TBPN - Binance’s CZ: We’ll Never Know Satoshi, and That’s Good

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

This is our full interview with CZ, the Founder of Binance, recorded live on TBPN.We discuss his motivation for writing his book following his legal battles, his effort to challenge misconceptions around crypto, and his perspective on regulation, privacy, and the balance between transparency and oversight in digital assets. We also explore his views on the intersection of AI and blockchain, the future of security and quantum risk, the enduring mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto, and why decentralization may depend on anonymity.Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.comFollow TBPN:https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

CZ, how are you? I'm good. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for hopping on. Tell us about the book. What was the goal? Is this an attempt to set the record straight or just tell your story?

What motivated you to write a book at this moment in time? I think it's really just to tell my story. And then I was bored for, I had nothing to do for a couple years. So I started writing a book when I was in prison. Okay. And then I just finished when I got out. I thought, you know, it might be an interesting story to share and stuff, you know, let people know what my view is. Yeah.

What do you think people get wrong about your story? Well, I think a lot of traditional media have many misconceptions about crypto, finance, myself, etc. So I think there's a lot of media that's not accurate about crypto. So I think this is a very good chance for me to share my perspective and have people understand crypto better. What specifically do people get wrong about crypto or you or Binance? Sure. I mean, like from 2013, right, people think that Bitcoin is only used by drug lords or for illicit activities. The truth is actually, if you look at percentage-wise, illicit activities in crypto is actually much, much less than your traditional finance.

And then by extension, a lot of the crypto players, a lot of crypto platforms get hit. And recently, you know, there's more attacks about, you know, just, Just random attacks on me about how I do business, who I have connections with. So I'm a simple tech guy, so I just wrote the book, you know, the way I wanted to tell it. It's a pretty simple language, pretty straightforward book. Just a simple guy. This is a simple guy. I think I'm a relatively simple guy.

Yeah. How have you been processing the new regulation that's been proposed in the United States? What do you think needs to change in the crypto industry? because I take your point about, you know, the amount of illicit activity might be lower than in cash or the traditional financial system. But, you know, the goal, I think for everyone it would agree is to get that to zero. And so what do you like about the new regulation? What do you think is reasonable to ask for? Well, I think right now U.S. is making really good progress on crypto regulation.

The Genius Act was passing last July. But I think right now there's still quite a lot of debate based on my. layman understanding. I'm not an expert. I'm not a lawyer, not a regulatory guy. But it seems like, no, there's a lot of debates about stable coin interest rates. So I think it's a big important issue, but from my perspective, any clarity is better than none. So we will not, I think the current iteration of regulations will not get everything right on the first try, right? So there's always some collaboration over time. So I think it's more important to make progress and move forward. How are you thinking about the broad trade-off between decentralization and

anonymity and then oversight and regulation? It feels like we've been moving towards more oversight, more regulation, more KYC. We've heard from some crypto leaders that that can lead to data breaches and other problems. But where do you sit on the level of regulation in the crypto industry broadly? So I think right now the crypto industry, to be honest, is too transparent. It's actually extremely easy to track crypto funds. Like the blockchain is a public ledger, and then if you couple of that with a few centralized exchanges, K-Y-C information,

you can track most of the transactions pretty accurately. So I think right now there's a lack of preserving of privacy. But right now, the problem is many of the regulators and law enforcement people don't know how to use it yet. Some people do. I think some of the U.S. law enforcement actually knows it quite well. In other countries, they know it much less. So hopefully we'll get to a balance where I don't know where the optimum balance is

But there should be an optimal balance where you know we satisfy all the regulatory requirements But we also need to protect individual privacy right for example I'll give you a couple examples For example like if this company if your company pays everybody in crypto And if you get a one payment today on the blockchain you can just trace to the address that you pay to you and see how many addresses That address paid in the last week, you can figure out everybody's salary. Right? So that's a privacy issue.

