CEO of largest crypto exchange speaks out on regulations and trends
For Zhao Changpeng, CEO and founder of Binance – the world’s largest spot cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume – the latest developments are encouraging.
Right now, we’re definitely seeing more users coming in, more adoption and more institutional involvement, Zhao (also known as CZ ) said in an interview from Singapore. Overall things are going pretty well, I would say.
Optimism over interest from institutional investors, among other factors, has led Bitcoin to more than double this year. After gains of around 20% this month, the coin has once again surpassed $ 16,000 and is around its highest level in nearly three years. It changed little to $ 16,055 at 11:12 a.m. in New York on Friday.
During this time, the regulatory environment has evolved rapidly, with greater restrictions in many parts of the world. Global central banks are also moving towards developing their own digital currencies.
A lot has changed this year and there are both negative and positive developments, Zhao says. Bloomberg News asked him to weigh in on recent trends and more. The next interview took place on November 12 – responses have been condensed for clarity and length.
About the foray of digital currency in China
While global central bankers have for a while snubbed digital currencies, many are now rushing to better understand potential use cases. A survey by the Bank for International Settlements of 66 central banks earlier this year showed increased interest in digital currencies and a growing number of them said they were considering issuing their own so-called digital currencies. central bank, or CBDC.
China has been among the most proactive on this front, and its central bank recently launched testing of its digital currency in a handful of cities.
China is “ahead” of other countries, Zhao said, adding that this will put pressure on others to push their efforts forward. The first to have a functioning central bank digital currency will be able to attract a lot of international use, international volumes, he said. “This will probably help significantly to make the RMB a more dominant currency in the world and if it works I think it will put pressure on other central banks to release their own central bank digital currency as soon as possible.” . “
About recent regulatory developments
China banned cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings in 2017, and Hong Kong recently took steps to regulate crypto exchanges. But that does not affect Binance’s operations, as the company has not been in China since then and is not involved in Hong Kong, Zhao said.
Our position generally is that we want to see other smaller exchanges succeed first in any geographic area, and then potentially expand our services to cover those areas as well. Still, he says the Asian market “is pretty big” – he estimates that 25% to 40% of daily trading volume comes there, depending on the news flow.
On operation in the United States
Binance is one of the biggest names in crypto and on average trades around $ 2 billion in daily trading volume. But it doesn’t work in the United States, he said.
We’ve always blocked access to the United States, but sometimes users find smart ways to get around our block and we just need to be smarter in how we block, he said. Basically we are continually trying to improve our blocking. Sometimes there are a few guys who want to get around our block and keep using the platform and we have to find a smarter way to protect that and when we do that we block them.
Regarding its relationship with Binance.US – among others, Binance licenses technology to Binance.US and provides branding support to it, Zhao said. But Binance.US is an independent entity and is fully U.S. compliant, he said, although there are still a handful of states it cannot yet serve.
“I hope they can get these licenses and offer these services.”
By Vildana Hajric
