Binance Founder CZ on Memecoins, Aster, BNB vs SOL and More | TG Podcast
CZ says his post-Binance objective is scalable impact, not another scoreboard for wealth, status, or power. Prison clarified the hierarchy—health first, then family and human connection—and left him wanting to reach old age knowing he had done “everything I could to help others.” His practical outlets are digital education, portfolio investing, and coaching founders, especially around BNB Chain.
He remains bullish on Bitcoin and still considers his $500,000-to-$1 million forecast valid, while stressing that “no one knows” where price ultimately goes. His historical frame is the four-year cycle, whose peaks have often fallen between October and December; his psychological frame is even longer, having endured bear markets at $200 and then $3,000. Against that history, a 1–2% drop is “nothing”; he later questions panic around moves near $115,000–$120,000.
CZ sees BNB Chain as a utility-and-liquidity ecosystem, while describing Solana’s current center of gravity as memecoins. BNB spans Greenfield storage, the EVM-compatible BNB Smart Chain, and opBNB, with more architectures under construction; he said about five BNB memecoins had reached market caps of roughly $100 million or $500 million. He nevertheless rejects a winner-take-all framing: Solana is fast, active, well supported, and made a “phenomenal comeback” after FTX.
His apparent memecoin conversion is really an infrastructure thesis, not a trading call. CZ says, “I was never against them”—he simply does not understand memes or NFTs and personally holds mainly Bitcoin and BNB. If users want memes, however, builders should supply the launchpads, real-time data, rapid updates, and trading tools they require; CZ has only bought small amounts experimentally and will not forecast the market’s size.
The Chinese-ticker boom was accidental, while Meme Rush exposed how quickly ambiguity can damage reflexive markets. CZ traced the Chinese wave to his posts around Mid-Autumn Festival and the community turning every phrase or image into a meme; Western traders responded by joking that they were learning Chinese on Duolingo. He says he had no involvement in Meme Rush, initially shared the community’s confusion, and watched prices fall before the misunderstanding was cleared up; he says the channel would not monopolize future listings.
CZ’s main decentralized-exchange forecast is that traders need privacy, and decentralized volumes could match centralized exchanges by the next four-year cycle if not this one. Hyperliquid’s transparent order flow, vaults, and marketing drove attention, but visible strategies can be reverse-engineered and attacked; Aster differentiates through privacy and broader native-chain access. Neither venue wins on one feature: liquidity, net execution, fees, stability, security, error handling, and the eventual L1 ecosystem all matter.
His antidote to 17-second holding periods is conviction built through understanding, paired with a survivable downside. It took him roughly six months in 2013 to conclude Bitcoin was “the future”; going all-in felt tolerable because even if it went to zero, he believed he could return to bank IT and earn six figures. The same framework shapes his startup advice: start earlier, but retain a Plan B, avoid desperation, and remember that CZ founded Binance at 40—not 19.
1. Prison reordered CZ’s priorities toward scalable impact
The viral Jeff/Hyperliquid backstory was less dramatic than Twitter implied. CZ says he had probably never met Jeff, agreed to an informal conversation only after learning he had joined Binance Labs’ first incubation cohort, then missed it because he set his alarm incorrectly. Hyperliquid was already too large for the early-stage investing CZ prefers, so “there was no deal to offer” and no reason to reschedule.
Binance’s rise gave CZ no gradual apprenticeship in wealth: it went from zero to the largest crypto exchange in five months, and Forbes put him on its cover after seven. “I don’t feel rich,” he recalls telling friends; he never progressed through the watches-cars-houses-yachts sequence, still favors functional clothes and a roughly $300 Garmin, and says he has never cashed out the billions attributed to him.
His defense of the Binance chapter is qualified but firm: “I made mistakes,” took responsibility, and pleaded guilty to a US federal crime, but says there was no fraud and no user was harmed. He believes he protected users, BNB investors, employees with shares, and the platform, while accepting that he can no longer operate Binance and remains only a shareholder.
Prison supplied the reset. Without dependable medical care, health became paramount; after everything else was removed, he missed family and human connection more than food or comfort. That led to a single long-horizon test: in old age, will he believe he did “everything I could to help others”? Digital education offers scale, while portfolio investing and founder coaching let him apply his crypto network without managing Binance.com.
2. Crypto’s fragmentation is evidence of growth, not decay
CZ maps each cycle through an expanding frontier: Bitcoin in 2013–14; Ethereum, ERC-20s, and ICOs in 2017; DeFi and NFTs in 2021; then ETFs, stablecoins, RWAs, DApps, and memes. NFTs shrank from their peak while DeFi endured, but the broader point is that more products, regions, governments, institutions, and user tribes now coexist.
The resulting friction—Bitcoin maximalists, memecoin traders, utility-token investors, Wall Street entrants, national reserves, and “ultra-libertarian oldies”—is natural in a decentralized system. His answer to the host’s sense that on-chain retail has lost its north star: welcome the diversity, competition, argument, and cooperation because “the industry has grown.”
CZ still regards $500,000–$1 million Bitcoin as a “perfectly valid prediction,” but immediately adds that price forecasts are opinions and “no one knows.” His supporting observation is historical rather than deterministic: four-year-cycle peaks have usually appeared around October through December, while today’s 1–2% panic looks trivial beside earlier days when Bitcoin could fall 50% and rebound 50%.
