The Pomp Podcast - #1568 CZ's Story: From No Electricity to Bitcoin Billionaire

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

CZ is the founder of Binance, and is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our lifetime. In this conversation we talk about when he first bought bitcoin in 2013, his childhood with no electricity or running water, career before finding bitcoin, starting Binance, managing bear and bull cycles, regulation, his time in prison, and what the future may hold for CZ and the crypto market. ========================This episode is brought to you by Figure, the platform to Earn and Borrow. Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Figure offers Crypto-Backed Loans, allowing you to borrow against your Bitcoin or Ethereum with 3-month terms and no prepayment penalties. They have the lowest interest rates in the industry at 9.9%, allowing you to access instant cash or buy more Bitcoin without triggering a tax event. Unlock your crypto’s potential today. Visit https://www.figure.com/pomp to apply for a Crypto Backed Loan today! Figure Lending LLC dba Figure. Equal Opportunity Lender. NMLS 1717824. Terms and conditions apply. Visit figure.com for more information.========================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $500 in rewards.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a

specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Hello, everyone. Today, we've got an amazing conversation with CZ. He's the founder of Binance. He's one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our lifetime. He's one of the wealthiest people in the world. And he's also someone who came from absolutely nothing. He was born in a village in China.

As you're going to hear, this story is incredible. It's one of the best entrepreneurship stories in our lifetime, but also is one of the most important stories in all of crypto because it ultimately explains one of the predominant exchanges in the industry, how it came to be, how they rose to all of the success that they've had and what happened when they went through all of the pain when it came to the legal issues that they faced. CZ is somebody who I've greatly respected for many, many years. Him and I have got to know each other, and I think that he's an individual who's got a story to tell. And so hopefully, as you listen to this entire conversation, you'll better understand not only

CZ as a person, Binance as a business, but also how he, as somebody who saw the future of where this industry was going, how he sees it actually playing out in the coming years as well. Here's my latest conversation with CZ. CZ, I thought a great place to start the conversation is, you know, you're one of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You've been incredibly successful, both personally and professionally. I think a lot of people outside of the crypto industry probably don't realize how big a company like Binance that you built became. I don't think they quite understand how successful you have been. But I always find it fascinating for people who have really driven their careers and reached kind of the pinnacle of whatever industry they've chosen,

and what their worldview is. And so the fact that you built it in a crypto industry, talk a little bit about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. What is its role in the world? And how do you see the importance of that continuing to increase moving forward? Yeah, sure. Well, I think you hit a pretty strong point,

which is over the years, I've learned that to be able to build a successful company, you really have to have a strong conviction. You really have to believe in a strong worldview. And hopefully that's a bit earlier than what other people realize. So I think I got lucky. We got lucky.

we got into Bitcoin early. Right. So, you know, this is the third time we did a podcast, I think. And so like in 2013, 2014, I came across Bitcoin. I was like, wow, this is this technology is going to be bigger than the Internet. Right. So and I didn't quite catch on the Internet wave. So I was just out of college and kind of in college. And then when Bitcoin came out in 2013, I was like 35. So I was like, well, I'm not going to miss this. So I went all in, quit my job, sold my house, and got into crypto. I think having that strong conviction really helps. This is a technology for money and for anything in the future that needs proof, so anything

that needs to be verified. Database is great for storage of data, but it cannot be verified easily. Everybody can have their own version of a database, and you have to believe somebody to do that. So this new technology is primed at the time, primed for finance, and we're still looking at the beginning of its adoption in the financial world. So for me, it was like, this is a big technology. I'm not going to miss it.

And the next one is going to come 10, 15 years later, which now we see as AI, I think. So it's like one of those three fundamental technologies that I would face in my sort of adult life. So that's kind of the mentality. I think that was important to have that kind of strong conviction, build a platform, et When you think about that worldview, you know, you're somebody who I think has had a lot of life experience. You've moved around, you've worked at different types of companies, and it feels like being exposed to a lot of different things in your life can help you not only have empathy and kind of understand how different people view things, but also I think of intuition as kind of like your human algorithm. You're training it.

And the more kind of exposure you have, the better you get at being able to identify it. Why, when you saw it, were you like, this is going to be so big? Was it the technology? Was it the, I don't know, the price associated with it? Was it something about the market? Like, what was the thing that really convinced you to say, hey, this is going to be so big? Yeah, so I think the, I was very lucky to have the personal experience in living in different countries. I grew up, I was born in China, grew up in Canada, went to school there, worked in Tokyo, in New York, and Shanghai.

So I was like, you know, I was like, I was pretty close to a global citizen back then. Nowadays, I'm a much more global citizen. But just that global experience, moving through different countries, changing money, moving money from like Japan to New York, I lost quite a bit on conversion rates. And then it also gives you a worldview that, you know, a currency, you're not limited by countries, et cetera. And also, I have a tech background. So I was using my own PGP private key, private public keys in 1998. And so I understand the encryption algorithms used by Bitcoin. And then I worked in Wall Street, like Bloomberg, Tokyo Stock Exchange systems, et cetera.

So I have a financial tech background, which is helpful to understanding Bitcoin early. And then for me, it was really, really important to look at the community. And I liked the community that I saw in 2013. So I think that combination of experiences helps me to understand this technology much earlier than other people. So I was lucky to have that type of experience that allowed me to do that. And also, I understood it enough for me to have a very strong conviction so that I can stay in the industry I was all in. So I think all of that helps.

I think people's horizons or understanding of the world is really important. It's really important for people to have a worldview instead of a country view. So I did a lot of research to come and talk to you. And, you know, you and I have known each other for a while now, but I think most people know you from the professional component of this. And as I talked with people and started to learn more, you know, you grew up in a pretty not ideal scenario in China. And I don't think I quite understood that before. Can you talk a little bit about where you grew up and what that life was like? Yeah, so I was born in a village in like rural China.

I moved from that small town to a real, real village before I can even remember. The place I grew up at that I remember, we didn't have running water. We didn't have electricity. Even when I was in elementary school, I was studying under oil lamps with like a glass cover. So a few years later, we got a water pump that you can pump water out. And then a few years later, we got electricity. And then I moved to a small city in China. and then i moved to canada um so that was all before when i was 12. so um so that's like uh

my life went through like you know quite big changes over time even when i was in vancouver my parents were teachers when they were in china um but in vancouver my dad was studying as a professor uh or studying to become a professor initially so my mom because she didn't speak english she had to work in a sewing factory sewing clothes right so she left at 7 a.m and came back around 7 p.m um it's like close to minimum wage so uh we were like kind of we're not starving but we're kind of at the bottom tier of the society but we never had any debt um the you know the chinese parents always have savings so well we so we went through that i was like the second generation immigrant so i saw how hard how hard my parents worked to give me that opportunity to

be able to uh to have a work platform so i think that mentality also helps so that's why i'm relatively frugal i don't have i don't have a lot of luxury habits but i work really hard so um that combination also helps i think um yeah so that's kind of my upbringing but i consider myself extremely lucky knowing going from like you know with no running water um you know we had my mom used to have to go to a well about 300 meters away carry two buckets with a bamboo stick on her shoulders to get one to get water for the household so going from that to like where we we are today, it's like, yeah, it makes you appreciate life a bit more, yeah. Well, what's interesting to me is I think many people would associate you and the work that

you've done as kind of being on the tip of the spear of innovation, right, and technology, and so much of the success that you've had, I think, is embracing new technologies. What you're describing is a world where it sounds like there was almost no technology, right? No running water, no electricity, like all this stuff. Did you know growing up that you guys didn't have a lot, Or was it just, hey, everyone around me has kind of similar things. And so this is how I think everyone lives. So when I was growing up, I just thought everyone was the same as us. I still have that mentality.

