> You just forked an open-source project like this is our, this is Binance?

>> No, we, we didn't say it was Binance. Yeah, this is before, this is before Binance.

>> Yeah.

>> And we didn't say we, I was very transparent. I was like, "This, we whipped up this demo up in two days or in a few days."

>> Um, and this is a demo that we can show you. But this is not our,

>> the ultimate product. It's just, it's just a proof of concept, just.

>> Yeah. So, um, it's like, uh, yeah, so, and then, but, and then we had a script that took Bitfinex, uh, market data. Bitfinex was like a, the large exchange back then, and we just kind of copied their order book, and the order book was flashing, there's trades going on. So it was a very lively demo. And when the investors saw that, it was like, "Wow, this is good technology." But it's not just a demo, it's, it's, it's a, when they ask me questions, I can answer in very deep ways, right? When they ask me like, you know, "How do, how do you structure this to be a fast, uh, exchange?" We, I can talk about, you know, in-memory, uh, matching, um, uh, optimizing database, all, all the stuff you've learned.

>> Yeah.

>> So I can go really deep when they ask questions, right? So the, my, my knowledge is there.

>> Right.

>> So they were like, uh, "They were like, 'Okay, this technology is cool, but you could, you won't, you won't be successful running a crypto Bitcoin exchange in Japan. You don't speak Japanese, right?'" I was like, "Okay, they have a point." Um, so they said, "Why don't you sell this technology to other exchanges? Because most of the Japanese exchanges don't have very good technology." Um, I was like, "Okay." So then I went to talk to a few of the exchanges. Like, literally two weeks later, we signed a contract with one of the, with one of the exchanges, and then they paid $30, $360,000 for the, for the system. Uh, so they made a down payment of $100, $180,000. Um, that was enough for me not to pay salaries anymore. So I was happy with that. So, uh, we pivoted from a wanting to run our own Bitcoin exchange to an exchange systems provider.

>> Yeah. You're selling software.

>> Uh, we, we're selling software. And then, um, in July 2015, a bunch of Chinese, uh, uh, companies came to us saying they want systems for.

>> Can I just say, by the way, sorry to interrupt you, but it's really incredible because there are so many founder stories when somebody says, "I've started a company." And then somebody says, "Well, how much is it worth or how successful is it?" And you know, let's just say Binance is a $200 billion company.

>> Probably less than that, but

>> it's in the neighborhood. A lot of people think that there is some incredible origin story that is like lightning in a bottle. But so often than not, the story is more yours, which is this. It's kind of like moving along, meandering, learning things, trying some other things,

>> this non-obvious iteration, and then all of a sudden

>> things kind of catalyze. But even then, you still don't get the right form because you're licensing it, really. And people just misunderstand that this is actually more what entrepreneurship is. It's the resilience and the grit to just keep grinding.

>> For sure. For sure. I think most, most people idealize like, you know, um, entrepreneurship that they just hate it and they, they,

>> it's like the Facebook story. You hack it together in college and, oh, it's now a million users.

>> It's Facebook is, is, is Microsoft, right? Exactly. And also Google, these three are like, you know, college, uh, garage, and they just.

>> Exactly. Even, but the reality, Binance or Tesla, it's like a grind. It's, it's a grind and it's a grind.

>> You have to like go so many different ways.

>> And it wasn't obvious from the beginning.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. So I think those three are the exceptions that kind of just hit it from day one.

>> Exactly.

>> Um, but then that kind of shaped the people's perception, like 99%, 99.9% of other businesses, successful businesses are not like that.

>> Right.

>> Right. So if you look at now, any other successful company. Yeah. So the same, same here.

>> So get us to the founding moment.

>> Yeah. So we did.

>> So you're licensing the software.

>> We licensed the software. We, that business went pretty well. So we've had like 30 different exchange clients.

>> Wait, no way.

>> Like over, over like.

>> Over two years. In two years, we signed up.

>> Yeah. So this is a multi-million dollar.

>> Oh, yeah. Yeah.

>> Licensing business.

>> Yeah. So, and it's a SaaS business, right? What we call exchange as a service, uh, business. So we charge a fixed monthly fee every month. And this is platform businesses paying us. It's a very steady business. Every new client we, so every new client increases the, the revenue. So every new client is like a step up.

>> Exactly. So it's a very, actually a very good business model. But then in March 2017, uh, the Chinese government shut down most of our clients. Uh, and then, um, and then by May, we're like.

>> Right. And they don't touch you because you're the software vendor.

>> With a software vendor. Exactly. We don't run any business. So with a software vendor, so, um, but then our businesses, we don't, we have no clients, right? So, uh, we lost our clients. And so by May, we were like, "Okay, we need to pivot." Um, well, by April, May, we were like, "Figure out how to pivot." Um, by end of May, we were like, "Okay, uh, actually three guys who worked for me said they want to do a Poloniex copycat." Poloniex was the biggest exchange back then. Um, and then I said, "Let me invest. We have some extra cash." Three days later, they want to do some on-chain chat trading software. Was like, "No, we're not going to invest in that anymore." Um, and then I said, "Well, why don't we do that? We have the exchange system already. Uh, we still need to customize it to do a crypto-to-crypto only trading."

>> My gosh. So in May, we said, "Okay, uh, we're going to do a crypto, we're going to do an exchange again." Um, the team said, "Fine, sure."

>> How big is the team at this point?

>> 20 people. So, um, and we had tech people. We don't have marketing because we are to be business, right? We, we have, we have two sales guys, two sales guys plus me.

>> Um, and then, uh, we said, "Well, now we can run our own. Let's, let's do our own crypto-to-crypto exchange." So, and then, so that was the end of May. And then June 1st to June 10th, uh, there was a guy who, who was a BTC co-founder, Link, he ran an ICO in China. He raised $15 million US dollars in in 10 days. And with, and then I looked at him, I was like, I was like, he only had a white, he only had one document and one website, no product, nothing. He raised $15 million US. If, if he can do that, I might be able to do that too.

>> You need venture funding. You're like, "If I get the $1 million, I can build out a team. I can invest in some marketing. I can be in the J-curve and not feel the pressure."

>> Exactly. Yeah. So, originally, we were going to go to the VC funding route, right? But then when I saw that, I was like, "Well, and, and everyone talking about ICOs back then." Uh, I went to like, I went to a conference, uh, mid-June, uh, 2017, and everyone was talking about ICO. Everyone's like, "CZ, you got to do an ICO. You got to do an ICO." So, um, by mid-June, uh, June 14th was the date. And then I said, "Okay, called the team, said, 'We're going to do an ICO. Write a white paper.'" And then by.

>> And so did you have a name at that point, like in the Bitcoin community or in the crypto community, either in China or in Japan or somewhere?

>> I had a little bit of a name. Even working at Blockchain.info, uh, quite a lot of people know me. Blockchain.info was the most popular platform back then, right?

>> And OKCoin was also like, I was a CTO. I was quite, I was quite active on social media. Um, I was also kind of managing their international markets, non-English speaking or non-Chinese speaking markets, because nobody else. I was the best English speaker on that team. Me, even though my English is not that great, but, uh, so I had a, I had a little bit of a, a name. Uh, uh, people know, uh, people know me in the community.

>> Because you needed a bit of a name or some kind of pedigree to actually do an ICO at this point.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but this is an advantage of when you get involved early in the industry. Like you go to a few conferences, like there's 200 people, and you go to like, by the second time you go there, people know you, right?

>> But the third time is people like, "Oh, you know."

>> You're the expert already, right? So, uh, so I had a, I had a bit of a reputation. Uh, so I thought that Link, quite the guy who did the ICO in China, he's quite well-known in China, but he's not known internationally. I have a little bit of both, so I said, "Well, I can probably do an ICO and raise the same amount." So we, uh, and, um.

>> So who are the buyers of the Binance ICO?

>> To be honest, even to this day, I don't know.

>> Even to this day, you don't know?

>> Right. It's like, I think.

>> But are they Chinese? Are they Japanese? Are they people from all around the world that kind of knew you? Was it that your white paper was really good?

>> Okay. So, I think in terms of demographic, it's probably like 80, the ICO purchases were probably 80, 80 to 90% Chinese. And there were some like international guys who who bought it. Uh, and I think the data shows that there was about 20, 20,000 people who bought in the ICO.

>> 20,000 people.

>> 20,000 people. So, and this is like a brand new brand. Uh, some people know me in the industry, and that was it.

>> So, even though the exchanges were put out of business in China,

>> Yeah.

>> the ICO was allowed.

>> No, the ICO wasn't banned back then.

>> Wasn't banned.

>> Yeah.

>> It was not, not allowed.

>> It was not, not allowed. Exactly. So, let me, let me, let me, let me just make one clarification. The exchange clients that that we were serving were mostly stamp, uh, cultures exchanges, not crypto exchanges. Okay.

>> Crypto exchanges were not banned in March. Crypto exchanges were banned after we started.

>> I see.

>> So, that was in September. We're talking about like June, July kind of 2017.

>> Wow. You're really threading a needle.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So I, we didn't know that that was coming. We just thought like, you know, those.

>> How much of the company did you sell?

>> No, we didn't have, we just, the coins.

>> We launched the token.

>> You had to do no equity participation. There's no, there's no equity that, there's no equity, uh, involved. So we just, we launched a new token, BNB is still there today.

