Transcript of CZ's Untold Story: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of Binance's Founder

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.

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. But before that, your parents were able to emigrate from China right around Tiamat Square, right?

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

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

He could visit us twice a year, basically, but most of the time he was in Canada. And he was a teacher in China? He was a teacher professor. He was a professor in China. And then he went to do a exchange program in University of Toronto first. And then a couple of years later, he moved to UBC, University of British Columbia in Vancouver. And then he was there. We We were applying. Back then, it's actually very difficult to get a passport. It takes three or four years to get a passport. We started applying in 1985-ish. It took two, three years to get a passport. And then after you get a passport-Meaning a Chinese passport. A Chinese passport, yeah. And then it takes another few years to get a visa. That's just how long the process takes back then. And then, yeah, so we got it shortly after 1989.

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

No. Actually, after that, the visa got easier. The passports got harder. So they no longer issue new passports. The reissue of new passports got harder. But we were lucky. So we got the passports 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 helped us to get the visa 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. It didn't change me that much. But subconsciously, I think there were discussions about democracy versus... So there were some discussions. I was actually leaving on a university campus back then. The China Science and Technology University is one of the top four universities in China. So there were a lot of discussions among the university students, which were probably seven to nine years older than me. So there were some discussions, but I was 12. So I wasn't really clued into it. But I think, subconsciously, it may have some a subconscious impact. I don't know.

And what was it like when you moved to Vancouver?

I moved to Vancouver, yeah.

So you land in British Columbia in Vancouver. It's like a different... It's just different.

It's very different. It's just a completely new country. And then-Did you know English at all or no? I studied English for a couple of years in high school, but I was not fluent at all. But yeah, Vancouver is great. Canada is nice greenery, open space. Everything's pretty... The living standard is high. Everything's pretty good. Everything's very clean. The fruits are bigger. So it's just a really nice environment.

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

So my father stayed assistant professor in the university. He gets like a thousand Canadian dollars per month of, I don't know, what do you call it? Like a stipend. Like a stipend. We get some really low cost housing, the faculty housing from UBC. So we lived on campus. I think on the third day of our arrival in Canada, my mom went to a sewing factory to work, like sewing clothes. 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. Country. She did that for seven, 10 years, and so she just worked there.

My mom was a nurse in Sri Lanka, and when we emigrated, when we got refugee status, my father was unemployed, and my mom became a housekeeper. That's what she did. Then she became a nurse's aide. Then I think when I was 14 is when I got my first job.

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

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. The minimum wage was $6, but McDonald's-Oh, that's incredible.

In Ontario, it was $455.

But in McDonald's, they pay $450. That's below minimum wage because McDonald's somehow had a special exemption because a lot of young kids work there. I think it was on my 14th birthday that I applied for the job. And then a week later, I was flipping burgers there. 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?

No, I wouldn't describe me as that. I think I'm a technical guy. I started computer science. I was interested in programming even in high school, but I wasn't a programming wizard. I wasn't one of those really genius coders. I think I'm a decent coder. I think I wrote some decent code in my career. And then When I was 28, 30-ish, I moved away from coding. I was doing more business development, sales, et cetera. So there was 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.

Only Asian friends or no?

Both. I actually had both Asian and non-Asian friends. But 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 Caucasian friends, all kinds of different friends. My teenager years in Canada was great. It was like some of the best years. 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 does that make you feel? Does it make you feel student?

Actually, my sister went to Waterloo. I was deciding between Waterloo and McGill and maybe UT. I knew I wasn't going to go to UBC. I wanted a different city. And actually UBC gave me the offer, but I just knew I don't want to go there. At the time, my friend's mother, who I really respect, she said, well, you might want to become a doctor because doctors have a good living, a good lifestyle. I took her advice. I studied biology and Waterloo is not much of a biology school. So I went to McGill. But then one semester later, I said, no, I'm more biology. I'm going to move to computer science.

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

I worked every summer. I work every summer, and I also I worked part-time during the school year.

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

I didn't take any student debt. The first year, I actually still took about $6,000 Canadian from my dad. The second year, I was still a bit short. My sister gave me 3,000 dollars. And then from that point on, I never took money from at all. I was self-sustainable. Wow. Yeah. So no student debt, very lucky. But I just worked every summer.

The best thing about Waterloo, which was a savior for me, was co-op program. Was co-op program. And I had these incredible co-op jobs. I still graduated with about $30,000 of debt, but I was also pretty prolific trader and equities. And my boss, this guy, Mike Fisher, He did this incredible kindness to me where I was working at a bank, and I was a driven as trader. That was my day job. But I was trading equities, and I had made him enough money. He called me Sherman. He didn't call me Chamath. He said, Sherman, how much debt do you have? I said, Fish, it's about 30,000, 32,000. He said, Go downstairs right now to the CIBC and pay your debt, and I'll write you a check. He wrote me a $32,000 check.

I should have said 300,000.

But Canada is incredible because you can get this education and it doesn't saddle you with this 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 Pay international student tuition, and it was still cheaper than the US. I was like, that's crazy. That's crazy. So 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 I went there for four years. And on my third year, I got an internship. On my third year, I got an internship job and then extended, extended, extended, and I 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, well, this is 2000. This is the dot com, like height. So I went to an online education program called the American College of Computer Science and got a degree there.

Oh, my God. So you're technically a graduate from that school?

Technically, yes.

Okay, so which internship did you get where you started to work there?

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

Sorry, that's a Japanese company with an office in Montreal or an office in Canada?

No, I went to Tokyo. You went to Tokyo? Yeah, it's actually a bunch of American guys' company that's in Tokyo. 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, I mean, I was a college student. Living in Tokyo is like a... It's a dream. It's a dream, yeah. And the first time you go there, it's cool.

It's from the future.

It's cool.

And what software did you write?

Mostly order execution software. So the same software that moves orders.

What drives Binance today?

Pretty much. So it's the same style. Actually, all the software I was involved with, 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 It was your job?

I first did it because it was my job. I was so young. I didn't know what all the different industries are. Actually, when I got to the company, the company was giving me a project on working on digital imaging storage systems. Basically, not iPhone photos app for for medical imaging for NITON. But very soon, the company's main product is the order execution system. So I was involved in that, and then that became the thing over my career. And I like it because it requires quite a lot of technical expertise. Everything is about efficiency, making it go as fast as possible, process as low latency as possible. That appears to me. I'm an efficiency-driven guy, subconsciously.

And just to double click on that, when you look at high-frequency trading organization, the Sasquana Haras, the JMPs, 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 pay the price to just shave a handful of milliseconds on either end. How does that manifest in the software? So when you're writing that software, how do you actually optimize for those boundary conditions in code? Yeah.

So well, there's quite a few levels, right? The first level you do is basically you write your software to be efficient and fast, like no slowness. You want to remove all the database lookups, so you want to do everything in memory. And then you want to reduce any additional computation. You want to simplify the risk checks, especially pre-trade risk checks. And then the more advanced versions, you move on to the FPGA, which is a network chip card that's on the network card, on what we call the 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 still writing code, maybe 10 years ago, that wrong trip is about 100 microseconds. And then by avoiding that, you reduce down to 20 microseconds. And then you move it to the physical infrastructure. You want a co-location, right?

You Why haven't these organizations, 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 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 C2C, and that technical problem made a lot of sense, and very, very fast for the decode phase of inference. It 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 FPGA's, 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 a very large scale. I think the algorithms change too often. So when you go to hardware, you want to design on chip, it is very efficient, it's very fast. But when you want to change it, it takes a long time. So when you want to reprogram it, I think FPGA already offers the best-Best of both worlds. Even FPGA is even a reprogramming. The programming cycle is much, it's 10 times longer than software.

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

It's successful. 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.

And so is that when you said, Hey, hold on, there's something here or no? Was it something else that happened?

No. 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. You're a salaryman in Japanese terms. Salaryman, yeah. You're a salaryman. Then walk us through what happens afterwards.

That company got sold. There was a lot of culture clashes between the parent company versus the original company. That's my first experience about how mergers may not work. The two managements were just clashing. Then the same partners went to do a different company called Building Two. But now this partners, I didn't get any money, but the partners got quite a of money now. So they rented a very fancy office. That company only lasted a year. It means that previous success doesn't guarantee future success. In fact. So they spent a lot of money, had a very nice office, but had zero revenue. So that folded within a year. And that's 2001. And early 2001, I was looking for new jobs, and then Bloomberg was hiring. And this is right before 9/11. I got an offer before 9/11, and then 9/11 happened. I still haven't moved. Where was this?

To New York?

I was still in Tokyo back then, and then Bloomberg is in New York. The offer was supposed to-The offer was in New York. 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 said, Yeah, okay. Then I went. I went to New York in November of 2001. Wow. What was that like? The streets were pretty quiet. But I was fine. New York is New York was quiet for a few months, but it became lively pretty quickly, I think. So I didn't feel too much issues. So I then went to New York and worked at Bloomberg for four years.

