← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
How Binance Became A Crypto Empire – Richard Teng On The Rise To 250M+ Users
00:47:02
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- [00:00]
Scott
What are the plans for Binance coming back to the United States as an industry?
- [00:04]
Richard Tang
I think we need to come together much more closely while we compete. This is a competitive advantage for us, and we are able to invest heavily on this front, which many other platforms are not able to. We are privileged and blessed in that sense. And I think the more they are educated, the more they embrace this space.
- [00:25]
Scott
I'm not sure there's a more challenging job in the world than running the largest exchange in the most heavily scrutinized industry in the world. Richard Tang is the CEO of Binance. Obviously, Binance had their problems with regulators in the past, which have now been put in the rearview mirror. But running an exchange that's so heavily scrutinized in an industry that everybody is watching has to be one of the most stressful jobs in the world. Richard Nye sat down in an incredible conversation and talked about all of those challenges, what the future looks like for Binance and the crypto industry in general, the endless tension between building a centralized and decentralized platform and the promise of crypto in general. You don't want to miss this incredible conversation with the incredible leader of Binance.
- [01:14]
Richard Tang
That's dope.
- [01:28]
Scott
I think it was in my last conversation that I had with cz, he made one of the funniest comments that I've ever heard in a podcast. He said, scott, I cut my own hair because I don't have time to get haircuts. I'm way too busy. There's too much to do, so I just cut my own hair. Do you find that you're so busy that you literally have to cut your own hair as well? I mean, his Life is the CEO of Binance 24 7, 365.
- [01:54]
Richard Tang
No, I don't have to. CZ is into really saving on a lot of these things, right? I find myself, I able to do some of these basic stuff. I still go to my regular hair barber to cut my hair. But I must say, we have a very, very strong team now. I've been blessed. CZ left me. CZ has built a fantastic organization, fantastic enterprise, and we have added to that bench strength since then in terms of leadership, in terms of the number of staff we have. So I must say, by today, it's not only myself, but I have a great leadership team. I have many committed staff around the world. We added our staff strength. As you can see, crypto continues to grow. So by now we have slightly more than 6,000 people. As we continue to drive the agenda on the crypto front. So I don't have that.
- [02:46]
Scott
Your hair looks great. If you did cut it yourself, I'd be incredibly impressed.
- [02:51]
Richard Tang
No, I don't. I don't.
- [02:54]
Scott
So you could argue. Listen, you're the CEO of the largest exchange in crypto, doing the most volume. It's probably the most heavily scrutinized exchange in the most heavily scrutinized industry in the world. Maybe there have to be some unique challenges that come with stepping into that role and with running Binance, and those are probably ever changing considering the regulatory and legislative environment in every single jurisdiction where you do business. I mean, how do you approach those challenges? Is it really by having a great team?
- [03:26]
Richard Tang
Absolutely. So I think it's not only in crypto. I mean, if you are the largest boy in any industry, you'll be subject to a lot of scrutiny. Right. So the competitors will be scrutinizing you, the users will be looking at you doing the right thing. The regulators will check to see whether you have all the safeguards and checks and securities in place.
- [03:45]
Scott
Right.
- [03:46]
Richard Tang
So it happens, especially in crypto, where it has been misunderstood for the longest period of time. I think now, especially in the US Went from Operation Choke Point to now trying to embrace crypto. So I think the landscape has changed, but then certain things do not change. So if you look at many of the people that may be much older, they have less understanding. Traditional regulators don't understand this space so well, so that's still misgiving. So a lot of it has to go into education to highlight to them the opportunities what this industry represents. And how do you make use of the technology that's associated with blockchain to do a lot of tracing to counter things like terrorism, counter money laundering, which this industry is able to do much better compared to traditional finance, for things like proof of reserve that we introduce for our clients, things like banks as securities firms, they're not able to do any of those. So a lot of it goes into education. By now, Binance is the most regulated exchange globally. We are regulated in 21 different jurisdictions. So I think it comes with the turf. So we're up to it. The user number continues to grow quite sharply. We started 2024 with 170 million users, ended the year with 240 million users. Today, we stand at close to 264 million users. So the crypto agenda, the crypto adoption will continue to increase very rapidly going forward.