>> And then we said, "Look, we're going to sell, uh, we're going to sell 60% of it for $15 million."

>> Roughly. Right. So, uh, because we're tokening Bitcoin.

>> And what were the original tokenomics that you designed for the BNB token?

>> Well, we said a bunch of things, but the main one that was going to be live very quickly was going to be, uh, if you hold BNB, you receive 50% fee discounts when you trade on Binance, eventually the platform that gets launched. Um, that was the main thing. But we also said, "Look, it's going to be a, it's going to have eventually its own chain, its own decentralized ecosystem." There's like three or four things.

>> So then you guys must have been ecstatic. You're like, "Wow, we raised $15 million bucks. We're now going to launch this exchange." But then September comes around and then exchanges themselves. So then what do you do?

>> Yeah. September comes around. September 4th, the like seven different departments of Chinese government issued a memo together saying that number one, exch, crypto exchanges are no longer allowed in China. ICOs are no longer allowed. Mining is not allowed, crypto mining. Uh, we said, "Well, we're gonna move." Well, we said, "Uh, we have to move." Uh, by then it was clear that even while at the time, China was one of the do, the largest user base, uh, they have like 30 something percent user base from China, but we still have like 70% from the rest of the world. We said, "Look, if we cut off that 30%, we can still survive. We can, we can actually survive pretty well."

>> Yeah.

>> Um, so we said, "Well, I just said, 'Look, let's move. Let's move. Uh, let's move to Tokyo.'"

>> Back to Tokyo.

>> Back to Tokyo, right?

>> You love Tokyo.

>> I, I've been, I've been back and out of Tokyo. I know it.

>> And by the way, at that point, do you speak Japanese as well?

>> I speak very little Japanese. Uh, what I call taxi Japanese. I can, I can say like, "No, thank you. Go left, go right." In a restaurant, I, when I order, I say this, this, this, not the, not the full menu names.

>> Yeah.

>> Sushi, I can name most of them.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. So that's my Japanese level. But you know, I know Japan, I know Tokyo. It wasn't, it's not like a new country for me, right? So I said, like, "Let's move to Tokyo." And we had like 30 people then, right? So.

>> And everybody moved.

>> Everybody moved.

>> Wow.

>> Back then, um, eight years ago, I think very like maybe one or two of the people were married. Uh, and nobody had kids. Uh, so it was like a very easy move for the team.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, so it's everybody just packed up and moved. I remember one girl cried, one product manager, she cried because her, her boyfriend is in, is in China. So she cried, but she moved with us. And, uh, she's not married to her boyfriend. So anyway.

>> Incredible.

>> So, yeah, so we moved to Tokyo. Like, uh, when China did that, um, and, uh, our platform continued to grow. Yeah.

So when you first launched Binance, was it an instant hit or did it take energy to find that product market fit? At first, a few zealous users that would tell everybody else, like, how did the virality start? How did the liquidity really get built?

>> So, Binance, I would say the product was growing pretty well, but the token price went down, uh, from ICO price. It went down 30, 40%. It took about three weeks to recover. So, uh, when we launched the product, uh, because at that time, crypto is still pretty hot. I think we, the product market fit was there. Um, it wasn't a new idea. It's just a crypto-to-crypto exchange. So then the ICO was critical then, right? Because these people say, "Well, I own this token now. I can trade at a fee discount."

>> Yeah.

>> So that's why I'm going to choose Binance.

>> Yeah.

>> But was it also architected better? Was it materially faster or more reliable?

>> Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

>> It was.

>> It was. So back then, uh, when we launched, you can even, even using your eyeballs, you can see that placing an order on Binance is so much faster than on competing platforms.

>> And so the performance of of the exchange system was visible. Back then, 2017, who were the big platforms that you were competing with?

>> There was Poloniex, Bitrex were the biggest ones, and then there's a few Chinese ones. There's Huobi, OKX, uh, OKCoin back then. Um, and then in the Western world, Coinbase was there. Um, Gemini was, Gemini wasn't there back then. Um, Gemini was later. Um, so Bitstamp was there. Uh, Bitfinex was there. Um, now they're kind of really, really small.

>> So you're now in your late 30s.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> And this thing is working.

>> 40s now.

>> 40s, sorry. 40s. How did you internalize the success? You're like, "What is this?" Like, "What what's happening?" Like, "Are you saying that to yourself or?"

>> Yeah, there were some really surreal moments where you were like, "Is this real?"

>> Yeah.

>> In a good way. Said like, "How, like, what's our revenue?"

>> She, I forgot the number, but she said like a couple, a couple hundred Bitcoins. Like, that's crazy. We can't be making like, are you sure? She's like, "Yeah, we're sure." Like, "No, this number can't be correct. We must be off by like a magnitude." And we double-checked, double-checked, triple-checked. Like, correct. I was like, "That's crazy." And then there was also a period where three weeks in, uh, when the BNB price was recovering. So BNB ICOed at like about 10 cents. It dropped to like 0.0, uh, up, dropped to 6 cents. And then, um, uh, Huobi joined, we announced Huobi joining, and then for the next two, three weeks, um, every time I, you know, you go to sleep, you wake up, the token is up 20%. You go to a meeting, come up, the token up 20%. You go to the bathroom, come back, and tokens up 20%.

>> I mean, it must have been very quick where you're like, "Wait a minute, I'm rich."

>> That came a little bit later. That came in early 2018, about six, seven, seven, eight months in. Forbes put me on the cover.

>> Uh, that's when like, well, I said, well.

>> How did they even know to find you at that time to put you on the cover?

>> I actually don't know, but Forbes was doing a crypto edition. I see. So with all the crypto guys, and then, um, they already had a picture of Italic doing a fancy hand gesture, which is a really cool picture. So, um, yeah, so, uh, yeah, so they, they invited us. They, they contacted our PR department, which maintains contact with them, which is really team back then, like team of four or five girls. Um, and Hu says like, "Well, Forbes wants to do a special feature with you and take some photos. I think you should go." I was like, "I don't want to go." But I said, "We're a new brand. Forbes can still help us, you know, uh, increase the brand."

>> With awareness. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So I said, "Okay, fine. I'll go." So I went to do the photo shoot. That was like my first photo, like to put makeup on me, and then the first time put makeup.

>> CZ, what is what is money?

>> Well, is it important? I mean, don't take this wrong way, but.

>> You got rich old.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> So, did it matter at that point? What is money when you're in your 40s and you make it?

>> It still matters. Uh, but money is not everything. I think I was old enough that there's a couple of things that happened to me. Number one is I was older, as like 40-something. So I'm not like a young 20-year-old that just, you know, Lambos, big parties.

>> Too old for that. Uh, so I have also my personality is quite stable. So I don't get too excited on things.

>> Um, also the other thing, not to brag, but, uh, I went from like a barely financially free to like, now cover Forbes, and I was like, "Wait a second, like, how, how rich am I? I don't even know." I don't like, when I look at my wallet, nothing changed. Like Forbes cover, nothing changed for me. Um, but then people say, "Look, now you might be a billionaire." I was like, "Am I really a billionaire?" Like, it doesn't feel that way. I was like, even like a month ago, like not a month, like at that time, when when we fled, well, when we left China to go to Japan, uh, I booked economy class for a redeye flight, and he was like, "No, maybe we should upgrade to a business class so we can lay down and sleep." Okay, that makes sense. That's, you know, so like I have those kind of habits. So, uh, when you make money successively, like, you know, you from one from 1 million, you become 10 million, you might want to buy some fancy cars. From to 100 million, you might want to buy a, you know, some yacht or something. To a billion, then you have, I didn't go through that stepwise process. I just went from like a relatively okay kind of thing to like, you're on the cover of Forbes.

>> Yeah.

>> So, um, and so I didn't develop quite a lot of those habits.

>> What does it, what does it mean now? Now, I mean, depending on the day,

>> Yeah.

>> you're a deca-billionaire or a centi-millionaire. What does it all mean?

>> I, it doesn't mean very much to me. I think money is two things. Number one, you, you have to take care of yourself. You have to have food, shelter, you know.

>> Which is a very minimal amount of money.

>> Very minimal. Like, you don't need that much for that.

>> Yeah. People can confuse themselves and create all kinds of complexity, but it doesn't take much.

>> It doesn't take much. Um, so that I for sure have. So, I have, I have a very, I don't have a luxury life, but I have a very comfortable life, I think. Um, and then the other.

>> Sorry, what does that mean?

>> If you look at my house, my, my house, like the living room, water leaks every month or so because the, the house is too, so old. But that's the house that has, that's the right size for me at right now. Um, no, it's not. We'll just fix it whenever it leaks. U, so that, that still happens. Like, that happened a month ago. So like, people think I live in a very fancy house, you know, all this other craz, you know, it kind of fits all my family members. Yeah.

>> Um, but it's not a, it's an old house, uh, that I bought third or fourth hand, but it's, it's in the right location. It works for me. It's in the right location. It's functional. Um, things break once in a while. It's fine.

>> Would you say it's because you're practical or is it just because you're just not moved by?

>> I'm function-driven.

>> You're function-driven.

>> If it functions, I'm okay. I, I don't care about the fanciness. I don't care about style. I don't care about colors. I don't care about glittering gold. And if it's functional, I'm okay.

>> Right. So, uh, if it, if it solves the problem, I'm good.