Doing, again, the same thing. You're 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 I joined as a senior developer. I was put into a team called Trade Book Futures. They just formed this team, and they had a system that allowed people to trade futures on Bloomberg, but it was spread out. So they collected that into one team.

And still no inkling of that entrepreneurial bug?

Not really. Back then, I was like, nah, I worked in-What were you looking for?

Stability? Why Bloomberg? Being in New York, what was it?

I was just a young guy. I think I was like 24, 25. Okay. So I was just a young guy trying to get a job, experience different parts of the world and just find my way through. I knew I wasn't experienced enough to do entrepreneurship myself. And I was working a small company in Tokyo. The company only had 200 people. Bloomberg at the time had about 3,000 people. So to me, that was a big company. And they have fancy offices, fish tanks, free food and everything. 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 they grew to about 80 people. And that's when I became a manager. I I no longer wrote code and I started the manager-The worst transition. The worst transition. The worst transition, right? The worst transition. So that's my Bloomberg experience. I stayed there for four years.

And then you quit and moved to China? Yes. How does that happen?

I think it was around beginning of 2005. Again, the same friends I made in Japan, they were talking about starting a new company, a new fintech company, and they were in Asia. 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. We should have picked Hong Kong. Hong Kong had a lot more happening since then. So I went there in 2005. So it was like five foreigners from a Chinese perspective, five Caucasians, four Caucasians plus a Japanese plus me. I'm the only one who speaks Chinese. And my Chinese was rusty back then, too. So the six of us went there to do a new IT startup in Shanghai.

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

So we thought we have all this Wall Street trading technology experience.

And 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 the other three were from Japan. So the six of us came together. And we wanted to do... Our idea was, let's bring the Wall Street trading technology into China so we can service the brokers and exchanges in China. But then, so we went. They rented a very fancy office again.

Wait, okay. So hold on. So when you guys start this company, 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. How did it all-It wasn't one-six.

It was like the top guy had, I don't know, 39, 40 %, and the rest five of us split equally. So I had about 11 % or so. Okay. So I knew that, but I didn't know all the ins and outs about shareholder rights, what terms. I didn't know any of that.

Preferred versus common, none of it. You're like, great, I got 11 %, I'm moving to Shanghai. Yeah.

So I just have 11 %. I have no idea what common stock is or where is it preferred. So I just went. And then, but so I was a junior partner in this group. And then once we landed in China, because 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-fouled-owned, what we call a Welfie. Welfie, yeah. A wholly-fouled-owned enterprise. The Chinese brokers and financial institutions are not allowed to work with a Welfie.

That's right.

So we found out after we started a company while we were in Shanghai. And so the company pivoted towards doing any IT system for any company. We can be-Work for hire. Work for hire. We can be fixing- Deloitte, you became Deloitte. Not even Deloitte. We can be fixing printers or we can be writing 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 a few years. And we made a living out of that. We had quite a number of automotive clients, the Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai First Automotive. They were all clients of ours. And then we were like maybe three or four years in, 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 successful.

The company is still around. The company is still around. So I left in 2013 after eight years, 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 Tokyo.

How big did that company get?

I think it got to about 200 people again, and it stayed there as far as I know, even till now.

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

Yeah. Well, actually, we didn't take that much profit. I actually invested most of my savings back into that company, and I actually didn't cash out a penny. But after a few years, the company was stable enough to pay the partner's salaries that all of our kids go to international school. So we get a six-figure salary.

At that point, you had gotten married?

Yes. So at that point, I got married when I was in New York. So I took care-And you had met your ex-wife how? Yeah, I met her in Tokyo when I first went to Tokyo. So I met her in 1999-ish when I was working in Tokyo doing the interns. And then she visited me in New York, and then we got married, and then we had kids. Now we are separated or we're divorced. In Shanghai, I young kids, and it was enough salary to put the kids into international school, and that was good enough for me. Wow.

So far, again, nothing here tells anybody that you're about to go and start Binance? No.

Nothing?

No, I didn't know. So then 2013, 2014, how old were you then at that point?

You were-2013, I would be 36.

Yeah, mid-30s.

Yeah.

So again, salary guy, junior partner at this thing. It's going well. Your kids are in private school. So then what happens?

So then I came across Bitcoin, right? So my friend tells me, Look, see, you got to look at this thing called Bitcoin. I look into it. It took me about roughly six months to fully understand it. So that was from 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?

Yeah, pretty much. Because back then, there was the Bitcoin talk or forum, and then that's pretty much it.

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

Unfortunately, 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 a relationship with Mike Bloomberg. He was not even a mentor. 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. Then I got to know some of Mike's team. In 2012 or so, they said, Schmuck, would you write an op-end? Okay. I was like, yeah. I wrote it about Bitcoin, and I said, Everybody should put 1% of their networth into Bitcoin. I said, It's basically schmuck insurance. Then they published it in the Bloomberg terminal or whatever. That's when I got red pilled on Bitcoin where I was like, Wow, it's the most incredibly interesting technical product that I had read about. 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? It's not something that is dense in 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.

It's only nine pages.

Exactly. You know what an enormous amount of intellectual skill it takes to do that? Oh, yeah.

It's much harder to write it very short.

Much harder, and elegantly, and simply.

If anybody else tried to rewrite that thing, it would be 90 pages.

So the friend that showed it to you, was he a coworker of yours or no?

Just a random friend in Shanghai? It's a friend. We don't have any working relationships. His name is Ron Tau. He runs, I guess now, Sky9 Ventures. Back then, he was at the Lightspeed Ventures. Of course. He was a managing director of Lightspeed Ventures in China. Okay. So we have a poker house game, like small stakes, a bunch of struggling entrepreneurs versus like VCs. So the VCs have all the money and all the time.

David versus Goliath. Yeah.

But It's a fun game. It's not a very serious game. In one of the poker games, Ron said, See, you should look at this thing called Bitcoin. I was like, Okay, Bitcoin. Okay. And so we talked about it a little bit. And then Bobby Lee, who was at the time was working for Walmart was just about to quit Walmart to join BTCHina to become their CEO. And 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 July 2013. I was like, okay, so these two guys are pretty serious about this. So I had lunch with Bobby the next day, and Bobby said, put 10 % of your networth into Bitcoin. He said, there's a small chance you will go to zero, then you lose 10 %. There's a much higher chance you will go 10X and you will double your networth. I was like, okay, that sounds pretty serious. So that's when I started learning about reading the white paper more carefully. Took me six months. So it was till the end of 2013. I started like, I'm convinced now. I'm ready to go.

But then Bitcoin went from $70 in mid-2013 to $1,000 by end of 2013. So you already went more than 15X.

How did that make you feel?

I was like, I'm too late. I was like, I wish I got in early. Because back then, it doesn't matter when you get into Bitcoin, you always feel late. Because everyone you talk to in the Bitcoin industry has bought before you.

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

There's a very small community in Shanghai. And then I was basically talking to anybody in the world that's willing to talk with me. And then I had a couple of friends in Taiwan. They worked for TSMC back then. And then they were trying to do a mining chip for Bitcoin. So two of those guys left TSMC to try to do this startup. Startup never really took off, but that was one group of guys I was talking to. There was another couple, they were mostly miners. There was another guy called... His nickname is Fish, Silverfish in China. He's like a big miner. He runs the F2 pool even today. Oh, sure. Those guys were based in Hong Kong. When they came to Shanghai, I talked to them, et cetera. So there was a group of guys that you talked to. And then the biggest thing was in December October 13th, 2013-ish, there was a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. I flew there to meet... Everyone in the industry was there. There was a 200 people conference. Vitalik was there, Matt Roszak was there, Charlie Lee was there. A bunch of guys were there. And the same guy still today.

And then at the time, just before that, it was the Silk Road arrest of Ross Wuberich. So the media was like, no, this Bitcoin is only used by drug lords. And when you go to the conference, it was like a bunch of kids, a bunch of geeks, and they're very nice people. So you can talk to Vitalik. 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 This is 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. Then when I got back, I told the partners, We should do a Bitcoin payment system because BitPay was the big player back then. Bitpay just raised $4 million in 2013. They was the large player.

Can I tell you a very funny... I have two BitPay stories. Sure. I was very focused on trying to prove the transactional capability of Bitcoin. I went to my car dealership and I bought a car with Bitcoin using BitPay in 2012 or '13. That Range Rover is probably $90 million. And then And even more stupidly, there was a real estate development in Lake Tahoe called Martis Camp. Beautiful. 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. I the guys a bit 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. Now that piece of land is a billion dollars.

But you cannot calculate this way, right?

So Ceezy, I calculated this way every day.