I think everyone's the same as us today. So when I compare horizontally, like people compare to the next guy, to the guy next to them, right? So in the village, everyone's the same. In fact, like, you know, my parents are still teachers, so they're actually a slightly above average in that village. But then when I moved to a bigger city, I was like, wow, this city is much better. Right. The city, when we moved to the city, that city is called Hefei. It hosts one of the

top universities in China. Inside the university campus, they have paved roads, like they have cement roads. That was a new thing. That was like, wow, this is pretty good. This is better than the dirt roads. So I've always kind of lived on the sort of a middle to bottom, like I wouldn't say poverty, but like middle tier. But every step up, I was like, wow, the world is much bigger. So over my lifetime, I was experiencing the world becoming bigger and bigger and better and better. So I think that also expands my mentality to accept new things. So like all of us early adopters of crypto are usually early adopters. So I think that also helps a bit.

But yeah, I've always viewed myself as kind of the same as everybody else, pretty much. So I never really have a superior or inferior complex. I hope I'm not overly arrogant, but also not overly pessimistic. I'm always quite optimistic in general. What's fascinating to me is I recently watched the NBA draft, and there was a gentleman who was drafted, and he talked about that for seven years he lived with a generator. They didn't have electricity.

The family lived on a generator. And you could feel the emotion. That was kind of overwhelming him in the moment, saying, I went from living with a generator for seven years. My mom sacrificed so much for me to be able to, you know, now play in the NBA. I don't know if you are good at basketball, but you have ascended to the NBA of technology, at least. Talk a little bit about your relationship with your parents. And then, you know, have you ever had a conversation with them where they've said they're proud of you or vice versa?

You kind of had to go explain to them like, hey, we may have an opportunity for a different lifestyle now that maybe we grew up with. Yeah. So luckily, my relationship with both of my parents are generally decent. I didn't spend a lot of time with my father. My father's always walked away from home, part a bit of his life, making a better living for us. So I spent more time with my mom. My mom didn't have huge ambitions for me. She's still extremely frugal today. She's like 83, 84 now. She still complains groceries are too expensive stuff like that today right i'm like mom you can buy anything you want now so um my dad is also quite frugal uh my dad uh when i get out when i give my dad money once the second

time like you know six months later or a year later i was like what dad do you need more money i can give you more money my dad always rejected it he's like no i haven't spent a penny of the money you gave me last time so i've only given my money given that my dad money once um so they still live their same life. They haven't changed at all. They don't want to change their life. My dad passed away two years ago. Both of them are pretty, I would say, normal. I wouldn't say I'm super close with my dad, but I think he had a lot of influence on me regardless. He's quite frugal. He's quite down to the basics. He's not a fancy guy. My mom's the same thing. So, yeah, so I would say I have a pretty good relationship with both of them.

When you moved to Canada, your parents obviously bring you there. You're 12 years old. What do you remember about that experience? And, you know, Canada, coming from America, we kind of look at Canada as like our little brother sometimes. I know they don't like that, but, you know, that's the joke, at least. But it is a very Western, you know, and as close to an American experience as you can get not being in America. So that's got to be jarring, I assume, going from China, especially from a village to maybe a little bit bigger city, then all of a sudden jumping to Canada, which is fairly developed. Yeah, that was a really nice experience.

For example, when I landed, my dad had a friend who had a car to pick us up from the airport. For me, that was a big thing. I've never sat in a private car in my life before that. In China, you just don't have private cars. I took buses and stuff, but never in a private car. And so a few days later, my dad took me to buy a $400 Canadian dollar, like a four-time used car. I was like, I was thrilled. I was like, wow, we have our own car.

And then the life in Canada is really good. You know, I think generally the life quality in Canada is quite good. It's safe. There's grass. You know, you play with your friends. School's really good. The school's not that taxing. Like, they're not that high pressure.

School's relatively easy. uh i had time to study english etc but overall just like the whole system is just really good so i had a fantastic teenager years in canada um and also college years so which i'm still very thankful um i developed a lot of good habits in terms of playing sports um i played a lot of volleyball in high school i played like 15 hours a week it's basically three hours a day um i was captain for the school volleyball team four out of the six years uh so the later four years grade eight grade nine i wasn't but from grade nine second uh the second half i was like so i played a lot of volleyball um uh i did okay in academics um so uh i had a great relationship with all my

teachers in high school um so we had a small high school with only like when i joined it was only 200 students when i graduated about 400 students so it's a small school uh everybody knew everyone else um so it was like a very um i would say like my teenager years are some of the best years in my life um so that really helped um and um yeah so i think canada i still feel a lot of debt to canada i think it's really helped me to grow yeah one of the things that you you talked about my wife as many people know is from bulgaria and when she came from bulgaria to the united states uh she remembers that they were like solving for x in bulgaria and she got here and the american kids were doing like addition and subtraction and she went from being like the worst math student to

the best math student for for a period of time i'm assuming that the chinese education system was much more intense what was that experience like going to uh you know from the chinese experience to uh to move to canadian yeah so uh my mom put me put both me and my sister in school two years early because my mom's a high school teacher so he she didn't want to take her take like no you deal with us at home so she just put us in school uh so when i uh i finished I finished grade eight or like the second grade of middle school when I was 12 in China. But when I came to Canada, they said I'm 12, so I have to go to elementary school. So I went to elementary school for one year and then got into grade eight in the sort

of middle school, high school, middle school. And then I was taking grade eight classes, but math, I was taking grade 10. So this is after one year delay, I was still taking grade 10 math. And then I participated in a few of the Canadian national mathematic competitions, the Fermat, Euclid's, et cetera. Most years, I was placed in the top 100. The last year, I was placed in the top 25 or something. So I got a couple of small plaques, et cetera.

So math is always my stronger subject. So naturally, math leads into programming, tech, et cetera. So that part is easy. English is always harder for me. naturally as a second language for me. So, yeah, but I also had a very good English teacher in high school. I was part of the ESL class, English as a Second Language class initially. Most people from those classes don't get A's in their normal English class.