- [05:19]
Scott
You have 264 million users. Would you say that the majority of them are trading, or would you say that the majority of those 264 million users are actually using it to send each other small stablecoin transactions, effectively as a wallet in the way that people envisioned crypto to be used in the first place.
- [05:39]
Richard Tang
Well, we have a spectrum. I mean being so many users, we have a spectrum of users that use the platform for different reasons. So you have what we call the active traders, people that trade very actively. And we have different tiers of users on that front, from the institutional investors to your huge trader, to your hedge funds, to the family officers and so on. But then you also have people that are very retail, especially in developing and frontier market, that make use of it for payments, for cross border remittance, solving a lot of pain points. I mean, they are not part of the financial system. In many of those countries, financial inclusion is extremely low, between 10 and 20%. So meaning 80% of people have no access to financial system. So the only way that all those pain points can be solved is via crypto. So you mentioned crypto payment. Indeed. That's one of the key areas that we see a lot of growth. We introduced binance pay in 2022 and in the last two years we did 27 billion in volume. And you know, the fees in this space is so, so tiny. It's minuscule compared to traditional finance. So by our estimate, we save our users at least 1.75 billion in terms of fees compared to what traditional financial institutions charge for that front.
- [06:59]
Scott
That's an astounding number. It's really just 264 million customers. That just blows my mind. Now you mentioned operation Chokepoint 2.0 earlier, which has been a main focus for the entire crypto industry, obviously specifically in the United States. I was a Binance US customer and I experienced, I think, all of the ups and downs that came with that when banking relationships were removed. So Binance as a business in the United States, which was a separate business, dealt with that. We all dealt with it as customers. Now, with this new regulatory environment and Operation Choke 1.2.0 likely coming to an end, even by executive order, apparently, potentially. What are the plans for Binance coming back to the United States?
- [07:48]
Richard Tang
At this point in time, we are focusing on our global deployment. So you have no plans? As you know, President Trump has assembled very thoughtful leaders, very thoughtful administrators into the respective agencies. And I think they are putting the sharpest mind together to consider what the regulatory landscape will look like in the United States. So we are taking a watching brief of what's going to develop in the US and determining whether at some point in time in the future, it makes sense for us to redeploy in the US but we have not cost bridge, we have not considered that issue. We are really focusing on global deployment and we have so many passionate users globally that we are aiming to serve to the best of our ability.
- [08:29]
Scott
If Binance comes back to the United States with a large push, would it structurally be the same as it was done before as a separate business, effectively under the umbrella or now in this regulatory environment, is it possible that US users could get the full breadth of Binance services? I know maybe not all of the assets, but could it basically just be another jurisdiction as a part of Binance International?
- [08:56]
Richard Tang
Well, it's too premature to speculate. I don't have a crystal ball to look at how and firstly whether we will deploy because there's really Binance US that's really restarting their journey in the US And I see there are different things that they're trying to push now. Binance US is a totally different company, has a different set of shareholders compared to dot com and different board of directors, different CEO. So I can't speak for them. They are best placed to speak for themselves on that front. But on our own, I think we are just taking a watching brief. It's too premature to speculate what the future will look like.
- [09:31]
Scott
You could probably argue that at this point, after all of the issues that Binance had previously with regulators in the United States and with the United States system in general, that you're the most heavily scrutinized company on the planet. I would imagine that you're being watched very, very closely. Would you say that any potential regulatory issues are behind you now and that Binance really has gotten a bit of a fresh start?
- [09:56]
Richard Tang
Well, I think if you think about it right, so the resolution that we enter into in November 2023, allow us to firstly acknowledge the past mistakes we have made. I think financial institutions make mistakes all the time. What is more important, we are not the first one, we will not be the last.
- [10:16]
Scott
Right? I always love to look at JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and how many fines they've paid and how many things.
- [10:24]
Richard Tang
In their history is humongous amount we will continue to trip over despite the best of intention as financial institutions globally. But what is important is acknowledging the past missteps and mistakes to repair and make. Continue to invest, continue to learn and become much better, which we have done so on the compliance front compared to the past we have invested so heavily. I would say that by now we have the largest compliance team within the crypto space and we continue to invest very heavily into that. I firmly believe that given the direction of travel now, where there's going to be much greater regulatory clarity on compliance, this is a competitive advantage for us and we are able to invest heavily on this front, which many other platforms are not able to. We are privileged and blessed on that sense and I have every intention to make this a competitive advantage for ourselves. So there will be historical issues which I think by and large we have tried to resolve. And given that the landscape is evolving so quickly, there are always new rules and regulations coming out, but we will continue to invest very heavily into compliance space like other financial institutions, and comply with evolving regulatory standards that come true.
