Binance's new CEO, He Yi, in a recent interview: Admires Duan Yongping and Discusses Women's Career Choices

If CZ represented the first generation of "technological idealism" at the birth of Binance, then Yi He has always been the most down-to-earth and emotionally vibrant face in this massive machine. From "Co-Founder & Chief Customer Service Officer" to self-proclaimed "Customer Service Xiao He" in the community, her personal narrative is almost intertwined with all the highs and lows of this company.

On the morning of December 3 in Dubai time, at the main stage of Binance Blockchain Week, Binance CEO Richard Teng announced that company co-founder Yi He has officially taken on the role of Co-CEO. In the days when CZ is not in the spotlight, perhaps Yi He has already been accustomed to bearing more decisions that only a "leader" can make. Internally, she shoulders the team and business rhythm, externally she faces regulatory and public relations pressures, and she also maintains trust on the front lines of the community. The title change today is just a smooth official announcement, behind which is a quiet rewrite of Binance's power structure, organizational path, and industry narrative.

This interview dialogue was transcribed in full on-site by Rhythm, while trying to retain Yi He's original tone and sharpness, with moderate streamlining and structural adjustments. I hope that beyond the noisy circle of cryptocurrency news, you can see a more three-dimensional Binance and a more authentic Yi He.

Question: Why was the position of Co-CEO created? What will be your and Richard's future division of responsibilities?

Yi He: First of all, everyone knows that Richard has a regulatory background and is very familiar with compliance processes. He is the best bridge in communications with regulators and has also helped us raise compliance standards to new heights. As for me personally, I am also considered an industry OG. Based on this, my main responsibility is to ensure that the user-centric corporate culture can be well preserved in the company.

On the other hand, I have previously mentioned wanting Binance to become a long-lasting company. So, over a year ago, I took over the HR department, constantly thinking and reforming how to build an organization that does not rely on individuals but is system-driven.

This is the background to why we introduced the Co-CEO. In traditional finance, such as J.P. Morgan, this role is very common. We hope to achieve the effect where 1+1>2.

Question: Recently, there have been intermediary agencies claiming they can list tokens on Binance. Have you heard of such cases? Have you discovered any similar violations and therefore dismissed some so-called white gloves and tightened related listing rules?

Yi He: First of all, Binance has never had so-called white gloves. Although many people pretend to be my close friends, relatives, or brothers, if everyone thinks from Binance's perspective, completely, we do not need these roles.

The reason why these so-called middlemen emerged is because our listing requirements are high. These people either just help you fill out a form, or they play a game of probability, casting a wide net and promising not to charge fees unless 100 projects are successfully listed. In the end, when a project gets listed based on its own quality, they take credit and get paid.

If you encounter anyone claiming to be able to get a project listed, feel free to report them, or even directly report them to law enforcement. With the increasing number of licenses held by Binance now, it is by no means a lawless place, and we firmly crack down on this kind of fraudulent behavior.

Lastly, everyone knows that I am the second largest shareholder of Binance. The so-called "white gloves" would be like stealing money from my own pocket to harm the company's interests, which is completely illogical. If you understand our ownership structure, you would know that I have no need to do such a thing.

Q: As a woman, reaching the position of co-CEO, do you have any new positioning or ideas?

He Yi: Talking about women's topics is indeed not easy, whether in fast-moving consumer goods or other industries. The key is not in the industry itself, but in whether you have set a glass ceiling for yourself. If you subconsciously feel that you cannot do it, then you really cannot.

Secondly, many women like to use their gender advantage in the workplace, such as having a good image and strong affinity, thinking that this makes communication smooth and influences large. But this can actually backfire on your professional image. The other party may only respect your communication skills, not your professional abilities. Whether in Web2 or Web3, the core is always to enhance professional skills.

If you are in marketing, strive to be the best in the industry; if you are in user growth or PR, take data and articles to the extreme; if you are a KOL, polish your content to the top. When others respect your expertise, the discussion about gender will naturally be bypassed.

No one in business competition will go easy on you because you are a woman. In life, you can be "ladies first," but in the business world, it is a brutal battlefield where one enters with a white knife and leaves with a red knife. No one will go easy on you because of your gender, and they may even criticize you more harshly. Sometimes what you think is an advantage is actually a disadvantage. In the end, everyone needs to find their core strength.

Q: Community has always been considered the core of the crypto industry, and you often refer to yourself as the "Eternal Customer Service of Binance." Against the backdrop of the recent rapid development of the prediction market, when formulating Binance's development strategy in the future, will you consider using users' votes and prediction results in the prediction market as a structured form of public feedback tool to assist decision-making or drive product and policy adjustments that are closer to the community's demands?

