Binance founder on mission to talk with govts & regulatory bodies

Changpeng Zhao, the founder, and chief executive officer of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance shared his thoughts after one of the most confusing weeks in a brief history of digital money.

On June 13, Binance had to suspend its Bitcoin business for a few hours. On the same day, a major crypto lender, Celsius, also suspended withdrawals. The large crypto hedge fund has admitted that it was really under trouble. On last Saturday, in a symbolic moment, Bitcoin fell below $ 20,000. The pillar of crypto has lost more than half of its value this year, causing serious losses to professional and aspiring investors.

Although Binance CEO speaks softly but always aims to persuade. His dialogue sometimes tied to semantics – mostly in response to the level of observation that he and his business have. As he went through and explained this month’s happenings, he was asked if the current cryptocurrency market movements can still be considered “normal”, to which Zhao replied: “It generally depends on how you look, everyone has a different perspective of normal and thus price fluctuations are normal.”

Zhao said that he is currently traveling from one country to another to talk with govt agencies and regulators even as investors retreat, in order to bring better environment for Crypto industry.

When Zhao was asked about his take on money laundering he said “The word is accessed differently in different countries” and that Binance can and is doing its job good enough to keep the regulators satisfied.”

The Financial Conduct Authority reportedly ordered Binance to suspend all regulated activity in Britain last June of last year, stating reasons that it was “not capable of being effectively monitored”. Although Zhao is not planning to give up on this and he is looking for a license to work in the region.

Zhao has also shown a keen interest in the media. Binance has already announced its plans to invest $200 million (£160m) in Forbes and $500 million in Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter bid.

Binance is a unified platform that connects buyers with sellers and makes money from transaction fees. It offers a wide variety of currencies, ranging from Bitcoin to Dogecoin and non-fungible tokens (NFT). The company also offers services to store those assets in a crypto wallet and has a wide range of financial products, including derivatives.

It has more than $120 million customers worldwide and processes $1tn worth of trades per month, including authorization to function within Italy and France, although users can access it through the offshore binance.com platform without any restrictions.

Born in Jiangsu, a coastal province in the north of Shanghai, Zhao moved to Canada with his mentor father when he was 12 years old. After graduating in computer science from McGill University in Montreal, he worked for Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg on their programming systems. Zhao moved to Shanghai in 2005, where he founded a High-Frequency Trading Platform.

He was drawn into a conversation about Bitcoin during a poker game back in 2013, after which Binance was founded four years later.

As per various sources, the impact of recent events on Zhao’s fortune has been severe. The Bloomberg Billionaire Index based on its 90% stake in Binance and its control over the US Exchange has fallen from over $75 billion since January to $20.6 billion as the broader market has fallen by more than half. During the same period, the market has halved to about $900 billion.

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