- [11:41]
Scott
With all that in mind, let's say in a vacuum, let's suspend reality. If you were starting an exchange today, if Binance didn't exist and you were starting Binance fresh today, in this current environment, what would you do? What would be the core model? How would you come to market? In this current environment, I would say.
- [12:04]
Richard Tang
I wouldn't do anything very differently. So if I can bring you back to 2017, when CZ started the firm, and kudos to him for having the foresight. Binance was not the first crypto exchange. There are many crypto exchanges set up before Binance. But I think the mission statement for Binance and what we aim to do is being very user focused, putting users at the heart of every decision that we make. Even until today, every key decision that we make is placing users at the heart of all those key decisions. And the landscape in 2017 is totally different from the landscape today. 2017 crypto adoption is less than 1%. Global rules and regulations was very unclear. Most of the regulators were just ignoring this space, thinking it's a passing fad. They are not investing resources to try to regulate this space. Institutions just say, look, this will go away. There's just a bit of hype and it will go away. So nobody is investing any time, energy and resources. And within a very short span of time, CZ and the founding team was able to build this very quickly and within half a year became the largest crypto platform. And we have remained in that position since then due to a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment and really doing right with users on that front. So making sure that users are protected, we protect users interest, we have very, very stringent listing standards, as you know, on that front. So it's placing users at the heart of everything we do. So will we do anything very differently? Despite the change in landscape, not really, because even today institutions are adopting this space, but regulators are still warming up to it. Only one third of global regulators have framework to regulate this space. Two thirds still do not have. So the only big difference is there are a lot more clarity today. So in the past we have underinvested in compliance. Today we invest very heavily in compliance. So that's the way to go. So other than that element, the rest of the elements I think remains by and large the same.
- [14:17]
Scott
You're in a unique position where you benefit financially, obviously from centralized control, but you also advocate for decentralization. You've built your own chain, you built Dexs. So maybe this is part of that same question about if you were starting today. But how do you internally reconcile this sort of tension between running a highly profitable centralized exchange, but also pushing the narrative of decentralization and building in decentralization? And that's obviously a narrative that's so important to crypto native people.
- [14:49]
Richard Tang
Yeah. So as you know, how crypto took off is really retail embracement. So this asset class is unlike any other asset class. Other asset class, if you look at history of the world is always embraced and adopted by institutions, then your high net worth individual and slowly it goes down to retail. This place was embraced by retail for the longest time. And the key fundamental reason is decentralization. What we try to do as a centralized exchange is, is trying to make sure that we embrace the ethos of trying to give as much as possible to users on that front by having the convenience of a centralized exchange. So if you look at a decentralized world, if something goes wrong, you normally have nobody to contact on that front. And it is going to be very stressful, especially for novice, even for very sophisticated users. So centralized platform allow us to really serve our users much better. You also allow the regulators to regulate us. Imagine even today only one third of regulators are regulating centralized platform. If it comes to a really decentralized platform, the regulators are going to have a huge headache trying to regulate that space. So it's trying to marry the best of both worlds, but not forgetting the roots of why the retail in the first instance embraced this space. But with more and more institutions coming through, this space will continue to evolve. It may go via a two track space, institutions on one side developing and adopting different aspects of it, different spectrum of it. And the retail, the crypto native, the degens embracing another spectrum of may go through two tracks in the future. So we have to see how those development pan out and deploy accordingly.
- [16:45]
Scott
Have you seen any evolution? I mean, you can look at the metrics, obviously, and the data, or any evidence that people are becoming more interested in the decentralized side, maybe less on the centralized side. And then I guess as a corollary to that, do you think that these institutions who are coming in and largely probably using the centralized side will eventually start to participate and trust, defi, you know, be obviously interested in earning those yields and smart contracts? How do you see this evolving in the future?