I got an A most of the time in the English class because the teacher liked my writing. He commented I was witty. So my vocabulary wasn't that much. But I was always kind of funny in the writing and the teacher liked it. So I had a good relationship with him. That also instilled quite a bit of confidence for writing today, even though I know I'm not a great writer in terms of grammar, et cetera. I make mistakes.

But, you know, just having the fun part, like the wittiness helps. So, yeah. So, yeah, academic wise, it's a bit different. I was stronger in the sort of mathematics side of things. What is the story of your life from you graduate high school? and then you find Bitcoin 35 years old, give or take. I don't think I really understand, you know, where did you go? What did you do?

It sounds like you went to some of the finance shops, but also you went back to Asia. Just talk us through kind of what you were doing there. Yeah, yeah. So in my fourth year, so I, well, when I was in McHill, right? So the first, I always work every summer. So the first summer I got a software intern job. The second summer I went to the same company.

The third summer I found a job in Tokyo doing an intern. This company worked for a trading system that connects to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. So I was a junior software developer, and I developed some code doing that. And then the fourth year, the same company gave me a job. And then we were working on a project. The project got delayed. So my boss, my manager says, can you extend for one semester to finish this project? Because you're now quite an integral part of this project.

They didn't want to switch. So I said, fine. So I extended for one semester. and that the project wasn't finished on time either. Not because of me. So the project extended a couple of times. I ended up never going back to McGill to finish the degree. So I actually didn't graduate from McGill. But then I stayed working in Tokyo. And then later on, I found out that without the degree, it's actually quite difficult for me to get a work visa. So I went through some online distance education to get the bachelor's degree.

I transferred most of the credit, got a couple more courses, got that degree. And then I was like, well, and then I worked there for a couple of years. And then the 2000 dot-com bubble hit. So most tech stocks got dropped. And then that company I was working for got acquired by a company, by a NASDAQ-listed company. But that stock wasn't doing well after the acquisition. So a bunch of people were leaving. And then I was looking for a job.

And very few companies are hiring. Bloomberg was hiring in 2021. Sorry, 2001. And so I interviewed with Bloomberg on the phone. We got an offer. I was going to go. And this is summer of 2001. And by September, 9-11 happened.

So I called back to say, well, is the job still there? They said, yeah, the job's still here. Do you still want to come? So yeah, I still want to come. So I went to New York on November in 2001. So that's two months after 9-11. The streets were pretty quiet. But, you know, I went there, everything was fine.

I continued to work. I worked in Bloomberg for four years. Bloomberg actually helped me grow quite a bit. I joined as a senior developer, but then very quickly I got promoted like three times in about two years. So I became, I managed a team of 60, initially 60, later on 80 people, some in New York, some in Princeton, and some in London, some in Tokyo. were working on a futures trading system so that's like my first full-on like that's what i call my

second generation trading system that i worked on um and then later on uh four years afterwards uh i got promoted three times in two years but then second two the last two years i didn't get promoted i look at the at the organization i was the youngest uh manager at that level and i was the only asian face everybody else is white at that time so i was like well i have to wait for somebody to retire or die to like you know move up to the next year um so i started looking at entrepreneurial activities and then there was a group of guys who were doing a startups in shanghai i was like okay let's it's actually the same uh quite a few of the senior founders in the in the japan company i worked for before um they were doing a new startup in shanghai so i said

i'm going to join them as the youngest partner out of the six people i was the only chinese speaking guy everybody else is there's two americans two british and one japanese guy So the six of us went to Shanghai to start a new startup called Fusion Systems. That's in 2005. And then we did that. We grown that company to four different offices, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Los Angeles. And the company had about 200 people. Initially, we struggled for a bit.

But later on, we eventually became sustainable. We became slightly profitable. The partners are taking decent salaries, have a decent lifestyle. we did that for eight years. So that's from 2005 to 2013. And in 2013, I came across Bitcoin. I was like, oh, okay, this needs a new thing. I tried to get Fusion to do a Bitcoin payment service provider like BitPay. BitPay raised $4 million in 2013. I was talking with my partners, we got to do a copycat of BitPay. But the other partners are older, they didn't quite get Bitcoin back then. They said, well, no, we're not going to do it. I said, okay, well, then I'm going to

leave and do join the bitcoin industry so that's kind of how that history kind of end up it's crazy to me how uh in hindsight you could always point to someone's career in terms of what were they doing what were those details how do they all kind of line up to each other in terms of uh eventually what you end up you know being highly successful at um but but uh you only can do that in hindsight right when you go to bloomberg or you go to uh to fusion you have no clue what's what's the future has in store for you so it's uh pretty cool now you see bitcoin what's the first thing you do in the bitcoin industry so uh i i saw bitcoin first so it took me about six months to understand it fully to have full conviction uh i was introduced to bitcoin in july 2013 bitcoin

was 70 dollars right and then by december when i fully understood it was like trading at a thousand right so that's the peak of december 2013. i was damn i'm really late i gotta get in this early So I sold my apartment in like January 2014 and I got paid in trenches, right? So every trench I get, I will buy Bitcoin. And so I got paid, so I bought at $800 one trench, $600 one trench. This is January 2014, it was like kind of going down.

And then by February or March, I got the last payment and I bought like 400 US dollars. So my average price is about 600 US dollars per Bitcoin. And then you went to like 200, 150, stayed at 200 for about 18 months, right? So that's like 2014 to early 2015. So I basically lost two-thirds of a house as soon as I bought. And luckily, my family is pretty supportive. And other than my mom, my mom's like, no, you stupid kid.

Why did you do this? Why couldn't you keep your original job at Bloomberg? you were making good money, et cetera, et cetera. So, but anyway, she was just nagging. She wasn't really able to do anything anyway. So, but I thought that either I was really wrong or everybody else is slightly off. So I actually thought I might just be too early.

So I just head on to it. And 2016, actually, I guess it was the governor of the Central Bank of China, Mr. Zhou Xiaoquan, he suddenly said something about blockchain in one of his speeches. And then suddenly the Chinese crypto industry became the blockchain industry and the price started going back up.

So yeah, so it went through, that was my first winter cycle. After that, everybody in crypto, right? After you go through your first cycle, the second cycle is so much easier because the price is much higher. A hundred percent. Now, when did you get the idea for Binance

and how much of it was kind of you sitting down to do it versus building a team initially? Yeah, so building an exchange is not a new idea. Everybody I spoke to in crypto wants to build an exchange at some point. So in 2013, we thought about building a payment system, then we thought about building an exchange. We talked about it. I thought I didn't have quite enough experience just to build an exchange yet.

