Binance x Dubai Key Opinion Leader

MasterPa

Read this article in 26 Minutes

aka A Day in the Life of a "Sidekick"

Original Article Title: "Binance and Dubai Travelogue"

Original Article Author: Hanyang MASTERPA

This is not an article, more like an "index of things to write about in the future". It mainly consists of some takeaways.

Before I even had a sense of the Middle East, Dubai had already made an impression on me during my childhood: Palm Island, the Sailboat Hotel, and later the Burj Khalifa... Understanding the complex situation in the Middle East is difficult, but understanding that Dubai is wealthy is easy. Like any place you only have a vague impression of, you can only truly understand it by experiencing it yourself.

As the plane was about to land, I climbed onto the empty seat next to me and looked out the window. I thought to myself, why is it only a few minutes before landing, yet I still don't see any signs of a city? Upon landing, I understood — Dubai is a city that has been pulled out of the desert. After all, 20% of the world's construction cranes are here.

I was here to work, so I didn't have much time to wander around. I quickly walked through both the new and old parts of the city. Even though I come from a country that has developed rapidly over the past forty years, it was the first time I had seen a place where the difference between the new and old parts of the city was so huge — not to mention anything about "Dubai Folding," but simply the feeling that Dubai's new city seems to have no historical baggage at all. I read a phrase in "Tokyo: A Biography" before, roughly saying that Tokyo is a place where "you can have a future without a past"; then Dubai's new city is truly a place where "you can completely abandon the past and still have a future."

For some reason, after landing, my social media posts were initially geotagged in India before arriving in Dubai. This led several friends to ask me if I was going to India to create content, and why I needed to go to both India and the Middle East. In fact, it's neither. This time, there is no plan to directly produce content. The main purpose of this trip was to participate in the Binance Blockchain Week (BBW).

I feel a bit ashamed for coming here. I have created a lot of blockchain-related content, but the number of times I have seriously participated in major events can be counted on one hand. The first time was at Devconnect in Istanbul last year, the second time was at Token 2049 this year, and the third time was at BBW. I went to Turkey because I found out that many friends were going, so I thought I should go and check it out; the reason for 2049 was a bit strange: I always felt that this event would be difficult to sustain its popularity every year, so I should see it before it fades away.

I had actually planned to attend BBW two months in advance this time, but I couldn't finalize the specific plan. Because for the past three months, I have been in a different place almost every other Friday, so I had no idea where BBW would be held in the days leading up to it, or where I could depart from. I only confirmed my itinerary a week in advance, and in the meantime, I kept bothering my friends at Binance to help me postpone various deadlines, which I truly felt sorry for.

The main reasons I wanted to attend BBW were:

1. I had previously written about Binance but had never closely interacted with the company. When I was writing for Xiaohongshu, I could still hang out at the Starbucks in front of the office. Binance, being fully remote, never gave me that opportunity.

2. Six months ago, I started reaching out to a team member to see if there was an opportunity to engage.

3. I had planned to meet CZ in the past, but for various reasons, we hadn't met in the past year. Later, CZ mentioned on X that he would attend this BBW, so I also wanted to see if I could arrange a meeting.

All three ideas materialized, far beyond my expectations. Let me go through each one.

1. Binance

This time, Binance should have had 200 employees organizing the event, with many additional attendees eager to meet their colleagues offline. So, I basically had the opportunity to chat with various people. I didn't have specific questions; the one thing I wanted to understand was: as an employee, how do you feel about this company?

The answers I received were enough to write a more serious article, but I'll just mention one point that left a deep impression on me: Binance employees believe that hard work is effective—meaning they see their work as meaningful, their personal goals align with the organization's goals, and as individuals, they can drive things forward and bring about change.

Interacting with Binance employees and hearing how they joined the company and what they've been doing all these years was quite interesting. For those who feel their work is meaningless, it's hard for them to clearly recall what steps they've taken.

This mindset is not common in today's internet giants. The attitude of many employees at big companies is to meet KPIs and avoid taking the blame if targets are not met. Few people feel that what they are doing can actually contribute to the bigger picture. It wasn't like this a few years ago; it was a time of greater drive and enthusiasm when everyone felt they were participating in a great journey. With the decline in entrepreneurship and the economic slowdown, this mindset has become increasingly rare. Perhaps it was the rise of ByteDance in the past two years in TikTok, where you could still see the remnants of a bygone era.