- [17:19]
Richard Tang
My personal view is it will go two tracks. I may be wrong on that front, so I'll caveat on that. But if you look at both centralized and decentralized, they have been growing, but decentralized compared to 2024, 2023 have grown at a much sharper rate because it's coming from a lower base. So it's growing at a much sharper rate compared to centralized space, as more and more people get much more savvy and become much more knowledgeable. Decentralized space offer them certain flexibility and freedom which the centralized space may or may not accord. But centralized space do have certain protections, security, etc. Etc. Which decentralized space may not have as well. So both have benefits. If you look at institutions, I think institutions mainly are centralized animals. Will they move towards a decentralized space at this point in time? My thesis is no, because they are not brought up that way. Their thinking is totally different. They need a counterparty, otherwise they can't access that bridge. So Even today, in 2024, the institutional wave came through because of the approval of ETFs, firstly in the US and then subsequently around the world. And then BlackRock, Fidelity, Child Swap and the rest started to say, hey, I have a crypto agenda, I want to embrace crypto. They went from crypto skeptic to crypto believer and supporter. But even then, the rest of the institutions and corporates have taken an extremely long period of time to do their due diligence, to be onboarded. So typical financial institutions normally go through at least six to nine months of due diligence before they get comfortable to venture into something new like crypto, something much longer. So if you want to move that, they are still taking their time and many of them are still not embracing it. So it's going to be a long journey. If you want to move from that to a decentralized space I think is very difficult. So I believe the institutions, the family office, the funds, the endowments, the trust will stay in a centralized space. I don't see them venturing that far into the decentralized space.
- [19:42]
Scott
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. One of the big narratives though obviously in crypto from the institutional side, you mentioned Blackrock tokenization. Right. They've obviously tokenized hundreds of millions of dollars, I think billions now actually in Treasuries for example, we're seeing that market of real world asset tokenization explode. Is that an area that you think institutions could participate more heavily in and how is Binance positioning for that if that's going to be the case?
- [20:11]
Richard Tang
Well, again, there's an area that we hold watching brief as a team. Tokenization. RWA has been around for many years, right? 7, 8. Actually I was involved in a RWA platform where I was the chairman of before I joined Binance. It didn't quite take off. Right. So as with many RWI platforms, they tell you if you think about origination, there's business to be done on the origination part and it's very good in terms of settlement and clearing. Right. So it solves pain points on the settlement clearing front. But it doesn't, I mean my view, it doesn't solve a lot of pain points in terms of injecting liquidity, having trading around those products.
- [20:51]
Scott
Right.
- [20:51]
Richard Tang
So different people have different theses. Right. So the way I look at it, there are some good use cases. Treasury is one good use case I see for tokenization because compared to what you get in terms of savings and current account, if you get less than 1% today, if you buy into a tokenized treasury, you can immediately unlock the upside on that front. A lot of retail can participate in that space and you can see the value unlock. But for many other asset class, I don't see that value unlocked in such an instantaneous matter and I don't see that much new liquidity being brought into those products. I have my reservations, but we are watching that space. Having said that, RWA in terms of TBL has continued to increase. I think more institutions are embracing it. But I think the key value proposition lies in clearing and settlement compared to the past. If you look at it and say it's so simple instead of T +2 and you have to do reconciliation, you may run into problems with books, etc. It's instantaneous, it's on blockchain, it's immutable, it's trustless. So there's beauty of all those things. So on a middle and back office space, I can totally agree with that. But it's more trading and settlement problems that he's solving.
- [22:16]
Scott
Now I have mixed views on it as well. I remember when it was such big news that they were going from T2 to T plus one after all these decades. But you look at crypto and it's T minus 00 seconds, you and I can settle. But the flip side of that is that people want the accountability, as you said, and also to go to crypto. Rails would basically eliminate the largest companies in the world as incumbents. And I don't think that they're going to just go away quietly.
- [22:47]
Richard Tang
Absolutely. So there are a lot of administrators out there making huge money in that space. Right? So going back to your point, people are used to a certain way of doing things, so I can see the value of it. But it really depends on the use case you're talking about.
- [23:02]
Scott
I agree with that. So mentioned. Obviously institutions preferring the centralized side, obviously more trust and accountability, but there's risk there too. Right. And it's hard to have a conversation without mentioning the recent bybit hack. Right? $1.5 billion in Ethereum effectively stolen from Bybit largely because of the wallet provider security system that they were using. Not necessarily their own incompetence as many have said, but it's a pretty big eye opener. When $1.5 billion is removed from an exchange in a matter of hours. I have to imagine that you're always being targeted, right? Any, any large fiduciary, any large financial institution always being targeted, government agencies always being targeted. And that the hackers probably are seemingly one step ahead because you have to react. So how do you deal with security at that level? How do you make sure there's systems in place when you don't even know what the next attack vector could be?