You can't calculate it that way because it's not-Stupidest purchase ever. No, that's the bucket of money mentality, right? No, it's true. Right. So even if he didn't use Bitcoin, you would have used the money to buy the land. You could have used that money to buy Bitcoin. Yeah. So you're like, Hey, we should do a version of BitBay.

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, I had maybe one Bitcoin. And one Bitcoin was like only a thousand bucks back then.

So then what happens?

And then I tell my partner, look, I think this is the biggest thing in my life. I think there's three fundamental... Back then, I realized there was two fundamental technologies in my life. There's the Internet. I was too young to do too much with it. And there was this Bitcoin thing. And 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.

Did 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?

No. A 36 is still okay. So it's still doable. You don't feel super old. Today, I feel that. But I thought, look, the next thing that will come will be 10, 15 years later. And that's AI, right? So today I say there's three fundamental technologies in my life. But back then, that's the thing. So for me, it was very clear, I got to do something in this industry. So I told my partners, look, I'm going to quit. Am I going to work in the Bitcoin industry? That's what it's called back then. And then I also need to buy Bitcoin, and I don't have money. So I don't have money. So I just 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 a solid few months to sell it. And it was it. It was only- Where did you just got a rental apartment? I sold it at... At the time, actually, my family also moved to Tokyo. So my family moved to Tokyo. We lived in a rental apartment.

In Tokyo?

In Tokyo. And then I was traveling in Shanghai. So that's the time I started moving, started separating from the family as well. So I was spending a lot of time traveling.

Right.

I sold the apartment for roughly $900,000, just under a million bucks, and then started buying. I got paid in trenches because you get a first down payment. You got to pay in trenches. And every trench I get, I just buy. The first trench at $800, and the Bitcoin is dropping $600, $400. It averaged to about $600. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible.

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

Yeah, I was looking for a job at the same time.

But you were looking for a job in the BitcoinIn the Bitcoin industry or you were just looking for any job?

In the Bitcoin industry. That was very specific. It didn't take me that long to get a job. The gap was probably, from the time I said I'm going to quit until I finalized the job was probably only about 2-3 weeks. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And so who hired you?

I first discussed with BTCC, Bobby. He wanted to hire me, but then blockchaininfo came along. I bought me to Roger Ver. At the time, blockchaininfo, I was the third person to join the blockchaininfo team. That was a Ben Reeve, who's the founder, and then there was Nicolas Keri, who was just hired the CEO. And I was like the third guy in. So I was like VP of engineering because Ben, we want to reserve the CTO title for Ben. So, yeah, I joined blockchain info and flew to York in London, like three hours north of London. I spent some time there figuring out what to do.

How did that go?

That didn't go very well. We expanded the team to 18 people, and then Peter Smith Smith joined as a CFO wanting to raise money for blockchain info. Coinbase just finished raising $30 million, and that was a big one in the industry back then. Peter Smith somehow maneuvered himself into the CEO position, pushing like Nicolas Kerry to the product manager role. The culture changed a little bit. I left, a bunch of the developers I hired left. Then Van Reeve sold quite a his position and also left a few months later. So that was Mike. So that was only a few... I think I was only there for six, seven months. So that didn't work out too well. But I learned a lot from that experience.

You learned what not to do.

No, no. Like blockchain info, when I joined, the Ben Reeve said, look, we have no company, we have no office, everyone works remotely. We just pay everybody in Bitcoin. And so that's something I learned from that company. And look, that's still very heavily used in Binance today. So I learned a lot. I also learned that that company, the whole marketing, at the time, blockchain was the largest user platform in the industry. So they had about two million wallets, more than Coinbase at the time. And the entire marketing was one thread on bitcointalk. Org. The thread is 150 pages. Ben Reeve just replies to that thread. And that's how you grew to a two million user platform. I was like, okay, so you can do I got a lot of guerrilla marketing to be successful. So I learned a lot. But the culture changed a little bit. It wasn't fit for me. And then I left. And then that was when Hei hired me into OKCoin. So Hei said, look, why are we working for this wallet company? Your experience is dealing with order execution exchanges. So Hei hired me there.

As a developer?

As a CTO. As a CTO. Yeah. So In the process, I think DTC China helped me again. I was looking for a job again, right? I left and then Hei was talking to me and Bobby Lee found out. Bobby Lee meant, okay, Coin back then offered me 5% equity. Then DTC China came along and offered me 10% equity. Then OKCoin matched it within three hours. Then I was debating between Shanghai and Beijing, and I decided to go to Beijing to join OK Coin back then. Hei at that time had 1% equity. She hired me to be the bigger partner in the business. That's how I went to OK Coin for about eight months or so. That didn't last long either.

Because?

I think there were also culture differences at OKCoin. There were some stuff that I didn't agree with, both in terms of simple examples, like how they run how they do fee discounts where you have to ask for it. Like, 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 it as such. So small things like that. And then So that was in early 2015, I said, No, I'm going to leave. So that's a... So that lasted for a few months in 2015, 2014, mostly.

So how do we get from there to buy nets.

So 2015, with a couple of my old colleagues said, we're going to do a Bitcoin exchange in Tokyo, in Japan, because this is a year after. After Mount Gox and all that. Yeah. So there's a vacuum in Japan. So we got two developers that came to me. On the same day I decided to leave OKCoin. They came to me and said, look, somehow they also quit their respective jobs. I said, okay, well, why don't the three of us do something? And so we said, okay, so I I will be the CEO, and then I'll be the big guy with more equity, and then I'll be responsible for fundraising. I was paying them a salary out of my own savings, and I wasn't taking anything. So the two developer person, we whipped up a demo very quickly. We downloaded an open source software for an exchange, and then we tweaked the UI to be a little bit sexier. And then we hooked up-You just forked an open source project.

This is our project. This is Binance?

No, we didn't say it was Binance. This is to perform my dance. I was very transparent. I was like, we worked up this demo up in two days or in a few days, and this is a demo that we can show you.

But this is not-The ultimate product. It's just a proof of concept.

It's just the proof of concept. It's Yeah. And then we had a script that took Bitfinex market data. Bitfinex was like a large exchange back then. We just copied the order book and the order book was flashing, there's trades going on. So you got a very lively demo. And then when the investors saw that, it was like, well, this is good technology. But it's not just a demo. When they ask me questions, I can answer in very deep ways. When they ask me, how do you structure this to be a fast exchange? I can talk about in-memory matching.

Optimizing database, all the stuff you've learned.

Yeah, so I can go really deep when they ask questions. So my knowledge is there. So they were like, okay, this technology is cool, but you won't be successful running a Bitcoin exchange in Japan. You don't speak Japanese. I was like, okay, they have a point. 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. 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 exchanges. And then they paid $360,000 for the system. So they made a down payment of $180,000. That was enough for me not to pay salaries anymore. So I was happy with that. So we pivoted from wanting to run our own Bitcoin exchange to exchange systems for provider.

Yeah, you're selling software.

We're selling software. And then in July 2015, a bunch of Chinese 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? 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 like moving along, meandering, learning things, trying some other things, this non-obvious iteration, and then all of a sudden, things catalyze. But even then, you still don't get the right form because you're licensing it, really. People just misunderstand that this is actually more what entrepreneurship is. It's the resilience and the grit to just keep grinding. For sure.

I think most people idealize entrepreneurship. They just hate it and they go from there.

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

Facebook is Microsoft. Exactly. And also Google. These three are college, garage, and they just... Exactly.

But the reality, Binance or Tesla, it's like a grind.

It's a grind. It's a grind. You have to go so many different ways. And it wasn't obvious from the beginning. I think those three are the exceptions that just hit it from day one.

Exactly.

But then that shaped the people's perception. 99. 9% of the other successful businesses are not like that. So if you look at now, any other successful company. So the same here.

So get us to the founding moment. So you're licensing the software.

We're licensing the software. That business went pretty So we've had like 30 different exchange clients.

Wait, no way.

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

So this is a multimillion dollar licensing business.

Yeah. And it's a SaaS business. We call it exchange as a service business. So we charge a fixed monthly fee every month. And this is platform business is paying us. It's a very steady business. Every new client increases the revenue. So every new client is like a step up. Exactly. So it's actually a very, very good business model. But then in March 2017, the Chinese government shut down most of our clients. And then by May, we were like, okay-Right.

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

We're the software vendor. Exactly. We don't run any business with a software vendor. But then our businesses, we have no clients. So we lost our clients. And so by May, we were like, okay, we need to pivot. By April, May, we were like, figure out how to pivot. By end of May, we was like, okay, actually three guys work for me said they want to do a Pollinex copycat. Pollinex was the biggest exchange back then. 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. I was like, no, we're not going to invest in that anymore. And then I said, why don't we do that? We have the exchange system already. We still need to customize it to do a crypto to crypto only trading. My gosh. So in May, we said, okay, we're going to do a crypto, we're going to do exchange again. The team said, fine, sure.

Howhow big is the team at this point?