>> Do you ever have bouts of insecurity?

>> Uh, not really. I'm, I, I know my weaknesses, so, and I learned to deal with it. So, uh, I'm not, I hope I'm not super arrogant. Uh, so I don't think I'm arrogant.

>> I've only gotten to know you in the last couple years.

>> Yeah. I saw videos of you, I think it was in the late teens, early 2000s, and my immediate reaction because that's always been my struggle is sort of these bouts of insecurity, ego. I thought, man, this guy's really calm.

>> Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm calm.

>> Yeah. So, I described this way.

>> Very well-regulated, very self-aware, it seems.

>> Yeah. Other people's emotions may go like this, like happy, sad, happy. I'll feel happy, sad, happy, sad. But my amplitude,

>> The amplitude is very moderated.

>> Is narrower. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So.

>> So it just allows you to manage in many ways. I mean, success is somewhat illusory. If you're like working on a problem, nobody knows the toil.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Nobody really wants to hear about the toil. They want to have a very simple way of pointing to something and say, "Oh, wow. Look at what you have." But if you're working and you have no time to enjoy it,

>> Nobody understands that, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So, you launched this thing, it's going bananas, but there were some hiccups.

>> Yep.

>> Do you think that you got too addicted to the growth at any point?

>> I wouldn't say I was addicted to the growth, but I was addicted to the work.

>> Okay.

>> The work was actually very satisfying, very rewarding. But, what was the average day for you? What were you trying to do? I was basically doing like 20 plus meetings a day, like scheduled calls or meetings, and then plus other random stuff, and then having to respond to people on Twitter and, uh, stuff. So, um, but it was very rewarding because, um, it's, there's a sense of fulfillment that is very hard to describe. It's not the money, it's not the growth.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, it's, uh, you know.

>> So what, yeah. What was it when you were running Binance? I don't know if you do this, but sometimes people fixate on the leading indicator. Like revenue is a lagging indicator, right? Revenue and profits are just, they're here. That's from six months ago, a year ago.

>> Yeah.

>> Manifest today. What were your leading indicators? What were the north stars that you really cared about that said this is the health of the system?

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really daily active users. It's not trading volume. It's not revenue. Why DAO versus those other things? I think as long as you keep helping serving more users, um, then you're, you give them value. So I believe a product is valuable when people want to use it.

>> So the more people who want to use it, even if your revenue is zero, you have, you have value. So any product that people use, the more people you use it, the higher value, right? So that's kind of always my philosophy. Whereas, uh, you, you can optimize for revenue, you can optimize for profit short-term, and you can lose the long-term growth. But I believe long-term, if you have a large number of people using your platform, that's where you create value. Not just for yourself, you also create value for your users. People choose to use you because there's a value in using you, right? So that's kind of my, my, my north star. And.

>> Also knowing that related to that was knowing that hundreds of millions of people are using us, we help them, right? So the way I view is if they pay like, you know, a commission fee, that they're willing to pay because we, we must have given them some higher value.

>> One of the double-edged sword of the DAO

>> is that some of those DAO are bad actors.

>> Yep.

>> When was the first inkling that you had that that may be a problem and that you have to take that seriously?

>> It was like, I think.

>> What does that first meeting look like where they're like, "CZ, I have good news and bad news."

>> Yeah. Yeah. I, there's actually a very clear point. I think it was like Christmas Day, January 1st, or like, you know, New Year Day, January 1st, 2018. So this is like six, five months after, you know, we, we were kind of large, uh, well, or five months after we started, and we're kind of, we were number one, uh, exchange already. On that New Year's Eve, December 31st-ish, 2017, a US Homeland Security guy reached out to me. Um, his name, I think, is Joseph. Um, I always remember his name is Patrick or Joseph. I'm not sure which one.

>> Okay.

>> Um, he wrote an email and then I got the email and said like, "Well, he wants to, he wants our help to help track some hackers who may have moved funds of the EtherDelta hack." EtherDelta was a decentralized exchange back in 2017 that got hacked, that went down. Um, so this guy who works for the US government, uh, emailed us, and I, I didn't know how to deal with it. Nobody on our team knows how to deal with law enforcement. So, um, I, you know, got a couple guys to huddle up together, say, "How, how do we help this guy?" And then we gave the information that he requested. We verified who, first, we had to verify who he was. And then, um, uh, and then afterwards, he thanked us. And then I said, "Hey, um, Joseph, can you recommend somebody that we could hire that can interface with law enforcement in the future?" He recommended someone, but it, the guy was based in the US, and we don't have a US entity. We, we couldn't hire anybody in the US back then. So we kind of had to let that go. But that was the point. It was like, um, New Year's Day. Uh, I actually remember.

>> Where you were like, "This is going to happen more."

>> Obviously.

>> Invariably of large numbers.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, that's the day when I realized, "Okay, look, we need to, we need, we need to have somebody who has experience working with law enforcement."

>> And so what did you do?

>> So we, we eventually hired, we hired more guys. Yeah.

>> Okay. Yeah.

>> Obviously, like, you're not looking at the transactions. So you wouldn't know. But if we fast forward a little bit, the claims that then the US government under President Biden made at you was essentially that people like Hamas or people like other organizations were using Binance and you didn't do enough.

>> Yeah. So, uh, on this point, I may have some legal restrictions on what I can say and cannot say about, you know, the plea, the etc. So I, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm, I try to stay very clear from that. But overall, though, I would just say, um, the Biden administration overall is quite hostile to crypto. I mean, they openly announced war on crypto. Yeah. Right. So, uh, it's good to see this new administration change 180 degrees. I think that's, this is good for America.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, this is good for the world.

>> Yeah.

>> So, uh, I think it was, I wouldn't blame the previous administration, but I think they just didn't understand.

>> Why do you think that they were so hostile to it?

>> It's fear of the new. As that as simple as that. Uh, I think they probably, in their heads, uh, there's some degree of, "Let's not disrupt the current financial system, the banks, whoever else." Um, there's probably a lot of lobbying from those industries as well to them, so that kind of brainwash or affect the thinking, however you call it.

>> So that's human nature. I mean, if you think about it, it's understandable. It's not ideal, but, uh, it's understandable.

>> So you're running the exchange, things are going well from 2018, 2019, 2020.

>> It's kind of like you're really coming into your own.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> You eventually opened a US entity.

>> Uh, yeah, in 2019. Yeah.

>> And why did you feel the need to do that?

>> So 2019, there was some news about, you know, US governments, basically in my layman's words, chasing BitMEX. There was some BitMEX in the news. Uh, there were some also Bitfinex stuff in the news. Uh, I think the US government frozen, froze at least the Poloniex government froze like six to $800 million of their assets when their market cap was,

>> only like four billion. That's like a large chunk.

>> And then they got sued later on by the US government saying that they don't have enough reserves.

>> Yeah.

>> So we saw those news and we're like, "Okay, well, the US government is looking at this industry, and we better register and, you know, again, I asked my friends, my many of them have legal backgrounds, and then they sort of general consensus was, "Okay, we got to, we should operate in a registered faction in the US." So this is 2019. Um, so we registered Binance US, and, um, it's a separate entity. It's a separate deployment. Uh, it's a separate matching engine, separate liquidity. So, and Binance US has been regulated from day one. Yeah.

2019, 2020, 2021, things are just generally working.

>> Generally. Generally. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Then you start to see some of these other folks start to pick up steam. SPF and FTX start to really. Tell me about that. Um, uh.

>> How did you meet him? Because you ended up owning a lot of the equity.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, well, we, we invested in them, only 20% as equity at some point, and then we exited a year, a year later. Yeah. Um, we didn't, we didn't stay there for very long.

>> Uh, I think I first met him in January 2019 in one of the Singapore conferences Binance organized.

>> I think at the time FTX did not exist. Uh, uh, Sam, Bankman-Fried, SBF, was running, um, Alameda, and they hosted an after-party in the S, uh, Singapore, uh, aquarium on Sentosa, and they had divers in the fish tank, you know, holding a sign with CZ. So they were, they were like a VIP client. They were like a large trader on Binance, so we're friendly to them.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

>> Yeah. So that was in January 2019, and then a couple months later, they came to us saying, "Look, they want to start a futures platform." They proposed a futures platform, uh, some kind of a JV, that I, I can't remember exactly, but I think they proposed 60-40 in our favor. Uh, we, we want, I thought about countering propos, like we have, we had all the users, they don't have anything back then. I thought about counterproposing like 95-5, but I don't think that was very polite. They're still like a trader. They still like a VIP client.

>> So we declined that. We said no. Um.

>> Because they were a crucial part of the liquidity pool.

>> Uh, not a crucial part. They're a large trader, but, you know, Binance, they, they were new too. They, they, it wasn't like they were there for like many years.

>> Okay.

>> They were only there for like, you know, probably six months or a year. I don't know the exact, uh, dates.

