Original title: How Binance’s Yi He became ‘the most powerful woman in crypto’—and steered the company past its biggest ordeal
Original author: JEFF JOHN ROBERTS, Fortune
Original translation: CryptoLeo, Odaily Planet Daily
Editor's note: (Fortune) recently interviewed Binance co-founder He Yi, discussing her efforts in cryptocurrency, the situation He Yi faced when CZ joined and left Binance. Odaily Planet Daily has translated the original text.
In the 1980s, when He Yi was a little girl, she had to go to the well to fetch water and sometimes relied on a kerosene lamp for lighting. Times have changed; He Yi is now a celebrity in the eyes of millions of Chinese and has become a billionaire with her 10% stake in the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. As a co-founder and executive of Binance, she wields significant influence. However, her life has not been easy.
Another co-founder of Binance, CZ, was imprisoned last year in the U.S. due to a $4.3 billion plea agreement. This situation posed significant business challenges for both Binance and He Yi, and for He Yi personally, CZ's imprisonment was a painful experience, as CZ is not only the CEO of the company but also the father of her young child.
Today, Binance has weathered the storm. CZ has completed his sentence. CZ's plea put Binance through a blow that could have paralyzed most companies, but Binance still remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally. He Yi played a crucial role in Binance's development during this time, and after years of holding power behind the scenes, she is moving to the forefront to publicly manage Binance.
In this rare interview, He Yi shared with (Fortune) her journey from a poor rural girl to a cryptocurrency billionaire, the trials she faced during the Binance crisis, and her vision for a rapidly changing global financial industry.
Chief Customer Service, approachable He Yi
Throughout her life and career, He Yi has overcome many obstacles, one of which was learning English. It was only four years ago, in her thirties, that He Yi began learning English. In a long Zoom interview, He Yi performed well, only seeking help from her translator when struggling to explain a Chinese idiom or proverb.
He Yi understands the power of communication. At Binance, she is known for her outstanding marketing and customer service abilities, which helped Binance become the largest exchange in the world in less than a year. To this day, she takes pride in listening to customers on platforms like Telegram, X, WeChat, and any other platform where Binance customers might be found, and insists that others at Binance do the same. She requires every person who comes to work at Binance to spend a few weeks working on the front lines of customer service, a rule that is well known.
In the interview, He Yi recounted a recent incident involving a college student who mistakenly sent $500 worth of cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet, a common mistake in the crypto space that usually means the funds are unrecoverable. However, He Yi took the time to track and recover the misdirected funds, recalling that the student once told her: "That money is a drop in the bucket for you, but it means everything to me."
He Yi stated that given her experiences growing up in a poor family in Sichuan Province, she can empathize with those experiences. She lost her father at the age of 9 and at 16, she would spend long hours selling soft drinks outside supermarkets. Although she eventually went to college (pausing to recall the joy of stepping into a library for the first time) and became a television host, she noted that her background means she can still resonate with many of Binance's lower-income customers.
He Yi's story evokes Jennifer Lopez's song (Jenny From the Block), which tells the story of a beautiful woman who remains down-to-earth even after achieving success—this is the type of story Americans are passionate about.
However, Eowyn Chen, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Trust Wallet (who previously worked with He Yi at Binance), stated that this is not the case in China. Eowyn Chen believes that Chinese people are less inclined to support the weak and more likely to insult those who surpass their status. He Yi often becomes the subject of satire in articles and social media that attempt to belittle and mock her, but her response is to return the negative remarks to those who spread them.
She tells people: "Of course, I came from a poor background, but I am successful. Why can't you do the same?"
He Yi has been hailed by Bloomberg as "the most influential woman in cryptocurrency," rising to the pinnacle of the blockchain world with her intelligence, hard work, and confident personality—qualities she shares with her co-founder and lover CZ.
Creating Binance
When CZ founded Binance in 2017, he established a distinct public image with the name "CZ", which today is well-known to most people. CZ shaped the "CZ myth" by taking significant risks (like selling his house in Shanghai in 2014 to buy more Bitcoin) and passionately engaging in the online community known as "Crypto Twitter".
CZ invited He Yi to join Binance early on, but He Yi had previously recruited CZ a few years earlier, persuading him to join OKCoin (now OKX) as Chief Technology Officer in 2014. Both are passionate about cryptocurrency but share other commonalities. He Yi and CZ both spent their early years in rural schoolhouses without heating, and it wasn't until CZ's father immigrated to Canada that things began to improve. CZ worked minimum wage jobs at Chevron and McDonald's during high school. CZ is also inclined to push back against those who mock his background, even retweeting meme images of himself in a McDonald's uniform on Twitter.