20 people. And we had tech people. We don't have marketing because we're a to be business. We have two sales guys, two sales guys plus me. And then we said, well, now we can run our own. Let's do our own crypto to Crypto Exchange. So that was end of May. And then June first to June 10th, there was a guy who was a BTCC co founder, Lin Ke. He ran an ICO in China. He raised $15 million in in 10 days. And then I looked at him, I was like, he only had one document and one website, no product, nothing. He raised $15 million. If he can do that, I might be able to do that, too.

You needed venture funding. You're like, if I get the $15 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.

So originally, we were going to go to the VC funding route, right? But then when I saw that, I was like, well... And everyone talking about ICOs back I went to a conference mid-June, 2017, and everyone's talking about an ICO. Everyone's like, Ceeze, you got to do an ICO. You got to do an ICO. So by mid-June, June 14th was the date. And then I said, okay, call the team, we're going to do an ICO. Write a white paper.

And so did you have a name at that point, 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 BlockchainInfo, quite a lot of people know me. Blockchaininfo was the most popular platform back then. And the OK Coin was also like I was a CTO. I was quite active on social media. I was also managing their international markets, non-English speaking or non-Chinese speaking markets, because nobody else... I was the best English speaker on that team, even though my English is not that great. So I had a little bit of a name. People know me in the community.

Because you needed a bit of a name or some pedigree to actually do an ICO at the time. Yeah.

But this is an advantage of when you get involved early in And in the industry, you go to a few conferences, there's 200 people. And by the second time you go there, people know you. But the third time, people are like, oh, you know what you're doing.

You're the expert.

You're already. So I had a bit of a reputation. So I thought, no, Linker is 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. I said, well, I can probably do an ICO and raise the same amount. So we did.

So who were 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. It's like, I think- But are they Chinese? Are they Japanese? Are they people from all around the world that knew you? Was it that your white paper was really good?

Okay, so I think in terms of demographic, it's probably like the ICO purchase is probably 80 to 90 % Chinese. And there were some international guys who bought it. And I think the data shows that there was about 20,000 people who bought in the ICU. 20,000 people? 20,000 people. And this is like a brand new brand. Some people know me in the industry, and that was it.

So even though the exchanges were put out of business in China, the ICU was allowed.

No, the ICU wasn't banned back then.

It wasn't banned. It was not not allowed.

It was not not allowed. Exactly. So let me just make one clarification. The exchange clients that we were serving were mostly stamp cultured exchanges, not crypto exchanges. Crypto exchanges were not banned in March. Crypto exchange were banned after we started. I see. So that was in September. We're talking about June, July, time frame in 2017.

You're really threading a needle.

Yeah. We didn't know that bank was coming. We just thought like, no.

How much of the company did you sell?

No, we didn't. It was just the coins. We launched the token.

You had to do no equity participation.

There's no equity involved. We launched a new token, BMB. It's still there today. And then we said, look, we're going to sell 60% of it for $15 million, roughly. Because we're talking Bitcoin.

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

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

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 were So then what do you do?

September comes around. September fourth, seven different departments of Chinese government issued a memo together saying that number one, crypto exchanges are no longer allowed in China. Icus are no longer allowed. Mining is not allowed, crypto mining. We said, well, we're going to move. Well, we said we have to move. By then it was clear that while at the time China was the largest user base, they had like 30 something % 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 actually survive pretty well. So we said, well, I just said, look, let's move. Let's move to Tokyo. Back to Tokyo. Back to Tokyo.

You love Tokyo.

I've been I've been back in out of Tokyo. I know it.

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

I speak very little Japanese. What would I call taxi Japanese? Taxi Japanese. I can say like, no, thank you. Good left, good right. In a restaurant, when I order, I say, is this, this, this? Not the full menu names. Sushi, I can name most of them. Okay. So that's my Japanese level. But I know Japan, I know Tokyo. It's not a new country for me. So I said, let's move to Tokyo. And we had 30 people then.

And everybody moved?

Everybody moved. Wow. Back then, eight years ago, I think maybe one or two of the people were married and nobody had kids. So it was a very easy move for the team. So everybody just packed up and moved. I remember one girl cried, one product manager. She cried because her boyfriend is in China. So she cried, but she moved with us. And she's not married to her boyfriend. So anyway.

Incredible.

So we moved to Tokyo when China did that. Our platform continued to grow.

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

Binance, I would say the product was growing pretty well, but the token price went down from ICO price. It went down 30, 40 %. It took about three weeks to recover. So when we launched the product, Because at that time, crypto is still pretty hot, I think the product market fit was there. 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. So that's why I'm going to choose Binance. But was it also architected better? Was it materially faster or more reliable? Yeah, for sure.

It was. It was. So back then when we launched, even using your eyeballs, you can see that placing an order on Binance so much faster than on competing platform. So the performance of the exchange system was- Back then, 2017, who were the big platforms that you were competing with? There was Polonex, Bittrex were the biggest ones. And then there's a few Chinese ones. There was Hobi, OKX, OK Coin back then. And then In the Western world, Coinbase was there. Gemini wasn't there back then. Gemini was later. So Bitstamp was there. Bitfinex was there. Now, they're really small.

You're now in your late 30s. Yeah. And this thing is working.

'40s, even now.

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

There were some really surreal moments. Where you were like, is this real? In a good way. What's our revenue? I forgot the number, but she said a couple of hundred bitcoins. It's like, That's crazy. We can't be making them. Are you sure? She's like, Yeah, I'm sure. This number can't be correct. We must be off by a magnitude. And we double check, double check, triple check. It's correct. It was like, That's crazy. And then there was also a period where three weeks in when the BMB price was recovering. So BMB, I sealed at about $0. 10. It dropped to $0. Dropped to $0. 06. And then we announced Hei joining. And then for the next two, three weeks, every time you go to sleep, you wake up, the token is up 20 %. You go to a meeting, come up, the token is up 20 %. You go to the bathroom and come back, the token is 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, eight months in. Forbes put me on the cover. That's when... Well, I said...

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 addition. I see. With all the crypto guys. And then they already had a picture of Italic doing a fancy hand gesture, which is really cool picture. So they invited us. They contacted our PR Department, which maintains contact with them, which was really Hei's team back then, like a team of four or five girls. Hei says, Well, Forbes wanted 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 they said, We're a new brand. Forbes can still help us increase the brand. With awareness, yeah. Yeah. So I said, Okay, fine. I'll go. So I went to do the photoshoot. That was my first photo to put makeup on me. And then the first time, put it make up.

Ceeci, what is money? Is it important? I mean, don't take this wrong way, but you got rich old.

Yeah.

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

It still matter, 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, so I'm 40 something. So I'm not like a young 20-year-old that just Lambo big parties. Too old for that. So I have also my personality is quite stable, so I don't get too excited on things. Also the other thing, not to brag, but I went from a barely financially free to cover Forbes. And I was like, Wait a second, how rich am I? I don't even know. When I look at my wallet, nothing changed. The Forbes cover, nothing changed for me. But then people say, look, now you might be a billionaire. I was like, Am I really a billionaire? It doesn't feel that way. Even like a month ago, not a month. At that time, when we left China to go to Japan, I booked economy classes for a red-eye 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 So I have those habits. So when you make money successively, from the one million, you become 10 million, you might want to buy some fancy cars.

From to 100 million, you might want to buy some yacht or something. To a billion, then you have... I didn't go through that stepwise process. I just went from a relatively okay thing to you're on the cover of Forbes. So I didn't develop quite a lot of those habits.

What does it mean now? Now, I mean, depending on the day, you're a decabillionaire or a centibillionaire. What does it all mean?

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

Which is very minimal amount of money.

Which is very minimal. You don't need that much That's what I'm thinking about.

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

It doesn't take much. That I for sure have. I don't have a luxury life, but I have a very comfortable life, I think. Then the other-Sorry, what does that mean? If you look at my My house, the living room water leaks every month or so because the house is so old. But that's the house that's the right size for me right now. No, it's not. We'll just fix it whenever it leaks. So that still happens. That happened a month ago. So people think I live in a very fancy house, there's all the craze. I live in a decent-size house, but it fits all my family members. But it's an old house that I bought third or fourth-hand. But it's in the right location. It works It works for you. It works for me. It's in the right location. It's functional. 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 don't care about the fanciness. I don't care about style. I don't care about colors. I don't care about gliding gold. If it's functional, I'm okay. Right. So if it solves the problem, I'm good.

Do you ever have bouts of insecurity?

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

I've only gotten to know you in the last couple of years. I saw videos of you I think it was in the late teens, early 2000s. My immediate reaction, because that's always been my struggle, is these belts of insecurity or ego, I thought, Man, this guy is really calm.

Yeah, I'm calm.

Yeah.

So I describe this way.

You're very well-regulated, very self-aware, it seems.

Other people's emotions may go like this, happy, sad. I don't feel happy, sad, happy, sad, but my amplitude- Amplitude is very moderated. Is narrow.

