I spoke Friday with Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as “CZ,” who despite the downturn still enjoys an estimated net worth in the neighborhood of $100 billion—near Warren Buffett/Bill Gates territory.
I asked him how long crypto winter would last. “That’s the trillion-dollar question,” he said. “Nobody knows, and I don’t either. Historically, Bitcoin goes through four-year cycles—there was 2013, 2017, and now this one. The third time might be different. Nobody really knows.”
But CZ says he has no doubt that, in the long term, crypto will continue to grow. “Four years from now, there will be another peak. There are more people coming to the industry, and more use cases in the industry. We want to be ready for exponential growth, but we also want to be ready for the worst-case downturn.” He says Binance plans to conserve cash and invest heavily in a bear market.
I asked CZ the biggest challenge Binance faces, and he was quick to cite regulatory issues. CZ was born in China, which has banned most cryptocurrency activity, and educated in Canada. He now operates from Dubai—which has one of the friendliest crypto regulatory regimes.
“In the short to medium term, regulatory is a big focus. We are in a critical stage. We are hiring a lot of senior regulators. This is a top priority tactical task. I am relatively confident we will get through this regulatory phase.”
In the longer term, CZ says he faces the same fundamental challenge that every company does: organizing to stay successful in the face of accelerating change. “The pace of disruption is so much faster than it has ever been,” he says.
“In terms of management philosophy, my philosophy is don’t do management. Let everyone excel. It’s important to align incentives. But we need more innovative and decentralized financial structures.”
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