#261: CZ explains Why Binance is Paying A Rumored $400 Million for CoinMarketCap

CZ is the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by volume. In this conversation, Anthony and CZ discuss how COVID-19 is impacting Binance, why CZ is paying a rumored $400 million for CoinMarketCap, what trends Binance is seeing in non-US countries, and why CZ wants to potentially turn Binance into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. =============================== TaxBit is a refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. =============================== Blockset by BRD is your hosted blockchain infrastructure. Blockset enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Using the services provided by Blockset, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much more: blockset.com ===============================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:10Anthony Pompliano?

  CZ is the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by volume. In this conversation, we discussed how COVID-19 is impacting Binance, why CZ is paying $400 million for CoinMarketCap, what trends Binance is seeing in non-US countries, and why CZ wants to potentially turn Binance into a decentralized autonomous organization. I really enjoyed this conversation and CZ was fantastic as always. Before we get into this episode though, I want to talk about the two sponsors. The first is TaxBit. TaxBit automates your cryptocurrency taxes, enabling you to effortlessly track, calculate, and report your transactions. They make it super simple. You can easily connect your exchanges

• 0:53Anthony Pompliano?

  to securely sync your transactions and run them through TaxBit's tax engine. Generate your completed tax forms with a single click. The company was founded by tax attorneys and CPAs. TaxBit is the most trusted cryptocurrency tax solution. So you can get 10% off your tax plan today with a free trial by going to taxbit.com/invite/pomp. Again, taxbit.com/invite/pomp. So they've got live support with experts whenever you need it. They're experts on hand who have experience facilitating thousands of crypto tax filings and IRS crypto tax audits. TaxBit is where crypto taxes get done simply. So head on over, taxbit.com/invite/pomp. Now, the second sponsor is a new one, BlockSet. If you're building in the blockchain space,

• 1:35Anthony Pompliano?

  then I want everyone to know about BlockSet. Their goal is to enable the next wave of developers and business leaders to build amazing applications. BlockSet is built by BRD, or Bret, the first wallet in the App Store from 2014 and one of the largest in the space today. They've taken the architecture and knowledge they've gained over the past six years to create BlockSet, a robust, reliable, and strategic B2B offering for developers and enterprises. So thanks to BlockSet, we can all build with crypto assets at light speed using their unified API that has data from all the major chains. It acts as a hosted blockchain infrastructure, and it ultimately enables high-quality apps to be built at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So head on over to blockset.com to see just how simple it is.

• 2:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, blockset.com. You can sign up for a free account today at blockset.com. All right, let's get into this episode with CZ. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got the man himself, CZ here. Thanks so much for doing this.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

• 3:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Let's start right off. How's your back doing? I know you had the back surgery.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, my back's doing quite all right now. Yeah, after the surgery, I feel really good. The doctor says there's a little minor complication, but I don't feel it. And I'm doing physical therapy exercises and I can walk. Which before was difficult for me. Sitting was really hard for me. So now I can sit. I don't sit for very long, but I can stand. I can, so I feel pretty good, actually. But it's only been two months since the surgery, so I'm still taking it quite lightly and still recovering, etc. So I'm just doing the regular, smaller, lighter exercises, just for mostly physical therapy type of exercises, trying to recover. Yeah.

• 3:45Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We've got to make sure that you're healthy because Binance is counting on you, along with most of crypto.

• 3:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And then let's just jump in. Maybe you can give us a quick update on Binance itself. I don't know if you wanted to share kind of any latest metrics or anything, but just how are things going since last time we talked?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  So Binance is, yeah, so especially recently, the numbers we're seeing are just phenomenal. So we see in general roughly about 5X more volumes than before, like since the sort of coronavirus took over. So business wise, the platform is like doing really well. So both futures and now they also even even in this environment, our market share has been gaining. So futures, binary futures is now the very clearly number one futures platform in the last couple of weeks. So business is doing really well for us. We know there's a lot of, so even in other exchanges that we hear, there's, I think they're seeing more traffic.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  I think it could be due to a number of reasons. It could be people are just bored at home, nothing to do, all the online businesses are doing well. And then it could also be that the, you know, the overall macroeconomic issues with quantitative easing, people moving slowly back into crypto. So it could be any number of those reasons. And yeah, but overall, business is doing well.

• 5:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. It it feels a lot like when you get volatility in the traditional markets, you also see the volatility in crypto. And then that all totally leads to trading or you're kind of just interested in doing something. Like people don't like to sit there when all the prices are moving and feel like they're not doing anything, which is obviously probably pretty good for the business as well.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, volatility is generally good for for the change business. So for for exchanges, the worst, the worst is when the market is flat. So when it's flat, there's no, no one's trading. When it's volatility, there's always high volumes. But usually when it's flat at a low price, it's not as good as when it's flat at a higher price. So when the prices are high, it's always good for the exchanges. So we, we, so we, for our business, we really want to like see the price be high. High volatility is okay, but generally speaking, the higher the price, the better.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And then how has COVID nineteen kind of impacted? I know you guys had. Last time we talked four hundred, five hundred employees, kind of forty different countries and pretty distributed already. But have you seen any impact from the virus itself on the business?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  So again, I think on this point, I think if anything was positive for Binance. Because we're quite used to, so we have been working remotely pretty much throughout the last two years. And we're quite used to it. And a lot of our internal conversations is like, oh, people call this quarantine.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So, so, so I think, and also kind of, to be honest, I think it slowed down a few of our competitors. So some of our competitors who had more centralized offices, they had more to adjust. Sending people home, people may or may not have the right equipment. They may, their team structures and daily routines may or may not be structured to facilitate. Just working remotely, right? So like, working remotely does require a little bit of a different, different mentality. A lot of conference calls, a lot of Zoom, a lot of Google Meets, a lot of other things. So, so I think for us, we are quite used to it. And also we've seen, we've seen a lot more flooding job applications.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  So people are really applying for jobs more. So now we're hiring very aggressively, which was actually difficult. So sort of towards second half of last year, we were actually trying to compete with other organizations. The internet companies, etc. So but now we're actually seeing a lot more candidates that's available in the market. So overall, things are actually, things are actually all right. I think, given that we're the online, remote working type of business, we're quite, the coronavirus did not impact us as negatively as we would, we would have expected. But we do, we do understand there's a lot of other people who are feeling like a lot of hardship out there and we want to be able to help. So that's why we're kind of doing a lot of charity work, etc.