>> Um, and then, uh, uh, mid, like a little bit later, they came back with a better offer. Said, "Look, we, uh, like in summer, they came back with a better offer." We still said no. Um, and then in, in November, they came back, said, "Okay, look, we're going to offer you this really, really attractive offer." But then FTX was launched. Have some volume. And they said, "Look, we're going to give, we're going to basically give you 20% at this, at this price." And there was a swap of tokens, BNB versus, uh, FT tokens. So that's, we got some initial, uh, FT tokens. At the time, BNB tokens are much more liquid, and FT tokens are less liquid. So, um, we done that deal. And then, um, almost as soon as we did that deal, I keep hearing from my friends like, "You know, SBF badmouthing us in the Washington circles in the US, etc." I was like, "Come on." And then, um, they also did some other stuff which is kind of annoying. Uh, they, they pay five times salary, uh, to our VIP, uh, uh, account managers that had access to our VIP database. And so, and so that girl goes, goes working for, we, if we match that girl, then we have to 5x everybody. So like, "Okay, you, you go work for them." And then,

>> The day after the girl goes, works for them, our VIP clients get called saying, "Look, they're going to get a better rate on FTX, etc." Like, so I called Sam, said like, "Can you stop doing this? We're like, we're your shareholder at the same time." He's like, "Look, CZ, like, can we do a one-to-one panel on a crypto event, right?" So fine. And we're an investor, we want, we want to help promote it. I actually want multiple exchanges to be to be successful in the industry because then we wouldn't be the ones that get targeted all the time.

>> Yeah.

>> But there was always like, no, I always keep hearing there was some bad mouthing, some other this and that. So a year later, I think it was mid, early 2021, we said, "Uh, and they were, they were claiming to be like raising money at, you know, $32 billion valuations." We're like, "Well, why don't we exit actually?" So, in our investment clause, we had veto rights on any future rounds, right? So if you want to block them, we could. I didn't want to use that to block them. Uh.

>> Oh, wow.

>> So I was like, you know, even if, why don't we just exit? And we can compete.

>> Right.

>> So, um, and then we thought, we, we talked about exit, and then we exited. I think in, if I remember correctly, it was in July, the deal was finalized, and the transfer was done in July 2021. And this is like a full, a full year and a half before they had issues. At the time, we didn't know.

>> Right. Because there was some rumors that a lot of their issues started after you sold and they were somehow conjoined. I'm sure you've heard of that, but you can put all of that to bed.

>> Yeah. So that's categorically not true. And also because of the competitive nature in the businesses, even though we're a shareholder, I never really, I never asked them for for financial statements.

>> Oh, wow.

>> So I just, you know, I just didn't ask for it. I'm a very passive investor. So when I invest, I don't get involved in their business.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, and they also, they're slightly competitive. We have, we have a futures platform. They have, they have a futures platform. So I try to stay, you know, let them do their thing.

>> So post this, the thing with the FTX thing, that most people talk about are a couple things. One was the way in which the restitution happened was suboptimal to some of the holders of of FTX people who had cash money there. The other thing that people talk about is the value of some of these investments post.

>> What do you think in the aftermath of all of this? It says anything at all about the industry or.

>> Um, I don't, crypto in general, or.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I don't understand the whole, uh, bankruptcy process, whether that's fair or not. Um, I read a lot of different things online. Also, um, just to be transparent, there's an ongoing lawsuit between the state and us. They want to try to claw back some of the money that we got, like a year and a half before.

>> Right.

>> So there's probably limited stuff I can comment on that.

>> Um, yeah, but again, I'm not an expert there, but I did hear some complaints about, you know, some Chinese users not eligible, etc., etc. But now, from what I read, is the, because of their appreciation of crypto now in US dollar terms, uh, they have enough, right?

>> Even though if people held crypto back then, they probably have gotten more. I don't know what the deal is.

When did things at Binance start to get complicated for you?

>> You mean with the US government, right?

>> Yeah.

>> For me, like, uh, they started asking for information, the information requests, which we always comply, right? So that was like 2021, 2022-ish, and it was like, uh, late 2022, it was getting more hostile. Um, and then I think in early 2023, it was more clear that they were making, uh, they were, uh, we either reach a deal of some kind or they're going to indict us or stuff like that. There was like, it became negotiations.

How do you deal with that as a person? Do you think, "I can't believe this is happening?" Like, when you're in this meeting and your lawyers or whoever it is are telling you, "Hey CZ, I think there's going to be an indictment."

>> Yeah.

>> How does that meeting go?

>> So, uh, number one, I'm not a legal background, so I had to rely on a lot of other people's advice. That's generally the harder part for me because I don't have experience there. Like, no one has experience going through this. You go through this once, you never want to touch it again. Right. So, um, so no one really on, on the receiving end has any experience. Um, you have a bunch of lawyers, and the lawyers are the lawyers. I think are good, but how you organize lawyers actually is quite tricky. If we hire a bunch of expensive lawyers, they all have different specialties, and they all have different opinions.

>> And they all want to seem like the smartest person that's driving the decision.

>> And also they, they all want to take a lot of time to analyze. They get paid by more time they spend. Um, I'm not saying that they're unethical. They, they want to do a really good job.

>> Um, but then they go in all kind of different tangents. Um, so you get dragged in a lot of different, different places. That was the most troublesome part for me. If somebody told me like, "These are the three things you got to focus on. This is, you know, you got to this strategy." We also didn't have a strong legal team. Uh, our team is young. Uh, we, we, our legal team didn't have this type of experience dealing, dealing with this type of, uh, uh, uh, issues. So that was always tricky. But I kind of look at, when I come by the way, where was the entire team at this point? Still.

>> This, we're all spread out.

>> Now, you're everywhere.

>> We're now, we're everywhere. We're spread out. And I think in 2023, I was in Dubai. Uh, I was in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, split in time. So, um, yeah, it, it was very stressful. Um, but the way I deal with stress is I just look at the best and worst case scenarios, right? So, uh, say, asked the team, "What's the best case scenario?" "Okay, you pay a fine, you get a, you know, you get a DPA, or then this, this thing's over." Then, "Okay, so that's the best case." And then the worst case, "Okay, so they were going to ask you to, they're going to try to put you in jail." Stuff like that.

>> Was that the worst case, though? Because at.

The time, it seemed like the fact pattern was, folks would get some sort of probation, or that would be the worst, worst case. But also, uh, yeah, so performing, nobody got put in jail, but they, they could ask for it.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. There's actually another worst case, which is you fight it, and then you, if you, if you can't agree on a term, you fight it, and you stay in the UAE, which is a non-extradition country, and you know, and now you have citizenship. And so, there's almost zero chance you'll get extradited, but then your travel is going to be limited. Anytime, if, if you cross to a different country, even if that country is a non-extradition country, that can still be a chance that there's a deal being made, right? It's kind of leaving fear.

Plus, it also creates complexity just at a government-to-government level. If folks are allies, and it just, it just creates a lot of noise. It creates a lot of noise. It also creates a lot of pressure for the UAE government, potentially. I don't want to trouble people who gave me a citizenship. I don't want to be the trouble causer.

Right. Right. So, um, and, uh, so, but, you know, there are the, the worst-case scenario is like, you know, you don't go there, they indict you, and then you, they put you on the red notice list. Um, stuff like that, right? So, those, you know, those are potential possibilities.

Yeah. So how did you resolve it? It took like, the negotiations like was basically daily calls with, with like 12, 20 lawyers on call for like more than a year.

Uh, more than a year. More than a year of back and forth with the President Biden DOJ. The President Biden DOJ. And the most common thing I hear from my lawyers is, "We have never seen them this hostile on a case like this."

Right. We have never seen this before. This is, like, that's the most common phrase I've heard.

At some point, you just become desensitized to it, or do you keep internalizing it, personalizing it? You think, "Why is this happening to me?" No resentment, or just more, "How did you deal with it?"

I'm just... It takes, it takes successive steps, and there were a couple of steps which are really hard to take. Um, the step where you say, "Look, in the negotiations, right, they come to a few points where you say, 'Look, we just, we're just going to have to say no.'" Um, and it's like, "Look, we just can't agree to that deal." They wouldn't back off, and I couldn't agree to that deal. We just have to say no. And then there were a couple weeks that lapsed, and you don't know what's going to happen.

So you... Purgatory. So you could get indicted in, they can indict you any moment, right? So that's their choice. You, you already said no to that. To that. There were like a couple periods of like that. And then, oh my god, in those, in those couple weeks, you're like, you're mentally thinking, "Okay, I can't travel anywhere. Um, so I, I might have to get used to this life of just living in one country and be very careful, etc." There might be some sealed indictment that's not public, at any border that you cross. And, interestingly, they come back after two weeks and they say, "Okay, we can negotiate again." And then you're like, "What do you think is happening over there?"

Well, no, I think that's a, now looking back, that's a very, that's a very useful negotiation tactic for me, or for anybody in my situation, for...

The silence.

Uh, yeah, the silence. For anybody who's going through this on the receiving end, you only go through this once. You're not experienced. This is your life. I mean, there could be a red, sealed red notice against you. Um, and this is the life they have to deal with, going forever. And they don't like this thing. These things can stay there for like decades. For them, they do this every day. This is like, this is their daily job, right? So, and but they, I think they're smart enough that they know two weeks is about the optimum time, because longer than that, you really get used to it. And when they come back to negotiate, you're going to say no, right? It's like, "Look, I'm already used to this."

Right. So, like, if you leave the guy in the situation for too long...

Interesting. Interesting.

So, so they're very skilled in this type of, uh, mental, uh, uh, uh, work, right? Whereas, yeah. So, there were some really tough periods. And for this type of stuff, you don't get used to it. Um, you, it's, it's mentally challenging.

