Athena、Sei、Saga、Aethir、Berachain！
I believe our friends in the crypto circle are no strangers to these projects, right?
Behind these star projects, there is investment from the same fund, No Limit Holdings. As a fund that was only established at the end of 2022, this fund has performed very well. Previously, the well-known data platform rootdata counted the proportion of Binance mining on the portfolios of major funds, and Binance Labs, which ranked first, only had 11%.
The probability of listing on Binance in No Limit Holings' Portofoli has actually reached 11%, which is almost the same as Binance Labs and far exceeds other funds.
Why is this fund so awesome? Because the founder of this fund, Gin Chao, is not only the former boss of Binance Labs, but also a director of Binance!
We at Crypto Da Piaoliang were fortunate enough to have an interview with this big guy. This article is compiled based on the interview content:
Big beautiful:
I know you are very successful in your career. You are the founder of No Limit Holdings, a director of Binance, and a director of CMC, but today I hope you can first answer our questions as a friend of CZ.
CZ is still serving his sentence, but it's only four months.
As his friend, you also wrote a petition to the court. Can you briefly tell us how you two met?
Gin Chao：
Thank you for inviting me here. It's a long story. It started with the financial crisis in 2009. The business environment in the United States was bad. I moved from the United States to Shanghai to start my new career. You know, BTC was born that year.
I moved to a residential area in Pudong at that time, and CZ happened to live there too. We had some mutual friends who organized a game of Texas Hold'em, and we got to know each other while playing cards. There were many old OGs of BTC at the game, and CZ and I learned a lot about encryption together. This is why the encryption fund I am working on now is called no limit holdings. Anyone who has played Texas Hold'em knows what it means.
Big beautiful:
Hahaha, cool. I can actually get to know the future richest man in the crypto industry by playing cards. So who is more likely to win when playing cards between you?
Gin Chao：
It was just a friend's card game. We had been playing together for many years. Sometimes he won and he lost, sometimes I won and I lost, and sometimes others beat us, but then I couldn't keep up.
Big beautiful:
So you joined binance because you trust CZ?
Gin Chao：
Yes, we knew each other since 2009, and then he went into crypto full time. He moved to Beijing in 2013, and that’s when I also moved to Beijing and joined NBA China. We were always discussing crypto, blockchain technology, what it really meant. So when he launched Binance in 2017, he invited me to join, and I joined the company as a strategy officer in 2018.
Big beautiful:
As for CZ's 4-month prison sentence, do you think it's reasonable? Is it too much? After all, the SEC has already fined CZ 4.3 billion US dollars. Many people suspect that the SEC did this to get more money. What do you think?
Gin Chao：
Let me first state that I am not a legal expert, but I have done research on this matter and asked some lawyer friends. From my understanding, this type of case has never been judged in this way before.
Because this is essentially a compliance request, requesting to pass the US bank confidentiality regulations and anti-money laundering regulations. If this type of regulations were broken before, I didn't see anyone going to jail, so today's decision is an important case. Usually, when they impose such a large fine, in past cases, they generally recommend probation. For example, Hayes was just sentenced, almost the same case, and he was given probation.
So from this perspective, CZ's case is unusual. Although four months is less than what the prosecutor recommended at the beginning, any jail time is a signal sent by the US government. So this is very unusual, and CZ was unfortunately caught as a typical example. Next, we will see whether people with the same case will be sentenced in the same way. If not, then CZ was sentenced too harshly.
Big beautiful:
Now that the fine has been paid and CZ is going to jail, does this mean that Binance is compliant in the United States?
Gin Chao：
I want to clarify here that Binance no longer accepts American users. Also for compliance reasons, Binance has now separated out a separate entity called Binance US, which serves American users as an independent entity.
In the past, Binance’s compliance was put on hold. After this incident, the United States will monitor Binance for five years, which means that it must remain clean and compliant in the future. As a global company, there is still some compliance work to be done if it wants to continue providing services.
Meanwhile, US users can only access Binance’s services through Binance US, which is a different entity.
Big beautiful:
What impact do you think this incident will have on our crypto industry? Recently, the SEC also sued the parent companies of Lido and Metask. In the long run, will it have a better boost to the entire industry?
Gin Chao：
In terms of long-term impact, I think this is a signal.
From the U.S. perspective, most crypto projects are not tokens for centralized exchanges, and centralization is not the essence of the cryptocurrency world. The business model of centralized exchanges is also different from our decentralized applications and governance structures.
So in the long run, this will not affect crypto prices now or in the future.
Is this good for the entire industry? I think it is a step towards more compliance. It is hard to say whether it is good or bad for the United States and Europe. But from the user's perspective, it can give new users a sense of security. New users may not understand encryption technology before, and they dare not take action because they are afraid of risks.
Of course, there are also bad aspects. The friction between corporate development and supervision will increase in the future, and the final outcome of the friction remains to be seen.
To date, the United States has not formulated a new policy specifically for this technology. They still rely on the traditional regulatory framework, which may not be the most suitable for this technology. So if you want to say that the ruling of this case today will have a big impact on the industry in the long run, I don’t think it will have a big impact. It’s just a result of the handling.
Big beautiful:
Speaking of investment strategies and ideas, there is a voice in the market now saying that the encryption industry is now in a state where the East and the West are not taking over each other. As a big guy with many connections in the East and the West, what do you think of this view?
Gin Chao：
To be honest I don't see it that way.
One thing that’s really fascinating about blockchain is that it really is a truly global technology.
Of course there is the Internet, but if you look at how the Internet was created, the basic infrastructure came from research labs in the United States, especially the Department of Defense. So the early ecosystem developed there, so now you look at the dominant Internet companies are still mainly in the United States. When you replicate it in other parts of the world, you have to meet local and cultural needs.
And when you look at blockchain technology, value transfer payments, and financial services, these are global needs and services.
First of all, from the perspective of the market, whether it is the market in developed countries in the West, the market in developing regions in the East, or the market in other backward regions, they are all developing in parallel in the encryption industry, which is what I like most about this industry.
In addition, the industry's technical talents, business talents, founders, grassroots marketing teams and community builders are distributed all over the world.
In many successful crypto projects, they may be registered in one place, and the team or other things that make the project successful are in another place.
I think we cannot look at such a global industry from the perspective of East-West opposition.
Good projects can come from anywhere, and there may be differences in execution between regions, but in the long run, the confrontation between the East and the West will not be a trend.
The regional differences we observe today may be a blip in the industry’s current stage of development.
Big beautiful:
At the end of the interview, can you give a message to our audience? Most of our audience are industry practitioners and investors. Is there anything you want to tell everyone?
Gin Chao：
Overall, the message I want to convey to people is that if you look at the last 10 years, our industry is still in the very early stages of development, really in its infancy.
We are just getting started. We are getting close to the tipping point, and what happens after the tipping point? The really useful applications are coming.
I think so far we've been building infrastructure to pave the way for large-scale applications.
In the next stage, application-related things will be more interesting. We will start by shifting from speculation/price discovery/liquidity provision to basic applications, just like the Internet started from simple applications such as email and search and truly developed to what it is today.
This is important, so I hope everyone keeps the long term in mind and looks at all the opportunities in this industry.
Big beautiful:
Thank you for your valuable time. Time is limited today, so let’s talk about it here first. I heard that your fund may be able to help your LP achieve a 15-fold return on investment this time, and you recently introduced Morgan’s COO as a partner, which is amazing!
If you have time later, I would like to invite you to our channel to talk about your investment strategy in the web3 field, is that okay?
Gin Chao：
Okay, see you next time.