• 8:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's one of these things where as we've talked to, you know, our portfolio of hundred plus companies, what we keep saying to them is, look, there's two ways to think about what's happening right now. One, you've got to have the defensive mindset to make sure your balance sheet is strong enough to kind of survive through whatever, you know, this ends up being from an economic standpoint. But two is if you're in a good position, you can actually be hyper aggressive and actually steal a lot of market share. And it sounds like that's kind of the approach you're taking here is you're in a good position. You've got a business that's actually benefiting from a lot of the volatility and the virus stuff. And so rather than just be defensive the whole time, you can actually get aggressive and try to build out and scale and really gain market share right now.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I absolutely think that way. So for us, I think we had a strong balance sheet before. We have very strong revenues, strong profits. We were not relying on burning money before. So we were growing like before our limitation factor was actually just our speed to hire good people. Right. So just talking, getting all the candidates and talking with them, interviewing them and then agree on a deal, compensation, etc. So right now that problem is not, is eased up a lot and we're seeing business demand on the platform growing. And so we're, so I think we're kind of unique in that way where there's a strong balance sheet supporting the business. And that's, this is why we are very aggressive on both hiring and also looking at acquisitions, etc.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  So we're just progressing on both fronts.

• 9:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Speaking of hiring, I know a lot of executives take different approaches to it. Some want to be really involved and some basically hire people that they trust and they kind of take it. What's your approach to the hiring process and how involved are you?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  On the hiring process, on the senior hires, I am involved. So I like to interview the senior hires before I kind of do the last, depending on if they're reporting to me directly, then I do a very in-depth interview. If they're reporting to one, somebody who's reporting to me, then I have a more casual chat. But I think one of my strengths is actually a pretty, I'm a pretty good judge of character. So I talked to them for a few minutes and then I tried to figure out, hey, this guy passionate about crypto. Is this guy a legit, a genuine character? Does he know his stuff? So on the technical side, for tech, like programming, technology interviews, I'm pretty good.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Like I can ask a couple of simple questions and get a very good feel of where the guy is. For some other roles, I'm less, because those other roles are not my background. So I'm less capable of judging the skill sets that accurately. But then I just rely that on the team, I rely on the team for that. But I do talk with the candidate to just get a feel of the personality match, culture match, etc. So, so I think I have a pretty good feel for just interacting with people, even though I may not, may or may not know their technical expertise. So I do, I do get involved in the senior hires. But we hire so many people that there's a lot of guys I'm not mad, I don't even know their name. So, yeah.

• 11:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. And, and I guess this then leads to like, there's so much going on, right? And I think one of the kind of the resounding messages I hear from CEOs right now is, hey, we've got our just normal business operations that we've got to worry about. Make sure our business is strong. And then you layer in the virus stuff and there's kind of this health crisis. So I want to make sure that my team's healthy, their families are healthy, etc. But that health crisis, the response globally is now creating this economic crisis, right? Where you see the macro economy kind of slowing down. Maybe just share your thoughts on what you're seeing from the macro economy. Are you worried about anything there and kind of how you're thinking through more of kind of the response to the virus, more so than just the virus itself?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Sure, I think there's a, yeah, so that's a pretty, so there's, there's a lot of aspects to it. I think for the, for the business team, we do, we have, I've asked the business team to work from home way early. Like, so when this thing's kind of brewing in China, I just told everyone, so look, just, just work from home. And so I think that was like end of January, early February, I just said, look, just work from home. And I also asked our, um, so, uh, and our team's pretty used to it. Our teams like they sometimes congregate in a coffee shop or stuff like that when they're in the same city. But it's just let's, let's just be more careful about it. And, um, um, and we also make sure our internal employee or the team members, what we call, we, we, we don't really use the word employees that much.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So I also make sure that, uh, we, we have like, we, we have supplies, uh, uh, that, that we secured through, um, various channels. And we make sure most of our team members do have good supplies. Even our members right now in Europe, we have, we have shipped their parents supplies, um, like, uh, masks where they couldn't get them right now. So we, we, uh, so we, we took a lot of precaution to, uh, en- ensure safety of our employees. And we all encourage them to work from home. Just don't go out that often. Um, and they typically work from home anyway. So they're quite like, they're quite, they're very used to it. Um, and, uh, at, at a higher level, uh, at a bigger scale, um, in different countries in the world, I think.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  I think this thing's gonna last multiple months. Um, uh, it, uh, I think it's gonna last, uh, I think coming summer, this virus may sub- uh, subside. But I think we've got to be very careful. If you look at past pandemics, there's a, there's very often a second wave, uh, come, come autumn. And, um, I think right now we're just with, uh, which we're witnessing, uh, this is like a leadership test for a lot of countries, right? So countries were well organized, uh, uh, even like if you look at China, even though it happened earlier there, but they actually had a. I think the numbers may be too low, uh, uh, I'm like, the numbers may or may not be accurate, but the fit- situation is they do have it under control. Uh, most, uh, most guys are returning to normal, uh, the work is returning to normal.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Um, other countries are still fighting it and other countries are still losing the battle with it, uh, to be honest, like especially like, uh, America. I think the numbers, the numbers, the numbers, um, says the results, the results are there. So I think the, um, we still at the ramp up stage where we haven't cut, we haven't seen the plateau. So that's very worrying, and I think that will definitely have an economic effect. I think back in February, March, people in in some countries or including the United States, some people are saying, oh, no, this thing just happening impacting China, nothing's going to impact the US. I think we're living one global economy, there's no escape. So I think we're seeing that playing out. I think it's going to be multiple months, it's going to have very severe impact on on the economy, on jobs, etc.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  So I think we've got to prepare this for the for the long run. And afterwards, I also think even like after a few months after this passes, we're going to see a new economy. So things are going to be different. People, people will be, the social norms are going to be different. So I don't know how different it will be, but I think in the back of people's heads, people will, I think even come autumn or or the next winter, people will be very cautious about this thing. Depending, it depends on whether we we discover a vaccine or not. So all of those things play a factor, but most countries are banning travel. I think travel is gone for the next, I don't know, half a year or so, to a large extent.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  So travel within the country may be allowed, but I think people are very cautious about it, even today. So there's a lot of restaurants are being hit really hard, movies, theaters are being hit really hard. So I think a lot of businesses will change. But also in this turbulent environment, there's a lot more opportunities, right? So when when one business, unfortunately, when one business goes down, other businesses thrive. So I think online businesses will do well. International business, the virtual aspect of the cryptocurrencies actually helps a lot. I think cryptocurrency is going to see a fairly strong boost, to be honest. Combined with like quantitative easing, depression, like the countries have no other option,