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

Yeah.

Okay, so you launched this thing, it's going bananas, but there were some hiccups. Yeah. 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. The work was actually very satisfying, very rewarding.

What was the average day for you? What were you trying to do?

I was basically doing 20 plus meetings a day, like schedule, calls or meetings, and then plus other random stuff, and then having to respond to people on Twitter and stuff. But it was very rewarding because there's a sense of fulfillment that is very hard to describe. It's not the money, it's not the growth, Yeah. You know-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. Revenue is a lagging indicator. Revenue and profits, they're here. That's from six months ago, a year ago, manifest today. What was your leading indicators? What were the North stars that you really cared about that said this is the health of the system?

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 serving more users, then you give them value. I believe a product is valuable when people want to use it. So the more people who wants to use it, even if your revenue is zero, you have value. So any product that people use, the more people use it, the higher value. So that's always my philosophy. Whereas 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. So that's my North Star. And also knowing that related to that was Knowing that hundreds of millions of people are using us, we help them. So the way I view it, if they pay a commission fee, then they're willing to pay it because 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. 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-What does that first meeting look like where they're It's like CZ have good news and bad news. Yeah. There's actually a very clear point. I think it was Christmas Day, January first, or New Year Day, January first, 2018. This is like five months after we were large, or five months after we started and we were number one exchange already. On that New Year's Eve, December 31st-ish, 2017, a US Homeland Security guy reached out to me. His name, I think, is Joseph. I always remember his name was Patrick or Joseph. I'm not sure which one. He wrote an email and then I got the email and said, well, 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. They got hacked. They went down. So this guy who works for the US government emailed us, and I didn't know how to deal with it. Nobody on our team knows how to deal with law enforcement. So I got a couple of guys to huddle together and say, how do we help this guy? Then we gave the information that he requested.

First of all, I had to verify who he was. Then afterwards, he thanked us. Then I said, Hey, Joseph, can you recommend somebody that we could hire that can interface with law enforcement in the future? He recommended someone, but the guy was based in the US, and we don't have a US entity. We couldn't hire anybody in the US back then, so we had to let that go. But that was the point. It was like a New Year's Day.

Where you were like, this is going to happen more.

Obviously. Invariably.

Invariably. A lot of large numbers.

That's the day when I realized, look, we need to have somebody who has experience working with law enforcement.

And so what did you do?

We eventually hired more guys.

Obviously, you're not looking at the transaction. 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 And the organizations were using Binance and you didn't do enough. Yeah.

So on this point, I may have some legal restrictions on what I can say and cannot say about the plea, the et cetera. So I'm not a lawyer, but I try to stay very clear from that. But overall, So I would just say the Biden administration overall is quite hostile to crypto. I mean, they openly announced war on crypto. So it's good to see this new administration change 180 degrees. I think this is good for America. This is good for the world. So I I think I wouldn't blame the previous administration, but I think they just didn't understand it.

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

It's fear of the new. It's as simple as that. I think they probably in their heads, there's some degree of a Let's not disrupt the current financial system, the banks, whoever else. There's probably a lot of lobbying from those industries as well to them, so that brainwash or affect the thinking, however you call it. So that's human nature. I mean, if you think about it, it's not on the It's understandable. It's not ideal, but it's understandable.

You're running the exchange, things are going well. From 2018, 2019, 2020, it's like you're really coming into your own.

Yeah.

You eventually open a US entity.

Yeah, in 2019.

Why did you feel the need to do that?

In 2019, there was some news about US government, basically in my layman's words, chasing BitMax. There was some BitMax in the news. There were some also BitFinex stuff in the news. I think the US government, at least the Poland government froze like $600 to $800 million of their assets when their market cap was only like $400 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. So we saw those news and we're like, Okay, well, the US government is looking at this industry and we better register. Again, I asked my friends, many of them have legal backgrounds, and then they a general consensus was, Okay, we should operate in a It's a registered fashion in the US. This is 2019. We registered Binance US, and it's a separate entity, it's a separate deployment, it's a separate matching engine, separate liquidity. Binance US has been regulated from day one.

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

Generally, generally.

Then you start to see some of these other folks start to pick up steam. Sbf and FTX start to really... Tell Tell me about that. How did you meet him? Because you ended up owning a lot of the equity.

We invested in them only 20% as equity at some point, and then we exited a year later. We didn't stay there for very long. I think I first met him in January 2019 in one of the Singapore conferences Binance organized. I think at the time, FDX did not exist. Sam Bankerman-Fried, SBF, was running Alameda. And they hosted an after-party in the Singapore Aquarium on Santosa. And they had divers in the fish tank holding a sign with etc. So they were like a VIP client. They were like a large trader on Binance. So we're friendly to them. Yeah, right. That was in January 2019. And then a couple of months later, they came to us saying they want to start a futures platform. They propose a futures platform, some a JV. I can't remember exactly, but I think they propose 60/40 in our favor. I thought about countering... We had all the users. They don't have anything back then. I thought about counterproposing 95. 5, but I don't think that was very polite. They're still a trader. They're still a VIP client. So we declined that. We said no.

Because they were a crucial part of the liquidity pool.

Not a crucial part. They're a large trader, but Binance, they were new, too. It wasn't like they were there for many years. They were only there for probably six months or a year. I don't know the exact date. And then a little bit later, they came back with a better offer and said, Look, in summer, they came back with a better offer. We still said no. And then in November, they came back said, Okay, look, we're going to offer you this really, really attractive offer. But then FTX was launched. At some volume, they said, Look, we're going to basically give you 20 % at this price. And there was a swap of tokens, a BNB versus FTT tokens. So we got some initial FTT tokens. At the time, BMB tokens are much more liquid and RTT tokens are less liquid. So we done that deal. And then almost as soon as we did that deal, I keep hearing from my friends, like SBF badmouthing us in the Washington circles, in the US, et cetera. I was like, come on. And then they also did some other stuff, which is annoying. They pay five times salary to our VIP account managers that had access to our VIP database.

And then so that girl goes goes working for... If we match that girl, then we have to do 5X everybody. So it was like, okay, you go work for them. And then the day after the girl goes works for them, our VIP clients gets called saying, look, are they going to get a better rate on FTX, et cetera? So I called Sam, said, can you stop doing this? We're your shareholder. At the same time, he's like, look, can we do a one to one panel on a crypto event? So I'm fine. We're an investor. We want to help promote. I actually want multiple exchanges to be successful in the industry because then we won't be the ones that get targeted all the time. But there was always like, no. I always keep hearing there was some badmouthing, some other this and that. So a year later, I think it was early 2021, we said, and they were claiming to be raising money at 32 billion valuations. We're like, why don't we exit? Actually, so in our investment clause, we had a veto rise on any future All right. So if we want to block them, we could.

I didn't want to use that to block them. Oh, wow. So I was like, why don't we just exit and we can compete? And then we talked about exit, and then we exited, I think in If I remember correctly, the deal was finalized and the transfer was done in July 2021. And this is like 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 ask them for financial statements. Oh, wow. No, 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. And they also are slightly competitive. We had a futures platform. They have a futures platform. So I try to stay, no, let them do their thing.

So post this, the thing with the FTX thing that most people talk about are a couple of things. One was the way in which the restitution happened was suboptimal to some of the holders 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 crypto in general?

I don't understand the whole bankruptcy process, whether that's fair or not. I read a lot of different things online. Also, just to be transparent, there's an ongoing lawsuit between the state and us. They want to try to call back some of the money that we got a year and a half before. So there's probably limited stuff I can comment on that. But again, I'm not an expert there, but I did hear some complaints about some Chinese users not eligible, etc. But now, from what I read is because of their appreciation of crypto, now in US dollar terms, they have enough. Even though if people helped 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 governments, right? Yeah. For me, they started asking for the information request, which we always comply. So that was like 2021, 2022. Jewish. It was like late 2022, it was getting more hostile. Then I think early 2023 was more clear that they were making... We had to reach a deal of some kind or they're going to indict us or stuff like that. That was like, it became negotiations.

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

Number one, I'm not a legal background, so I have 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. No one has experience going through this. You go through this once, you never want to touch it again. No one really on the receiving it and have any experience. 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 all want to take a lot of time to analyze. They get paid by more time they spend. I'm not saying that they're unethical. They want to do a really good job. But then they go in all different tangents. So you get to drag in a lot of different places. That was the most troublesome part for me. If somebody told me, these are the three things you got to focus on, this strategy. We also didn't have a strong legal team. Our team is young. Our legal team didn't have this type of experience dealing dealing with this type of issues. So that was always tricky. But I look at... When I come...

By the way, where was the entire team at this point? Still...

