Original title: "If we disagree, you may be right"
Original author: He Yi, co-founder of Binance
Recently, after Binance launched multiple meme coins, a chat screenshot of a KOL accurately predicting all specific coins before listing was reported, which once again aroused heated discussions in the community about "Binance insider trading". The US SEC also submitted a proposed revised complaint against Binance, focusing on Binance's token listing process and accusing Binance of acting as an unregistered securities provider.
In response to this, Binance co-founder He Yi wrote a post explaining his personal views and unique opinions on the two major themes of "not so easy to make money" and "compliance" in the crypto field during this cycle, as well as the specific process of Binance listing coins. The following is the original text:
1. Is the cryptocurrency world going to end?
Recently, many posts in the industry that are pessimistic about blockchain are very popular. Many people outside the industry are asking me if the blockchain scam is over? People in the industry are asking if the industry has no future? What stage of the cycle are we in? Compared with good news, bad news is more likely to make headlines, and bad news is also more likely to get more traffic and attention. What is more worthy of ridicule than people in the cryptocurrency circle pessimistic about the cryptocurrency circle? These behaviors and emotions are constantly contagious, engulfing traffic and intensifying. Even some OG retirements have been magnified as evidence that "the cryptocurrency circle is over." Some industry-firm idealists also reveal anxiety and confusion in their chats with me.
In fact, it is not just the cryptocurrency industry that is anxious. We live in this world and cannot do without the environment, water and air. Whether the investment market is active or not is inseparable from the economic cycle. Whether the economy is going up or down will determine where the public's budget is allocated. As an ordinary person, you will consider investing only when you have enough food and clothing. Therefore, every news from the Federal Reserve is a baton for the market trend for senior cryptocurrency players, especially as the overall market size of the cryptocurrency industry continues to expand, large financial institutions are participating in the industry, and the blockchain industry is gradually maturing. Especially after the approval of BTC and ETH ETFs, as a "configurable asset" in the investment category, the cryptocurrency market and the stock market have become two sides of the same coin.
Hindsight: What has changed in the cryptocurrency world over the past decade? I once compared the cryptocurrency world to the Wild West, so the early influx of people into the industry were the early Western gold diggers. In the economic upswing, a little bit of capital overflowing into the cryptocurrency world can also make the cryptocurrency world grow exponentially. In the early days of the wild growth of the blockchain industry, as long as you dare to go all-in, it is not uncommon to see a hundred or thousand times the return of a coin. This is the dual blessing of the early niche market and the macro economy. In such an environment, if you go all-in today, you will get it back tomorrow if you go all-in. But as time goes by, the economy enters another cycle, consumption is downgraded around the world, and more players join the gold diggers. The gold diggers wielding shovels continue to upgrade their equipment, and there are more and more professional players in the traditional market. Everyone will feel that "the cryptocurrency world is not as profitable as before."
From Bitcoin being called a "Ponzi scheme" by countless people over and over again, and being criticized by countless mainstream media, to the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, it is of course a great victory. At the same time, we can see that the trading scale of traditional financial products related to cryptocurrencies is steadily expanding, such as: CME and ETF trading volume. Yes, the big ones are coming, but the way they come is different from the way everyone imagines that capital will take over without thinking. Just like the Internet changed the publishing industry and the television industry, it did not happen overnight, but it was a subtle and silent change, bringing more than just the rise of Bitcoin.
2. Is Binance flat?
We are the pigs at the wind’s mouth, stepping on the pulse of the times, standing together with users to the Binance of today. We hope that the blockchain industry is not a playground for niche players. We hope that Binance can serve one billion users in the future. We hope to become the infrastructure of the future, and we have been working hard for this goal. When we want to meet the needs of most people, it means that we need to reconcile with the real world, need compliance, anti-money laundering, and follow the existing rules of the traditional financial industry. You see, history always repeats itself. There were countless technological innovations in the early days of the Internet, and the turning point was that the company that served most people became today’s Internet giants, and the absolute liberalism of the Internet went to the dark web.
We have no way to predict the future, so we can only learn from history. Products need to be able to serve the majority of people in order to become the financial infrastructure of the future world. Binance's products start with transactions, but not just transactions. You will see the emergence of Earn, Square, Pay, and Web3 wallets. We hope to try and explore how to cross the gap and truly popularize blockchain technology, so that ordinary people can use blockchain instead of just speculating on it. They may not know what blockchain technology is, but they can benefit from it, just like your grandma doesn't understand Internet technology, but can enjoy the convenience brought by mobile phones. Bubbles will burst, and those products that truly solve user needs will change the world and create history.
3. Is your coin listed on Binance?
The community has been discussing Binance's listing of coins very intensely these days. We have carefully read everyone's opinions. Whether it was that Binance used to think that VC-invested coins on Binance were betraying the community, or that Binance's listing of MEME coins lowered the listing standards, or that Binance's listing of TG game projects was all nonsense, and that it was all studio players, and that rumors of insider trading were also investigated, we have all paid attention and are constantly reflecting on it. "The deeper the love, the more severe the blame." People who don't care will not spend time on you. Binance relies on users to get to where it is today, and every user's opinion will be valued. I will try to explain the basic framework and process of listing coins that everyone is calling for:
Binance listing consists of four parts: business, research group, committee, and compliance review. I will roughly summarize the aesthetic preferences retained by previous committees, which can be roughly divided into:
1) List projects that users need, projects that have users and traffic. In the past two cycles, we have missed many opportunities to list coins. In the early days, we did not pay enough attention to MEMEcoin, so we were late to list Shib, PEOPLE, PEPE, and even the recent MEME projects, and only listed them after they had risen very high, so that we were humiliated. The experience and lesson here is that Binance, as a trading platform, cannot just think it is good, but also needs users to think it is good.