• 16:03Speaker 01

  but to print a lot of money right now. And that's going to, those money right now is not free flowing into the economy. But once they start flowing, cost of goods, most prices are going to go up very dramatically. And I think cryptocurrency will go up uh much more like unproportionately higher. So um yeah, so I think all of those things are gonna happen. And uh I think people in the crypto industry are generally in a very good spot. Um, so I think we just gotta uh, I think we wanna, we wanna work really hard. Yeah, I think it's especially important to work really hard during this economic turbulent times. Because there are new opportunities and the guys who can grab these new opportunities are much. There's much more new opportunities, opportunities right now than than there were before.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Um, I also think most likely more banks and more financial institutions are gonna look at cryptocurrency. They're more willing to work with cryptocurrency exchanges, uh payment services, etc. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. Um, it's not gonna be easy, it's gonna be tough, but you know, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

• 17:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it it it's really interesting because on the economic side, one of the things that people I think are missing is just like the economy is not gonna recover until people are allowed to leave their home. Right? I mean, it's just, what are you gonna do from your house? You basically are gonna uh, pretty much, you can do things in crypto, maybe you'll buy some things online, but most of your economic activity is gonna go to zero. And so you just can't get an economy back if everyone's sitting at home, which I think is uh kind of a missing point, because there's a lot of people who say, oh, this is a two-week thing. And it's like, I don't think that this is two weeks.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  No, it's not two weeks. So in the ideal world, if that world, if the world is really, really well organized, and you say, oh, look, and that's a great to stay home, everyone stays home for two weeks. Um, and whoever have symptoms go to the hospital, whoever doesn't then are done. Uh, yes, but i- i- in the ideal world, yes, but humans are not organized that way. Um, and we have very, we're seeing very poor leadership across different countries, right? So if everybody started lockdown at the end of January for three weeks or four weeks, we're done. Uh, and very, very, very few number of people will get sick, but um, people don't act that way, so, yeah.

• 18:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, we'll see. Uh, we'll switch gears. You uh, you you recently announced a pretty big purchase. While everyone else is uh, running around and uh, and worried about surviving, you guys um, announced that you're uh, purchasing CoinMarketCap. Uh, maybe just talk a little bit about kind of how that deal came together, how you originally met them, uh, and then kind of what the logic behind the acquisition is.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Sure. So I've known Brandon, so I've used Mark CoinMarketCap for like, I don't know, ever, like from 2013, 14, when they started. And back then, there was like a number of other sort of data aggregators, but they, CoinMarketCap just grew, grown to be the most popular one by far. So, and I, so when we, after we started, it was like basically about two years ago, I was just sort of peeing Brandon. Just sort of very, very occasionally, not frequently, just sort of, hey, how are you doing? What are your plans, etc. So I've been, I've been peeing him over time with, with a sort of interest of saying potentially working together more. A closer partnership or potentially in the acquisition.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  But I didn't sort of mention in that terms, I was just sort of, hey, look, I was just trying to understand what his mental, mentalities are. And it was really towards the end of last year, like a few months ago, we, we, we, we met again and we kind of discussed. And we both felt there was an interest. And so we, we talked, we like, I think we met over, we met twice. And we sort of discussed the numbers and we came to a term pretty, pretty quickly. And it was a very simple, it was a very simple deal. So it's like, there's no complicated stuff going on. And, and then from there, we were just like getting lawyers to execute the deal, which took a while.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  But, and none of us went back, like to read, none of us thought about to renegotiate the terms of the deal. Even in this economic turbulent times, I think, like for me, I'm looking at this thing at a very, very long-term play. It's not like, okay, how much is it worth today or tomorrow, the day, the day before. So we don't think in that kind of terms, whereas I think, look, if we, right now is what, I think is one of the most valuable as platforms in the industry. And I think you'll grow another 10x, 100x. So I, also, I think the higher value for that is not to make it just servicefinance.com, the exchange. I think should continue to grow the, it's original purpose in providing data access for crypto.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  And be be the landing page of crypto have information on there. So I think which CoinMarketCap will continue to grow in that way. And I actually think that they have not been expanding super aggressively because it's a small team. They've been growing organically, they're selling ads, etc. Like, look, by working with Binance, we we acquire it and we also have we also have more room to fund it. So I think we just want to continue to fund the growth of it. There's naturally a lot of synergies with Binance.com, but we're not, there's also naturally a lot of synergies with every other exchange out there. So CoinMarketCap will continue to maintain neutrality and independence.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And any other exchange who wants to continue to work with them, I think most definitely will because they are by far the largest single referral for any exchange. So I think and they will continue to work with other exchanges. So that's fine. So that's kind of how the deal was went together. It's actually pretty simple.