How did you get yourself to a place to agree to the final terms?

After a lot of negotiations, we're like, "Okay, um, basically said, okay, I validated a single, uh, single charge of a banking secrecy violation, which is a registration failure, which is a federal crime. It's, it's serious. Uh, but no one went to jail for this in history." Um, and, um, there's no, there's no, uh...

Sorry, that charge, that's more technical. How does that relate to the perception of what was in the media, at least in America, which is money laundering and aiding and abetting folks and not doing KYC and not doing AML, versus the actual charge? Are those two things connected and they're equal, or these are sort of disjoint?

Perception versus the actual specifics?

Sure. I can try to explain my understanding. I'm not a lawyer, so I want to make a small disclaimer here. Um, this is my layman understanding, could be wrong.

Uh, there's a first, my understanding, there's a first level is like banking secrecy act violation, which is a failure to register. Basically, you serviced, we serviced US users without registering as a financial services company in the US.

So that's a, you thing that has nothing to do with the user themselves doing anything nefarious or bad?

No, you did not register with the proper authorities to say, "I'm going to take on US customers." And so that's number one, right? So that, that, that's the bait, that's the kind of bait layer. Okay. On top of that, you can say, "Look, you didn't have adequate KYC AML procedures." So your, all your procedures are not strong enough. Um, so, uh, uh, so that's another, that's another level, which, even if you're not registered, you're also supposed to have good KYC, etc., AML procedures. Um, and those things are not, and those things people think that's a black and white thing. In reality, it's not. Uh, it's how well you do it. Uh, which systems do you use? What, how do you do this?

How many people do you have? What's your standard operating procedures?

Yeah. Yeah. So, there's actually a lot of details. And then, like, quite a bit above that, in my understanding, is if you have somehow known and facilitated, uh, bad transactions. So you can have a weak AML program, and that didn't catch all the bad players, but you, you don't know that.

Right. So it's not like you're intentionally facilitating that.

It's not robust.

It's not robust.

It's relatively naive, but it's there.

Yeah. Versus this is, I know this to be bad, and I'm enabling it to happen, regardless.

Yeah. Right.

And there's the next level, which you personally handling the transactions.

Right.

Right. So, which is, you know, uh, you know, Charlie, Charlie Shrem handled, uh, transactions for Silk Road, for for Ross, right? So that's how you know. So there's different levels. I don't handle any transactions at all myself. That's just not my thing. I just don't do it. And so they said, "Okay, Binance, number one, we didn't register. KYC ML is weak." So, uh, those are things we can fine, we can agree on that.

Layer one, layer two.

Yeah. So we can agree on that for those single charges, without any other additional stuff. No one ever went to jail in US history, even till today, right? So, uh, and then the government, we couldn't agree on the two additional, the government wants to add two additional charges, they call enhancements, the three and four. The three and four, they said somehow I personally facilitated, but they couldn't provide any evidence. They were trying to lean on the company somehow, something happened in the company, you know, etc. They were trying to use...

Were they able to point to a transaction or some...

No, they wasn't. So these two enhancements, the court outright rejected. But we decided to, we, before I went to the US, we said we agreed that we will argue that in court, right? Um, and also based on, I don't want to get into the sort of privileged conversations, but like the understanding I went, before I went, was no one went to jail. The worst, uh, guy who got punished was Arthur Hayes of BitMEX, he got six months of home confinement for, for BitMEX. And when I look at that case, he had much more direct interactions with clients, whereas I had much less direction. I basically, I don't deal with clients at Binance. I deal with users on Twitter, but not like, you know, the Binance back end kind of thing. So I felt pretty confident that, you know, we should be in a fairly strong position. And that's the best thing forward.

Right. So you're like, "We agree with this. We agree with this. We're going to really debate this in court. Layers three and four. I'm going to come to the US."

Yeah.

"And we're going to hash it out in court."

Yeah.

So you land in America.

Yeah.

You go into the courtroom. You start this process. What happens?

So, yeah, there was quite a lot of details there. Uh, first of all, the first, like, the first day, you go, you go and plea, right? So the plea, the agreement has already like debated...

By the way, sorry. And where you're staying in a hotel?

I was staying in a hotel. Yeah. I was staying in a hotel in downtown Seattle. Um...

Is your family with you?

Or no? My family went to join to... Well, not my, not my, not my kids. Um, but my sister and my mom went to join me. Um, I didn't want my kids to go. Um, they have school and, and then my partner has a business to run. Um, I was already like, no longer running the business.

Yeah.

So I didn't want to drag her away from, from, from, from that. So, um... Yeah. So my sister, my, my, my mom, and my older kids with, with me. And then, um, uh, yeah, so that's, and then I was staying in a hotel. Um, and then the next morning, going to court. Going to court. The first part of the process is the plea, right? The judge asks you, "Do you understand this paragraph, this paragraph, this paragraph?" Just say, "Yes, yes, yes." The, the paragraphs were already like negotiated like out of the wazoo by the multiple, so many lawyers.

Over-lawyered.

Over-lawyered. And you, the, um, so, so, you know, and then you, then the lawyers debate about, you know, the, uh, they didn't, the first case, when I, after the plea, they didn't debate about the charge, they debated about my bail, my bail condition, right? So I got to post bail. Uh, my lawyers argued I should be allowed to go back to the UAE, waiting for the sentence, three months later. The government argued that, um, uh, I may not come back. So they want me to stay in the US. And they said they will not restrict me in my movement in the US, because I don't, I don't, I don't possess any harm to the community. They argued about that. The, the magistrate judge, the first judge, approved me leaving the US to go back to the UAE for three months, which would have been great. And then the, the government appealed that. My lawyer says, like, in his 40 years, he never seen an appeal on a bail condition.

Wow.

And then he said, "Well, this guy is a ton of death, because they will, this will piss off the courts, which will actually be my favor." And guess what? Two weeks later, the court ruled, ruling in the government's favor, and I was kept in the US. So I was kept away from home for three months. When three months came...

That hotel...

I was free to travel in the US. I was like, "Well, I'm stuck in the US, so might as well travel." Uh, I had a sister, my sister has a place in the US. So I was staying with my sister for a bit of the time, and then I was traveling, just, cool, just to try to keep myself cool, chill. All right. Um, and then three months later, the government requests for another three months extension. So now I have to stay in the US for another three months longer, waiting for...

Now, were your kids at this point coming to see you, at least so that they could come see you?

Or no? I did not ask them to come and see me.

So you didn't see them for six months?

Uh, yeah. And, well, actually, I didn't see them for that year. Yeah. For, yeah.

Yeah. So, uh, and then, so the government asked for another three months extension. Then on April 30th, 2024, that's my court date. And then a week before that is when both sides submit their their request. The government requests for 36 months, which is twice the maximum sentencing guideline for the worst-case scenario for me. Right. So the court said, like, "Then this court had never seen a government asking the court to ignore the sentencing guideline."

Did you find that out for the first time sitting there in the court?

No, just a week before the court, because the government had to make the submission. There's a written submission before.

How did you react to that?

Well, not good. Right. So, uh, and then my lawyers also, the, my lawyer told changed before. They said, "Oh, you can probably get home." They said, "Look, the judge most likely is going to split the baby." So, if the government's asking for 36 months, you're asking for probation. The, the government most likely to pick some number in between, right? So I was like, "Okay, that's not good."

Wow.

Yeah. And also, five days before my sentencing, um, on April 25th, Senator Elizabeth Warren went on TV to say to declare war on crypto again. Um, so this is like five days before my sentencing. Um, and she wrote an open letter. She wrote an open letter to the DOJ saying all this stuff. Um, which is actually, most of it is, is not correct. So, uh, yeah. So then that's, and April 30th, I got sentenced. And then the judge, the judge said a bunch of good, really good things about me. I have all the excerpts in the book. But then at some point, the judge says, "But," and then you're like, "Okay, that's not good."

Wow.

Yeah. And then I got forward...

That's how they start the sentencing. They're like, he's telling you all the good things, and then he gets to the "but," and you're like, "Oh my god."

Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. So, uh, the, the lawyers still debate the sentencing on the April 3rd. Is the lawyers debating court about, no, this, or that. That's when the two enhancements got rejected, uh, by the court. Like, my lawyers argued like, "No, this and that. This, I never touched any of the transactions. I'm not aware of these things."

Just layers three and four of the accusations got thrown out.

Yeah. So, um, and then, uh, they argued about, you know, what's, what, what should, what the recommended sentencing should be. My lawyers, of course, argued for either, uh, home, probation, or home confinement at the worst case, right? Um, and then the government argued like, "This guy's a really bad guy, you know, this case is really big." Um, and we should punish him really, really hard with double the punishment of any legally recommended punishment. 36 months. Um, so the judge landed at four.

How did you deal with that?

It was difficult at, at the beginning, right? Um, it wasn't a full month. It was, "Am I going to be safe?"

Yeah.

Right. So, if, if, like, if you tell me like, "I'm going to go to this place for four months. Am I, I'm guaranteed to be safe? I'll be okay. I'll be like, 'Okay, fine. I'll just deal with it.'" But the uncertain part is like, also, right after the sentencing, uh, um, a bunch of the big media wrote that I'm going to be the richest person to ever go to US prison.

Or, and then my lawyers plus prison consultants, they say, "Well, given all the..."

What is a prison consultant?