- [24:09]
Richard Tang
So this is an area that we invested hundreds of millions of dollars into. Again, this is an area that in many of my conversations with regulators globally, I said you look at money laundering, you look at terrorism financing, etc. You look at transaction monitoring. But an area that most regulators under invested their time to understand is the area of security. Because customers money get compromised, funds get compromised and how do you make sure that customers are protected? Is really making sure that you invest heavily in this space to safeguard the platform. And you mentioned, you say it so well. So this space is evolving cyber threats. The hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated, so must our defenses. So we have to continue to step up. The BYBIT episode in many sense is a phishing attack on the UI system user interface, but it's not new. So if you look at past episodes, what happened to WazRx? I think it's quite similar to what has happened to bybit. And this underscores the importance of securing all aspects of the exchange infrastructure, including user interface, to protect against such very sophisticated threat. So, so it's a wake up call for the industry to really implement multi layer security, to have real time threat detection, to have robust risk mitigation strategy. On our side from very, very early on, we highlight, we know this threat. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars. We have set aside what we call a SAFU fund, safe asset for user fund that now stands north of US$1 billion. So it's on public blockchain, people can check on that. We have pushed out proof of reserve. Again, this is something that blockchain can afford to highlight to our users. The assets are held on a one to one basis. We are the first major exchange to adopt that. And this is our commitment to transparency. And we need to continue to focus heavily in terms of security spending. We have very high standards, including vendor onboarding, making sure that we screen them thoroughly in terms of the security front before we allow any new vendors to be onboarded. And so this is an area that we all have to play our part. Not only, I mean we are blessed as a big platform, we can invest very heavily on that front to save your assets. But other industry players, the medium size, the smaller players, could be much more vulnerable and they need to invest a lot more into that space.
- [26:46]
Scott
Do you think that much like the stock exchanges in the United States, that eventually custody in crypto will be largely separated from exchanges? Obviously in crypto we have this unique scenario where basically Binance or another exchange can offer every single service right in the US generally and other jurisdictions, obviously they'll force that sort of separation between, between them. So do you think that there's a world where Binance, for example, has to custody with some other entity that's unrelated to Binance to keep that separation?
- [27:23]
Richard Tang
2 comments on that front. Right. So if you look at the Western hemisphere, the clearing, the custody could be separated from the exchange. But if you look at the Eastern hemisphere, so most of the Eastern world, even in securities exchange normally is vertically integrated. So the exchange, the settlement, the custody, the clearinghouse are all integrated together, owned by one party. So again, there's a difference between Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere. So in the traditional security space, because I used to come from that space, so I can explain that to you. But if you look at crypto, it's very different. Added to that complexity, there are vulnerabilities every time you use external vendor you don't control it so well, you could bring in new vulnerabilities onto the platform. I mean, if everything is within our control, we invest, we build a lot of our own system, we control end to end. Right. We take responsibility for that. Right. But once you put, once you have a different party, it could have quite adverse result. Some jurisdiction actually falls upon external custody and it doesn't prevent all this hacking episode. Wazirx, which was hacked for 200 over a million, has an external custodian and it's hacked. Right. So it doesn't prevent it. So a lot of regulators, when we speak to them initially have to, I mean, because they apply a very treadfined mentality to say, hey, I need you to do it on an external basis. And when we show them what we have compared to what is out there in terms of what you're able to put procure and highlight the amount that we invested into this space and the amount they have invested in that space to try to protect supposedly the assets of all the crypto exchange they understand. Oh, okay. You're talking about very, very different things, right?
- [29:12]
Scott
Yeah. I guess moving money between the custodian and exchange, if it was a third party, would be probably one of the most obvious attack vectors.
- [29:20]
Richard Tang
Absolutely. And that's a bigger single point of failure. If you have external custodian custodizing for more than one exchange, that is a single point of failure because more than one exchange could get into problem if they go into trouble and they don't invest as much into those things that we have invested into and we take responsibility for everything. When you have more than one party, you start pointing fingers who is responsible. It gets a bit messy. There are intricacies in crypto that regulators needs to understand and be educated on.