So I actually joined another Chinese exchange for a bit, but things didn't work out too well there. So I left within less than a year. And then I pivoted, I tried to do a Bitcoin exchange in Japan because Mt. Gox went down in 2014. And then by 2015, I was like, well, we can do another crypto Bitcoin exchange in Japan. I talked to a bunch of VCs trying to raise money. The VCs all suggested to me that I should become a tech provider to other exchanges

because they have invested in a bunch of exchanges in Japan. And I know how to build the systems. And I got a couple of guys together. We started building a system. And so we kind of pivoted from wanting to build an exchange ourselves to providing the exchange system. That company actually became quite successful. We signed up a lot of clients who want to do exchanges.

Some crypts only actually want a small number of crypto exchanges, but majority, there was another growing phenomena in China back then on the, what they call stamps exchanges, cultures and stamps. That's a whole different story, but they needed systems with order book matching, et cetera. So we had the systems. So we actually signed up like 30 plus exchange clients. So this is a B2B business. We charge a monthly fee to the businesses, and it's actually a very steady business.

But then in early 2017, the Chinese government shut most of our clients down because they don't allow that type of exchanges anymore. And then we're like, well, what are we going to do? Now we have a team because we're servicing 30 plus clients, et cetera. We had a team of about 25 people at that time, mostly tech guys and one or two sales guys. So we said, well, let's do our own exchange now. So we kind of pivoted backwards. So the idea wasn't new.

So this is what I tell entrepreneurs, ideas are not worth the paper they're written on. So it's all execution. So by 2017, we have the system, we have our own team, which I thought is a pretty high performing team. I really liked that team. Well, that's still the Binance team today. So none of them are fancy resumes. None of them are fancy guys.

All of them are, I would say, quite relatively down to earth, relatively young and junior, but they're all very good. So I thought, no, this team's pretty good. In 2017, most of the other exchanges were still Bitcoin exchanges. Coinbase didn't even support Ethereum back then. So Ethereum wasn't listed. Coinbase has Bitcoin, Litecoin, or something else. And most other exchanges were not prepared to handle ERC20 tokens.

But 2017 was the sort of ICO year. Everyone was issuing ERC20 tokens. So Binance, we issued the ERC20 token ourselves. And then we started supporting all the ERC20 tokens on Ethereum. So that was a niche we caught on. And then the other guys wasn't reacting fast enough. And then we really revamped the customer service in the crypto industry. 2017 if you raise a support ticket you'll be waiting for two months or more if you get a reply

and this is when your bitcoin withdraws stuck and you don't have it you can't trade it the price is moving and you're stuck there for two months right so we thought no that's the i have had those experiences on other exchanges which are not good and i said okay let's do 24-hour response longest and then we push to one hour so uh so we built a really good product plus really good servers. And then we also got lucky in the sense that we protected users like no other exchange has done before or even since. So we got lucky in a few of those points and then Binance grew. When you're going through that hyper growth, you basically brought to market something that no one else had created. You were solving a problem, right? Which is, I think anyone that I know

has had any degree of success in business or been able to build any amount of wealth for themselves personally, you can always go back and say, hey, what was the thing you provided to the market that they needed and you guys were doing that um what was it like when you were hitting that hyper scum in 2017 that was the first cycle that i went through where i was like okay this is going to get kind of crazy right uh this is not just a bitcoin thing this is you know all these coins are going to keep going up um and then there was a big crash and i got to imagine that there's some like emotions that follow price uh in this industry so what was that like you know in the early days of binance yeah yeah so that was like the first i would say uh eight month is like

surreal. It's just everything is unexpected. Everything's kind of hard to imagine. When we started July 14th, 2017, six weeks later, like a month and a half later, Chinese says, okay, the Chinese government says no more crypto exchanges in China. We're like, okay, we got to pack up. We could shut down or we could pack up and move. Because again, this comes back to my international experience, right? So I was like, it's easy enough to move. I lived in many places outside of China and we can move. So we moved 30 people from China to Tokyo back then. So we decided not to have a China base.

So that was a bit surreal and kind of hard to imagine for most businesses. And then we didn't have any fiat channels. No banks worked with crypto exchanges, not in China, not anywhere else. So we were forced to deal with the blockchain. So Bitcoin, we were crypto to crypto exchange. So Bitcoin deposit on the blockchain. you can pay to Ethereum, withdraw on the blockchain, et cetera. But that actually, that will limit our user base to a very small number of users per country,

because most people are more familiar with banks. But then we found out that, wait a second, with this small number, there's a small number in every country. So we were actually, then we have a global platform. So then moving out is quite easy and we saw our business grow. And then by within like two months, we were like the top 10 exchange. And then another four months later with a top five, and we stuck at the top four for like about a month. And then by December, five months after we launched, I was in Tokyo. Somebody messaged me and says, congrats.

I was like, well, what's going on? He's like, well, now you're the number one exchange. And the Bitcoin price went through the roof too. So the volume is really high. So Bitcoin went from 3,000 at the beginning of the year to 19,000 at peak in December, almost on the same day that we reached number one in trading volume. And the system's crashing like crazy. I'll give you a little story.

So our CTO, he's managing this whole system with all this load. Our product manager sleeps late. So while designing the product, designing the buttons and screens, he will monitor the the community, and if there's any issues, he will call the CTO. And there's usually a lot of issues. He will call the CTO almost every night at 1, 2 a.m. And then our operations guy, what we call the project manager, he wakes up early. And when he wakes up at 3 or 4 a.m., he looks at the community again to make sure there's

no issues. And if there are issues, he will call the CTO. And for a month, for many months, both of them will call the CTO the last thing they go to sleep and the first thing they wake up so the ctu wasn't getting any sleep um when there's serious issues i'll get wake up so uh it was like that kind of environment for like for months and then uh in january 2018 um we had peaks where we were getting like uh 200 000 registers per hour uh we got 300 300 000 red users registering per day and our system couldn't handle it it's not just like it's not as simple as people think that you just can't put a email and password in the

database we had huge backlogs right so we didn't we couldn't stick to the one hour or 24 hour response so all of that happened um and then actually in january when the um when the bitcoin price went down the the market became quieter it actually gave us a bit of breathing room like we were like we were literally like like swimming uh before that so when the market went quiet we our trading volume went down but we actually got some breathing room to to rebuild uh we were never really worried too much for me like you know when bitcoin was like six thousand dollars i was fine you know i was like this price is much higher than what we anticipated um so i the second that would be the second cycles that we go through so um that didn't cause from a business pricing

financial perspective we didn't feel any pressure binance has always been profitable since three months in so uh every single day yeah so i i was gonna ask how much money do you think you in the first year? Because it's kind of a crazy story. You launch this thing and it just takes off, right? But to what scale in the early days? I think we made about a billion profit in the first year. I think we are probably the first company

to hit a billion profit from startup. And that was what? In only the first like six months, really, if you launched in July? I think bulk of it is in the first six months or so. But the bulk of it is from month three, four to like month seven, eight-ish. That's like the peak

where we had the tremendous volumes. So we did some research. There's some other company which higher valuations faster that got acquired by Facebook, I think. They reached a billion valuation, got acquired. But in terms of startup profitable, I think we hit the one billion profitability

