On April 30, Zhao Changpeng, the founder of Binance, was sentenced to four months in prison in the Seattle District Court of the United States for violating the US Anti-Money Laundering Act. The prosecutor originally requested a 36-month sentence, but the court received 161 letters of support from friends and family, which emphasized his good image in family and career, which had a positive impact on the judge's verdict. The judge believed that although CZ made mistakes in anti-money laundering, he did not deliberately participate in illegal activities, so he finally decided to give him a light sentence of four months.
As time goes by, CZ is expected to be released from prison on September 29, 2024. By then, there will inevitably be a wave of hype about related concepts in the crypto market, and the overall market environment will be turbulent!
So what is so attractive about this man?
Single-handedly created the "largest institute in the universe"
When it comes to the top cryptocurrency exchanges, you may think of a long list of names, but there is only one king - Binance.
This is a fact that even its competitors have to admit. In various rankings, whether it is spot or futures, Binance's market share is far ahead, often exceeding 50%, which is more than the sum of the top five.
Data shows that Binance currently has more than 6,000 employees worldwide; it supports 18 service languages worldwide, and has more than 120 million users who have passed KYC certification, which is equivalent to 1 Binance user for every 66 people in the world. People in the circle jokingly call Binance the "largest exchange in the universe."
From a small startup in 2017 to the current industry leader, Binance, under the leadership of CZ, took only 6 years to build a diversified business system from scratch, covering spot, futures, options, OTC, mining pools, cloud services, public chains, investments, charity, etc. Today, Binance is not just a trading platform, but a comprehensive blockchain giant.
What is the secret of Binance's success? Many people say it is the industry opportunity given by the "94" in China. Opportunities are important, but what is more critical is how people in the game judge the situation and make good choices. The internationalization strategy established by CZ successfully helped Binance capture a batch of traffic in its early stages.
In 2017, domestic exchanges emerged in large numbers. When Binance was founded, it positioned itself as an international trading platform, expanding its target users to the world and avoiding the competition in the domestic stock market. Two months later, the "94" strong regulation came. When a number of domestic exchanges were shut down, Binance's global strategic goal enabled it to survive and lay a user base for subsequent development. In just 165 days, Binance made a strong counterattack and successfully became a first-tier trading platform, becoming the largest cryptocurrency spot exchange at the time.
After the boom passed and the market entered a bear market, Binance did not rest on its laurels, but continued to enrich its trading business. For example, in the second half of 2019, it focused on derivatives contracts, and successively launched C2C, lending and other services to enhance the network effect. After its trading business became the top one, Binance is also seeking transformation, mainly focusing on investment, technology research and development (public chain), new business (such as mining pools) and charity.
Unlike the totalitarian managers in the traditional impression, CZ, who is in charge of a huge crypto empire, advocates a decentralized model and tries his best to delegate power. All of Binance's businesses are "taken one step at a time" and slowly explored. "We have always had a relatively loose management model, and everyone has a lot of freedom. It is relatively simple to start a project in Binance, and everyone can do whatever they want. But he has to produce results. If he can't produce results for a period of time, we may stop the project."
It may be under this model that Binance's innovative factors burst out, and its management efficiency has not been reduced due to distributed office. Taking the Binance public chain as an example, it announced the development of its own public chain in December 2018, and it took only more than a year to launch the main network. This year, it launched BNB Chain's second-layer network OpBNB and distributed storage chain BNB Greenfield. Binance's public chain is also the one with the best ecological development among the exchange's public chains, and it once caught up with Ethereum.
Interestingly, Binance is not a "pioneer" in its exploration of many tracks, but a "follower". Take the most popular IEO as an example. As early as 2017, some exchanges tried it but the effect was not good. Instead, Binance popularized this gameplay in 2019 and it has continued to this day, and it has become the standard of CEX.
"If you look at the entire history of Binance's development, Binance was not the first to jump out and develop trading products, but we were able to iterate based on the work of our predecessors." Binance co-founder He Yi said that every attack by Binance was carefully planned before action, achieving the greatest effect with the least trial and error cost.