- [29:56]
Scott
So you're interested in rwa, but not necessarily as a focus right now. We talked about coming back into the U.S. not necessarily a focus right now. Let's talk about the future. As Binance continues to build and compete, what is the focus moving forward? What are the things that you're most excited about? What is Binance trying to build to get ahead of whatever the next trends might be in crypto?
- [30:21]
Richard Tang
We continue to focus on our users. We are here today only because the users trust and confidence. I mentioned this just now. We place our users at the forefront of every decision that we make trying to build the best, most resilient, most robust, most secure platform for users in terms of product feature. We will continue to enhance what we have, be it in terms of Web3 wallet, we do receive good feedback and inputs as well as criticism from time to time from our very passionate users, including on our listing strategy, which we are looking at, etc. Etc. So everything that relates to users we continue to look at, where we continue to push forth with new features and product. Last year we came up with Web3 wallet. We did enhancement to that. We launched things like Mega Drop, Binance Alpha. So as and when we have new things, we will launch them. And we are working on quite a number of new things. So as and when we are ready, we will launch them. So I think that's one. Continue to invest into compliance and security. I can't emphasize enough on that front, so those are areas that we'll continue to work on. We started 2024 with 14 global regulatory approval. We entered the year with 21. So we secured seven new regulatory approval throughout the course of 2024, including in some major jurisdictions such as Brazil, Argentina, India, Indonesia, Thailand, jurisdiction with huge population. So we aim to serve them well and we aim to consider new jurisdiction in terms of crypto deployment and adoption globally. Where else can we really deploy to support global users on that front? So that occupies a lot of our time and energy in terms of global deployment. And the last thing, I mean, we are still at a very nascent stage of development today. Crypto adoption is still early 7%. So if you look at any technology in the past, be it Internet, e commerce, etc. Once you reach 7% adoption, the next 10% adoption will come relatively quickly. But for us, how do we work with other players to really embrace, make it much more vibrant, make it a very robust space and really support each other. So we have entered into quite a number of partnerships, including one with Circle in November last year. And we are discussing a lot of different partnerships on how do we support the utility, the use case, the growth of this space. And we are working on things that last more than one cycle. So it's quite important to have a long term view of things. So. So those are the key areas that we're focusing quite a fair bit of our attention on.
- [33:02]
Scott
It's interesting because obviously there was a time in Binance's history where USDC was being removed from the platform, right? And now you have a partnership, now you have a partnership with Circle, which obviously means embracing USDC once again. I would also argue that there was a time, nonspecific to Binance, that exchanges the relationship was much more contentious and cutthroat and everybody was out to beat everyone else. And now, for example, with the Bybit hack, seemingly every other major player jumped in to make sure that those bridge loans were filled, that there was no problem, that there was no gap, that withdrawals were able to continue. It seems like we're actually in a much friendlier environment as an industry. Is that actually true or is that just a perception?
- [33:48]
Richard Tang
I think it is true. I think we should be cooperating with each other, working with each other as an industry. I think we need to come together much more closer while we compete. We need to uphold industry development, industry trust. The more we can work with others to uphold trust and confidence within industry, the better we are. Embrace the good actors and keep out the bad actors. I think that's extremely important. There's a good, bad and ugly on that front. So the more we can do together to really embrace trust, to work with each other, to create confidence, to build new use cases and utility, which in the long term will drive crypto adoption and deployment. The better off we are as a community, the better off we are as an industry.
- [34:39]
Scott
You have mentioned a few times the listing process and how stringent it is when we're launching millions of tokens a month in crypto, given they last about 10 minutes and they're all meme coins, they're all pumped on fun and they're not serious assets. But it lends to the question that as the space grows, as we have so much more competition, so many things being launched, how do you decide what's worthy of listing on Binance and how quickly to list them?