He Yi: I have a huge lesson learned called "Never say never." Back in the day, I said Binance wouldn't do futures contracts because I didn't understand it at the time; later I said no to Memecoins, only to realize that it was because I didn't understand it myself.

So now when it comes to the prediction market, I might not have seen through it completely yet. Therefore, I've learned to be smart and not jump to conclusions, avoiding saying "never." However, I also cannot commit to saying "definitely." Because when a market has enough influence, there will surely be different voices, and it is easy to be swayed by interests.

Everyone has their own position and vested interests, and the data often only reflects a slice of the whole picture. To be honest, I still do not fully understand the prediction market, haven't spent enough time researching it, so it is challenging for me to give a definitive answer at this moment.

Question: Binance currently has over 300 million global users, making it one of the largest companies in the cryptocurrency field to date. I would like you to talk from the perspective of a Co-CEO; what do you think Binance has done particularly well by 2025? In which areas is it still lacking? How will the future improvements be made to achieve what you describe as making Binance a "timeless" company?

He Yi: There are many areas where Binance needs to improve, such as not having a seamless user experience, not being as user-friendly in localization as domestic exchanges, technical stability, and how to establish a more positive industry image. The outside world often perceives the industry as a "den of thieves," where all benefit or suffer together. We need to demonstrate positive value to society.

We are far from perfect; we may just be slightly better than our competitors. The key is that we really care about our users. With the user base now approaching 300 million, traditional financial giants entering the space, the market has become highly competitive, moving in sync with traditional finance. When there is a market fluctuation, the whales first sell altcoins and then Bitcoin; this is a logical necessity.

Retail investors form the foundation of Binance. I insist on being on the front line to fight for more inclusive opportunities for retail investors in the face of challenges. For example, the flash crash on October 11th was precisely because we do not take the opposite side of users. When the market sharply drops, market makers halt trading, leading to a liquidity vacuum and price discontinuity in the matching engine. If we participated in gambling against users, this situation would not have occurred. Overall, we are continuously thinking about how to establish a fairer, more transparent market.

Question: What is Binance's biggest challenge now? And which business areas will it focus on next?

He Yi: The biggest challenge is still the density of talent. Technology has developed to this point, not only in Crypto but also in AI; the talent density of traditional finance and Internet giants is extremely high, and we are competing with the entire market for the top talent.

However, the Crypto industry is relatively stigmatized, and the talent pool is naturally small. When you ask a candidate whether they want to move to the UAE, they will surely need to think it over. What we need are people who understand financial products, understand Crypto, and truly believe in this industry. If you don't believe yourself and are just writing code for a $10,000 salary, not caring about what you are coding, it's challenging to build a globally top-tier company with that mindset.

So my most important responsibility is to help Binance find the best people. Recently, some peers have had strong reactions, so I want to clarify that I am looking everywhere for talent, not targeting a specific company, but searching across the entire industry. If there are outstanding talents who want to join the crypto industry, feel free to make recommendations.

Q: You mentioned in a live broadcast that you greatly admire Duan Yongping, who has been very successful in both the "business" and "investment" fields. Now that you are serving as Binance's co-CEO, will you also focus some of your efforts on investments and incubation projects surrounding the Binance ecosystem in your future work?

He Yi: When I started recommending Duan Yongping in public, he wasn't as prominent as he is today. He has now become a very hotly discussed entrepreneur. You can understand that I actually admire him a lot, building a company into a successful, highly efficient organization, and then the founder can retire with honors, while the company can still operate continuously and iterate.

For me, what I pursue has never been just Binance's success, but I hope that on top of the Binance ecosystem, a large number of outstanding entrepreneurs can grow and establish their own brands. In the future, more companies like the "Binance ecosystem version of OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Pinduoduo" could emerge in the crypto industry.

The reason I admire Duan Yongping is more about his thinking on "how to build a system" rather than simply trusting a certain individual's abilities. When people talk about him today, they focus more on investment because the crypto industry is still highly financialized and investment-driven. From an investment perspective, Duan Yongping and Buffett are in the same lineage. Their investment logic is very simple: to hold onto top assets for the long term.

What is considered a "top asset"? I have written about this on my social media and in public areas; of course, it's just a personal opinion and does not constitute any investment advice. If you firmly believe in the long-term prospects of an industry, and believe it will undoubtedly grow bigger and have a promising future, then just go for the top assets in that industry.

Looking at the crypto industry, what is the most decentralized top asset? It's Bitcoin. From another perspective, if you were to choose a company, then look at which is the "most resilient, largest in scale, and always striving to evolve" in that industry, and that may be Binance. Whether Buffett understands the crypto industry or not, the underlying logic of the world in resource and value allocation is actually the same.