• 21:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. In in terms of kind of when you talk about this 10x or 100x expansion, like, what is your vision at least of kind of that path? Like, how do you actually 10x that? Is that, let's take the Binance playbook of kind of super aggressive growth and just sense of our folks over and help them do that? Or is there something else that's a little bit more complex in in how you do it?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Sure, I think I actually think it's actually something much more simpler. I think we just got to wait for the market to grow.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  I think basically, in the like, if the market is the if the entire industry doesn't grow, then it's unlikely for CoinMarketCap to go 10x or even for Binance to go 10x. I think like, look, CoinMarketCap is by far the largest data aggregator or and data provider site. And Binance.com is by is one of the largest exchanges and both in future spot margin. So so I think, but like, even if it kill all the other industry players, we're not going to go, we're not going to grow another, I don't know, 10x or net, definitely not 100x. So I think the the goal is definitely to, yeah, we we're like, we're definitely over like 10% market share in a lot of places. So we we don't have room to grow 10x, even if it kill everybody in those things.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  So I think the goal is to is to make the industry bigger and and to make the industry bigger, we actually can't grow alone. We actually want to grow with other industry players. So we want other exchanges to grow. We want other data data providers to grow, information providers to grow. Because that's like a hundred, about 200 different countries in the world and a lot of different geographies, a lot of different cultures, a lot of different banking channels, fiat channels, etc. There's only so much we can do ourselves, even though we're the biggest, we're one of the biggest players in the market. But we need to grow the industry bigger. We need other people to grow it with us. So I think right now, if you look at the industry, probably only one in one, one in 1,000 people have crypto.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  So that's at least 1,000 times to grow. But and even that is not a very good measurement. I think if you like, if you judge the potential market share of taxi or the the the market size of taxis for Uber, that's not the potential market size. They're going to expand that market. So I think crypto, in crypto, we're looking at the same same thing. Crypto will be able to service new business types, new opportunities that the traditional fiat world does not, does not touch or can cannot service. So I think basically, in my mind, the trick is really just to grow the industry. So it's not so much, hey, let's give them more. We would definitely want to want them to hire more and grow the team a bit more. I think the team is a bit too small. And but other than that, I think we're just going to continue to

• 24:26Speaker 01

  build innovative products and provide services that other people wants to use. And hopefully, the industry will grow. And I'm pretty confident the industry will grow.

• 24:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, obviously, I'm there with you on that. One of the most asked questions I got when I asked people for questions to ask you, and obviously, you don't have to answer this if you don't want. But people want to know how was the acquisition paid for? Was it cash, stock, or B and B? And I said, look, I'll ask them, but I don't think he's going to answer that one.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So it's not that I don't want to answer that part is covered by the NDA. So I actually can't answer it. But it's a it's a pretty straightforward deal. So there's nothing too complicated about it. And and to be honest, I for us, doesn't matter what the method is. So if it's BNB cash, it's the same thing. If it's cash, if it's cash. BNB is cash or BTC is cash to us. When people say cash, then probably US dollars, that's fine. We will come. If we need that, we can just we can just sell BTC or sell BNB and convert to cash. To us, it's the same thing, to be honest. And yeah, but it's a it's a it's a very straightforward deal. There's nothing complicated about it.

• 25:32Anthony Pompliano?

  It it one of the things that I think you you said early on that I I remember saying, hey, I like that guy is you said, look, I got no more fiat left. Right? I I spent it all and got all crypto.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yes. So but look, if we have to spend fiat, then we just sell some crypto and but we don't hold fiat. So whatever fiat we want, we need to spend, we just sell crypto and we spend it and and and we and then we'll have no fiat left again. So that's kind of how we operate.

• 25:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. One of the things that I think you've done very differently than especially exchanges in the United States, etc., is you've made some pretty big bets on non-US countries. So obviously, India is a big one, a couple of others. What are you seeing in the non-US countries right now, given the global instability? Are you seeing kind of a ton of interest into crypto? Are you seeing expansion there? Maybe just highlight some of that.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Sure. I think every country is very different. US is definitely one of the most developed economies and it's a very strong economy. So there's a lot of money flowing around. Trading institutional trading is very established.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And then there's a lot of money to be made in those markets. The markets are bigger. So the US accounts for like, I don't know, the worst. Overall, the worst twenty percent, twenty plus percent GDP with only four percent of the population. So per capita, if you reach one user, then the user per the value per user is much higher for any business. So even like social media, trading platforms, etc. So a lot of guys are focused on those type of markets. China is a very different one. China China is getting the people is getting relatively rich. There's a lot of rich. Guys, there's a lot of guys with discretionary spending power. And online businesses, mobile businesses, internet businesses are very developed. So that's another very interesting market.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  If you look at big countries, the regulations tends to be very expensive. So you've got to have like a team of lawyers, apply for different licenses, deal with a lot of different regulators, etc. And also because the traditional financial economy is very established, there's actually more incumbent players to adapt blocks of growth of crypto. So whereas in countries like, say, for example, if you look at Africa, even India, the traditional financial services are not super established. There's actually more opportunity for you to grow. And India is like the second most populous country in terms of heck people in the world. And it's got one point, one point three billion people. And that's, there's a lot of opportunity there.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  There was a lot of uncertainty in terms of the regulations and very luckily we placed a bet before that. Before it was clear and the results turned out to be favorable. But when we placed the bet, it wasn't betting on the outcome of the regulatory changes. It was like, that was, that was a really good team. Michel leads a really good team. They have good products, they understand the local market. And we, and we ask ourselves, right? So are we, am I going to be able to go to India, lead a, build a team there and compete there? Um, gonna be pretty difficult for me. I think, I think I do have the senses to realize where the shortcomings for myself or our current teams are. I understand the different culture norms, different business cultures, different psychology, psychologies in different markets.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And different, just different, just every market is very different. So in, in markets where we feel comfortable operating, then we, we go in and operate ourselves. Where in markets where we, we, we, we're lucky enough to meet a lo, a strong local team, then we, we work with a local team. And also, if you look at, for example, a different market, Africa, right? It's got 1.2 billion people for the whole continent. Uh, it's divided into a lot of different countries, but um. There are the, uh, people are still, people are still getting used to like smartphones and um. Um, but only, only 11% of the population have bank accounts. So they can actually just skip bank account, uh, bank accounts. We don't need to bank them. So we, we no longer need to bank their bank. We can just give them a cellphone and an app.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Um, so, uh, there's a lot of different opportunities there. So I think a lot of people focus on US and we are now too. So we'll, we have a partner there, Catherine Cooley, I'm sure you have spoken to her. Um, and, um, so, uh, US is, is a very important economy, but, um, it's one of the countries in the world. Uh, so we, we, I think crypto's value is really when you connect a different countries in the world. That's where the value really, really shines. So that's kind of our approach and philosophy.