In the dispute between big and small neiro, it is also because of the criticism from the community that we are more reflecting on what is a good MEME. If the essence of the MEME community is another "anti-Wall Street movement", then the tokens are highly concentrated, the price has been pumped up, and it is unknown when the bubble will burst. Is MEME still MEME? Or is it a Ponzi scheme in MEME clothing? Therefore, several MEME projects with relatively decentralized tokens and low market capitalization were listed. There were more than a dozen projects screened in the early stage, and many of them failed due to compliance review and token concentration.
2) Long-lived projects; At the beginning of the last two cycles, some traditional VCs began to enter the cryptocurrency circle in a big way, frequently making investments and being generous. Then everyone found that the projects with a little bit of appearance in the industry were all rising. After the project parties received hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in valuations from the VC side, they had a lot of money in their hands to try and make mistakes and adjust their directions. The grand occasion of Matic, an infrastructure project that sold coins at a low valuation, is gone forever. With a lot of cash in hand, who is willing to lower their valuation of billions of dollars and sell their own coins for tens of millions of dollars? It is not Binance that determines the price of their tokens, but the token model, circulation, buying and selling. These high-valuation projects of top teams have a large number of MMs around them who are willing to give them advice to maintain a high market value, and a large number of trading platforms are flocking to them, especially AMM has brought about the rise of DEX, and it is not impossible without a trading platform. But it is undeniable that when other projects are ups and downs, they live longer and have more opportunities.
Many people would say that this shows that Binance is losing its voice. Yes, of course it does not have absolute voice. This is precisely the characteristic of the industry's decentralization. It is the result of the joint efforts of financial professional players and the rise of DEFI. Both of these are the key to bringing the industry to the next level. Without the intervention of capital, how could cryptocurrency become a hot topic in the US election? Decentralization and the lack of absolute authority, isn't this the charm of this industry?
3) There are projects with solid business logic. In the past ten years, I often heard a statement: "Crypto projects do not need business models. Once there is a business model, the valuation can be calculated." But I think that whether it is Web2 or Web3, the essence of entrepreneurship is to create what the world needs, and naturally someone will pay for it. Whether the customer is B-end or C-end, the financing method will change, but the essence of entrepreneurship will not change. Since the ICO boom of ETH in 2017, I have been conveying a concept: issuing coins is issuing bonds, and it is guaranteed by long-term reputation. It is easier to obtain your start-up fund than to find VC financing, and the liquidity is stronger, but the responsibility is also greater. If you sell the coins directly and retire after issuing them, then a person's reputation bankruptcy is the real bankruptcy.
Because we like projects with solid business models and revenue, we hope that the team is reliable, they have entrepreneurial potential and can take responsibility. We also hope that your valuation is not too high and that you can take care of the community's common growth. We hope that you can empower tokens, because if you stand with your users, your users will stand with you. If any project meets these standards, please contact us or leave a message under this post.
In terms of the coin listing process and prevention of insider trading, Binance, as a system, has considered all links and isolated information. As the outside world has said, the Binance coin listing team has been through several rounds of bloodbaths. Currently, the people doing coin listing research at Binance do not talk about business. When they talk about business terms, they do not know what projects have entered the observation pool. Everyone only knows the progress of the projects they are responsible for. Even if they have passed the IC vote, these projects are subject to compliance review restrictions and may be cancelled at any time.
From a compliance perspective, the current Binance listing process is monitored by monitors. If insider trading is discovered, it will be reported to the U.S. Department of Justice and the inspectors stationed by FinCEN, and employees involved in insider trading will be held criminally liable.
We can establish rules to constrain people, but we cannot rule out the possibility that the current system or system still has information blind spots, so we are offering a high reward: We welcome all reports of any information involving coin listings and other corruption, or any other "coin listing observation indicators" that we have blinded. If verified by the Binance team, we will keep your identity confidential and provide you with a security vulnerability bounty of US$10,000 to US$5 million.
4. If we disagree, you may be right
In the past few months, I rarely posted on social media. The more I read, the more ignorant I feel, and the more I feel in awe of the world. We are all just a grain of sand in the torrent of the times, swept to the crest of the wave by various coincidences. Everything I have today is a product of the times, the rapid economic development brought about by globalization, the information flattening caused by the rise of the Internet, and the opportunity for the blockchain industry to exist from scratch. It is not because I am gifted, but it is just that in the early days of the industry, "there are no heroes when there are no heroes." This means: "I am not necessarily right", because according to the logic of listing coins mentioned above, even if Bitcoin is born today, it may not pass the IC. My inadvertent words, incomplete and inaccurate expressions may bring unnecessary misunderstandings and over-interpretations to the community, so I am increasingly lacking the desire to express myself. Occasionally, when I see some misunderstandings, I will still try to explain them, and the more I explain, the worse it gets.
The world that everyone sees is not the same. We may be the intersection of different parallel time and space. If my words can touch you a little, and can make investors DYOR, and entrepreneurs willing to calm down and move forward, then I will be deeply honored. Everyone can only see their own future. What you believe in is what you will build. We will continue to explore the future, just like the first day we entered this industry. Thank you for your cooperation.