We're all spread out. Now you're everywhere. Now we're everywhere. We're spread out. And I think, 2023, I was in Dubai. I was in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, splitting time. So, yeah, it was very stressful. But the way I deal with stress is I just look at the best and worst case scenarios. So ask the team, what's the best case scenario? Okay, you pay a fine, you get a DPA or then this thing's over. Then, okay, so that's the best case. And then the worst case is, 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 probation or- That would be the worst, worst case.

But for me, nobody got put in jail. But they could ask for it. There's actually another worst case, which is you fight it, and then If you can't agree on a term, you fight it and you stay in the UAE, which is a non-extradition country, 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. And Every time if you cross to a different country, even if that country is a non-extradition country, there can still be a chance that there's a deal being made. It's leaving fear.

Plus, it also creates complexity just at a government-to-government level if folks are allies. It just It 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 give me a citizenship. I don't want to be the trouble causer. The worst case scenario is you don't go there, they indict you, and they put you on the red notice list, stuff like that. Those are potential possibilities.

So how did you resolve it?

The negotiations was basically daily calls with 12, How many lawyers are on call for more than a year?

More than a year?

More than a year.

Back and forth with the President Biden DOJ.

The President Biden DOJ. And the most common thing I hear from my lawyer is, We have never seen them this hostile on a case like this. We have never seen this before. 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? Do you think, why is this happening to me? No resentment or just more, how did you deal with it?

It takes It takes successive steps, and there were a couple of steps which are really hard to take. The step where you say, look, in the negotiations, they come to a few points where you say, look, we're just going to have to say no. 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. So just have to say no. And then there was a couple of weeks that laps. You don't know what's going to happen.

So purgatory.

So you could get indicted. They can get you at any moment. So that's their choice. You already said no to that. There were a couple periods like that. Oh my God. And then in those couple of weeks, you're mentally thinking, okay, I can't travel anywhere. So 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 you go share it again?

And then you're like, what do you think is happening over there?

I think now, looking back, That's a very useful negotiation tactic. For me or for anybody in my situation-The silence. 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. There could be a sealed red notice against you. And this is the life they have to deal with going forever. And they don't... This things can stay there for decades. For them, they do this every day. This is the daily job. But 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. It's like, look, I'm already used to this. If you leave the guy in the situation for too long. Interesting. So they're very skilled in this type of mental work. Right. There were some really tough periods. And for this type of stuff, you don't get used to it. 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 basically said, Okay, I have validated a single charge of a banking secrecy violation, which is a registration failure, which is a federal crime. It's serious. But no one went to jail for this in history. There's no- 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 disjoint? Their 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. This is my layman's understanding, could be wrong. My understanding is there's a first level is banking secrecy act violation, which is a failure to register. Basically, we service US users without a register as a financial services company in the US.

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.

So that's number one, right? So that's the base layer. Okay. On top of that, you can say, look, you didn't have adequate KYC AML procedures or your procedures are not strong enough. So that's another level. Even if you're not registered, you're also supposed to have KYC, etc. Aml procedures. And those things people think that's a black and white thing. In reality, it's not. It's how well you do it. Which systems do you use? How do you do-How many people do you have?

What's your standard operating procedures? Yeah.

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

It's not robust. It's not robust. It's relatively naive, but it's there. Versus this is, I know this to be bad, and I'm enabling it to happen regardless. Yeah.

And there's the next level, which you're personally handling the transactions. Which is Charlie Schram handled transactions for Silicon Road for Ross. So that'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/aml is weak. Those are things we can find. 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. And then the government, we couldn't The government agreed on the two addition. The government wanted to add two additional charges. They call enhancements. The three and four. The three and four. They said, somehow I've personally facilitated, but they couldn't provide any evidence. They were trying to lean on the company. Somehow something happened in the company, etc.

They were trying to use- Were they able to Did they point to a transaction or something?

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

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, and we're going to hash it out in court. You land in America, you go into the courtroom, you start this process. What happens?

So, yeah, there was quite a lot of details there. First, the first day, you go and plea, right? So the plea, the agreement already debate it. By the way, sorry.

You're staying in a hotel?

I was staying in a hotel, yeah. I was staying in a hotel in downtown Seattle.

Is your family with you or no?

My family went to join. Well, not my kids, but my sister and my mom went to join me. I didn't want my kids to go. They had school, Yeah. And then my partner has a business to run. I was already no longer running the business. So I didn't want to drag her away from that. So my sister, my mom, and my older kids were with me. And then, yeah, so that's... And then I was staying in a hotel, and then the next morning, going to court. Going to court, the first part of the process is the plea, right? The judge ask, Do you understand this paragraph, this paragraph, this paragraph? Just say, Yes, yes, yes. That the paragraphs were already negotiated out of the wazoo by the multiple so-called lawyers.

Overlawyered.

Overlawyered. And then the lawyers debate about the The first case after the plea, they didn't debate about the charge. They debate about my bail, my bail condition. I got a post bail. My lawyers argued I should be allowed to go back to UAE waiting for the sentence three months later. The government argued that 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 possess any harm to the community. They argue about that 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 government appealed that. My lawyer says in his 40 years, he never seen a appeal on a bail condition. And then he said, well, this guy is a tone death because this will piss off the courts, which will actually be in my favor. And guess what? Two weeks later, the court was in the government's favor and I was kept in the US. I was kept away from home for three months. When three months came-In 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. My sister have a place in the US, so I was staying with my sister for a bit of the time, and then I was traveling just to try to keep myself cool. Chill. All right. Then three months later, the government request for another three months extension. 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?

No, I didn't ask them to come and see me.

You didn't see them for six months?

Yeah. Well, actually, I didn't see them for a year.

Then, yeah.

Then, so that government asked for another three months extension. Then on April 30th, 2024, that's my court date. Then a week before that is when both sides submit their request, the government request for 36 months, which is twice the maximum sentencing guideline for the worst case scenario for me. The court said, 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? And then my lawyer also... My The lawyer tone changed. Before they said, Oh, you can probably get home. They said, 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 government, most likely, is going to pick some number in between. I was like, Okay, that's not good. Wow. Yeah. Also, five days before my sentencing, on April 25th, Senator Elezabeth Warren went on TV to declare war on crypto again. This is five days before my sentencing. He he wrote an open letter, she wrote an open letter to the DOJ saying all this stuff, which is actually most of it is not correct. So then that's in April 30th, I got a sentence and then the judge said a bunch of really good things about me. I have all the experts in the book. And then at some point the judge says, but, and then you're like, okay, that's not good. And then I got four months.

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 the lawyer still debate. The sentencing on the April third is the lawyer's debate in court about, no, that's when the two headsmen got rejected by the court, my lawyers argue like, no, this and that. I never touched any of the transactions. I'm not aware. This thing just layers three and four of the accusations got thrown out. Yeah. And then they argue about what the recommend it, sentencing should be. My lawyers, of course, argued for either probation or home confinement as the worst case. And then the government argued like, this guy is a really bad guy. This case is really big. And We should punish him really, really hard with double the punishment of any legally recommended punishment, 36 months. So the judge landed at four.

How did you deal with that?

It was difficult at the beginning. It wasn't For a full month. It was, am I going to be safe? If you tell me, I'm not going to go to this place for four months. I'm guaranteed to be safe. I'll be okay. I'll be like, okay, fine. I'll just deal with it. But on a certain parties, Also, right after the sentencing, a bunch of the big media wrote that I'm going to be the richest person to ever go to US prison. And then my lawyers plus prison consultants, they say, Well, Given all this coverage- What is a prison consultant? That's a whole industry of some guy who advise you what prison is like and give 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. Anyway, the prison consultant is like, given the high-profile coverage, you're probably the biggest target for potential extortion in prison. So your safety is going to be an issue. That's the thing I was I was worried about then. I was like, so how do I deal? You go in, you don't have anything, right? How do I make sure that I stay safe? That's the top consideration, right? So you're really thinking about how do you do that? Well, you talk to a lot of people who... Prison consultants are usually ex-guards, ex-wardens. There's another group of guys who people who have been to... But those guys are in prison, but they are working there. They're They're not inmates. There's another group of guys who've been into prison, prison. They were there as an inmate. So you talk to a lot of those guys, and then you figure out what prison is like. Do you make friends? Do you not make friends? You get advice on if somebody comes up to you on the first day and they're really friendly, don't take anything from them because they will ask for 10 times more favor back later on.

If you don't, then they stab you, stuff like that. So I got a lot of different advice, but at the end of the day, you just got to go and face it, right? So What I learned is actually the US prison system is so vast. Two million people stay in US prison. The US government spends per annum more on prison than on education on schools, right? So that's how big the US prison population is. There's 50 states, and every state has a different system. There's state prisons, there's federal prisons, and each one is like a mini city. The prison I went in has 2,200 emails It's like a small city, and they each have their own rules, et cetera. I got some advice, but many of those advice are not really useful. But when you go in, you just got to deal with it.

You get sentenced on April 30th, you said? Yeah. When do you start?