• 29:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Are there any countries, uh, that maybe people aren't thinking about that you're like, look, I'm really excited. Obviously, India is a big one, um, and you've kind of, uh, you know, made some moves there. But are there other countries that, that, uh, you want to kind of highlight that you think people should be paying attention to?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Um, I think almost every country is quite interesting, to be honest. Um, uh, uh, India is definitely one of them. Uh, uh, a number of countries, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, um, those are really interesting as well. Because in those countries, the internet is getting there. Uh, people, people do have, uh, uh, people, the number of people having smartphones is really increasing. And, um, what other countries? There are some, like, there are some really interesting countries as well. Vietnam's really active, Turkey's really active in terms of cryptocurrencies. So we're, we're fairly active there. Um, so, uh, our user base is fairly active there. Um, there's a lot of different countries in the world. That's, uh, so, um, and so, uh, yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  I mean, we, we try to build a platform that's really neutral, uh, towards, uh, that's kind of geography, um, uh, independent. And, um, it's much easier to do with just crypto to crypto. Uh, it's a lot harder when you want to touch fiat. But unfortunately today, most of the money is still in fiat. So we, we still got to go country by country to bring them in.

• 31:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it it almost feels like there's the two parallel worlds being built and I I think about it if you take the totality of that, it's like what percentage of the total economic activity or financial activity, whatever is in crypto, I don't know, 1% might be a hyper aggressive, right? Like it's very, very small percent. And as the crypto industry grows, that will become a bigger and bigger percent. And that to me is like one of the biggest metrics of measuring progress is just if you can get to 5% is crypto, 10%, 20%. That's where I think we'll really, really start to see some material impact on the world.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm guessing my numbers tell me that we're we're at above 0.1%. So like really just 1 in 1,000. So on the positive, so on the negative side, it's really tiny. So we're basically basically working in a very tiny market right now. Positive positive side is like the growth potential is really high, so we just got to make sure that, and I think the growth will come. And I think the growth will be sped this will be sped sped up by this right now, all the turmoil in the current economic environments. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty confident about it. I think we're we are in the right industry. We are the we are the super early adopters right now. And we just got to, once we go into 1%, I think we'll see 10x and of course 10% will see 100x.

• 32:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, for sure. U S, you guys partnered and brought Binance U S with Catherine to what many people I think thinks is one of the most important geographies in the world for this. What's going on there and how do you feel it's going?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think U S is going quite well. U S, I think with overall the teams, my understanding is the Binance U S teams taking a very careful and a solid approach. So they're they're progressing in very careful manners because they are spending a lot of time on regulatory compliance, getting licenses, etc. So hopefully they will be able to bring to turn on additional states very soon. And at the same time with the states, they're they're capable of serving right now. They're copying over more and more features from binance.com from the technology platform product perspective. So staking, most selection of coins, they have a very rigorous selection

• 33:33Speaker 01

  process for listing coins, but I think they do have a larger selection than the other players in the US. And the trading fees are much lower. The trading fees is about a third of what other platforms charge. Most of the retail guys, the retail guys may or may not care too much about it, but slowly we're seeing, we're seeing the shift over. And yeah, I think that they're just going very steady. So I think, and their market share is actually slowly increasing. Most people may or may not understand that, or may or may not notice just yet. But I think overall, things are going really, I'm very pleased with the progress Binance US is seeing. So I think just give it time. The other players have been in the market for like, I don't know, eight, nine

• 34:17Speaker 01

  years. So they are very entrenched. And they're, the other, the competition is high. The other platforms are very high quality. And they're, they're very credible platforms. So I think that's, that's good. Because then they also help grow the industry. So I think Binance US overall, I'm pretty happy with the progress.

• 34:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's one of these interesting things where the US specifically, you have to have the regulatory ban, right? You almost have to go slow to get the approvals. There's other countries, obviously, where you don't need to do that. And so it kind of adds some, some challenges there. One of the things that you recently announced is this mining pool. Maybe talk a little bit about, you know, what exactly you guys are going to build and kind of what the logic is there.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, to be honest, it was the, it was like one of the team members said, look, we should build a mining pool, and this is how to do it. I said, well, that sounds, that makes sense. So do you know how to, do you want to do it? Well, she says, yes. Again, it's a girl. And I just went ahead and doing. And in my head, originally, I thought it was just going to be a BTC mining pool. But she's also doing POS for EOS. So now we're kind of having US nodes swapping votes, exchanging votes, like you gotta do like, I didn't know this before, you gotta exchange like twenty one different votes. Uh with like different parties and all this stuff going on, like just horse trading and stuff like that.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  So, uh but at the end of the day, um the goal is to build a both a POW like for Bitcoin and also POS for most other uh coins. Um mining pool, um and also be able to support other non-mining but staking pools, uh staking coins as well, so. Um and so all of this are sort of an interest, interest generating or income generating products for our users. So you can, uh for Bitcoin, uh the miners will put their mining power into, into a pool and uh will do that and and they'll get coins. Um for staking coins, uh you stake number, you stake, you, you lock your number of coins and then you get a interest rate or reward. Um but also, this is from a user perspective, this is very similar to the loan product we have, uh that the lending product we have.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  So you, you lend your product for the margin traders, you get an interest. Um for the, for the users is the same thing and then um we're, we're also rolling out the loan business, so all of that ties into what I call bin, the Binance Finance Product Suite. So all of the financial products in our platform, so that, that's all tying together, so. Um they're building it, uh I think they're gonna, the mining pool is gonna be launched soon, uh from what I hear. Uh but again, it's a fairly independent team, uh they're, they're running with it, the, the, the team, the couple, the team leader and a couple of the senior guys on the team. Comes to me once in a while for like, I don't know, different budget requests, uh some, some decisions, I just, I, I, I usually flip a coin. Just like go for it.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Uh this, I mean, this is the magic of Binance, right? It is the fact that you just find really talented, smart, ambitious people, put them together and they come up with these ideas and. You basically are given the, the green light and they go and they build it and use the resources and, and kind of distribution you have. And next thing you know, you, you probably will end up building one of the largest mining pools, right? Um hopefully, yeah, I mean, it's not launched yet, but uh typically, we do have the network effect where. Um people who, I think number one, we have the brand, we have the number of users and a lot of big. Already trading us, they mine and then move the coins to finance and this they they either sell to be USD T or be a BUSD.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  So they're they're already trading with us. So I think the the network effect is there and having and also giving the network effect. All of the services we provide, we can we can provide as lowest fees. So if you look at a market, we always our fees are usually typically the the lowest, sometimes by a factor of two or three X. So and it's going to be a same model for mining code, the fees will be very low, the fees that we charge will be very low. So then the the users gets most of the most of the rewards that they they're supposed to get. So I think, yeah, I I do hope that you you will become one of the sort of major players in in the space.