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pretty cool do you celebrate the billion dollar milestone uh well actually i took a much more balanced mindset back then i was like well this is based on bitcoin price at today uh when the bitcoin when the bitcoin price goes down our pre week because we hold our profits in crypto so we don't convert into us dollars because we believe that crypto longer term will rise higher so there will be volatilities but we can handle it so um i thought that we just gotta we just gotta make sure that we have enough cushion uh to survive any downturn so that was like in my head uh it was like no we just want to make sure we let's like let's not get too excited right now uh let's not distribute all the you know earnings and then on the next downturn we will be in the red right so

we got to survive so um yeah and then the price actually did went from like no um twenty thousand dollars to three thousand dollars in early late 2018 so yeah so back then i also um the the profit numbers shadowed by the amount of assets on the platform right so the amount of asset user assets on the platform when we have to like rearrange code wallets we'll be transferring billions of dollars and the first time we do that is like really shaky but after you do that a few times it's like oh that's just a number so you kind of your mind gets numbed to the number is it just a number and you look at your own wallet you don't have that much money so when i look at my own personal wallet i never cashed out so i don't have i don't have any money so i didn't really

it was like a more of a virtual number we in virtual industry so yeah i i remember um i was in new york city and i was walking and i can't remember if it was 2018 or 2019 but all of a sudden all over at the time twitter uh binance gets hacked and i remember reaching out to someone on the executive team at Binance and saying, you know, are you guys okay? Is there anything to do to help? And it was chaos because everyone was trying to figure out what happened, where's the money,

all this stuff. Talk about that because I think that, you know, when people hear, oh, Binance went from zero to a billion in profit in the first year, everything's amazing. You guys had just as much, I think, kind of challenges and pains along the way as every other, you know, company in this industry, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So that happened in May 2019. So we suffered a hack where the hacker emptied our BTC hot wallet of 7,000 BTC. So at the time, it was about $40 million. So we shut down Withdrawals for a week. But we kept trading on because we didn't want the price fluctuations to be out of sync with other exchanges. And then within a couple of hours from the hack, I did a live AMA. The live AMA was actually scheduled beforehand.

end, I was going to have a monthly AMA. It was just the next day, the next morning. So I went on it, and people analyzed my posture, my expressions, saying that we had the funds to back it up. Just to give some context, back in 2019, $40 million was probably about, we calculated it was about a month of revenue. So it wasn't going to bankrupt us, but everyone was very edgy, right? So we were very nervous too. We're like, is that the only thing that they can take away we were like no um so this is always the biggest risk in crypto is security um and then uh i think we i established with the team back then we got to get on twitter every two hours every two hours we're going to give an update um and what we're doing uh we were doing

the proof of reserves we were doing like and actually looking back that's probably a blessing in disguise um yeah so back then everyone everyone was really edgy but uh what's interesting though is after a week later, after we enabled withdrawals, we returned everything to normal, we saw more deposits back into the system than withdrawals. So people actually were more confident with us in how we handled the hack. So I think that was a very good lesson for me

that if you're just being very transparent, always there and just take responsibility, deal with the issue, people actually, the hacks are the security instance actually build more trust in you. So I think recently we've seen some of that as well. People who handle those instances well actually build more credibility.

But yeah, it's not an easy business. So it's just so many issues, yeah. We can't talk about that hack without the funds are SAFU. You're going to have to explain where that came from. Sure, yeah, yeah. So I first say, obviously, when this means what's happening, I tweet about the funds are safe, right? And there's somebody, I forgot his name,

Um, uh, somebody, a YouTuber made a YouTube video, uh, uh, and then he portrayed me as a Japanese guy. And in the video, he says, phones are safe food, uh, as a pronunciation. And then the next time when we had any kind of withdrawal, uh, pause or, you know, system updates, I adopted that. I said, it sounds like safe food, essay FU. All right. Um, and then that kind of, no, I was kind of embracing the meme and then,

you know, then the community kind of rallied behind it and that became a meme. So that became very popular. Every time I see it, it cracks me up because of that moment. All right. So you get into, out of 2019, past the hack, 2020, obviously things kind of get crazy again coming out of COVID. Talk a little bit about, you know, now you're kind of prepared to a degree, right? You've had that breathing room.

You're now building this big business. I think the world now understands, at least the people paying attention to crypto, finance is big, finance is successful. What happens in 2020 and 2021 that maybe is different or that you think is important? Yeah, so 2020 was like a warm up year, I would say. I think in 2019, Binance launched the Binance Launchpad in the bottom of the winter. I remember when Bitcoin was $3,000 or so, we launched Binance Launchpad. And then we rolled out a slew of features.

Now we continue to revamp the system. 2020 was like a Walmart year. 2021 was really the explosive year. 2021, at the beginning of 2021, we had 20 million users. At the end of 2021, we had 120 million users. So we're going like 5, 6x during that year. And 2021, the Bitcoin price went to like 60,000, right? So yeah, that was, again, a high-pressure year. But that time, we were much better prepared.

The team's bigger. We're still struggling here and there. uh we're still struggling on customer support we're still struggling on some of the system issues etc but 2021 we had a bigger team uh we uh we're more mature in in the industry etc so that was a really strong growth year where we got a lot of users and our reputations also kind of out there so we're kind of a long no longer a new platform so that that was the main growth here in sort of as far as i can remember and at some point you guys go from you know, what I'll call a kind of a niche crypto product to very quickly, the number one crypto product

to eventually it's on the world stage and everyone starts showing up. And I think that I saw you in Singapore, maybe in 2019. And I remember you kind of being like, oh wow, this is like, this is big, right? And you can just feel it. You guys had a conference in Singapore and I just remember looking around and being like,

there's a lot of people here, right? And as you get into 2020, 2021, I also think that there became a lot more scrutiny on the crypto industry and that's when it kind of started but no one was really uh doing anything about it obviously as we get into 22 23 then it felt like there was a crackdown and so talk a little bit as to you know there's like explosion in 21 and then really success being met with friction from governments not only in the united states around the world though um it ends up really kind of causing problems i think for a number of companies in the industry yeah so i

we met in january 2020 2019 um and that's that's when the bottom of the bear uh the bear market um that's like when bitcoin was like 3100 um and um but even at the bottom like you know when we organized a conference there was still quite a lot of people right so uh and then by 2021 uh the market was pretty hot a couple months later sec filed a lawsuit against binance us uh binance and myself initially that lawsuit had like you know accused us of fraud saying that we we moved customer money, and they actually issued an emergency freezing order, like a temporary restriction order, and that froze all the assets in the company. I gave a $250 million loan to Binance US. I couldn't get a penny back until recently when the case was fully dismissed.