On the contrary, many people may think that a small entrepreneurial team of only three to five people can issue a new coin and see it rise tenfold or a hundredfold—why is that? What we, as a platform, can do is to have serious discussions with the project team. For example, what is your current valuation, what is your financing structure, are you willing to allocate a portion and, at a relatively fair price, provide feedback to early genuine users through airdrops or other incentives? If they are willing to bear the cost to acquire seed users, that is a reasonable business arrangement.

However, whether this project can ultimately succeed, no one can guarantee. All we can do is try our best to judge whether this is a team that is serious about their work, whether its underlying logic is self-consistent, whether there is a product prototype or real progress, rather than just telling a story with nothing to show for. As for the future price of each token, no one can fully control that.

For us, BNB is more like an aircraft carrier. We hope to support more entrepreneurs' success based on this carrier and make the entire ecosystem more prosperous. But I cannot and will not promise anyone that buying will only lead to price increases and never decreases; such a thing does not exist in any market.

Q: How do you view the recent price drop? Furthermore, how do you foresee the industry trend and potential risks for the years 2026 and beyond?

He Yi: First, I want to declare that this is a personal opinion and does not constitute investment advice. Bitcoin is the most decentralized crypto asset, and the so-called "rise and fall" depends on the cycle. In the long run, today's price drop may just be a small shake-up.

However, I believe that the current price drop and volatility will not be as intense as in the past. This is because it has evolved from a niche asset to a mainstream core asset. Although there may be news of a country selling off seized assets in the market, more and more sovereign wealth funds and wealth are allocating to Bitcoin.

So, I say the underlying logic has changed, and the absolute cycle theory and volatility patterns are being reconstructed. Basic strategies that have been very profitable in the past few cycles may not work now because the players have changed, the pool has grown, and the fish have grown too. If you are still holding onto the old logic of sitting in a corner and eating small fish and shrimp in this cycle, it may not work.

Q: Why did Binance choose to implement a Co-CEO system at this time? What fundamental changes will this new management structure bring to Binance? Additionally, could you please share three things personally led by you that you consider most important for Binance?

He Yi: I think, in terms of the specific day-to-day work content, there hasn't been a particularly massive change. But from my personal perspective, there are a few things that will become more important to me.

First is the continuation of Binance's culture. I have always believed that the reason Binance has come this far ultimately lies in our culture, and the most core aspect of it is putting users first. No matter how the market changes, this principle must not change.

I hope to spend more time promoting a systemic construction. As I mentioned earlier, what we need more of is to enhance the overall efficiency of the entire organization, rather than just empowering or boosting firepower in certain isolated areas. How to make the organization's machine run more efficiently is the direction I will be very focused on.

Although I myself do not have a technical background and do not come from a traditional product background, I strongly believe that technological innovation is the underlying force driving the world forward. With this premise, I would be particularly interested in increasing the introduction and application of AI within Binance. Only by truly integrating these new technologies into the business and organization can technological transformation benefit the entire industry, allowing us to move more steadily and further.

Q: Over the past two years, Hong Kong has been actively promoting the development of virtual assets, hoping to build the city into a global virtual asset hub, and has successively introduced a series of related policies. Given Binance's leading position in the industry, everyone is very interested in the specific layout and plans Binance currently has in Hong Kong. As the newly appointed Co-CEO, how do you evaluate the strategic priority of Hong Kong in Binance's global roadmap? Furthermore, the event on October 11 this year almost drained the entire industry of liquidity, and everyone felt it deeply. As an industry leader, how do you and Binance view the "liquidity restoration" issue? Under the new Co-CEO structure, what specific strategies or measures will Binance take to promote the restoration and rebuilding of industry liquidity?

He Yi: Regarding Hong Kong's regulation, we highly respect its status as an Asian financial center. However, observing the financial reports of local exchanges, it can be seen that their operating conditions are quite challenging. We maintain an open approach to the Hong Kong market and hope to make significant progress. However, it is understood that local exchanges still face restrictions in accessing international liquidity, making operations difficult. At present, we can only feel our way across the river and take it step by step.

Regarding the industry's liquidity drain, everyone should understand that this usually only means that the top market makers have temporarily halted trading in crisis moments, and it does not mean that funds have disappeared. From on-chain data, it is evident that users do not lack funds; rather, they hold a large amount of stablecoins. Therefore, the market is not lacking liquidity, but rather a sufficient number of good investment targets.

Your money has not been taken by Binance; it has flowed into the hands of more professional players. The overall market size is expanding, but during volatile periods, many people choose a more conservative strategy, such as stablecoin investment or only allocating to major coins like Bitcoin. What everyone seeks is peace of mind.

Q: What are Binance's plans regarding meme coins?

He Yi: I think this question can be viewed from several dimensions. Firstly, from the perspective of a trading platform, I actually don't like everyone focusing on my tweets to create memes. This puts a lot of pressure on me because if I casually mention something, it could potentially become a coin; if it goes up, everyone is happy, but if it falls, they all come to criticize me, making me hesitant to speak. But in the end, people don't care who created the meme, nor do they care if it's called He Yi, Doggy, or Piggy. What they truly need is simply an asset that can carry emotions and be tradable.