- [35:10]
Richard Tang
Well, it's tough. It's a delicate balance. It's a delicate balance between giving our users enough choices, adhering to wishes, and you see that we have allowed for things like community voting and voices, so that we hear our users much better. On the other hand, upholding certain standards, making sure there's no rug pull, people don't pump and dump, and hopefully people focus on the long term. This cycle you have several teams coming through. Memecoin is big, but again, Meme coin, I do think that over time we need to focus on the long term. When you have hundreds of millions of coins being launched, the issue of longevity, the issue of whether can they last through one cycle, what are they going to build for the future, really comes to the mind of many people. So again, those are important issues. It's something that we try to strike a balance with in terms of criteria for listing. We set them out in terms of, you know, what they bring to the community, the engagement, the security they have the compliance utility, who are the project leaders and founders and who's behind what they're trying to build. But those are guiding principles that we are here to. Right? So any point in time we are recalibrating and trying to see how do we balance the two. Right. Giving our users greater choice, giving them access earlier on, at the same time maintaining high standards. So it's not easy. We are trying our best.
- [36:45]
Scott
Isn't that challenge just going to increase with time? Maybe the meme coin craze will die off. I pray every day that maybe we'll get a little bit less of this insanity and nonsense because I do think that it's a bit distracting from the more important and serious parts of the industry. So I'm somewhat critic of the meme coin side. I do believe people should be able to do whatever they want, but that doesn't mean that all 10 million of them should be listed on centralized exchanges. Right? So do you foresee this becoming snowballing and becoming a bigger issue or do you think that maybe this is one of those hype cycles that gets kind of washed out and we return to utility and serious building?
- [37:21]
Richard Tang
My view is you take a long term view, right? It's always back to utility and adoption, right? And what's the important use cases? We have gone through so many different cycles and we've gone through so many narratives, right? From ICO, IEOs to things like DeFi to NFTs and now memes, right? And then for a while things like AI agents, etc. So there'll be new narrative that will keep continue to be pushed to the forefront, right? But if you look over a longer period of time, what is going to last are things that's going to last for more than one cycle that probably have much stronger use cases, much stronger utility, and those are things that many builders continue to spend a lot of time developing. And we want to encourage them to support all those new utility coming through because they help to support crypto adoption longer term.
- [38:16]
Scott
So I see exchanges, Binance included, constantly getting attacked for manipulating the market or for the behavior of market makers. Obviously you see it across the board. Can you please explain the function of market makers on an exchange like Binance? Because I think there's so much confusion as to what they do.
- [38:39]
Richard Tang
Yeah, so similar to traditional market, right? So market makers are supposed to make sure that you narrow the bid, ask, spread and you inject liquidity into a counter. So I think that's the key function of market makers. And market makers are not unique to Crypto, they exist in every market, whether it's bonds, securities, commodities, market market makers are there. I think there's a lack of understanding. As a centralized exchange, we uphold ourselves to very, very high standards. I can't speak for that. Exchanges on our exchange, we are agnostic. We are a platform for matching to take place, trades to be conducted. And if we do, and we keep track of market activities very closely, if we detect any sliver of possible concerns and wrongdoings and they are given to us, feedback is given to us, virus, different means, and we look at those feedback very seriously. We actually all bought market makers and we said that, look, I don't think the conduct is up to what we expect market makers to be upholding in terms of standards. And we actually outboard. I mean, there's a recent episode where we highlighted we outboarded market makers as well. So we hold our market makers to very high standards and they know that.
- [39:54]
Scott
Are all market makers known to an exchange or can there be people who are effectively participating in that activity just because they have size or normal users on an exchange?
- [40:06]
Richard Tang
Normally, I mean, if you're market makers, you'll be known to the exchange because then you're taking a very proactive role in terms of making markets. You are entitled to certain rebates, certain fee structure that we offer to market makers. I think nobody will make market without some of those incentives to make markets because the reason for them doing that is to really narrow the bid, asking to make it much more liquid.
- [40:33]
Scott
So they couldn't do it with the same fees that retail is paying on the exchange. Basically, it wouldn't. There'd be no incentive or reason to do it.
- [40:40]
Richard Tang
Yeah, they take on risk as well. So you have to understand they take on different risks.
- [40:45]
Scott
So the transactions that people always point to from exchanges going to market makers and back, those are completely standard and normal?
- [40:53]
Richard Tang
Well, I think exchange, we don't take any position. The market makers are the one that will have to, depending on how the market is moving. I mean, they have to make markets both ways. So the fees, I mean, the rebates, etc. Etc. They are pretty standard practice across not only crypto, but if you look at every exchange, securities, commodities, bonds, I mean, they exist everywhere.
