January 24 AMA with CZ on Twitter Spaces: Key Takeaways
Main Takeaways
Everybody, of all ages, should be encouraged to learn about finance and new technologies, but only those above 18 should be able to trade.
There are benefits to FUD. You cannot say something negative about somebody without mentioning their name. As long as there are FUD attacks against Binance – which we cannot stop anyway – our name will be mentioned, spreading awareness.
Binance is already using artificial intelligence and blockchain for certain tasks. Public ledgers hold a lot of data that algorithms can leverage, so the number of AI and ML applications in the blockchain space will only grow.
Binance’s CEO, CZ, took to Twitter Spaces on January 24, 2023, hosting a surprise AMA for the community to ask questions about Binance directly. If you missed it, here are the key takeaways from the live session. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
1. There are a lot of new projects coming up. What plans do you have when it comes to listing projects?
CZ: Our listing standards don't change whether it's a bear or bull market, layer-1 or layer-2, on the BNB Chain or other chains. Even projects on the BNB Chain that we may review faster need to have users and good products.
Binance’s listing standards have not changed much over the years. The number one thing we look for is the number of users. So, if the number of users for a project or a coin is high, there is utility value, and usually very good liquidity. If they don't have a large number of users, then we need to look at other things very carefully, like the product or team. For early-stage projects, we need to do a detailed review or due diligence. It’s a simpler decision if it’s already a large project.
We don't really consider other factors, but being in the BNB ecosystem or on the BNB Chain does give a project more exposure to our team, so their review may be prioritized. However, it doesn't give them any special privilege to get listed on Binance.
2. How about making Binance Feed available to those aged 15 and above to use as social media?
CZ: We agree completely with this suggestion. It's very important to educate young people about finance and new technology, and we agree with that part of the idea, but only people above 18 should be able to trade.
Even today, articles on Binance Academy can be accessed by anyone interested in learning more. So conceptually, we agree with this idea.
3. What is your personal view on the regulatory environment for NFTs and how they are regulated as an asset class?
CZ: I'm not an expert on the regulatory framework in every part of the world, but I do get some exposure to that. Most places, as far as I know, don't have specific regulations for NFTs yet. In Europe, the MiCA (Markets in Crypto Assets) proposals specifically carved out NFTs, saying that they are not part of the regulatory framework. They'll revisit that topic in the future.
So that's MiCA, which should kick off in a year or two for all of Europe. In other parts of the world, there are very few countries that have regulations for NFTs. That's the state of things today. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any single country that has one, we will just have to wait and see.
As for the Binance NFT platform, Binance.com provides a more centralized NFT platform, different from OpenSea and other players. We’ll also have to see how that goes. We just have to provide as many choices to the users as possible and wait for the results.
4. How do you go about stopping fake news, FUD and attacks on Binance?
CZ: I don't think it's possible to stop it, I really wish it was, but it happens for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there are many different groups of people who may generate fake news, gossip and rumors. Secondly, there are people who are traders. There are traders who will try to generate negative news when they're short. When they're long, they want to generate positive news, since they want the price to go up. So those are the traders, they swing, sometimes depending on which position they're in. Thirdly, there are people with skeptical views about crypto. They don't understand it and they're skeptical about it, which is fine. Fourthly, there are people who simply feel threatened by this new disruptive technology. All of these reasons are perfectly legitimate.
Last year, we actually paid attention to FUD. But this year we just said, look, let's ignore all of that, and focus on our own thing, let's build products that people use.
There is a positive aspect to this in that you cannot say something negative about somebody without mentioning their name. Our name will constantly be mentioned as long as FUD or rumors are spread about us, which spreads people’s awareness of Binance. If these people come to their own judgments, which I believe they will, then they can judge whether it is FUD or not. We will continue to ignore most of that and build our products.
5. Will Binance develop anything in the area of machine learning, and will this be combined with blockchain?
CZ: There are a lot of use cases for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
On Binance.com today, there are two places where we use it very heavily. One is customer support. Obviously most customer support questions are repetitive. Usually, people ask “How do I deposit,” “How do I do KYC,” and related questions. Using machine learning is quite good for that. I think about 75% of our customer support requests can be handled by AI successfully upon first contact. That means 75% of the workload is reduced, then the other 25% goes to a human agent, which gives us more time to service those users.
The other areas we use it in are risk management, transaction monitoring, risk fraud detection, market manipulation detection, and more. In those areas, we use big data and machine learning for detection purposes. There are many other areas where we could use AI and machine-learning technology, so I think this technology has very far-reaching implications, or applications. I won’t be able to list them all.
On the blockchain side, public ledgers contain quite a lot of data, which means that there are many different use cases to use machine learning to analyze this – potentially in fraud detection, trading strategies, and many other applications, the list goes on. With machine learning becoming more mature and stronger, there will naturally be more applications.
Listen to the full recording on Twitter Spaces:
Read the following articles on Binance to learn more about CZ and Binance:
Don’t miss the chance to ask your questions at the next AMA. Follow Binance and CZ on Twitter for the upcoming schedule and more insights from CZ.
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