Yeah. And if you stay at a hotel, you pay for the hotel, then people know where you, you know, if people know your address and the hotel address, people will know that you're going to stay at that hotel, which for some people may create security issues, right? So there's little problems like those that are not solved yet. So we need to strike a balance. It's hard to say exactly where the balance is, but I think over time we'll get there. How are you thinking about the interaction between AI and crypto?

Generally, there's been a lot of excitement even from people in AI about crypto and the intersection. But I'm curious what your overall view is and then if it's positive, some maybe specific examples of where you expect to see it manifest first. Sure, absolutely. I think both AI and blockchain are being. recent new big industries. I think that's really three big technologies in my adult lifetime right there's like AI there's blockchain this internet it's on those levels I think AI is gonna use crypto for payments for transactions they're not

gonna use no they cannot K Y see through a bank they cannot do they cannot do a selfie they don't have a passport etc and also payments in every country is a little bit different whereas crypto blockchain is the same across different So you integrate with the blockchain once, it works globally. And it also handles micro transactions, large transactions, etc. And also, crypto is going to increase the amount of transactions significantly. So the traditional payment rails may not be able to handle that. I think blockchain also have a lot of benefit from AI.

I think right now, a lot of the applications are in blockchain quite difficult to build. I think with AI, we can probably build like a safer tools for people to do. do self-custody and safer tools for people to transact. So I think so today the two industries, to be honest, have not really leveraged each other that significantly, but I think in the future they will. How are you thinking about the risk of quantum computing to the cryptocurrency ecosystem broadly?

I think there's some risk, but I think overall though, any technology improvement is always going to be good. More computing power is good for crypto. So quantum may break the existing encryption, mechanisms. But with quantum computing, there's probably new, well, there will be new encryption algorithm. There are already quantum proof encryption algorithms that quantum computers do not have an advantage to crack. So we just need to upgrade the protocol to use those encryption mechanisms. Also, more computing power with quantum, there's probably newer encryption mechanisms we have

not even thought about, that we can use quantum to encrypt, and the encryption is always going to be much harder. Sure. What about non-quart? hacking throughout the crypto boom there's been so many upstart projects many of them have been able to get to escape velocity and they're still around today a lot of them have had to go through hacks and and adapt and it feels like with the moment that we're in in terms of AI's effect on cybersecurity we could potentially be looking at maybe a bifurcation between the the projects that have the resources to actually harden themselves

against new cybersecurity threats and those who are maybe smaller upstarts and don't, how do you think that effect plays out? I actually think AI is going to improve security for most projects. Like Anthropic Cloud, right? So now they're, I think if you play like that, you could potentially discover many flaws, at least they claim, in many projects. But I think projects can also use their tool to fix their security problems. I think a big company like that, they already make a lot of money.

They don't need to exploit smaller projects to hack and to do illegal stuff. So I think right now with AI tools that's available, the developers can use those tools to find their own problems. But of course, if you don't do that, then the hackers may do that for you, which is a typical problem we have today anyway. So I think with AI, security is actually going to become better. I don't think it's going to become worse. So I'm pretty confident about that. about that. Do you know who Satoshi Nakamoto is? No, unfortunately I don't. Even if I did, I would have said no, but I honestly don't. Okay. Do you have, how have you processed that question of who is Satoshi? Have you wrestled with it? Have you done a bunch of research to try and figure it out? Have you had various suspects at various points in time, favorite pet theories, wild card theories? Or has it sort of been a quick ride to sort of process that and then,

let go of that desire because it's the unsolved mystery. This is an interesting point. I should have put this in my book. Maybe the next edition. But I've come to peace with it. I think I'm curious, obviously. And if there was one person I really wanted to meet in the world, that would probably be him.

But I think there are negative consequences if we find out who he is. For example, if I couldn't lie on the oath, if people say, look, have you met Tatochi? If I say yes, then, you know, all hell's going to break loose. Sure. I think it's better if we don't know who he is. Yeah.

It's better if we did, and without knowing him that we don't have a funder centralization. Yeah. Right. For example, if you look at Ethereum, Metallics there, right? So there's a fund decentralization. What makes Bitcoin unique is that we don't know, well, the funders no longer participating. He may not be around. He may not be participating.