Surely thereafter, obviously, you come under your own scrutiny from regulators and talk through a little bit. It's like, what happened? Because I think people read headlines, and frankly, even I, you know, you and I know each other, and I don't even know if I know all the details in terms of what exactly happened? What did they claim you guys did? What did you get in trouble for? What was the punishment? Just walk us through this whole situation. Yeah, yeah, sure. So that was FTX was November 2022, right? So December 2022, people got really panicked about safety of funds on centralized exchanges. December, Binance experienced a lot of withdrawals. In that one week, there were $14 billion withdrawn from the platform. On the highest day, it was a Wednesday,

$7 billion got withdrawn from the platform. Again, on that Wednesday, I was having dinner with Matt Rozak, Bruce Fenton, plus Gabriel, plus Calvin Chan in Dubai. And they were like, wow, look at all this withdrawals from Binance. Why are you having drinks with us? It was like, Like, I'm not managing to buy, like, withdraws myself. So that was December. We, like, the platform handled $14 billion of withdrawals, no issues. And then a month later, by January 2023, SEC lawsuit came. The SEC lawsuit was pretty much, like, was trying to accuse us of a FTX, right?

So they said, look, you moved user funds, et cetera, et cetera. And the judge even said, like, asked them, like, we have zero evidence. This is part of the court transcript, which is public. So that thing happened. And then Binance US at the time of the SEC lawsuit was about 35% of Coinbase's global trading volume. So market share wise. So it was like, I would probably imagine it's about 50% of Coinbase's US market share.

After that lawsuit, Binance US lost their banking channels. It dropped to about 1% of Coinbase's volume. So it went from 35% to 1%. So that's how much impact that is on our business. um and then uh uh after that uh it became the the doj stuff so the doj came later um so the doj stuff uh i have a plea agreement with the doj um i cannot say anything that violates the plea agreement but the plea agreement basically says i i agree to violation of one charge of banking secrecy act uh we um uh we were going to debate in court about the sentencing um i was a

bit surprised that I was sentenced to jail because I was the first one in U.S. history to be sentenced to jail for a single violation of Banking Secrecy Act with no fraud, no prior history, nothing else really. So I was a bit surprised, but it is what it is. I voluntarily flew to the U.S. to deal with it. That outcome is a possibility that I knew, even though I thought it was a small possibility, But it happened. Yeah. And then I did four months in jail and came out luckily OK. Yeah. So you you were outside the U.S. while this was starting and then you voluntarily flew to the U.S., which, you know, there are many people throughout history. There's a famous story. I don't know if you know the story of a guy named Mark Rich, who he actually invented the oil spot market. And he got in trouble and he fled the U.S. He went to Switzerland and he refused to ever come back.

right? And he actually got pardoned at one point by Bill Clinton. And I think there's a book called The King of Oil that I read years ago. And it's just a fascinating story, right? I read that book. Did you read it? Okay. I read that book like a textbook. So, well, I read all the books. I read quite a lot of books about people getting pardoned. I read Mike Milken's book. Witness to a Prosecution.

Yeah, about, I read multiple books about Mike Milken, et cetera. So yeah, I read all of those books before I flew to the U.S. I read them like textbooks. All right. So, but a big thing is, in Mark Rich's case in particular, he left the United States and, you know, I don't think he wasn't, he wasn't born in America. He'd become an American citizen. He fled. And then he stayed away.

He never came back to the United States ever again. I think that there's an element of you voluntarily coming of sure maybe you didn't think that there was a high probability of going to jail but you still came and you know I don't think anyone would suggest hey you should not come face the charges or you know run or anything like that but I do think that there's plenty of people who would do that right they would just say hey I'm not coming and so what was like the calculation or you know you can't talk about like the conversation with lawyers but just like what was that like what were you feeling you know did you talk to friends or family or or what as that was all playing out yeah yeah so there were i mean it's a very difficult

process i don't know how to describe it so that people get it um it's it's unimaginable i would say um even through the process there are multiple times where you you you think about the choices right and there will be friends or lawyers giving opinions and uh devices etc so there's all of things going on and you're reading books about you know what's happened the type of the type of life lifestyle that mark was going through um if he his office is building his security you know all this stuff um so uh and multiple times you have to think about well okay where if i make one choice i probably there's a very high chance i will be living life as an international fugitive right so i will have to be very careful about every border i cross etc and my business is

is going to be destroyed. On top of that, a lot of our users, a lot of BNB holders will suffer. The BNB price will definitely tank. And there's just going to be a lot of damage in the industry. Even the BTC price will probably get hurt. We saw when FTX went down, BTC price got hurt pretty bad as well. So there's one choice, which is, OK, I can probably live a reasonable life just holding out in a few countries.

There are quite a few countries you can live in without extradition treaties to the US. But I thought, overall, that's not a lifestyle for me. That's not running, hiding, running away from things. Avoiding is not the lifestyle that I want. I did have some trust in the US justice system. I thought, you know, overall, regardless of all the politics, the war on crypto, choke point, operation choke point, all of that stuff, you know, that's politics. I still have a degree of confidence in the U.S. judicial system.

So I said, well, let's on the flip side, why go there? I could be probably shouldn't be even worst case. I'll go to jail. Probably shouldn't be that long. And I think that's a very small possibility. I thought a higher possibility is I have a home confinement for like six months or 12 months or so. So at least then I would personally still be safe. I wouldn't be like with other inmates. I thought that's an outcome I can deal with.

And also that's a reasonable outcome which says, look, either just probation, right? So I've already resigned from Binance as the CEO. I already paid a huge fine. The company paid an even bigger fine. I thought all of that would suffice. Um, so, um, it was a difficult calculation, but I thought I would, uh, it's much more responsible for me to take it head on and address it and deal with it and deal with whatever outcome, uh, instead of being a sort of, um, uh, a runner, um, avoiding, avoiding,

avoiding things. In doing, in doing this, um, I heard a story that you missed the birth of one of your children dealing with all this. Is that true? No, no, no, no, no. I didn't miss a birth. My son was born, my latest son was born in July, 2023. I flew to US November, 2023.

And my other son had a minor medical operation, which I missed. So when I flew to the US, we didn't agree on the plea arrangements. The US, the government wants to keep me in the US. The DOJ wants to keep me in the US, But they promised that they would not limit my movement in the US. So I'm free to go anywhere in the US, but they don't want me to leave the country.

We of course argued, like I paid $150 million bail, and I had three other friends putting up their houses to do a spunk for bail for me. We argued that I should be, and I flew in voluntarily to plead guilty. It would be worse if I plead guilty and don't show up for sentencing. That's crazy, right? If you don't want to come, you don't plead, you just fight. So the first judge, the magistrate judge, said, I can leave. But then the government appealed the bail hearing, which is unheard of.

