But do you expect to find it hard to achieve a new era at Binance when the founder – who is synonymous with the company – makes the largest shareholder?
We are very clear in terms of what we are trying to build: a best-in-class, sustainable and global platform. Again, I work very closely with senior management and the board of directors in that area.
How would you like people to think about the difference between the CZ era and the Richard Teng era?
CZ started building the company in 2017, when the landscape was completely different: no institutions embrace this and there were no rules and regulations. It was a very, very different environment.
When I took over, we had to adjust the company to the new environment – one that will be much more conform to nature. There will be much more regulatory clarity, even though there will be inconsistency and a lack of harmonization [between jurisdictions.]
We have invested very heavily in our compliance program. We are now the most regulated exchange worldwide, with twenty -one different regulatory approvals. This is the path forward.
What specific changes have you implemented to ensure that the kind of things that have put Binance into trouble in the past – which mean that CZ is in prison – cannot return to the company?
Last year I believe that we have held nearly a hundred different courses and programs for law enforcement agencies on research techniques. Crypto is a traceable technology. We want to emphasize the ways to use this technology to detect, detect and prevent bad actors in space.
We want to work very closely with our competitors and law enforcement agencies worldwide to ensure that we have a sustainable future and can keep all these illegal financial crimes out.
Under the settlement with the US Department of Justice, Binance must submit to supervision by external authorities. What does that look like from a practical perspective?
We have two sets of external monitors: one appointed by the Doj and one by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. We work closely with both sets.
Our interests are coordinated: to ensure that we invest in and improve our compliance program. If there are blind spots that we do not pick up, the compliance monitors are there to help. They continue what we have, ask for data and make recommendations about areas that we must improve.
It is very useful for me, because we not only make our breasts, but that we have an independent lens to say that we are doing the right things.
In the past, Binance has cast itself as a worldwide company without a head office. How did that change under your leadership?
This is something we pay a lot of attention to. As we are regulated worldwide, the two fundamental things that regulators will ask for a board of directors – which we have appointed – and a global head office.
The deliberations [over the location of a global headquarters] are necessarily complex, with several factors: whether we can base our talent in that country, what is the regulatory framework, and so on. But we are in deep discussion with different areas of law.