• 38:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that that's a really kind of important strategic decision, maybe elaborate on that a little bit, right? It's almost like kind of the Amazon approach of, hey, let's deliver as much back to the user or customer as possible. And then they'll stay with us for a long period of time. Obviously, a lot of your competitors are charging higher fees and and that kind of extracting more value. Why did you choose to go with the low fee model? And they kind of how is that thought process changed over time?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Sure, I think there's there's a number of factors, there's the mentality factor of the different founders. How how much do they believe in in this industry, whether they're short term or long term? And then there's the skill that we already have or people already have. So to be honest, when we first start, the goal is just to survive, right? So just to get to cash flow, break even and be able to survive. And potentially, if we're not very quite yet, then we may even want to raise some money from some investors that they they they take a little bit of the risk. And then also get gets rewarded later on. So initially, it's that kind of thought process. And once you over that hurdle, it's like, well, now the mentality really comes into play.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It's quite, to be honest, once you have a like a reasonable exchange running, you have like decent number of users, etc. It's not that hard to make some money. I mean, you will be able to make some money. But then as most platforms or most businesses, the more you charge, the the slower you grow. And the the more you charge, you may even you may even like actually actually have a short term business. The uncertainty in this in this industry also causes people to be more short sighted. For example, if you establish an exchange in a country and the regulations change every three months, then you're kind of forced to be more short sighted and just sort of look, let's let's make as much money as we can

• 40:14Speaker 01

  as quickly as possible. And then when things change, we just pack up and leave and we would have made our money. Or at least recovered our investments. But I think I've always I've been in the in the industry for a long time, even before Binance. So I have a much longer term play. I believe crypto will be the will be the super future. Like if you look at 10, 20, 50 years, 100 years from now. So I have a much longer vision on this. And luckily, we got over the bump for the sort of survival mode very quickly, like within a few months. And it was also within those first few months, like even with the first quarter after we launched the platform, we seemed like some of the regulations changed in China that impacted us quite severely.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  But actually afterwards, looking back, it was actually a very positive influence. We actually drove a lot of users to us. But at the time, it was like quite tricky. So we we got we gone through the initial sort of phases very quickly. And right now we have a platform that's that has scale and we have we have the brand. And I think what I think right now, we I have a much longer I have a much longer term sort of play. I just want to be able to service users for the next 20, 50, 100 years, hopefully. So yeah, so for us, it's really not about making so making all the money right now. So businesses very often have to have to decide between short term profits versus long term gains. For us, everything for for us, everything's long term.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  So this is why we are we're still investing in large in large deals in this environment. It's not about the next three months. It's not about the next year. It's about like more than that. So and also, we're not a publicly listed company, so we don't have this sort of Wall Street analyst calls, etc. We do have a token, but the token is getting more and more decentralized and tokens doing fine. But so I think so I think basically we are we have a just a mentality aspect of this is really important. So for this reason, we we really want to protect our users. So we view our users much, much more than our short term revenue. So we do make money. We make money very transparently. People trade and they pay they pay commission. So that's pretty much it, really.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you mentioned a public company, any interest in ever going public? Or you're, do you enjoy being a private company with, without all of the, the short term pressures? Yeah, so I don't, I, I don't think we're going public anytime soon. We're not preparing for it, we're not prepared for it. So we're kind of running the company in, in direction that's not really fit for IPO.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  So a lot, a lot of the decisions we make sort of very fundamentally shape, shapes of the organization. I don't even use the word company that, that often. So it's kind of hard to IPO that kind of, the IPO, the IPO world doesn't really fit our type of organization, which is totally, which is very decentralized. And I also don't believe in the IPO game. I think that, that game's really way old. The system's really broken. Basically, the entrepreneurs are no longer, number one, the entrepreneurs are no longer making the money. They, they basically have to yield to VCs very early on to be able to grow a large platform. Because to grow a platform, you do need to have, you do need heavy investments.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And typically entrepreneurs have the skills, may or may not have the skills, but they don't have the money. And when the institutional investors come in, when the VCs come in, they want returns. They, they, to be honest, very few VCs care about the vision. Most guys who care about the vision would be building stuff themselves. There's very few that do care about the visions. I don't want to like, I don't want to like offend everybody. But, but most, mostly VCs have a, have a fund that have a, that have a, like a six term, five years or eight years or 10 years. And they need to show returns. They need to run, they need to raise the next fund, etc. And they naturally want to have pressure to sort of cash out. And then they want to, they run the firms to IPO.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And then when the firms IPO, the VCs, the, the CEOs are typically giving a mandate to get the price to a certain point. And they usually have a deal. And then the, the CEOs get a bonus when they get to that point. The VCs cash out at that point. And then the retailers, the retail investors get left holding the bag. And hopefully if the company Does well in the future, great, but there's a lot of risks there. But everybody knows how to play that game, so that this is why the CEOs gets a lot of money. This is why the VCs structured deals that way. I don't think super beneficial. I think there's a better structure that can be achieved.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  We have a lot more freedom. We are, we are luckily, we are, we are cash flow positive and we can dictate our own growth. At the rate we grow, we can fund relatively mute ideas, sometimes some really wild ideas. So we're, we're kind of operating as a startup, but also as an investment arm. And we have a lot of experiments going on. So we have a lot of freedom to try this kind of stuff and we have a very united team. So we don't, we don't have a board telling us what to do, etc. So, so I think, yeah, I, I don't, I don't see it a need to, to IPO. And also, given the regulatory uncertainty in, in many jurisdictions, it's still unclear to see how a cryptocurrency exchanges on IPO.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  So we prefer to let, probably let somebody else do that first and we, we don't, we don't need to be the first one there.