That's a whole industry of some guy who advises you what prison is like and gives you advice and stuff like that. How to live, how to, yeah. So that's a whole big industry that's growing because of the prison population is growing in the US. So anyway, so the prison consultants like, "Given the high-profile coverage, you are a prime, you're the probably the biggest target for potential extortion in in prison. So your safety is going to be an issue." So that's the thing I was worried about. Then I was like, "So how, how do I deal, like, you know, you go in and they, you don't have anything, right?" Um, how, how do I make sure that I stay safe? Um, uh, that's like the top consideration, right? So you, you're really thinking about how do you do that? So, well, you know, um, you talk to a lot of people. Who, prison consultants are usually like, ex-guards, ex-wardens. There's another group of guys who people who have been to, but those guys are in prison, but they're working there. They're not inmates. There's another group of guys who've been into prison, prison, like, know, they were there for like as an inmate. So you talk to a lot of those guys. Um, and then, uh, you figure out what prison is like. Do you make friends? Do you not make friends? You get advice on like, know, if somebody comes up onto you on the first day, and they're really, really friendly, don't take anything from them because, know, they will ask for 10 times more favor back later on. If you don't, then they stab you and stuff like that. So, um, I got a lot of different advice, but at the end of the day, you just got to go and face it, right? So, um, um, I learned what I learned is actually the US prison system, so vast, 2 million people stay in US prison. The US government spends per more on prison than on education, on schools, right? That's, know, how much, uh, big the US prison population is. And because, and there's 50 states, and everyone, every state has a different system. The state prisons, there's federal prisons, and each one is like a mini city. They each, like, the prison I went in has, has 2200 inmates. It's like a small city. And they each have their own rules, etc. So I got some advice, um, but many of those advice are not really useful. But when you go in, you just got to deal with it. Yeah.

So, you get sentenced on April 30th, you said.

Yeah.

And when do you start?

So, when you get sentenced, you don't know where, we don't know which prison you're going to. The court makes two recommendations. Um, and then, um, uh, usually you will receive a letter in...

But you're, you can be in the hotel or doing whatever, and then you have to check in, basically, on some date, like you have to go.

So, in my case, the judge ruled that I don't need supervision, which is very unique. Um, then I don't have to check in. So I just have to sit, uh, I just have to wait for a letter that comes to my sister's place, which is an address I registered with the court. In fact, the, the government, the DOJ, in their request, they asked me to be, uh, pre-manded, meaning I'll be taken away with handcuffs.

Uh, I think they really wanted that photo for PR reasons, but the judge said, "Look, he's not a risk. He's not a flight risk. He's not a risk to society. I'm not going to do that." In fact, the judge added one sentence that said, uh, "He doesn't, he does not need supervision," which is actually a very interesting legal clause I learned later. So, this is why when I finish my sentence, I don't have probation. I, there's no parole. I don't, I don't need supervision.

Oh, wow.

So, um, uh, so there's some really interesting stuff. Well, interesting stuff that you learned.

How was that period for you? Did anything bad happen, or was it...

Luckily, nothing too bad happened. Uh, it's not, it's a really bad experience overall, but nothing like, no physical harm. Uh, there's no fights, uh, there's no, um, there's no real extortion. What I found, like, so my prison consultants tell me like, "Know, when you go in, don't join any gang, stay to yourself, uh, uh, just, you know, just, just stay to yourself, be quiet, stay out of sight, just..."

The minute I walked into the prison gate, the guard says, "Well, you're going to need some protection here." Um, "I hear the Pacific Islanders are hiring, so you might want to join them." Like, that's like, this is literally like the minute I walked through the gate, one guard was saying this to me.

Wow.

I was like, "What does that mean?" Right. Um, and then, you know, after the whole day, the first day was like, the first day is pretty, like, they take you through so many processes. You strip search. I talked on CNBC, like, you know, they, they strip search you, and then you move to your unit, which is like, you know, 200 inmates there. Um, it's like three rows of cells, 20, 20 cells each facing each other, three floors, and there's a common area in the in the bottom. Um, and there's like 200 macho guys looking at you, and you know, you walk into a cell. And then, um, but what I actually found out is, um, they organize prisons by race. So by ethnicity, uh, they group, uh, so if you are a Chinese dude, they group you with Chinese dudes. And if you're like a white guys, they group you with white guys. Black dudes group with Mexicans, Spanish guys. No, they, they put them in one group. This actually does avoid a lot of conflicts. Um, you are more likely to get along, uh, with people of your own ethnicity, in terms of culture, customs. Like, know, Arab, there was one or two Arab, uh, guys that, you know, they, they pray, they know, they have a different schedule. Um, so, uh, they put you in groups by ethnicity, and the guards actually encourage it because it reduces, uh, fighting.

Oh, wow.

Um, and then once you're in your group, uh, if you have a problem with somebody else in somebody, some other group, there's a group rep, and the rep will talk about it, and you know, there's like a hierarchy. And so, union reps.

Kind of like union reps.

Yeah.

And then they come together and they hash out.

Yeah. They say, "Look, step, stand down. We walked, we walked through it." So, uh, so there's a system to it. But I, I didn't know any of this, right? So I walk in, and then this, um, half-ch, half-Asian looking dude comes to me, says, "Look, my name is Chino. Welcome to our group." He says, "Car, welcome to our car." I was like, "What, should I shake his hand? Should I not? Like, am I joining this gang?" This, like, it's, yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah. And this guy is a Filipino-German mix. There's not enough Asians, so they kind of group anything that's kind of Asian. And they also group the Native Americans, plus, plus Pacific Islanders, like how the Hawaiians into the same group. So our group only has six people out of this 200 people. Um, and I was sent to a low-security prison. I should be eligible for a minimum-security prison, which is one, one level lower, where most of the white-collar crimes go. But because I'm not a US citizen, uh, they put me into a low, which is where all the drug laws are. So...

Wow.

Uh, yeah. So that's a, it's a crazy experience. I have quite a lot, quite a, quite a lot of details about this part in my upcoming book.

What was the first thing you did when you got up?

A good shower. A good meal. Um, the, when you first get, so the shower is like literally like, you know, box this big. This is like a, this is like a cowboy bar door like that covers the middle part. They can see your legs and see, see your head. Um, but it's hard to take a shower without touching the wall. Um, so the, when you get out of prison, the first time, it's like taking a shower. No, you no longer need to touch the shower wall. That's like a luxury. That's a luxury. And also, um, uh, there's very limited fruits, uh, very limited protein, like good, like proper protein. Um, there's a lot of carbs, uh, a lot of like, you know, uh, bread, uh, uh, flowers, fried stuff. Um, very little veggies, very little protein, very little fruits. Um, I haven't seen a whole fruit for like months. When I saw, when I got out and saw like a plate of fruit, I was like, "Wow, that's, that's a luxury I haven't seen for a few months."

Wow.

Yeah.

Did you immediately just go back to the UAE?

Yeah.

Yeah. When I left prison, it took, took me about six, 26 minutes from leaving the, uh, the prison door to getting on the airplane and flying out.

What were you thinking? Were you saying to yourself, "I understand where they were coming from, and I was at least vindicated on the parts that I felt were overreach. I can see where they were coming from with these first two things." Did you say that to yourself, or did you say, "This was a total railroad, and this is completely unfair, and how did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me?" What were you saying to yourself?

I have some restrictions on some on what I can say about the agreement, the plea, etc. So, um, I...

I'm just talking emotionally.

Emotionally, I just want to be, I would just want it to be over with. Um, and remember that when I first got out, this is still the Biden administration. The election has not happened. Um, and, uh, uh, it wasn't clear who's going to win. It wasn't clear the U.S. policy is still the same.

You went in when?

I went in on May 30th, 2024.

And you got out four months later.

Uh, September 27th is the day I fully got out. The election was in November.

Right.

And by the way, sorry, at that point, you had been in America for a year.

For, you hadn't seen your kids in a year.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, at that point, like, I just want this whole thing to be over with. Um, and I thought they will continue. Well, I was thought if they, if the policies continue, then you will still be anti-crypto, uh, policies. Um, we'll just, whatever, we'll just survive however we survive. Um, so, um, yeah, so that, that was kind of the mentality.

So, when you get back, had you come to terms as well with the fact that you couldn't run Binance per se, and that that was part of the plea?

Uh, yeah. So I'm actually okay with that. Uh, stepping down was really, really hard. Um, I actually cried out of it. And the, the only other time I really cried was like, know, when my father passed away a few years ago. Um, but after a few, after coming back, you know, I was actually quite happy not to run Binance. I have a lot more free time. Um, and then if I stepped down myself, people say, "Hey, this, this guy ran out of stamina." But like, now I can't run Binance. So, so it's not my fault. It's not your problem. It's not, it's not my choice.

Right. But after, after a while, I was like, know, there are other, there are other very useful, meaningful things I can do with my life. Uh, I am, I think overall, I'm in a very fortunate position, right? Um, I have resources. Um, I have enough money to do whatever I want to do, in terms of ambling projects and businesses, etc. Including like, know, Google Academy, free education stuff like that.

Yeah. I wanted to talk about that and AI.

Yeah. Yeah.

But before I do that, let's just do a little bit of the final chord here. Tell me about the process to start getting a pardon and getting it, and what you had to do.

Yeah. So the, so on the pardon, I don't think anybody knows what the pardon process is.