Although everything is memeable now, if we look at the long term, the assets truly worth holding onto for the long run will still circle back to Buffett's value investing logic. Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned in this regard, often feeling like I can't keep up with the times, striving to "5G surf" while learning.

Memes are certainly a fresh phenomenon, but which memes will ultimately have long-term value support and crystallize real value will determine their price: emotions in the short term and value in the long term. Any asset goes through stages of being "overbought" and "oversold" — when emotions are high, everyone is chasing highs, and at each dip, there is a frenzy of selling, fearing that "not selling will lead to losses."

From Binance's perspective, we will try our best to communicate with the project team, such as whether the TGE pricing can be set lower or whether an additional portion can be allocated for airdrops to users. The project team then turns around and says Binance is "greedy, wanting so many coins for airdrops," and this rumor quickly becomes a "sky-high listing fee."

In reality, we also encounter situations where some memes have almost nothing to offer fundamentally, and I personally believe they will fall sooner or later, but users are willing to buy and trade them. If we completely disregard this type of demand, we will lose market share. So in the end, we can only strike a dynamic balance between "providing users with an adequate number of trading pairs" and "the platform's risk control requirements," which is itself a continuous game.

Question: You just mentioned stablecoin-related financial management business. Does Binance have any plans to relaunch products or collaborations related to PYUSD in the future? Additionally, are there considerations to re-enter the U.S. market fully in the future? If there are changes in the U.S. political landscape in the future, with the Democratic Party returning to power, do you think Binance will face a more rigorous regulatory environment in the U.S.?

He Yi: My current mindset can be summed up in one phrase: never say never. Honestly, I don't know what the next step will be. Many times, we just have to take it step by step, try what we can do, and if it doesn't work out, we have to learn to accept it because what's done is done.

The political landscape in the U.S. is vast, and it's not something we can influence. And frankly, we are not that close to the so-called Trump family. Some domestic media outlets like to demonize excessively, one moment saying things about what CZ has done, and the next moment saying something like "paying fines to buy pardons," which are all not factual. When looking at the U.S., we need to be more down-to-earth; fundamentally, it's a highly competitive two-party game. In this partisan strife context, at best, we are just sacrificial lambs.

Just think about it, as a commercial company, we are currently just trying to survive in a tight spot, far from anything like "influencing a political party." Harshly put, we don't deserve that yet. If one day Binance can truly influence government decisions, or even intervene in party struggles, then it might be considered "making a big impact." But at least for now, we truly are just a small fry.

Q: How much has changed between the strategic direction and career you are driving as a Co-CEO today and the dream you had at 18? What is the underlying driving force that has supported you to this day? What is your most steadfast belief? If you were to go back to your 18-year-old self or even younger, what did you think was the most important pursuit in life, wealth, family, or something else?

He Yi: When I was 18, I actually didn't have a clear concept of wealth, but I really liked Chen Changsheng in the Chinese web novel "Way of Choices." Every time he faced a challenge, he would say, "I want to give it a try." I felt that was very much like me. Although I didn't look like someone who could rely on their looks, I still tried being a host. Because it had the lowest cost and the least effort, I did my own makeup, and I was fine with any pay.

Later on, entrepreneurship was the same. Although I had never done it before, I wanted to try. I remember when I was young, a friend (Li Jiayi) asked me about my life dream, and I had a bit of a "literary youth" phase, saying, "I want to become someone who influences the world." She thought I was crazy and couldn't be bothered with me at the time.

Many years later, there was an Internet personality selection that included me. She suddenly messaged me saying, "Look, you achieved what you said about influencing the world." Actually, that selection was quite random, and I had forgotten about that incident, but looking back, my driving force has always been that phrase "I want to try." What does it matter if I haven't done it before? I haven't been a CEO before, once I do it, won't I know what to do?

Q: How do you deal with emotions like fear, anxiety, and confusion?

He Yi: I believe everyone experiences emotions, whether it's fear, anxiety, nervousness, or sadness, despair; these will all happen, and I'm no exception, after all, I'm just an ordinary person. For me, the most important thing is to first accept that these emotions will naturally occur; they are a very normal human reaction, not something that "shouldn't happen."

I really like a saying—"The clouds float in the blue sky, the water sits in the bottle." Although the ending of the Jiajing Emperor's story wasn't good, this saying itself deeply moved me. You have to learn to accept the good and bad things that happen in life. The clouds are there, the blue sky is there, the water and the bottle are also in their respective positions, everything has its own arrangement. I used to say that whatever fate gives you, live it out well and enjoy it.

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