In a timely interview, Binance’s Vishal Sacheendran offered insights into the cryptocurrency giant’s operations amid major changes.

Sacheendran, Binance’s head of regional markets, emphasized the company’s dedication to staying compliant and shared insights into its future goals. Speaking to BeInCrypto, he discussed how one of the largest crypto exchanges is navigating regulatory hurdles, adapting to its connection with its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), and planning its next steps.

What progress has been made in Binance’s global regulatory compliance policy, especially after what happened with CZ?

It is a bit unfair to say that we only started paying attention to compliance since CZ entered into an agreement. Compliance has been our focus for four years or so. Although we are only a 7-year-old company, we have always paid great attention to compliance in recent years.

When you look at the settlement with the US Department of Justice, what happened was in our early years as a company when rules and regulations were not in place, and they mention that we have done a good job with the compliance program since then.

Read more: How to make money with cryptocurrencies

We currently have about 500 to 600 compliance staff and we continue to invest heavily in our team. We expect to reach closer to 700 to 800 by the end of the year. So we are one of the most regulated crypto companies out there. We just got our 19th registration in India a few weeks ago.

Overall, we have been doing very well in the compliance space. I don't think the deal with the US regulators has anything to do with our current pace of compliance.

What will the relationship between CZ and Binance be like after its release?

He is just the final shareholder. CZ is not involved in any way and that was part of the deal. He will not be back and that can be seen in the statements.

We have a statement. He is not involved in any of the operations.

There is a lot of speculation that the prices of Binance-related tokens may rise when this happens as well.

You should be more excited about the US federal rate cuts. That will be more influential than anything else.

What is the outlook for the crypto industry?

2025 will be a very interesting year for crypto, and we just have to wait and see what happens next. There are a lot of good things coming with regulations slowly catching up to innovation.

Vishal Sacheendran, Head of Regional Markets, Binance. Source: Binance

You can see regulators trying to grow the industry rather than just looking at it from their own perspective.

Binance has been putting a lot of effort into crypto education. What are your biggest achievements?

We need to start looking at crypto education from the basic level. In Kazakhstan, we are working with universities and high schools to teach children about blockchain, about crypto.

Our users are also becoming more knowledgeable. For people who want to invest, it is extremely important to know what they are investing in, do their research and not just follow the hype.

There’s a huge amount of effort being put into education not just with Binance Academy, but also in the work we do with regulators, law enforcement agencies, with governments around the world. Our compliance teams work with law enforcement agencies around the world, providing training. We provide cybersecurity training to a lot of people.

Just like you had mandatory AML and KYC training when you joined a bank, I think these things should be mandatory for crypto as well. Education will be key for them to understand the industry and how to approach it.

Which jurisdiction seems to have the most reasonable regulation for the crypto industry?

Every jurisdiction is different. For example, Japan was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to create a framework for crypto. They approached crypto from an AML perspective.

If you look at a comprehensive framework for crypto, the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) was the first in Abu Dhabi and I was part of the team that implemented it. Everyone has a different risk appetite and different perspectives on how to regulate crypto.

The ones that will be successful are the ones that will make sure that they don’t kill the industry, but regulate it. Crypto regulators either regulate, ban or take no action. I think regulation is the key.

For specific jurisdictions, you can see crypto adoption in the MENA, Latin America, and Southeast Asia markets. Indonesia, Thailand, and India have the highest crypto adoption globally.

On the other hand, there are other jurisdictions that haven't gotten there yet. It could be for a number of reasons. They don't have the risk appetite for it and that's a big talent drain.

The article Binance without CZ: executive talks about the exchange’s next steps was first seen on BeInCrypto Brasil.