But what's even more unheard of is that the judge actually sided with the government and said, OK, I have to stay in the US. So I flew there with a small suitcase of a couple of change of clothes. And then I had to buy clothes in the US. And then I missed one medical procedure for my slightly older son. So yeah, so that's what happened. And then I was only supposed to be there for three months first between plea and sentencing. There should only be a three-month gap.

My sentencing hearing was originally scheduled for February 23rd, 2024. In early February, on my birthday, the government requested an extension on my birthday. So there's a lot of mind games that's being played. And of course, the court readily agreed to a three-month extension. And I requested to leave the U.S. the court says, no, you have to stay in the U.S. So I stayed for six months in the U.S. away from my family, just waiting for sentencing.

And then four months after that. So, yeah. And so you don't, once you go to the U.S., you don't see your family again until you get to leave post all the sentencing stuff. No. So, yeah, I didn't. I mean, in theory, my family could visit me,

but they don't have the proper visas anyway. And also I didn't want them to come to the U.S. and deal with other issues. Yeah. Well, I think anyone who's got young kids and you know family and stuff it's also uh god forbid they come they can't leave or there's other issues or you know whatever right i think it's understandable um all right so you get sentenced uh my understanding is you got sentenced to four months in jail is that right yeah all

right um i also read somewhere that the first cellmate that you had was a double murderer is that true yes yes that's true okay you guys are telling me this story i mean that's pretty crazy to go from running Binance, making a billion dollars in the first year. You know, yeah, you started off life in a pretty tough situation, but now you're an assault mate with a double murder. Yeah, well, on top of that, even before I got to prison, so between prison and between sentencing and going to prison, so the government, the DOJ actually asked the judge to remand me,

like put me in handcuffs and take me to prison. And the judge said, look, I've shown really good behavior for the first six months. I didn't have any violations while I was on bail, and the judge said there's no need for supervision for me at all, which actually had some interesting implications even after sentencing. I had no parole. I was just like, oh wait, when I'm done, I was done.

But then for my crime, I'm a white collar crime, I should go to a minimum security prison, which most people call the camp. The camp usually, like, you know, some camps don't even have fences. You can leave, but then your sentence will increase. Most people in camps will, like, a few months, a few years, a couple years, so they won't violate it. But because I'm not a U.S. citizen, they had to put me in a low-security prison. So the low is one tier higher. In the low, there's mostly drug lords and then people.

But my first cellmate was a double murderer. He was serving a 30-year sentence. he did 18 years because of good behavior he got moved down to medium to a low the low is lowest he can go he will never go to minimum so and because of my ethnicity they put they group people by ethnicity so they've grouped the asians together with a pacific islanders together with native americans into one group one car this way they're organized by ethnicities to avoid violence you actually if you hang out with your people your of your same ethnicity ethnicity, usually the same culture, there's less clashes. So I was sent to say, okay,

this is your roommate. And the other guy said, no, he's pretty chill, but you understand that he's a double murderer. He killed two guys at once. But no, we got along just fine. He's actually quite chill. The most lethal part about him wasn't his murdering, it was his snoring. He snores really loud. And the first night I was like, should I kick him? more because he's a double murder might not be a good idea but the next morning i told him look bro you you you know that you were snoring pretty hard uh i told him in a pretty friendly way he said well just just just just not try to wake me up well just try to kick me when um when i snore so that's that's what i did in the future and we got along just fine yeah

now it's pretty scary and also before i went to prison the bloomberg wall street journal uh they all published i'm going to be the richest person to ever go to a u.s prison right and this doesn't help right so uh like i don't want to like break privilege but multiple people said look this may increase your chances of being extorted in prison right so luckily the people in prison not that many people read bloomberg and wall street journal so uh so yeah what were there any situations where you felt you know unsafe or or people tried to extort you or anything like that actually no um And so I was very worried, but throughout the whole experience, I think it also has to do with how you conduct yourself.

I got along with people around me pretty quickly. I got into a group, and I was a part of a group very quickly. So I don't think I showed any weakness, so I didn't see anybody try to extort me. People do try to get a better deal when you want to do something, et cetera, but nothing, I would say, are physical risks, et cetera. Now, I got to imagine if somebody is sitting in a low security prison and a very wealthy, successful person shows up, they got to ask you, you know, what do I do with investing?

How do I learn? Is there any conversation around you trying to educate them while they're on crypto or Bitcoin or any of that stuff? Yeah, yeah. So, well, there's inmates and their guards. So the inmate event was pretty soon. The words passed around. They figured out who I am.

And then they were like, oh, they... But luckily, a few guys want to learn about crypto and want to learn about investing. And they were like, okay, fine. So we got books sent to the prison. So I had a little kind of study group with them. I sit down with them for 30 minutes every day. I give them some homework to read.

They ask questions. And they actually... There were like nine TVs in the unit. They actually changed one of the TVs to like a financial channel, which is like what they started looking at Bitcoin prices, et cetera. So which is kind of interesting. So actually that group also is, I felt that that group also probably helped me to avoid

quite a lot of trouble because once you have a group of guys were supporting you, you generally other people pick on you less. And then there's a group of guards that figured out who I was and the guards asked me, Hey, is this a good time to buy Bitcoin? My response is pretty simple. It's like, I don't have internet here. I don't have information. So I don't even know what price it is, even though I do know, because I have my friends

sending me messages about just the sort of general market updates. But I just told them that. And I said, look, I don't have information. I can't give you any advice. I wouldn't know. But they mostly, the guards mostly took it pretty well. So far, I think I did not see any major violence in prison. There were some fights, but not related to me.

So I think most mostly the U.S. prison system, at least the minimum security that I was in, I didn't see any major violence. Now, we talked about Mark Rich, which it's hilarious that you read that book. And I love that you said you studied it like a textbook. Michael Milken, there's many examples of people who were either accused of, convicted of or even put in jail who have been pardoned. I think that we have seen the existing administration pardon a number of people. Some of them have drug offenses or things that I think are considered more kind of non-white collar. And then we've also seen a number of white collar criminals who have been pardoned as well. My understanding is that there's an entire process here, but is that something that you're trying to get approved?