- [41:17]
Scott
So what do you make of the news that a company like Citadel is now interested in making markets in crypto and they're obviously the largest market makers in traditional markets. Is this a trend? I mean, are we going to see the biggest incumbents in the United States making markets in crypto participating in every other way that institutions do. And will they be able to do that on exchanges that are not US native?
- [41:43]
Richard Tang
I can speak on the latter. I think it's for them to decide.
- [41:46]
Scott
But they could.
- [41:47]
Richard Tang
They could. Right? So. But if you think about it, it's natural. It's natural progression. So what we saw last year with the institutional progression is trading desk in the tradfi world that used to just trade commodities, FX stocks and bonds, now that they say, hey, okay, this is getting much more institutionalized as a product and the volatility, the correlation is slightly different compared to other asset class. It gets very interesting. So many of the firms that were unbordered on Binance last year, the institutional trading desk, they started in other asset class and then they added a new trading desk in crypto and they start trading. So it's not much different from what Citadel is doing. Citadel is on a much larger scale compared to many of them. But I think that's a natural progression for, for not only crypto, I mean future. If there's a new asset class coming to, if they can make market, I think they will do so.
- [42:45]
Scott
Are you surprised at all that these institutions, or more importantly the leaders of these institutions are now really starting to finally embrace crypto? I mean, sometimes I wake up and pinch myself and I say, is Larry Fink really out doing interviews where he sounds like Satoshi Nakamoto and has been totally orange peeled and understands. Now you have Ken Griffin obviously talking about coming into the space. Even JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon, he's so dismissive and anti crypto. But if you look at what J.P. morgan's doing, that is very counter to his public opinions.
- [43:19]
Richard Tang
So if you look at JP Morgan trading desk and the others, they're just okay, regardless of what the CEO say, we are going to do it right. But if you think about it, I mean I go and do crypto much later than many years. I got into crypto around 2017. And the reason why I started to get into crypto is really, I believe this is going to be the future of financial services, this is going to be the future of money. But it needs two elements to come into play. Firstly, you need more regulatory clarity. Because for the early adopters, people are embracing it without clarity. But for mass adoption to come true, they need to understand that the regulators are looking into this space. If you adequately protected for mass adoption to come true. Secondly, you need institutions because without institutions, if it's mainly retail play, the price action is going to be extremely volatile. So with more Institutions with more buy and hold users and investors with investors with different time horizon, then the price movement will become much less volatile and the market cap will become much bigger over time. And we are seeing that coming into play in 2024. So I believe we are still in the very, very early days. That wave will continue to go forward. The reason why it took so long for the rest of people in trapfire to come to this space is they have not really invested time and energy in the past to really understand this space. I came from tredfi world, I invested my time in 2017 to understand this space. And once I understood this space, I said, hey, to me is totally intuitive. I understand what problems are there that's not solved by traditional finance. I've been involved in financial services for more than 30 years now. Day one, all the central bankers government said we need to improve on financial inclusion. The bulk of the population have no access to payments and financial system. That's still the same problem 30 years later in many of the developing and frontier market financial institutions have not solved them. They're not interested to serve those clienteles. Crypto doesn't differentiate. Crypto is 24 7, right? Financial institutions operate 8 to 10 hours a day, depending on where they are.
- [45:32]
Scott
Well, the NASDAQ's about to be 24 7, five days a week, apparently. That's the new news.
- [45:37]
Richard Tang
So they're moving towards what crypto has always afforded the users and the community. And I think the more they are educated, the more they embrace this space. Stablecoins, for example, you see Standard Chartered being one of the first in terms of traditional financial institutions. I embrace that because it makes perfect sense. Instead of doing a payment and sending money overseas, only getting it two days later, as you put it, crypto is instantaneous. You can do minting or stablecoins and send it instantaneously. It solves so many problems, it's so efficient, it's so cost effective. That financial institution will start to embrace different parts of crypto.
- [46:19]
Scott
Well, I can't believe that we came to the end of time. I have about 100 more questions I would love to ask you. So I'm hoping that we can continue this conversation a few months down the road and continue to have them and get updates, if that's possible.
- [46:31]
Richard Tang
Definitely. It's a real pleasure speaking with you, Scott.
- [46:35]
Scott
Thank you so much, Richard. It's been great to connect. Incredible insight and you make me very excited for the future future of this space moving forward. So thank you very much. Thank you.
- [46:44]
Richard Tang
Thank you. We are all in it together.