Do the right thing at the right time. Binance’s current achievements are the reward for quickly developing new businesses, choosing the right focus, and seizing the market.
The light of Chinese people, speaking for encryption
If "leading his own company to become a unicorn in a vertical field" is considered the first step, then CZ's subsequent steps are more focused on promoting the growth of the entire Web3 industry.
Looking at the crypto world, the roles that can "lead the industry with their own opinions" are nothing more than infrastructure (mining in the early years, the public chains that exploded in the previous stage, and the emerging new ecological bottom layer), trading platforms, investment institutions, traditional technology and financial giants, and regulators.
The KOLs include Wu Jihan, Shenyu, Vitalik, CZ, Arthur, the ever-professional a16z and Paradigm, Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, Musk, Jack Dorsey, Buffett and Charlie Munger, Gary Gensler...
We found that with the changes in the themes of the Web3 industry, there are very few KOLs who are still active on the front line of social media and who can "have people listen to every word" rather than "let their butts determine their heads". Among them, except for CZ, it is rare to hear Chinese voices.
Looking back over the past few years, some of CZ’s classic remarks are still fresh in my mind.
For example, CZ has been calling for actively embracing regulation and remains optimistic about the compliance situation. During the deep bear market last year, CZ encouraged the industry by saying that most countries and jurisdictions have begun to establish regulatory frameworks rather than completely banning Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, which is creating a better environment for cryptocurrencies.
At the beginning of this year, CZ mentioned his four personal focus areas in 2023, and once again called on the industry to pay attention to education and compliance. It is worth mentioning that CZ’s fourth personal focus is "ignore FUD, fake news and attacks", which is why CZ often shows four fingers at some false rumors.
Although he is the helmsman of the world’s largest CEX, CZ has a firm belief in the future of decentralization. When talking about the future development trend of DeFi, CZ has mentioned many times that DeFi may surpass CeFi in the next bull market.
In addition, CZ admitted that his "trading skills are very poor" and he basically just holds the coins but does not trade them. He sold his house all in BTC many years ago and has basically not touched it. Even though he often speaks on Twitter, he always focuses on the industry or Binance-related business trends and never predicts the price of the coin. "I am more concerned about the usage rate of Bitcoin. How many people have entered this industry and how many people are using Bitcoin. This issue may be more core."
In terms of internal management, Binance employees, including CZ himself, are prohibited from futures trading. The product testing team has a specially allocated limit account. All employees' Binance accounts are registered and closely monitored. The starting point of all work is to prevent Binance and users from becoming counterparties and maintain market trading order.
CZ is also happy to support Binance employees leaving to start their own businesses. Commenting on the departure of former senior Binance officials, CZ once said: “Some employees are engaged in exciting new careers outside of Binance. They are growing into more important roles. I have even helped introduce many of them. and recommendations. We support everyone and we are a team, which also creates more development opportunities within Binance.”
As one of the busiest people in the industry, CZ never forgets to blow the whistle in emergencies to remind users of asset risks. For example, he proactively notifies competitors when information leaks occur without disclosing the names of specific competitors. When iOS vulnerabilities are exposed, he actively calls on users to update as soon as possible. After hacking incidents, he has assisted damaged projects in freezing hacker funds on many occasions.
Future market expectations
On September 19, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced a 50 basis point interest rate cut, which is the first two-point interest rate cut since 2020. It also means that the interest rate cut cycle has begun. It can be expected that hot money will gradually flow into the risk market and the crypto market will restore liquidity.
In addition, October has been called "Uptober" in the cryptocurrency circle over the years. According to the history of the cryptocurrency circle over the past 11 years, there have been only two declines in October, and the remaining 9 were all increases, with an increase probability of up to 82%.
The current macro conditions have improved, and coupled with Binance's "artificial bull market", the crypto market is expected to emerge from the gloom in Q4, and Bitcoin will set a new record high.
So, let's wait and see CZ's return!!!