So that makes it more decentralized. I think that's a good thing. I came to terms. I came to terms with quite a lot. while ago. So even though I'm curious, I'm not actively looking. Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing an anonymous project or do you have a reflection on why we haven't seen more projects effectively run, at least to my knowledge, the Satoshi playbook of maybe it requires some crazy OPSEC to go anonymous for a couple of years,

but if it worked for Bitcoin, I would imagine that somebody would have thought I'm going to do the same thing for this new project with slightly different opinions about how the technology is built. I haven't seen it happen, but what's your take on the idea of a new attempt at a Satoshi-like founder in the crypto industry? I actually really want to see that too. I think that's a really, really cool idea, to be honest, but I think also very hard to do. Most projects fail, even with the founders heavily promoting, we know who they are, etc. for a new project without knowing the founder, there's less trust in the community.

Bitcoin was the first one. Somehow it started very slowly. It took many, many years for you to get to where it is today. And for a new project to do that, it's very, very difficult. And there have been anonymous projects that are basically rock pools. So they're also the other side of it. People lose trust with an anonymous project. So to do what Bitcoin did is very, very difficult.

I would actually love to see more anonymous, fully decentralized projects. But what you mentioned is the obsec is also extremely hard. It's so hard today to not leave any trace, both digitally or physically, right? So the fact that nobody has really announced who Tatashia is means that his offset is crazy. I think 99.99, nobody else can do it really at this point. Yeah. What do Americans miss about crypto adoption globally? Here, I mean, as so many, at least younger generations, almost everyone has some exposure to digital assets or some experience, buying, selling, maybe not using it functionally for payments.

But obviously, it's very different in other parts of the world with, you know, less centralized financial institutions. Yeah, I think America, for the last few years, before the Trump administration, was fairly anti-crypto. So many of the founders left, many of the projects left, and many of the liquidity left. Right. The biggest crypto exchanges are not in America today. The biggest blockchains, the biggest stable coin, they're not America-based. So I think America misses that liquidity quite a bit. America right now has very forward-looking regulations, and now people fly. I think the talent is coming back, but some of the larger players are not backing America yet.

So I would love to see that changing. I think right now, crypto, if you buy crypto, Americans are probably paying the highest fees in the world, whereas if you buy anything else, America is usually paying the lowest price. So the cost to American consumers today for accessing crypto is quite high. So that's a disadvantage that America has today. America's large economy, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of VCs and good liquidity in traditional markets. I think, and I think America definitely has the ability to catch up very quickly. You were born in China. How are you thinking about geopolitical relations between the U.S. and China?

Tensions seem to have been rising for years. There's trade tensions. There's all sorts of geopolitical tensions. Is there any hope for de-escalation between the two countries? I'm not an expert on the geopolitics between different countries. And also my layman understanding is both countries have leaders with pretty big personalities. So they're very hard to predict. I think the President Xi in China is easier to predict than President Trump. President Trump is like a wild card, right? Which is in his advantage?

You can't predict what he's going to do. But I do think both countries are large countries now with leaders who are smart and who are business-driven. They want the economy to grow. So if that's the goal, then I'm optimistic that there's certain outcome to be reached. Between two countries, there's usually a fairly large zone of overlap that you can reach deals. Right now it's just the personalities and also both countries are quite proud. So they're all hard negotiators. The negotiations at that level takes time.

So, but I am fairly optimistic that, you know, both the two countries will work out something that's beneficial for both. You've written the book, what's next for you? What do you think the next decade looks like? I'm actually not too sure, exactly. So I'm doing a few different things right now. I'm running investment fund. Well, I'm not really running it, but I support it. I do some mentoring in the space for new entrepreneurs.

I run a free education platform, a Giga Academy, that provides free education to 240,000 kids now. And we've only been edited for like a year and a half. And then I also, yeah, and I also advise different governments on crypto policies. So between those four things that keep me pretty busy, the book was actually a huge distraction for me. It took a lot of time, it takes a lot of time to write a book.