With Binance, you get a sense of déjà vu: work can be exhausting, but it is never meaningless. Most people know what they are doing, which is quite remarkable. On the other hand, employees take pride in what they do. Working hard on something doesn't necessarily bring pride; pride only comes from truly feeling that you've done the right thing.

And this contact once again deepened my "stereotype" of Binance: this is a company of regular people. Regular people have strengths and weaknesses, but that's okay because regular people can communicate. Especially after seeing all kinds of weird, crazy, and paranoid companies, my feelings were particularly clear. To chat, to write, to engage with this company, there is no need to worry about anything special. So, besides Binance, I am also willing to write about Xiaohongshu. The biggest reason, apart from personal interest, is that both of these companies are made up of regular people. Those who understand the intricacies of the Chinese internet industry know how deep this is.

However, I feel that working at Binance is indeed quite tiring, not falling short of the big tech giants. This is also due to the global remote work context. If Binance were a standard company with a headquarters, facing a never-ending office building, there would certainly be no shortage of online debates on this topic.

2. The Top Sister

Indeed, there is quite a bit of information about the Top Sister online, leaving many traces, but they are not of much use. Especially in the last two years, there is even less information available. Overall, there is a lot of gossip content and very little valuable information. But thanks to two related articles from last year, I got to know some friends who used to work at Binance. Everyone who has had direct working cooperation with the Top Sister speaks very highly of her. The contradictory tension between online information fog and offline real-life evaluations makes me very curious.

So, starting from the end of last year until the beginning of this year, I have been trying through different channels to see if I can chat with the Top Sister. Actually, it shouldn't be difficult to arrange a chat with her, but my request is a bit "excessive": I don't want to chat for two hours and then write an interview; I want to have a deeper, long-term conversation with her, discussing more significant and challenging topics. So, at that time, I suggested whether there was an opportunity to spend a day or two with the Top Sister to see her usual work status.

Unfortunately, at that time, Binance had just finished an event in Dubai, and I was in Japan and missed it. Normally, she keeps a low profile and is not particularly convenient for interviews. So, it wasn't until this BBW event that I had the opportunity to meet with the Top Sister. Binance's friends still remember my proposal from a few months ago, so they helped me arrange a 30-minute one-on-one conversation with her, and I could participate in a few activities with her. In total, it was about two to three hours.

As a result, I not only had nearly an hour of one-on-one communication with the Top Sister before and after, but also participated in activities for nine hours from the afternoon until midnight, including sharing a meal halfway through. In the meantime, because they were short-handed, I helped with some things, to the extent that the next day people I met thought I was a Binance employee.

Many people say that entrepreneurship is also a physical activity, but few people truly understand this statement. I believe One Sister must understand it well. While I, as a follower, am feeling a bit tired, she has been operating at full capacity. Moreover, the day before yesterday, she had a high fever and took all sorts of medication to suppress it before coming. During the large part of the day that I followed her, I saw her finish a small box of Longzao San. Later, I saw someone post a group photo on Xiaohongshu, saying that she looked a bit haggard, after all, she was ill.

I won't go into detail about the specific content of our conversation here. It might have the opportunity to become an article, but it won't be seen until at least half a year later.

I just want to share one particular detail that caught my attention:

In the evening, she had dinner with two colleagues and me, waiting for the dishes to arrive, chatting about what everyone had been up to recently. She said she would browse Xiaohongshu before bed. One colleague asked if there were any interesting hot topics. She mentioned, "Have you been following the 'Entering Ke Xue' trend recently?" One colleague and I immediately laughed, as mature netizens are naturally attuned to hot topics. However, another colleague, having spent a long time in the Middle East, wasn't very familiar with current Chinese internet hot topics. So One Sister quickly explained what this was all about: including but not limited to who Ke Xue refers to, the issues the protagonist encountered, the controversy between feminism and anti-feminism on the internet, and the polarization of the current internet. A person who can quickly and clearly explain a hot topic event, along with providing the background context and the broader environment, definitely has a skill. But what impressed me the most was what she said next.

After discussing Ke Xue, the dishes hadn't arrived yet, and everyone was a bit hungry, so we sat quietly in our chairs. After a while, she suddenly said to us, somewhat introspectively, "Regardless, regardless of which side's point of view it is, it is all just participating in a grand cyberbullying event."

Indeed.