What is that process like? Kind of walk us through your thoughts on this idea of a pardon. Yeah. So, um, I think I don't know that process that well, but as any felon, everyone wouldn't mind a pardon. Right. So, and especially in my case, I do think that, um, there's probably some, uh, there probably some politicalness in my case where, um, five days before my sentencing, Senator Elizabeth Warren declares war on crypto again on national TV and writes a public letter to the DOJ. So, um, again, uh, whether that's political or not, i cannot comment so um i uh i personally wouldn't mind i obviously wouldn't mind a pardon um so um but that's a process for the lawyers i actually don't know that process that well i wouldn't

want to comment on it too much yeah um yeah but uh also yeah and speaking of kind of this like idea of lawfare right where that they're uh writing this stuff how do you think through you know okay there's certain things that you're accused of you obviously pled guilty i think that that people say, hey, you know, there's a process that gets played out. You said earlier that you have this confidence in the judicial system. But do you think that there was lawfare involved in the kind of investigations and prosecutions and stuff like that? I think on the SEC front, I think it's very clear that I can say that there's definitely lawfare there. I think, you know, the case got dismissed now with prejudice.

So we can see that this new administration are much more reasonable in terms of how to regulate the market. I think they understand the nuances of being a new technology, new industry, et cetera, and the balance between encouraging innovation versus protecting, well, at the same time, protecting consumers. So I think we've seen that attitude difference. Um, so, um, I, and also, uh, not so much on my case, but if you look at our president Trump, so he's, I thought he was like a prime target for lawfare and for political target too. Like when I was in prison, right?

So I got into prison in the end of May, uh, by July, uh, I saw, you know, president Trump went to Nashville to attend the Bitcoin conference. I was like, wow, this is cool. And then he's pro and then he declared his pro crypto. And then I think it was Kamala Harris that also declared she was pro-crypto. I was like, wait a second, I'm still in jail here, less than two months, and now the government's pro-crypto now? And also, I read the President Trump's charges.

He got charged, he got a criminal charge for bringing some documents to his bathroom to read. I mean, that's crazy, right? If my employee did that, I would give them a bonus, right? Then the buyer takes some confidential company papers, reading it in his bathroom. The guy's working really hard, right? So the guy's literally have zero other time, using every minute of his time to read stuff. So I thought that was a bit extreme as well.

So I think the last administration was against crypto. I think that was pretty clear, with Elizabeth Warren declaring war on crypto multiple times, with Gary Gensler suing, initiating lawsuits, et cetera. And now we see that this new administration is much more friendlier to crypto and have a much deeper understanding of finance and technology. So yeah, again, the definition of lawfare

is very subjective. I wouldn't comment on it too strongly, but I do think there's probably some elements of it. If I was president for a day, I would pardon you. You know, I... I can't vote. that counts for absolutely zero, but that's, that's what I would do. All right. Before I let you go, let, let, let's let's talk about kind of the future, right? Obviously you are one of the

most successful entrepreneurs of our generation. Actually, you know what a question people want to know? How much money do you have? Are you allowed to say what they want to know? How successful are you? And I think wealth is like a quantitative measurement. Are you able to say anything publicly about that? I know I have enough money to live. I also have enough money to do stuff. So anything I want to do, I have enough money to do. Money is an enabler for you to be able to do

what you think you need to do. In my case, it's not so much playing golf and all this stuff. That stuff, I can handle that. But if I want to do a business that helps people or that have positive impact, I have enough resources. So money is no longer the limiting resource. It's other things.

It's talent, it's people, it's health, time. All of those things are limited resources. So I'm much more focused on those things instead of the money pile, yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. If you ever want to take Binance public, feel free to call me. I'm sure there's a lot of people

who'd be interested in that. All right, talk to me about where's this all going, right? So obviously Bitcoin was kind of your first love in this industry. You've built the leading exchange. Where do you think that as an industry this goes now, especially since governments around the world are supporting it. It seems like there's, you know, hundreds of millions of people

who are signing up to adopt these assets. Yeah, I think right now we're extremely bullish, right? With the U.S., the world's largest, most powerful government adopting, pushing crypto. Now we're seeing you launched a BTC treasury public company. That's fantastic. So I think we're going to see a lot more institutional adoption, both on the ETFs, on the public treasuries, BTC treasuries,

A couple of companies launched BNB treasuries, the Ethereum treasuries, there's a whole bunch of... So I think we're going to see the traditional equity markets coming into crypto in a big way. We're going to see a lot more innovation in terms... I think there's going to be an intersection between AI... Well, there is an intersection between AI and blockchain. I think that's only going to get bigger.

And I think I'm also seeing a lot of governments adopting blockchain for government solutions, decentralized IDs, land title rights, health care benefits, welfare distributions, taxes, all of that stuff is happening too. So I think we're finally seeing blockchain expanding beyond just a trading or finance single dimension kind of thing. Now it's going to a multi-dimension thing. So I think all of those things are happening and all of those things are really, really good.

I think I actually didn't expect, if you asked me this like nine months ago, I would not have said this, like we will be in this kind of environment. But this also speaks volumes to the government structure where the elections can change, can bring in new ideas and innovative leading ideas very quickly.

So I think with the US leading, the rest of the world will follow on the policies. And we would love to help the US to become the capital of crypto. We would like to contribute, but right now we're limited in some ways. So we hope to be able to contribute more in the future. But it's kind of crazy, right?

Like you guys are the biggest crypto exchange in the world. You're not in the United States. We want to be. And also when we look at the market, right? The US exchanges charge about 10 to 20X of these fees, really charged. Everything else in the world you buy, you buy them cheaper from the US.

Like I use Amazon, right? Everything else you buy on Amazon is cheaper in the US. It ships faster. It's, you know, anything you do, it's cheaper in the U.S. Hamburgers are cheaper in the U.S. So, but it's only in crypto that the U.S. consumers pay a much higher price right now. And you have a much more limited product offering. And we would love to contribute, but there are regulations in place.

So we need to go step by step. Yeah, well, it seems like if you guys want to be in the United States, this administration wants to be the crypto capital of the world, then maybe there's something to be done there. we would love to be we would love we would love to be part of the contribution to to help to help to make that happen yeah absolutely all right well cc thank you so much for taking the time to do this i know that uh um you know you've had a ton of success in the business world and people are always excited about kind of your thoughts but uh it's pretty fascinating to hear i think a story

of somebody who you know growing up without electricity and running water to eventually becoming you know one of the best entrepreneurs one of the wealthiest people in the world is one of those stories that as this plays out, it's almost, you know, out of like a fairy tale, right? Where every person who has success, you know, they have some obstacles along the way and whether it's, you know, Binance being hacked, obviously the legal situation, et cetera.

One thing I think I've always admired about you is you just keep chugging along, right? And you kind of deal with it and keep pushing forward. Absolutely. So I think we're just onwards, right? So we got to put in this word or simulation that I call it. We just got it. We just got it. We got dealt with a hand with a hand putting a situation. We just got to do the best we can. We just got to keep moving forward. And also, I want to thank you so much for all your support along the years. And, you know, we've never really spent that much time in person. But, you know, I've always respected what you have done, which how much you've contributed to the industry and always also be a level headed voice in this industry and also in America overall. So I really appreciate everything you've done. So, yeah, looking forward to do more together and onwards. sounds good we'll talk soon okay

yep alright thanks Tom