It doesn't seem like there's a process.

Like, I don't even know what the process is. So, what the process is, you find a lawyer who writes you a petition, who puts all the arguments why you were, you should be pardoned, why you know, you were overly prosecuted, etc., etc., right? And why you're a good person. And a pardon, what is it for? Is it effectively to recognize overprosecution?

No. Pardon, pardon, er, you raise everything you had, you had before. So you're, you're now a very normal person.

But the reason to be considered for it can be anything.

Can be anything.

It's really just the discretion of the president reading the petition.

I think so. Uh, well, based on my understanding, based on my understanding is, um, uh, the constitution grants the US government or the US president to give pardons, and that's as about, that's about as much detail as it says, I think.

Right. Okay.

Um, and then how he does it.

So it's really about the social norms in that moment, and then how he interprets...

I think so.

...those social norms.

Yeah. And then, you know, historically, most presidents pardon on the last day. Right.

Exactly.

And then Biden, I think, started, uh, pardoning some in between.

And he also did pre-pardons.

Which is, which is, which is a bit new, which is new, and also crazy.

Well, it was very new. Yeah. I was largely around co for for for that, but...

Yeah, that that really caught a lot of people. He, he also pre-pardoned his son for some, for some, for some period.

That's right.

Biden prayed.

It wasn't just the co stuff. That's...

It wasn't just the co stuff. It was like a period where nobody, where a period of time where nobody even talked about.

That's right.

It was like, "Why do we need it to..."

That's right.

But anyway, so the process, I believe, is there's no process. The president can do whatever they want. And then, uh, so you petition, and you wait. And then, uh, there is a pardon SAR in the White House. Uh, I think her name is Alice Johnson. Uh, she also went to prison for many years. She wrote, she, she wrote a really nice book, which I read. Um, but your lawyers, you know, ping her, say they need a status update, they need a status update. And there's no, no. And then suddenly it happened. So, uh, uh, that's kind of my, the, the extent I know about the pardon process. I don't think anybody knows. I don't think that's a fixed process. I don't think anybody knows what that is.

The question that some people can kind of jump to is, they think, "What must CZ have done to try to get it?" Do you want to put that to bed?

Well, I didn't do much. I didn't do anything. And then, but I think, look, um, without the pardon, it's quite hard for Binance to enter the US in a proper way. I think if you...

Because you're the UBO.

I'm the UBO. Yeah. So, uh, and B, I'm the UBO of Binance and Binance US, right?

Without a pardon, Binance, Binance is severely limited to do stuff in the US, right?

Uh, if US wants to become the capital of crypto in the world, you cannot have not, you cannot have the largest player. You cannot not, you cannot have US people not be able to access the largest liquidity pool.

Yeah.

Uh, in crypto. And also, we're the, we're also one of the largest crypto ecosystems. Uh, so I think, uh, my guess would be that, look, the president is a pro-crypto president. Um, you obviously...

He's had his own issues, like the de-banking.

Exactly. Where he's felt what it feels like to be targeted.

Not only de-banking, he got 34 criminal charges.

Yeah. Right. And he got like one of the, I don't know all the other charges, but...

That as well.

When I was in prison, I saw on the prison TV that he got 34 criminal charges. Like, and one of the charges was he brought some document to his bathroom to read.

That's like, that's crazy.

Right. So I think the fact that he went through that, the Biden DOJ will probably help me a lot to get the pardon, because he will sympathize. He, he knows how aggressive that DOJ was, right? So, um, that's, that probably helped me in some way.

So how do you spend your time now?

I'm still getting pretty busy now. So I do Giggle Academy. Um, you know, this free education platform. I consult with many governments on, uh, to help them to putting so sound crypto regulatory policies. Um, I get involved on the investment side. We, we invest in the, um, blockchain, AI, biotech. The very active team, um, doing investments. And then...

This is within Binance, or outside of?

This is outside of Binance. This is a part of EZ Labs. And then I also help, like, mentor, coach a few guys in the, a few founders in the BNB Chain ecosystem, etc. So between all of those things, I'm actually pretty busy.

Tell me about Giggle Academy.

So I thought, no, it's possible to, uh, develop fully digitize all education content. And why is that important?

There's some numbers. I think 700 to 800 million adults do not are illiterate. Two-thirds of them are women. And on top of that, there's about 500 million kids who are not in school. So if you add all of that up, that's like 1.2 billion people.

Yeah.

Uh, who are not educated. Uh, and this...

12, 12, 13% of the world population.

Yeah. And, uh, these are all in really poor areas. Uh, they, there's just no schools around, or they just couldn't afford to go to school. Um, and the schools are not very good today either. Um, the schools are like, you know, they, the schools average you out.

Yeah. No, you, um, you have a classroom and...

How is the software designed?

So it's just an app on a phone, uh, on a phone or tablet. It's just an app. Um, I believe that we have enough technology with, you know, gaming, understanding of human psychology, with AI, a single app can deliver all the education content you need, and we can do that for free.

Have you looked at versions of this, like Alpha School, and do you have any opinions on that?

Yes. Yes. I think Alpha School is great. Um, Alpha School is really, really good. Um, uh, but, you know, it's high cost.

High cost.

Right. So, uh, uh, it's more, I think, um...

I think Joe's software is called Time Back. I think that's what it's called.

Yeah.

Have you had a chance to see?

I have not played with a, with a lot. Uh, I did meet some of the founders there and some of the key executives there. Um, uh, they target a, they solve a very hard problem of making, making the existing education better, where I solve the other end of the problem, making the education accessible.

Right.

Uh, hopefully better later too.

And so your goal would be that this is widely proliferated. Are there schools in your view of how Giggle works? Or...

No, I actually don't want to do schools. Uh, I, I want everyone to learn from one app.

The software is very reward-oriented.

Yeah.

Badges.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just going to ask the obvious question.

When I looked at it, I was like, "Well..."

Badges is like a trail of breadcrumbs to like...

Tokenize and earn and payments. Am I just making this up, or?

No. Uh, so I thought really hard about this. Um, but I res, I will for a very long time resist issuing a token on the Giggle Academy. This has pros and cons. When you issue a token, you can do the rewards. You can earn, uh, learn to earn.

Learn to earn. Exactly.

You can do a bunch of stuff. You can do, you can incentivize teachers. You can create content.

Yeah.

Um, that's good. Um, but the, uh, for me, I want to avoid the token because of me.

Right. Because if I do a token, everyone wants to buy the token, and everyone on the platform.

People want to speculate on the token.

People want to speculate on the token. People, then I won't be able to tell if people are they real kids learning, or they just farmers that are trying to farm the token. Yeah.

Um, I want to rem, uh, if I issue a tok, if Giggle issues a token, everyone's going to...

I have to be honest. I think Giggle sounds really incredible, but that was where my reptilian brain went was the...

Everyone thinks about that obvious thing, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Um, but I want the Giggle, I want to be a real free education platform instead of a token platform, instead of some crypto thing.

Right. So, if, if there's a token, then people is going to focus on the token.

So your goal is that you'll just deficit finance this and just continue to kind of proliferate this.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was my goal. But what happened is, um, there's a community project that donates, um, donated like $12 million based on...

$12 million.

$12 million US based on memecoin. Um, and this is not some, like, and I've only spent like maybe three, $4 million on the entire project so far.

Yeah.

So now, you know, it's actually net, like, you know, it's hard to give money away.

Yeah.

So, it's hard to give money away with positive impact.

With positive impact, it's very, very difficult. So, uh, yeah. So my plan is, I will fund it for as long as it needs to reach that goal of a fully, um, fully digitized delivery of education in a gamified, sticky way.

Let me ask an AI question for a second.

Yeah.

You said that AI is this third pillar of your life. You see these big waves, right?

Yep.

One of the most interesting things about AI is that when you basically get one level below the English, and you start to look at the embeddings, and the layer of embeddings,

What you start to see is that it's this machine-readable language. It's not English.

Yeah.

And there's a richness of information there. It's perfect for agents.

It can traverse it. You can cipher query it. You can do all this stuff that allows you to make really incredible leaps in productivity and otherwise.

Yeah. It stands to reason that agents are also participants of commerce and need payments. And, you know, and I think you've said this is like probably the largest user of crypto at some point in the near future. Describe that vision for us.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's fairly straightforward. I think as you said, right? I think it's very clear soon we're going to, each of us is going to have like, know, hundreds or thousands or millions of agents working for us in the background, and they will be transacting. They will be, they will be moving money around, right? So, in theory, if I want to listen to this podcast, you know, your people should pay a few cents to to listen to it. Um, whatever economic model that you want.

More than that, CZ.

Sure. Of course. Sure. But there was some economic model, right? Uh, right now, you know, even last year, we talked about agents buying tickets for us. It's not quite there yet, but you will get there, right? Uh, they will book restaurants. They'll pay, they'll pay for hotels for us. Um, and then, um, uh, the agents can transact a million times more than us.

Yeah.

And they're not going to use banks. Uh, banks just won't be able to...

Well, banks won't onboard and AML KYC an agent. Doesn't even make sense.

You can't do a KYC. They...

It doesn't make any sense.

Right. So, uh...

But also, what agents will do is they'll transact at a transaction volume and at a rate.

Yeah.

It'll make the traditional networks' heads spin.