3. CZ

We had an appointment a year ago, and we finally met. I had imagined what the situation would be like when we met, but I never expected it to be in this state:

Meeting in the morning, after the assistant led me into the house, he said he would come down to meet me. I was alone in the house, and suddenly the doorbell rang. I didn't know whether I should go answer the door or not. Because according to the arrangement, he wouldn't arrive at the venue until four in the afternoon, and we were reminded in advance to keep the exact location confidential, and to send photos only after 4 p.m. The meeting place wasn't a heavily guarded office building, so I wondered if it was a neighbor looking for someone else? Or perhaps someone was here to see him? After all, he must have his own key to the space, and his entourage could also open the door.

So I didn't go to open the door.

Then the doorbell rang a few more times, and I thought, should I just go ahead and open it? So, when I opened the door, CZ was standing there with a single shoulder bag, carrying a huge sports water bottle in one hand. He was alone at the door. He seemed a bit surprised why I didn't open the door earlier, and I was also puzzled why this dude just showed up alone like that.

After a moment, he asked me if he was at the right place. I replied, "If you're CZ, then this is the right place." So, he set down his bag and water bottle, and we sat down to chat. It was a great conversation, and he had a good sense of humor. As long as a person has an ample sense of humor and can engage in self-deprecation, the conversation is bound to be enjoyable. We talked about his upcoming book, and he felt he had been through enough experiences to write about. I couldn't help but laugh because, when it comes to life experiences, there are very few people who can rival him.

His Chinese was excellent - in case you didn't know, I speak very fast with an accent, so many people (including native Chinese speakers) don't understand what I'm saying; every time I record a podcast, I have to slow down my speech. CZ not only could understand me clearly but also catch on to the jokes I made. Even afterwards, he asked me if he could understand what I was saying.

I'll leave out the details of our conversation for now, hoping to write something about it next year. Let's just say that after our chat, I suggested taking a photo together and pulled out a Polaroid 680 I had brought along. He recognized it as a Polaroid, and I joked that this camera was bigger than both of us, and whether it could produce a photo would depend on luck each time.

As expected, it jammed.

As I was getting ready to leave and fixing the camera, CZ's assistant came downstairs to pick him up, leaving just the two of us in the room. I suggested we take a selfie since I had never tried a Polaroid selfie but figured it should work.

And this time, it worked.

At the end of the first day at the event, I overheard people chatting, saying that it's not easy to see CZ nowadays, and he must be surrounded by bodyguards. But compared to the image of the person sitting across from me with a sports water bottle, it felt quite surreal.

Also, if I had known that both of them had this kind of style, I wouldn't have bothered wearing formal attire. Except for attending a friend's wedding, the last time I needed to wear formal clothes was before the pandemic. This time, I thought I was meeting people and wanted to be a bit more formal. But whether it's Ya Jie or CZ, they probably don't care about these things.

Oh, and many friends who met me for the first time might need an additional note that I'm usually not this formal. I'm generally in the laid-back style of a northeast street wanderer:

Photo Credit: Yang Dayi

This time I also met some online friends for the first time. Many friends thought I was a full-time journalist. In fact, not only am I not a full-time journalist, I can't even be a good journalist at all. Over the past three years, I have gradually realized one thing, that is, the skills required to be a good journalist, Han Yang, this person, does not have at all.

A good journalist needs to have enough passion and patience to clearly understand a matter for reporting, able to continuously track a company; they also need to have sufficient knowledge of the topics they cover. Additionally, a journalist must endure long, boring work and ensure that results can be produced. "The Wire" writer David Simon is the epitome of a good journalist in my mind.

That's not me. All my interest in creation lies in exploration itself, not caring about reaching a conclusion or result. So almost all of my articles are about sharing the path of my exploration. Therefore, I am often criticized for not providing a conclusion—I haven't reached a result myself; it's just a journey we take together. Another side effect is that I find many paths uninteresting after exploring them, so I don't write about them.

Regarding topics, it's the same. I am only curious about the threads in my own problem awareness. For things I am not interested in, I don't want to touch them at all—which is very unprofessional for a journalist.

Another question I was asked several times on this trip is, where do I find so much time to write? In fact, this question does not exist; most of my energy is spent on work. Creative activities like writing or photography take up at most 20% of my time. I feel like I am productive because year after year, I can always spend 20% of my time on creativity.

Another common misconception about creation is that people think it's like constantly taking exams. It's not. Let's take an article as an example. If it took 100 hours, the actual time spent on writing might only be 20-30 hours. The remaining time is all about thinking and researching before writing. Waiting for the subway, waiting for the elevator, sitting on the toilet... all these are times for thinking. The difficulty is never in how to create but in continuously creating.