Where do you see Binance in 1 year time and 3 year time from now?
I hope to see 1 billion users in this industry.
I think the key right now is not so much focusing on
your own business it's actually let's just make the pie bigger.
Let's just grow the industry.
Don't launch a cryptocurrency exchange, it's one of the worst businesses to run.
You launched Binance through a very successful ICO in 2017.
What would be a recommendation for a younger entrepreneur
that wants to launch its own cryptocurrency exchange today?
Okay, first advice would be - don't launch a cryptocurrency exchange,
it's one of the worst businesses to run.
It's really tough, it's really tricky.
There's a lot of different headaches.
But if you really want to run one, I would tell you just focus on the users.
So just focus on providing extra services that
the current exchanges are now able to provide.
It's getting increasingly more difficult because right now
the exchanges are no longer just exchanges.
We actually do a lot more than just exchanges.
We're really adding a lot more services
like staking, lending, all this other stuff.
So I would say just think about what the unique service offerings are.
And we would like to see more creativity around this
space and we want to copy and improve as well.
Okay, cool.
But do you think it's more difficult now than when you launched it yourself?
Absolutely. I think it's definitely more difficult right now.
The exchanges are much, much more competitive right now
than maybe, say, two or three years ago.
Customer service have gotten a lot better, system sustainability have gotten a lot of better,
communication with social media has gotten a lot better.
So it's actually quite tough to start one right now, I would say, it's harder.
This year, you launched Binance in the U.S.
After you focus the long time on the Asian market.
How is the U.S. market responding and how
is it different from the Asian markets?
For Binance U.S. we actually work with a local
partner BAM trading services in the United States.
When we first started, we just didn't have
the bandwidth to target the United States.
It is one of the largest markets in the world,
but at the same time we started in Asia.
So we didn't really have the resources to target that
market and there were fairly well established players there.
They do provide decent services.
So two years later, we said, well, other exchanges are leaving the U.S.,
and we see a clear path of being able to offer our services finally there.
And so we found a really good partner, we have a really good team.
We felt the time was right.
And there's a clear path to properly service U.S.
users in a fully compliant way.
Locally, onshore.
With U.S. dollar support.
So we thought that's a very unique opportunity for
us to enter and not to walk away.
Where do you see Binance in 1 year time and 3 year time from now?
What are the milestones that you hope to achieve in these timeframes?
In 1 year time, we hope to add a lot more fiat support.
And so there's 200 countries in the world, we service about 180 of them.
And we want to be able to provide a
fiat support to all of those countries if possible.
I think, in 1 year time we probably not going to achieve that.
Maybe, hopefully, we'll add 20, 30, 40 fiat support.
I don't really have an exact number in my head.
And in 3 years time, I hope we can make the industry a lot bigger.
I hope to see 1 billion users in this industry.
Right now, I think we're probably around
100 million-ish users, depending how you count.
I don't really have a specific target for a number of users for Binance.
I think the key right now is not so much focusing on your own business.
It's actually let's just make the pie bigger.
Let's just grow the industry.
And what role do you think Venus, your project similar
to Libra, is going to play in this advancement?
For Venus we've tried to provide a similar,
but maybe slightly different position, stable coins.
So we think there will be multiple stable
coins throughout different parts of the world.
That's practic fiat that people can use.
And we hope that all of this fiat stable
coins are supported by governments or large existing companies.
So we launched BUSD as the first one, the Binance USD.
And Binance USD is already accepted by
the Bermudian government for paying taxes.
So even though it's a small country,
but it's a pretty significant, meaningful milestone.
So we're hoping to add maybe, I don't know,
20, 30, 50, 100 stable coins like that.
And our approach is a little bit different.
So far, we found it much easier to work with
smaller countries because the governments simpler, they move faster.
For example, if you look at Singapore, there's only one regulatory agency you've got to deal with
and you can talk to them, they make a decision, you're done.
Whereas in larger countries there's probably like 10, 20,
50 different regulatory bodies you have to work with.
So they do move a little bit slower given the complex structure.
But we want to work with everybody in the world to push
more stable coins, to have more fiat gateways into the ecosystem.
What should actually happen in the industry?
What kind of techno technological advancement that
should happen in order to increase adoption?
If you'd ask me in 2016 what's going to be the next killer app that's going to bring everybody in,
I would not have said: ICOs or fund raising on blockchain.
So those things are really, really difficult to predict.
But for us, we're just enabling more fiat access
so that people can access crypto more easily.
But I think in terms of the industry, there's probably
a number of potential things that could tip the scale.
But I'm really speculating if I name anything, but I think gaming is pretty big, payments are pretty big,
e-commerce, probably a bit later, but they could be pretty big.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much, cheers