Exactly. They're just not going to be able to support it.

Yeah.

Right. And also, um, even stuff like investments or trading, right? So today, you know, you open the Binance app, you look at a chart, you have to like, you know, click on a price level, and you have to type in the price and a green or red button. That shouldn't be the interface. The interface should be like, "Hey, look, convert 10% of my stable coins into BNB." And then you'll figure out, okay, if you have a large position, you'll do it slowly over time. If you have a small position, which what be one, one market order. Um, all of that stuff should be just happening in the background. All right. So, the agent can do this for us. Uh, you soon you will be able to.

What is the most viable payment system today that agents could rely on?

I'm actually not too sure. Uh, I don't think there is any one that's super...

That crypto project today do you think comes...

Oh, you mean crypto?

Yeah.

That agents could use theoretically.

Again, it's early days. I don't want to speculate. I don't want to name any specific projects. Um, it'll cause some token price fluctuations. Um, but quite a number of people are working on it. Uh, so especially recently with a more like an AI agent social network thing. So it's getting more and more hype.

Yeah. Um, and, uh, yeah. So I think you, you'll get there.

Let me ask you about crypto in general for a second. What is the role when you see a lot of stuff around free speech? What is the role of privacy in crypto? One of the things that I struggle with. If you ask me, "Am I a Bitcoin maximalist?" I would say no. Even though I was early, I think my biggest issue with it is that there's a lack of fungibility, which I think is problematic to get to mega scale, and then there's a lack of privacy.

I agree. It's probably the biggest thing that will hold Bitcoin back from being ubiquitous.

Where does privacy play as the world evolves, as you see it?

I think privacy plays a very fundamental role in our society. But right now, as you said, I also think that, uh, Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies do not have enough privacy features.

Yeah. Um, I think when Bitcoin was designed, it was going to be pseudo-anonymous, but the fact is, every transaction on the blockchain, you can trace, especially now you have a centralized exchange with KYC.

Exactly.

Um, and, you know, if you have like, it's actually very easy...

And by the way, we go always back to the same argument, which is, it always goes back to the corner case of, "Well, somebody's using this for something illicit." And...

I say there are those use cases, but the overwhelming majority is you buy a pack of gum, but tomorrow you may buy, you know, you may want to buy a certain movie or a video game, you may want to buy cigarettes. And it's not for me to judge.

Yeah. And dollars are funible in that sense. There's complete anonymity. We have no idea about what it was used before that I got my hands on it.

Yeah. Well, there there actually real applications where privacy is extremely important. Uh if you book a certain hotel and people know that hotel address like blockchain hotel address receiving address they will know that you will be in that hotel. That's right. That's a that's a physical security for for you. That's right.

Right. So there there are real use cases where privacy is very important. This is why people don't publicize their home addresses online.

That's right.

In many countries if you if you reveal somebody in Japan if you re review somebody's home address that's illegal, right? So uh um so there they're they're real there are real use cases for privacy and which Bitcoin uh most cryptocurrencies currently do not provide.

Yeah.

Um there's a counter argument okay law enforcement wanted to track down bad guys that can be done uh even with no that can be done. Um we I'm supportive of that but there's fundamental privacy issues. So uh I do think that in the future we uh as an industry need to figure out how to uh evolve the privacy features which no one no one's really focusing on right now. There's a few privacy focus of coins. I I was going to say no one. Um but they are they don't have much market cap. They don't they don't have much size.

Right.

Yeah. Tell me about the book. It's coming along. It's a it's a it's a it's it's a always a longer project than I anticipate.

Right. What was the point of it? Was it is like catharsis or is it to make a point? Is it to tell the story?

All of those things?

A bit of everything. It started because I was bored. Uh because I was I started drafting when I was in prison. It was just to get keep me busy uh because I don't want to deal with you know I don't want to be chatting with it just keep me busy in in prison. So I started drafting it and typing on on a very dumb terminal and sending it to my assistant. Um and then once I got out I was like well I have enough that if I spend a bit more time on it I can have a book. And then um uh but but editing a book takes so long. Uh every every every pass takes like two three weeks if you want to edit a book because like know right now it's like uh 95,000 words so it's like 300 pages um and then um I'm also editing the English and Chinese version so uh uh so it just takes longer but the point of the book right now I think is just to get the story out I think there's many misconceptions about who I am uh what we what I went through

what are those misconceptions do you think

well there's a lot of negative media about crypto there's a lot of negative media about uh um uh CZ, Binance, um the entire industry and to some extent I think there's a lot of negative media about Trump the party etc. I that part is not too heavy in my book. I just know this is as simple as we we talked about on this podcast but just for people to understand like you know who we who I am uh who B to some extent by extension who Binance kind of is from my perspective.

Is it important story for your children?

I think so. Yes. Yeah.

Why?

Um I think it's important for them to un like no they see they of course are more on my side. They know all this media uh not the right stuff. Uh but they haven't I didn't have time to explain the story to them in this level of detail and I think it's important for them to read this and they will understand a lot more detail than what I what I'm able to tell them verbally or in person etc. Uh even though the book doesn't contain everything but it's as much as I can put in.

What do you want for your kids?

I want them to live a healthy and happy life however they define it. Uh if they're happy just being a normal person then that's good for me. Uh if they want to do startups and you know build companies and that's great. Um if if they want to be artistic etc that's great. If they want to do human humanitarian efforts charity that's also great. Um whatever they figure out what they want to do I just want to be there to support them. Um uh yeah that's how similar or different is that from what you got from your parents?

pretty similar. My my parents didn't have pressure to on me. Uh my pre my parents didn't pressure me to be this and that. Like they didn't they're not even like normal Chinese parents where they want you to be a doctor or engineer or

lawyer, engineer,

lawyer. Those that was my parents. Yeah. Okay.

My parents didn't do that with me. My parents like you can do whatever you want. Just my parents said to me like

very unche very unche u my parents said don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt other people. Right. So don't do drugs. Uh don't get into like you know don't don't get into crime. Um, and then don't hurt other people. Uh, so that's as simple as like as I got from my parents. And uh, yeah, I think there's a lot of people that probably hear this and they'll probably think that, and I think this is a real compliment, by the way, so don't take this wrong when I say this this way. That could have been me, too.

Yeah. I think that we glorify success in a way that makes it seem like it's impregnable. It's like this very quicksotic thing that happens and it's not that.

No.

Yeah.

And the reason why I can say that is that when I spend time with you and I'm sure now with the people, you know, rounding two hours with you,

they'll think, man, this guy is really normal.

It's a nor I'm a normal dude.

Exactly. A lot of people say that like,

you know,

to me as well in this weird way, it's like you're just a normal guy. And it's like there's something really valuable about working on things that you like because then the time just passes.

Yeah.

And you kind of just put your head up and you're like, "Wow, okay, there's something new to try. Let's go try that. Let's go learn something." I want to give you a chance to speak to all these people who are probably thinking to themselves, "Wow, that could be me."

Absolutely. I think um number one, I'm a normal dude. Uh I don't I don't think I know I'm not super smart. Uh but you don't need to be super smart to to be successful. You can't be too dumb, but you can't be you don't need to be super smart. There's a lot of other things like you know principles, values, uh emotional quotient, a lot of those those things come into play. I think um there's a lot a lot of luck as well. Um but I think for most people um you are in a situation where you are you usually cannot change the situation. So what you can only do is change yourself, right? So if you just push yourself a little bit every day, you don't have to push yourself too hard. You too you push yourself too hard, you're gonna burn out and you're not going to last long. But you want to push yourself to like 120% 110 130 somewhere in that range where however you can last long.

Yeah.

And if you do that for like 30 years and you get lucky, you will most likely be relatively successful. You might not be a you might not be a billionaire, but you'll you you'll have a very comfortable life.

Do you think that it's important to maybe dispel the myth that being a billionaire is not everything it's cracked up to be?

Oh yeah, absolutely. U money is money. So in in our life there's a few if I kind of picture spiderweb graph right money is only one tangent.

Yeah.

Right. So once you have enough having

one thread

it's one thread. Having more doesn't help you. Uh in fact there's health there's family um there's other things that can keep you happy like your values uh contribution positive impact like that's intrinsic internal rewards that you feel very happy about. Um a lot of those things are extremely important. So once you have enough money on this graph you don't more doesn't make you happy. Sometimes you have more, sometimes you have less. Um, then how's your health? Also, like there's another dime, time. How much time do you have? Can you use your time the way you want? Can you are you working on the stuff you you want? Are you spending with the people that you you want to spend with?

Yeah.

Um, and are your family healthy? Uh, you'll be you were very lucky if your family is all healthy. Like that's that's already a huge gift.

Um, so uh and then your mental health is also important. How to deal with pressure etc. I somehow am very lucky to have a very sort of stable uh mind. So I think all of those things are extremely important and all of those things you can improve on uh instead of just money. A lot of people only chase money but sacrifice everything else. They work really really hard. They don't have free time. They are not spending time with their family. Their health deteriorates after 10 20 years.

They don't enjoy the time that they're spending on these things even to get the thing that they have so much of that they don't need.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is also the this is also the part like you know I'm actually very grateful that I don't have to run Binance anymore now I have more time.

Yeah. Whereas before like even though that was very enjoyable but on my other questions I was not doing well.

Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah.

CZ thanks for joining the online podcast.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm going all in.