When you get sentenced, you don't know which person you're going to. The court makes two recommendations, and then usually you will receive a letter.

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

In my case, the judge ruled that I don't need supervision, which is very unique. Then I don't have to check in. I just have to wait for a letter that comes to my sister's place, which is the address I register with the court. In fact, The government, the DOJ, in their request, they asked me to be premanded, meaning that I'll be taken away in handcuffs. I think they really wanted that photo for PR reasons. But the judge said, look, he's not at 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 he does not need supervision, which is actually a very interesting legal clause I learned later. This is why when I finish my sentence, I don't have probation. There's no parole. I don't need supervision. Oh, wow. So there's something really interesting stuff. Well, interesting stuff that you learn.

How was that period for you? Did anything bad happen or was it- Luckily, nothing too bad happened.

It's a really bad experience overall, but nothing, like no physical harm. There's no fights. There's no real extortion. What I found, like... So my prison consultants tell me, like, no, when you go in, don't join any gang. Stay to yourself. Just stay to yourself. Be quiet. Stay out of sight. The minute I walk into the prison gate, the guard says, Oh, you're going to need some protection here. I hear the Pacific Islanders are hurrying, so you might want to join them. This is literally the minute I walked through the gate, one guard was saying this to me. Wow. I was like, What does that mean? And then after the whole day, the first day was like, the first day is pretty... They take you through so many processes, you slip, search. I talked on CNBC, They strip search you. And then you move to your unit, which is 200 inmates there. It's like three rows of cells, 20 cells each facing each other's three floors. And there's a comment area in the bottom. And there's 200 macho guys looking at you and you walk into a cell. But what I actually found out is they organize prisons by race, so by ethnicity.

So if you are a Chinese dude, they group you with a Chinese dudes. And if you're a white guy, they group you with white guys, Black deals group with Mexican, Spanish guys, no, they put them in one group. This actually does avoid a lot of conflicts. You are more likely to get along with people of your own ethnicity in terms of culture, customs. There was one or two Eric guys. They pray, they have a different schedule. So they put you in groups by ethnicity. And the guards actually, the prison encourages because it reduces fighting. Oh, wow. And then once you're in a group, if you have a problem with somebody else in some other group, there's a group rep, and the rep will talk about it. And this is like a hierarchy.

Union reps?

Kind of like a Union reps. Like a Union Reps.

And then they come together and they hash out.

Yeah, they say, Look, stand down. We walked through it. So there's a system to it, but I didn't know any of this. So I walk in and then this half Asian-looking dude comes to me, say, Look, my name's Chino. Welcome to our group. He says, car. Welcome to our car. I was like, What? Should I shake his hands? Should I nod? Am I joining this gang? It's crazy. And this guy is a Filipino- German mix. There's not enough Asians, so they group anything that's Asian. And they also group the Native Americans plus Pacific Islanders, like how the Hawaiiians, into the same group. So our group only has six people out of this 200 people. And I was sent to a low security prison. I should be eligible for a minimum security prison, which is one level lower, where most of the white-collar crimes go. But because I'm not a US citizen, they put me into a low, which is where all the drug laws are. So... Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's a crazy experience. I have 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. When you first get... So the shower is literally box this big. This is like a cowboy bar door. That covers the middle part. They can see your legs and see your head. But it's hard to take a shower without touching the wall. So when you get out of prison the first time, it's like taking a shower, you no longer need to touch the shower wall. That's a luxury. And also there's very limited fruits, very limited protein, proper protein. There's a lot of carbs, a lot of bread, flowers, fried stuff, very little veggies, very little protein, very little fruits. I haven't seen a whole fruit for months. When I saw When I got out and saw a plate of fruit, I was like, wow, that's a luxury I haven't seen for a few months.

Did you immediately just go back to the UE? Yeah.

When I left prison, it took me about 26 minutes from leaving 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 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 what I can say about the agreement, the plea, et cetera. So I- You're just talking emotionally. Emotionally, I just wanted to be over with. And remember that when I first got out, this is still the Biden administration. The election has not happened. And it wasn't clear who's going to win. It wasn't clear. The US policy is still the same.

You went in when?

I went in on May 30th, 2024.

And you got out four months later.

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

And by the way, sorry, at that point, you had been in America for a year. You hadn't seen your kids in a year. Yeah.

So at that point, I just wanted this whole thing to be over with. I thought they will continue. I thought if the policies continue, then you will still be anti-crypto policies. Well, just whatever. We'll just survive however we survive. So that was 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?

Yeah, so I'm actually okay with that. Stepping down was really hard. I actually cried out of it. And the only other time I really cried was when my father passed away a few years ago. But after a few... After coming back, I was actually quite happy not to run Binance. I have a lot more free time. And then if I step down myself, people will say, Hey, this guy ran out of stamina. But now I can't run Binance. So it's not my fault. It's not your problem. It's not my choice. But after a while, I was like, no, there are other very useful, meaningful things I can do with my life. I I think overall, I'm in a very fortunate position. I have resources. I have enough money to do whatever I want to do in terms of enabling projects and businesses, etc. Including like, no, GIGO Academy, free education, stuff like that.

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

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

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

I don't even know what the process is. So the process is you find a lawyer who writes you a petition, who put all the arguments why you should be pardoned, why you were overly prosecuted, etc. And why are you a good person?

And a pardon, what is it for? Is it effectively to recognize over prosecution?

No, partnership, you erase everything you had before. So you're now a very normal person.

But the reason to be considered for it can be anything. It can be anything. It's really just the discretion of the President reading the petition.

I think so. Well, based on my understanding is the Constitution grants the US President to give pardon. And that's about as much detail as it says, I think. Right. Okay. And then how he does it-It's really about the social norms in that moment and then how he interprets those social norms. I think so. And then, historically, most presidents pardon on the last day, right? Exactly. And then Biden, I think, started pardoning in between.

And he also did pre-pardons.

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

It was very new. It was largely around COVID for that. But that really caught a lot of people off guard.

He also pre-pardoned his son for some period. That's right.

Biden- It wasn't just the COVID stuff.

It wasn't just a COVID study. It was like a period of time where nobody even talked about. That's right. It was like, why do we need it? That's right. But anyway, so the process, I believe, there's no process. The President can do whatever they want. So you send a petition, then you wait. And then there is a pardon, sir, in the White House. I think her name is Alice Johnson. She also went to prison for many years. She wrote a really nice book, which I read. But your lawyers will go pin her and say, They need a status update. They need a status update. There's no, no, no. And then suddenly, it happened. So that's the the extent I know about the pardon process. I don't think there's a fixed process. I don't think anybody knows what that is.

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

I didn't do much. I didn't do anything. But I think, look, without a pardon, it's quite hard for Binance to enter the US in a proper way.

Because you're the UBO.

I'm the UBO. Is that right? Yeah. I'm the UBO of Binance US. Right. Without a pardon, Binance is severely limited to do stuff in the US. If US wants to become the capital of crypto in the world, you cannot not have the largest player. You cannot have US people not be able to access the largest liquidity pool in crypto. And we're also one of the largest crypto ecosystems. So I think my guess would be that, look, the President is a crypto President. You obviously He's had his own issues, like the debanking.

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

Not only debanking, he got 34 criminal charges. Yeah. That as well. And he got, 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. And one of the charges was he brought some document to his bathroom to read. That's crazy. So I think the fact that he went through the Biden DOJ will probably help me a lot to get the pardon because he will sympathize He knows how aggressive that DOJ was. So that probably helped me in some way.

So how do you spend your time now?

I'm still getting pretty busy now. I do GIGO Academy, this free education platform. I consult with many governments to We helped them to put in sound crypto regulatory policies. I get involved on the investment side. We invest in the blockchain AI biotech, the very active team doing investments. This is within Binance or outside of Binance? This is outside of Binance. This is a part of Easy Laps. And then I also help mentor, coach a few funders in the BMB chain ecosystem, etc. So being in all of those things, I'm actually pretty busy. Tell me about Giggle Academy. So I thought, no, it's possible to fully digitize all education content.

And why is that important?

There's some numbers. I think 700 to 800 million adults are illiterate. Two-thirds of them are women. And on On top of that, there's about 500 million kids who are not in school. If you add all of that up, that's like 1. 2 billion people who are not educated.

12, 13% of the world population.

Yeah. And these are all in really poor areas. There's just no schools around or they just couldn't afford to go to school. And the schools are not very good today either. The schools average you out. You have a classroom.

How is the software designed?

So it's just an app on a or a phone or tablet. It's just an app. I believe that we have enough technology with 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 Is there a difference in this, like Alpha School, and do you have any opinions on that?

Yes, I think Alpha School is great. Alpha School is really good, but it's high cost. High cost. It's more cute.

I think Joe's software is called Time Back. I think that's what it's called. Have you had a chance to see?