But I'm glad to know it's out there. is out there and there's an audio version coming out soon. And then after that, I'll put that on pause, just let it be for a while and then figure out what to do. Yeah. What was the strategy for the audio book version? Did you narrate it yourself, hire a human narrator, use AI?

So one of my friend, Michael Santos, is gonna narrate it. Okay. So we had this sort of agreement verbally from a long time ago and also Amazon doesn't allow AI generated voices. Yeah. I didn't know that. So you'll be a human read or audio roll.

And then I've been playing with AI quite a bit myself. The AI cloning of voice is, I can't tell the difference for my own voice. It's just better. It reads more smoothly. It's better than my own reading. So in certain other platforms, in certain other countries, we may use in the AI generated voice that clones my voice to try to read it. I haven't finished that yet.

There's still little quirks here and there. Sometimes AI make very obvious mistakes. You know, it pronounces Chinese names wrong, which I would not make that mistake. You pronounce this. Sometimes you will say like when I write $400, you say $400, you say $400. So I would not make that mistake.

But 99% of the time you actually reach better than me. So we'll see. So I might do two different audio versions, we're still playing wrong with it. Yeah. I wonder after Jassy's letter today if he's still going to be anti-AI voices. I did have one last question. I'm curious.

How did you process the prediction market boom over the last two years? There had been, you know, long, people had long had predictions that prediction markets would intersect with crypto and be really big. And yet there was attempts in the 2010s that didn't really reach critical mass. So I'm curious how you process that entire period. Yeah. So I think today I do think prediction markets has a huge potential and it's already pretty big. Like the top players are pretty big already. And there's like hundreds of thousands of upcoming platforms as well.

And also if you look at the regulatory landscape, the CFTC chairman, Michael Seleck, he talks about prediction markets multiple times. Every time I watch him talk, he seems to mention prediction markets. So it seems like the regulators and the traditional market are also moving in. So as you said, there have been many attempts previously, but then timing is important. Some ideas, even though the idea is very obvious, if you implement them too early, they don't get traction. You have to implement the idea at the right time. I don't know what all the ingredients are for prediction markets, but somehow now seems

to be the right time. The previous attempts have struggled, and now it seems to take it. off. So I'm a big proponent for anything that's new and interesting and I think prediction markets are very interesting. They're the price discovery and truth discovery discovery. They're kind of using price to discovery truth, right? So which is actually very, which is usually the reverse for what we do. We like information drives training volumes. So that's a very interesting dynamic. I think and also the easy labs, the fund I'm involved with, we invest in multiple production markets. So

we'll see which ones work. But I do think that it's a huge potential and it's hot. Yeah. And it works. How are you thinking about any of the previous crypto booms or narratives or themes coming back? Things like NFTs or crypto gaming. Are you optimistic on any projects, the Dow's that had their moment in the sun and didn't quite at least reach escape velocity? Do you think anything will have a second wind in the near future? I do think so. I think many things will have a second wing, but the second wind will most likely be a little bit different. There will be something that's, you know, like even prediction markets today, they're different from the sort of prediction markets four or five years ago. So every iteration, there will be some tweak. And it's usually that little tweak that makes it a little bit different and maybe the micro environment. So I do think that some of the things that were there, like I think thousands will not disappear.

I think that's haven't really took off, to be honest. The concept being there for years. It's like, you know, even in the 2010s, video streaming doesn't really work, right? Like, you know, this type of, even today, this type of call sometimes the internet doesn't work, sometimes the microphone doesn't work, right? So, you know, we get into those situations a lot. So a lot of things take a lot of time to mature. So I think the DAO, the NFTs, again, the next iteration may be slightly different, but you may still be called NFTs or NFT2, you may be a different name.

But I think tokenizing art is probably going to come back at some point multiple times. I don't know when you really hit big and stay. NFTs, I think honestly, we saw a rise and then a downward trend. So it's hard to say, but I think all of those things eventually should be much bigger than they were today. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Congratulations on the book.

I recommend everyone go check it out and hear CZ's side of the story. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.