• 45:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that, that brings up B and B, which I, I think there's a lot of folks, you know, I think multi coin, you know, a bunch of these people have kind of written these long analysis on the idea that B and B, if you don't go the IPO route, can serve as a way to really drive kind of shareholder value. But in this unique kind of new model, maybe talk a little bit about where B and B is today and then kind of how you see that evolving over time.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Sure, I think we structured B and B as very much a utility token. So it does not represent security in Binance, in Binance or any of the Binance affiliated entities. It's a freely traded coin that we used to, we used to, we used my ICO back in 2017 to raise some funds to, to bootstrap the platform. And then from there, I think today it's grown about 130x from, in the last two years. At the peak, it's grown about 400x, but you know, there's fluctuations. And this this common discussion between what's the difference between shares and the token. So now that's a pretty interesting dynamic. So I think the shares and tokens could be separate.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  But especially if you want to, in case, look, the tokens are used in the ER ecosystem. For like, let's not use finance, let's use like, say, a gaming company, right? So you issue a token, people can use it to pay for, I don't know, game virtual merchandise, like weapons and stuff like that. So then they can use that in the game.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  And then you have the company shares that you can sort of, the company shares are worth however much. You can look at the income, profits, etc. of the company and determine the price of that. Whereas we have chosen not to, or at least for now, would not to sort of monetize the shares aspects of finance. So the, and right now, so we don't, we don't see a need for it right now. And a lot of companies stay private, even like if you look at Bloomberg, Bloomberg's company is still private. It's a valuable company, but Bloomberg makes money from profits. So he didn't really sell a lot of shares to make money. So I think right now our focus really just, and I think right now, if we say we launch, we issue like finance shares and raise a lot of money and continue to do that.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  You actually dilute some of the value in the B and B ecosystem. So we actually just want to say, look, we will continue to push B and B to be used in more ecosystem and also in our partners ecosystems. And that's what we're going to be focused on. And we're not going to, so I'm, at least right now, I'm not really thinking about monetizing the shares at all. Actually, I would, I have, I have an idea, which I don't talk to people often about. I eventually want to make finance a real deal, like a real decentralized autonomous operation. And if we do that, then one of the things we will have to do is we will likely have to forego the valuable shares.

• 48:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So, okay, so you got to explain, you got to explain this a little bit, because this is, I think, kind of the extreme end of the non-IPO path, which is you essentially decentralize. The entire thing and you being the founder. It's a big financial decision because you basically would say the equity in what I've built is going to be worth zero. You're not going to have the payday from the equity and you now have this Dow. But if you have the cash flow, there's obviously value there. Maybe talk through exactly like what would that world look like? And then what would that mean for you and the rest of the team?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Sure, I actually don't know what that word would look like, to be honest. We're kind of, this is new territory, right? So we're kind of experimenting ourselves. And so we're kind of on our virgin territory. We just landed on this land and we're still exploring. We can see there's a forest, but we don't know what's in the forest. We can see there's a hill. We don't know what's behind it, kind of thing. So in my mind, we're kind of in that territory in terms of organizational structure, etc. We do have team members who have ESOPs. We do have, we still do have a couple of external shareholders. And so, and so this aspect is, it is, it is an interesting topic to sort of explore and discuss.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  But I do think a company who has very, well, I would say, I would say, an organization who have very strong cash flow are able to take care of their employees, shareholders, etc. So the different ways to monetize and this is why it ties to the long-term play that we have. I mean, you can say our shares and well, basically the shares encompass future value, right? So the value of the shares of a company encompass how much money can be made later on. Whereas if you just do a dividend or profit split to people, then it's just how much money we've earned so far. But if you, but if you take a longer version, say, look,

• 50:32Speaker 01

  there are many companies who does not, who does not go IPO, that many founders who like, again, taking Bloomberg, for example, like, and the guy's really rich and he has, I think he still owns 70% of the shares of the company and then never really sold anything else. Merrill Lynch was one of the investors, probably still is. Well, they probably changed hands because Merrill may have, may have, may have had its own financial issues.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  So in that, in that aspect, I think there's, I think as long as you get investors and you get team members who are into the same vision, who are here for the long-term play, then that's less of a problem. We actually looked at a new idea that which I think we invented, actually. So I named it. And so I named it and then our team kind of is still polishing it, what we call ETOP. So instead of employee stock option, as we call it employee token options. We actually don't like the word employee, we call them team members, but WTTOP, it's kind of cheesy.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  But overall, though, we want to say, look, of our, of our profits, we can distribute some to tokens to our team members. And the tokens are interesting because the tokens value fluctuates with how well the ecosystem is doing. And, and if, and then this way, the team members are incentivized to sort of grow the ecosystem, not just the corporate value, not just like, not, not just the enterprise value, but more of the sort of ecosystem value. And I think that, that's much, that's actually more aligned with what we want to achieve right now. We want to build out the ecosystem, we want to decentralize sort of the, the enterprise aspect of it. Even though right now, I think Binance.com, especially the trading platforms do, is a large revenue generator.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  But things could change, like we have a DEX, it's not super big right now, but if, look, things could change in three years, five years. So we're, we're, we're experimenting with that. And I think it's super fascinating. And, but if you, if you ask me like, look, what's the blueprint, is it 100% going to go this way? I don't really know, to be honest, because it's all virgin territory. We're experimenting and we may make some mistakes and we have to readjust. But we're, we are exploring with the team together. So, and I think whatever we, whatever we find out that works, we will be very happy to share with the community. And hopefully other organizations will be able to follow. Binance is unique, yeah, Binance is unique in this way. We actually started as more centralized organization, we're kind of pushing this way.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Whereas other like projects like Ethereum, they did start much more decentralized. So it's a bit different, yeah.