I have not played with a lot. I did meet some of the funders there and some of the key executives there. They solve a very hard problem of making the existing education better, where I solved the other end of the problem, making the education accessible, hopefully better later.

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

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

The software is very reward-oriented. Badges.

Yeah.

Let me just ask the obvious question. When I looked at it, I was like, well, badges is like a trail of breadcrumbs to tokenize and earn and payments. Am I just making this up?

No. I thought really hard about this, but I will for a very long time resist issue a token on the Gold Academy. This is pros and cons. When you issue a token, you You can do the rewards, you can learn to earn. You can do a bunch of stuff, you can incentivize teachers, you can create content. That's good. But for me, I want to avoid the token because of me. 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. Then I won't be able to tell if people are they real kids learning or is it just farmers that are trying to farm the token? I want to If I issue a token, if Giggle issue a token, everyone's going to sell it.

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

Everyone thinks about that. It's a very obvious thing, right? Yeah, exactly. But I want the Giggle. I want Giggle to be a real free education platform instead of a token platform, instead of some crypto thing, right? So if there's a token, then people is going to focus on the token.

So your goal is that you'll just deficit finances and just continue to proliferate this?

Yeah. So that was my goal. But what happened is there's a community project that donated $12 million. $12 million? $12 million US dollars based on a meme coin. And this is not something... And I've only spent maybe three, $4 million on the entire project so far. So now it's actually net. It's hard to give money away. So it's hard to give money away with a positive impact.

With a positive impact.

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

Let me ask an AI question for a second. You said that AI is this third pillar of your life that you see, these big waves, right? Yeah. 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. And there's a richness 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. It stands to reason that agents are also participants of commerce and need payments. I think you've said this is probably the largest user of crypto at some point in the near future. Describe that vision for us.

Yeah, I think it's fairly straightforward. I think, as you said, right? I think it's very clear soon, each of us is going to have hundreds or thousands of millions of agents working for us in the background, and they will be transacting. They will be moving money around. In theory, if I want to listen to this podcast, people should pay a few cents to listen to it, whatever economic model that you want. More than that's easy. Sure, of course. Sure. But there was some economic model, right? Right. Right now, even last year, we talked about agents buying tickets for us. It's not quite there yet, but you will get there. They will book They'll pay for hotels for us. And then the agents can transact a million times more than us, and they are not going to use banks. Banks just won't be able to support it.

Banks won't onboard and AML KYC an agent. It doesn't even make sense.

It can't do a KYC. They can't swipe a card.

It doesn't make any sense. But also what agents will do is they'll transact at a transaction volume and at a rate, it'll make the traditional networks head spin.

Exactly. They're just not going to be able to support it. And also So even stuff like investments or trading, right? So today, you open the Binance app, you look at a chart, you have to click on a price level and you have to type in the price on a green or red button. That shouldn't be the interface. The interface should be like, look, convert 10 % of my stablecoins into BMB. And then you'll figure out, okay, if you have a large position, you'll do slowly over time. If you have a small position, which would be one market order. All of that stuff should be just happening in the background, all right? So the agent can do this for us. Soon, you will be able to.

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

I'm actually not too sure. I don't think there is any one that's super-What crypto project today do you think comes? You mean crypto?

Yeah. That agents could use, theoretically.

Again, it's early days. I don't want to name any specific projects. It will cost some token price fluctuations. But quite a number of people are working on. Especially recently with more like an AI agent social network thing. It's getting more and more hype. I think 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. Notice. 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 Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies do not have enough privacy features. I think when Bitcoin was designed, it was going to be pseudo-anonymous. But the fact is every transaction on the blockchain can trace, especially now you have a centralized exchange with KYC. Exactly. And 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 while somebody's using this for something illicit. I say there are those use cases, but the overwhelming majority is you buy a pack of gum, but tomorrow you may want to buy a certain movie or a video game. You may want to buy a cigarette. And it's not for me to judge. And dollars are fungible in that sense. It's complete anonymity. We have no idea about what it was used before that I got my hands on it.

Well, there are actually There are real applications where privacy is extremely important. If you book a certain hotel and people know that hotel address, like blockchain hotel address, the receiving address, they will know that you will be in that hotel. That's right. That's a physical security for you. That's right. So there are real use cases where privacy is very important. This is why people don't publicize their home addresses online. In many countries, in Japan, if you review somebody's home address, that's illegal. So there are real use cases for privacy, at which Bitcoin, most cryptocurrencies currently do not provide. There's a counter argument, okay, law enforcement wanted to track down bad guys. That can be done. I'm supportive of that, but there's fundamental privacy issue choose. So I do think that in the future, as an industry, we need to figure out how to evolve the privacy features, which no one is really focusing on right now. There's a few privacy-focused coins. I shouldn't say no one, but they are They don't have much market cap. They don't have much size.

Tell me about the book.

It's coming along. It's always a longer project than I anticipate.

What was the point of it? Is it catharsis or is it to make a point? Is it to tell a story? All of those things?

A bit of everything. It started because I was bored. I started drafting when I was in prison. It was just to keep me busy because I don't want to be chatting with It just kept me busy in prison. So I was starting drafting it and typing on a very dumb terminal and sending it to my assistant. 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. But editing a book takes so long. Every pass takes two, three weeks if you want to edit a book. Because right now, it's 95,000 words, so it's like 300 pages. And then I'm also editing the English Chinese version. 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, 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 CZ, Binance, the entire industry. And to some extent, I think there's a lot of negative media about Trump, the part, et cetera. That part is not too heavy in my book. It's as simple as we talked about on this podcast. But just for people to understand who I am, to some extent, by extension, who Binance is from my perspective.

Is it important story for your children?

I think so, yes.

Why?

I think it's important for them to understand. No, they see... They, of course, are more on my side. They know all this media is not the right stuff, but I didn't have time to explain the story to them in this level of detail. I think it's important for them to read this, and they will understand a lot more detail than what I'm able to tell them verbally or in person, etc. 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. If they're happy just being a normal person, then that's good for me. If they want to do startups and build companies, then that's great. If they want to be artistic, et cetera, that's great. If they want to do humanitarian efforts, charity, that's also great. Whatever they figure out what they want to do, I just want to be there to support them. How similar or different is that from what you got from your parents? Pretty similar. My parents didn't have pressure on me. My parents didn't pressure me to be this and that. They're not even like normal Chinese parents where they want you to be a doctor or engineer. Or lawyer engineer. That was my parents. My parents didn't do that with me. My parents, you can do whatever you want. My parents said to me...

It's very un-Chinese.

Very long Chinese. My parents said, Don't hurt yourself, don't hurt other people. So don't do drugs, don't get into crime, and then don't hurt other people. So that's as simple as I got from my parents.

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. I think that we glorify success in a way that makes it seem like it's impregnable. It's like this very quixotic thing that happens. And it's not that. No. The reason why I can say that is that when I spend time with you, and I'm sure now the people are rounding two hours with you, they'll think, Man, this guy is really normal.

I'm a normal dude.

Exactly. A lot of people say that. To me as well in this weird way, it's like you're just a normal guy. It's like there's something really valuable about working on things that you like because then the time just passes. You 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, number one, I'm a normal dude. I know I'm not super smart, but you don't need to be super smart to be successful. You can't be too dumb, but you don't need to be super smart. There's a lot of other things like principles, values, emotional quotient, a lot of those things come into play. I think there's a lot of luck as well. But I think for most people, you are in a situation where you are. You usually cannot change the situation. So what you can only do is change yourself. So if you just push yourself a little bit every day, you don't have to push yourself too hard. You push yourself too hard, you're going to burn out. You're not going to last long. But you want to push yourself to like 120%, 110, I think it's 130 %, somewhere in that range, where however you can last long. If you do that for like 30 years and you get lucky, you will most likely be relatively successful. You might not be a billionaire, but 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. In our life, there's a few... I picture a spider your web graph. Money is only one tangent. So once you have enough-One thread. It's one thread. Having more doesn't help you. In fact, there's health, there's family, there's other things that can keep you happy, like your values, contribution, positive impact, that's intrinsic internal rewards that you feel very happy about. A lot of those things are extremely important. So once you have enough money on this graph, more doesn't make you happy. Sometimes you have more, sometimes you have less. Then how's your health? Also, there's another time. How much time do you have? Can you use your time the way you want? Are you working on the stuff you want? Are you spending with the people that you want to spend with? And are your family healthy? You are very lucky if your family is all healthy. That's already a huge gift. And then your mental health is also important. How do you deal with pressure, et cetera. I somehow am very lucky to have a very stable mind. So I think all of those things are extremely important. And all of those things you can improve on instead of just money.

A lot of people only chase money, but they 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.

So this is also the part I'm actually very grateful that I don't have to run Binance anymore, now I have more time. Whereas before, even though that was very enjoyable, but on my other quotients, I was not doing well.

Cz, thanks for joining the All In podcast.

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