It was during their time at OKCoin that the two became a couple and accumulated experience in large cryptocurrency operations. Today, this pair, who have never married but still maintain a romantic relationship, work closely together as both parents and business partners. (The Wall Street Journal) reported that He Yi and CZ co-own Binance's venture capital arm YZi Labs, holding at least 10% of the parent company's shares.
Regarding her relationship with CZ, He Yi requested to remain unnamed and instead provided a written statement: "My personal life is separate from my professional life. As a co-founder, my achievements and abilities are often questioned because of my personal life," she wrote, while emphasizing that Binance has 280 million users.
Regardless of how this relationship plays out on a personal level, it has proven to be very effective professionally. He Yi's role at Binance is roughly equivalent to Sheryl Sandberg's position at Facebook. Sandberg helped build Facebook in its early days while helping the then-immature CEO Mark Zuckerberg establish himself.
In practice, this means CZ plays the role of Binance's legendary spokesperson and product visionary, while He Yi promotes significant growth for Binance through active promotional activities (including giving away cars). Her approach has been popular among overseas Chinese communities and people within China. In China, cryptocurrency is very popular, even though it is banned in certain aspects, partly because it is an easily transferable asset that is not subject to government regulations.
A Binance employee, who wished to remain anonymous, described He Yi as a demanding boss, but one who also supports employees and speaks up for those around her. When discussing the daily operations of Binance, He Yi stated that the company's core principle is "founder culture," a term used in the tech industry to describe companies that retain the spirit of early startups.
For Binance, its early development benefited to some extent from its willingness to quickly evade regulation and frequently shift from one country to another under government scrutiny. While this strategy fueled Binance's astonishing growth, it sometimes became the company's biggest weakness—this very aspect led to the loss of its most prominent founders.
The post-Zhao Changpeng era of Binance
By early 2023, the situation had become increasingly severe. The previous year, the FTX exchange, owned by SBF, collapsed, prompting the U.S. government to double down on policies targeting the cryptocurrency industry, especially focusing on the largest player, Binance. For years, the company's lawyers had been negotiating with the Department of Justice over various allegations, but ultimately reached an agreement.
In September 2023, U.S. regulators announced a comprehensive settlement agreement that not only required Binance to pay up to $4.3 billion in fines (the largest such fine in corporate history) but also forced CZ to resign as CEO of Binance and acknowledge that he failed to take adequate anti-money laundering measures. Meanwhile, (The Wall Street Journal) and Reuters cited multiple anonymous sources saying that regulators also attempted to force He Yi to leave Binance.
Despite suffering heavy blows to its funding and leadership, two years later, under the leadership of CZ's successor, Richard Teng, Binance remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange to date. Richard Teng, a former senior regulator in Singapore, helped Binance implement a series of compliance measures and shaped a new image indicating that the company had moved away from its earlier rapid and loose tactics. In January of this year, Binance took another significant step by introducing a formal board structure, including seven members and three independent directors, including Richard Teng.
Nevertheless, a former employee of the company told (Fortune) that power at Binance still lies in the hands of early executives (CZ, He Yi, and two other early Binance executives, Lilai Wang and Wei Zhou). The employee added that He Yi has the final say on all personnel matters and holds the greatest power in customer experience decisions. Meanwhile, Binance's spokesperson stated that this claim is inaccurate and that the company's culture encourages employees to exercise a high degree of autonomy.
Meanwhile, the founder of a venture capital firm described Binance as a company run with an "iron fist". Despite facing new legal restrictions and challenges in operating a large global business, the company remains firmly in the position of market leader. This assessment seems to be supported by recent data provided by CoinGecko, which shows that despite emerging competitors, Binance still holds the largest share of trading activity—39% of centralized exchange trading volume in June.
For He Yi, Binance's continued dominance affirms her "customer-first" strategy and reflects the personal belief of the company's founders in cryptocurrency—she believes that this technology is transformative to a degree comparable to the impact of the internet on traditional media and television.
He Yi predicts that cryptocurrency will accelerate its penetration into the traditional financial system through stablecoins and other blockchain technologies, achieving full integration in the next five to ten years.
On a personal level, He Yi expressed that the large-scale adoption of cryptocurrency feels like another significant technological transformation she experienced since her girlhood, back when her home lacked electricity and running water.
Reflecting on her journey, He Yi quoted a saying by poet Shi Mingrong: "Since we've agreed, let's not talk about the pain anymore."
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