Highlights From CZ’s MENA AMA
Main Takeaways
From March 22 to April 4, we ran different activities, rewards, and community initiatives every day for 14 days as part of our dedicated Ramadan Calendar.
One of those events was a special Binance Live AMA with Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance’s CEO, during which he answered as many questions from the community as possible, with a particular focus on the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.
CZ believes that MENA is one of the best places to do business in the world. “I find that people here are very humble, very business-driven, very reasonable, and very friendly.”
Too many people talk about price. Anytime the price moves, there's a lot of discussion. The industry should focus on building utility — basically products that people use.
Adoption of blockchain and crypto is accelerating. What gets built will shape the future.
What follows is a summary of CZ’s answers to some of the questions he received during a Binance Live AMA on March 22, 2023. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Middle East & North Africa (MENA)
You visit the Middle East region quite a lot. What have you found most inspiring about the predominantly Muslim culture there?
CZ: Well, I'm not just visiting. I'm based here now. This is my base. I fly back, dump my dirty clothes, get new ones, and fly out. What I find is the Muslim or Middle East regions — they're quite often misunderstood. The Western media portray them with a level of skepticism or narrative that's quite unfair, in my opinion, kind of how they treat crypto. I find that people here are very humble, very business-driven, very reasonable, and very friendly. So I find this is one of the best places to do business in the world.
Education and Charity
How important is it for Binance to be giving back through Binance Charity and Web3 education?
CZ: First of all, I think education is super, super important. It’s the best way to increase adoption. People learn. They come in and learn about the risks, the rewards, and what the technology can do — that's the best way to proper adoption. And education is also the best charity. When you teach somebody to fish, you help them for life instead of just giving them direct money. But education is long-term. There are times when we do need our charity efforts to ramp up. For example, when there's an earthquake or a war, we need to deploy funds very quickly, as people need immediate help.
Web3 Adoption
How do you think the industry can best help drive Web3 adoption?
CZ: I think the number one thing would be to focus on utility and not price. Too many people talk about price. Anytime the price moves, there's a lot of discussion. But unless you’re a day trader, you shouldn't be too worried about price. We as an industry should focus on building utility — basically products that people use.
I also think we need to work very closely with regulators. In our industry, there's a view that we want to get away from governments, from regulators. That's not the best approach. We need to make incremental innovations, incremental approaches, and we need to make sure the regulators are comfortable with us.
MENA and Blockchain
Countries in the MENA region seem to be particularly forward-thinking when it comes to blockchain and new financial technology. What's your view of that?
CZ: Well, the overall MENA region is very business-driven. The leaders are very forward-thinking. They understand they cannot rely on oil forever and that they need to build new industries. And we see them welcoming new blockchain tech and new crypto startups. I think when I first came to Dubai, there were maybe half a dozen crypto companies. Today, there are probably more than 700. I also see other cities in the region growing very quickly as well. So yeah, I think this is one of the best places to be.
But we’ve got to have a global view. Blockchain doesn't work if it's only one note. So we need a network all around the world. There are many different places. I've been spending quite a lot of time in Africa, which has huge potential in the long term because of the population, and because many don't have access to banking. They're kind of financially excluded right now. We’re trying to give them that access.
The Benefit of Hindsight
What do you wish you had known when you were starting out?
CZ: With hindsight, there are a lot of things I’d have done differently. I think I probably would've wanted to come to the MENA region earlier. We probably should have engaged with the regulators globally a lot earlier and made earlier educational efforts. I probably should have learned Arabic earlier. But we knew what we knew at the time, and we made the decisions we thought were best. Just keep moving forward.
Setting the Right Goals
How do you plan on staying the biggest?
CZ: The goal shouldn't be: "We want to be the biggest." That's the wrong goal. We just do our best and we are who we are. Being big or small is not an issue for me personally. Our goal is not to be the biggest or to maximize profits or stuff like that. It's just to do what we do well and be sustainable and provide value to our users.
We build a stable, safe platform for people to exchange assets and provide a marketplace for people to access liquidity, and that's what we do best. Somebody does that better, or somebody does that slightly differently; they become bigger. That's that. We can try to learn from them; we can try to improve.
On/Off-Ramps and Banks
Is Binance exploring the idea of its own bank as a solution to fiat on/off-ramps?
CZ: There are many different types of fiat on/off-ramps, and there’s no global solution. Buying a bank doesn't solve the problem. It's not as simple as that. Banks are highly regulated, which means they're highly molded. You have to operate in a very certain way. There’s almost zero innovation. You're forced to lend customer money to make money, and you're forced into not having a one-to-one depository reserve system.
Having said that, we’re exploring all options. So we’re talking with different regulatory bodies about applying for banking licenses, buying banks, and also operating full depository banks. So one-to-one reserves; no lending. We’re exploring. We have people working on these initiatives. But there's no single global on/off-ramp solution.
Each country's different. But that gives Binance the edge. We’re large enough that we have the resources to work on different solutions globally as a single platform. That gives our users the best liquidity and the best prices. It's a very long and detailed topic.
The Future
What do you think Web3 will look like in five years?
CZ: Predicting the future is so hard, especially the short-term future. We’re seeing accelerated adoption of blockchain and crypto technologies. But specifically, what that future looks like, depends on entrepreneurs and what they build.
We can't predict the future precisely, but we can see that technological innovation does not stop. You cannot erase or backtrack concepts in people's minds. Hundreds of millions of people understand the blockchain concept. What we’re seeing is more and more users coming in. There are more and more projects, they're building more use cases, there’s more utility, and there are more users.