• 53:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's really interesting because basically what you're talking about, like, what is equity, right? Equity is a claim on cash flows, a claim on a company's assets. And then obviously, kind of an option on future profits, etc. Really, what you're talking about here is like, a lot of that is more speculative in nature because you're looking into the future. But if you've actually built a business that works, that has cash flow, etc. What now you say to people is, well, if you're a quote-unquote investor or hold, you know, equity holder, if you will. Really, what you're just doing is you're getting a percent of profits, right? And if that's paid out, you know, it changes the dynamic. And then, obviously, if you're an employee, would you rather have something that represents, you know, potential future performance? Or would you rather have a percent of profits today? I think most employees actually would probably want, you know, percent of profits today.

• 53:52Anthony Pompliano?

  It's better short term and too, it's much more tangible in many cases.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, and also, there's a very subtle difference between profits of a traditional organization and profits of a crypto organization. So in crypto, even if our profits are in BNB today, let's say we distribute BNB to some of our team members or BTC. There's an implied gross value of that profit even afterwards. So it's not like, okay, no, I received a hundred dollars and that's it. The dollar will only devalue. So there's, even after they receive the profits, because it's given mostly in tokens and actually a large number do hold it. And they don't really sell. They are aligned with sort of overall ecosystem growth, not just the company growth. So they are aligned to sort of, let's get a brave browser deal.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Let's get more partnerships, let's do all this other stuff to grow the ecosystem. Which actually works really, really well for us, which is totally aligned with what I think we should be doing.

• 54:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I love it. One of the other questions that a lot of people had was around security tokens, which I think is related here. Kind of what are you seeing in the security token world? And is that something that Binance would ever kind of dip their toe into?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Sure, I think there's a lot of potential in the security tokens world. But I, but honestly, though, I think most of the implementations today are too restrictive. So most of the implementations today is just taking the piece of paper that was, that used to represent a security and put it on the blockchain. And on the blockchain, I've seen a lot of implementations where on the smart, the smart contract has a wide list of addresses that you can send people to. That kind of defeats the purpose of blockchainizing it. It doesn't have the freedom that you can send it to anybody, anywhere in the world, etc. So, and to be honest, I don't see that we have so much issue with that piece of paper. Very few people are forging it. There's very easy ways to, to, to verify that piece of paper actually represents shares in a company.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  So I think most of the, most of the implementations I've seen so far are relatively rudimentary and they don't solve the fundamental problem of actually having a security token on the blockchain. It's really traded around the world, anybody can participate, that kind of stuff. That would require, I think, a lot of regulatory changes. So it's not just the, I think the technology is there for sure. But the regulatory hurdles in different countries are, are not solved. I actually think on, I actually am guessing on this front, again, I could be wrong, because this is kind of guessing into the future. I think the countries who are less developed in the security space will actually be easier to change. Because like, if you take a country like United States, there's so many securities laws.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Changing all of them is just a big, like, it's a big train that's already moving in one direction. It's going to be difficult to change that in a different direction. Whereas in countries where the, the securities market is not super developed, they may want to jumpstart their security, like sort of securities markets. And what we have seen is actually many countries want to securitize their real estate. They want to securitize their companies so that they can raise money internationally. So for, for countries that, that's less developed, that's, that, that actually want the money to, to, to, to go to their country. And they don't want wireless in smart contracts, they don't want like all of those restrictions. So I think things are going to play.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Different play out differently. I think the market size is huge. Like, we can all see that. How much of that size is going to convert right into crypto? I think we'll have to see. Our position is basically, look, we do monitor the space. We are interested in it. There's already a few early players who are sort of plowing the way, pushing it. And we'll just see how they do. And if they do well, we can partner with them. We can work with them. We can launch something our own. To some extent, we can copy them and we can innovate. So all those options are open. And but for the STO specifically, Binance's strength is not in dealing with regulators. So we don't have, like, I don't have a lawyer background.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  We don't have teams of lawyers chasing different regulators, etc. I think there are people who have those backgrounds who are much more fitted into chasing those type of businesses. Hopefully, those guys will make some leeway. And then if they do, then we have a technology platform. If they want to partner with us, we're more than happy to partner. We have Binance Cloud. We can deploy a separate exchange. So we typically is a technology provider in this aspect.

• 58:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I love it. Makes a lot of sense. Last question for you. Somebody asked, what is the biggest misconception that people have of you? Like, what's the one thing that maybe people think about CZ? And you would say they're either wrong or don't have kind of the truth on. That was a great question.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Sure. It's a very simple one, actually. A lot of people think I control the cryptocurrency price.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  It's like, I really wish that was true. I mean, if that was true, things would be so much easier, like Bitcoin would be going straight up. And then, so I think that, so I think one of the biggest misconceptions is like, hey, CZ, pump it. Like, what do you expect me to do? I don't have fiat. I don't like, I don't trade. So that's, I think fundamentally, there's a lot of misconception that thinking the biggest change is control price. We don't. We don't trade. I can't tell you which way the price is going to go. If I could, the price will be way higher right now.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm always bullish. I always think the price is too low. And for our business, the price is much better, it's much better for the price to be higher. So I think that's definitely one of the misconceptions people have. And I'm a personally, I'm a very poor trader. I tried this like 10 years, like a decade ago and didn't work too well. I learned that very early on. So I'm a technology builder. And we provide platforms to for people to access liquidity. So I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions that people have. They think that we actually influence price. We don't. I really wish we could, but we don't.

• 59:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I can speak for you in that if CZ controlled price Bitcoin would be at hundreds of thousands of dollars for sure.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:00:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. You know, I think that a lot of people are obviously paying attention to what you guys are building and you're really pushing the pace of innovation. So keep it up and we'll have to do this again in the future.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for all the things that you do in the industry. Yeah, I mean, we we we kind of we talk to each other on Twitter all the time. But I really appreciate what you're doing as well, which is like this distributing high quality information and always pushing the industry forward. So yeah, I appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

• 1:00:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you like this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.