Launched in July 2017, Binance has grown to become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. In just nine months after its launch, the exchange rose to the number one spot and has managed to retain this position ever since, thanks to its excellent strategic choices.
With over 13 million active users, Binance’s average daily trading volume was $54B as of January 2021. This makes the company a multi-billion business. Undoubtedly, much of the company’s success comes from the team behind Binance, among whom is He Yi.
He Yi is the co-founder and the CMO of Binance. She has been in the cryptocurrency space since 2014, starting by leading OKCoin’s branding and marketing strategy and later moving on to serve as Vice President at Yixia Technology, a leading mobile video tech firm.
Even though the current cryptocurrency industry is male-dominated, Yi stands strong, leading one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges globally. Yi shared her interesting story with BTC Peers. We covered everything from her specialty, marketing, to what she thinks about gender inequality in the blockchain industry.
Please share your backgrounds before founding Binance with CZ and briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
After I joined the cryptocurrency industry, I first founded OKCoin, where I have transformed it from a small exchange platform to one of the top players of the industry. I always firmly believe in the cryptocurrency’s potential to change the world, and that is why I co-founded Binance. I’m always passionate about providing transparency and empowering communities in the cryptocurrency industry and championing economic freedom.
As the CMO, what are some initiatives that are memorable among the ones you planned/executed since Binance was first founded?
Also, generally speaking, Binance founders, CZ and myself, try to listen to our users’ feedback carefully and from all aspects. We want to interact with our users actively; tweets, AMAs, Clubhouse sessions, online conferences, etc. We try not to act as authorities and we want to be as close as possible to the users to listen to them and meet the needs.
Binance became #1 crypto exchange after 180 days of its launch in 2017. As the CMO, in your opinion, which strategy do you think is the most effective to make that happen?
When we make such decisions, users always come first in our considerations.
A recent example to share is a project (Meercat) runaway occurred in BSC. We all know BSC is in fact a public blockchain, where countless projects are run on a daily basis. This project Meercat has claimed it was drained of $31 million in crypto assets just one day after launching on the BSC. Together with this exit scam, their twitter profile and website also disappeared. BSC is a decentralised and open-source ecosystem, it’s extremely difficult to trace and search for the scammer and money. But Binance still has dedicated a lot of resources and efforts in doing so, in the hope to retrieve users’ money back one day. What Binance is doing may not be favoured by some community voices, as our efforts may be deemed as centralised involvement in decentralised space.
Why would Binance spend so much time and efforts on it anyway? As we see it, for Binance Chain or Binance users alike, if there is anything we can do to make a difference, allowing the sector to change for the better or truly offering users the service or support they deserve, we will make our best efforts, as long as it works for our users. Of course, best efforts aside, there is no way to guarantee successful recovery for every runaway project on BSC. All we can do and have been doing is to try our best on everyone of such projects with our tracking efforts.
Do you own cryptocurrencies?
What are some problems in our society that blockchain technology can solve in your opinion? Which sector do you think will be affected in a good way by blockchain?
Many problems could be solved, such as copyright issues (traceability), credibility issues of voting systems, and maybe archiving of government information. Paper or electronic files could be easily accessed and modified, storing information using blockchain technology would prevent such problems. If needed, blockchain could also help to ensure the transparency of important information.
NFT (Non-fungible token) is a prominent example to demonstrate how blockchain technology helps to effectively guarantee the authenticity of digital artwork. In the past, when people talked about print arts, Andy Warhol was the most representative figure in this area, who has successfully transformed the way art could be presented and how people perceive print works. Recently, NFT has made Beeple the Andy Warhol of the new generation. Christie as the first major auction house, has offered a pure digital work by Beeple with a unique NFT and realised $69 million. Christie has never offered a digital work with NFT of this scale and importance before - this serves as a high recognition for Beeple’s work carried by NFT from traditional art space.
How do you see the future of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the next 10 years?Morgan Stanley MS
Why do you think BNB’s price soared recently? BNB is now ranked at 3-4 at CoinMarketCap with its market cap.
When Binance was small, Binance user base was small, and BNB had limited influence and values. With exponential user growth in Binance, BNB has gained much more influence and could be used in many places. Currently, BNB is the native token of BSC, and trading volume using BNB has exceeded that of ETH, and the number of active users using BNB has reached 70% of that of ETH. So to certain extent, BNB’s value has been underestimated, there is much room for growth.
Also, BNB is burnt every quarter, which means BNB has been persistently deflating its total supply.
Now Binance is one of the top global exchanges, what are some things that you would like to improve? What are your future plans for Binance?
The second part is about myself. I will slow down a bit and simplify my life, because running a startup is really tiring and I can feel that I have aged a lot in recent years. In 2017, I felt like I was 18 but now I feel like I am middle-aged. Still, there is a lot of information and knowledge that I have to absorb everyday in order to keep pace with the fast-changing industry. I have focused a lot on management up until now, but for the next one or two years, I plan to spend more time learning.
Some experts have predicted that governments would try to kill cryptocurrencies. Do you think this is possible?
One interesting thing about Binance is its evolution. From just a simple exchange, the firm has expanded its offering to include a Launchpad, Smart Chain, and more recently Binance Pay. What is the motivation behind these expansions?
In the last few years, blockchain tech has spread to literally every aspect of our lives – finance, gaming, logistics, etc. What critical area do you think crypto has a chance to fix that hasn’t been attempted yet?
What can you describe as the biggest break for Binance? At what point did things start to change?
Speaking of gender inequality, do you think the blockchain industry is any better?
Speaking of the cryptocurrency industry, it’s an entirely new industry with enormous new opportunities offered to those who are passionate about blockchain and willing to learn. And now is the best time, for both men and women, as we’re empowered with the freedom to knowledge access, which helps to advance gender equality. This is also aligned with what Binance aspires to build - a platform which allows freedom of financial values.
If you had the power, what are some of the things you would change in the cryptocurrency space?
It’s a very natural thing to do, when organisations are strong enough to initiate changes, this helps to push for social advances and by doing so, organisations will advance faster and gain more to give back to the society.