3. BNB’s advantage is cohesion without exclusivity
CZ positions BNB Chain around utility plus trading liquidity. It includes Greenfield for storage, the EVM-compatible BNB Smart Chain, and the opBNB layer two, with other technical architectures being built. Bitcoin remains the reserve network but lacks smart-contract programmability, while Bitcoin and Ethereum can face congestion, higher fees, and performance bottlenecks.
His Solana account is contextual, not dismissive. After FTX collapsed, Solana lost an exchange anchor but made a “phenomenal comeback” during an enforcement environment in which serious utility tokens risked being called securities; memecoins could instead disclaim utility and operate as entertainment. CZ says Binance and BNB avoided that narrative while facing SEC litigation, whereas Solana developed fast infrastructure and a highly active meme community.
More recently, he said about five BNB memecoins had reached market capitalizations of roughly $100 million or $500 million, while Solana activity quieted. He calls BNB’s community more holder-oriented and charitable, but admits he is “not really in the thick of things” and will not claim the networks are locked in a simple competition.
The host’s vertical-integration thesis—launchpad to Aster, Binance Alpha, and potentially Binance spot—was “definitely not planned,” CZ says. Binance.com lists tokens from all blockchains, and Trust Wallet supports BNB, Solana, and others; by contrast, he understood Phantom to be Solana-only. BNB’s edge is alignment among participants who often hold BNB: “more cohesive, but not closed,” rather than a walled garden.
4. Memecoin participation is a builder decision, not a personal endorsement
CZ corrects the premise that he reversed his position: “I wasn’t against memecoins. I was never against them.” He has never bought an NFT, rarely buys altcoins, and holds essentially Bitcoin and BNB because he is oriented toward technology and utility, not art, collectibles, or rapid trading. Supporting an ecosystem does not require personally owning everything inside it.
Founder demand drives his stance: 10–20 people a day approach him with launchpads, stablecoins, meme-trading tools, and other products. Memes impose real technical requirements—rapid updates and real-time information—so his role is to help strong teams build reliable infrastructure. He tried a few tiny purchases to learn the mechanics, not to chase “10x overnight,” and refuses to predict a market where millions of tokens can appear daily.
The Chinese-token wave began when virtually anything CZ posted became a meme. After temporarily censoring himself, he decided, “I’m going to tweet freely”; a Mid-Autumn Festival prompt for users’ best memes then produced moon, mooncake, wordplay, and Chinese-character tickers. Chinese users understood the jokes, Western users reached for Google Translate, and the phenomenon drew traders from Solana without any planned campaign.
The host described Meme Rush as a channel with Binance KYC requirements and delayed US participation. CZ says he learned of it only after launch and initially asked, “What is this thing?” The community inferred that Binance.com would henceforth list only tokens from that channel, which he says was false; while he traveled through Bahrain and sought clarification, the market sold off. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up, he says prices had already fallen substantially. His diagnosis: rapidly appreciating memecoins have “no price support,” so confusion can unwind them violently.
5. Privacy is the wedge, but perp DEXs will compete as full systems
CZ credits Hyperliquid’s early success to visible on-chain transactions, vaults, and effective marketing, including James Wynn’s billion-dollar order. Yet his two decades around trading make radical transparency hard to accept: professional traders do not want orders or algorithms exposed in real time because rivals can reverse-engineer them and “play against them so that they lose money.”
After a tweet on the issue, CZ received roughly 30 proposals in one day. When a team said it could implement private trading functionality, his response was “do it”; he also invested across several such projects. His major forecast is that decentralized perpetual venues will eventually match centralized-exchange volume—possibly this cycle, and “definitely” by the next four-year cycle.
CEXs retain the onboarding advantage: newcomers want an email, password, support, fiat rails, and banking access—not keys, backups, explorers, MEV, and “random strings of characters.” With perhaps 90% of people still outside crypto, new users may enter through CEXs, then migrate toward DEXs for earlier assets and broader access. CZ imagines everything moving on-chain over 20, 30, or 50 years, while traditional finance could take a century to recede.
Aster offers privacy and native access across more chains, including Solana, while Hyperliquid serves users comfortable trading publicly. CZ says Hyperliquid “should” add privacy, but one copied feature would not settle the contest: user protection, error handling, founder philosophy, technology, and the ecosystems both venues build when moving toward L1s matter. “Being first doesn’t actually always guarantee that you’ll always be the greatest.”
6. Real exchange quality reveals itself in users’ net execution
Asked for the decisive metric, CZ initially offers “number of users plus volume,” then explains why neither is clean. Airdrops encourage more trading; the line between incentivized activity and wash trading is subjective; and one bot can make a thousand addresses look like a thousand users. Revenue and commissions add signal, but no single figure resolves the problem.
His pushback on DeFiLlama’s apparent removal of Aster volume is practical: label the airdrop period instead. Incentives are a factual qualification, not unique evidence of fabrication—Hyperliquid also used them—and readers can judge the resulting activity with that context preserved.
His retail test cuts through reported statistics: split a $1,000 purchase across two exchanges, buying $500 on each, withdraw both, and compare the tokens arriving in the wallet. That captures price, slippage, deposit and withdrawal charges, and other hidden costs. Users may not formalize the experiment, but they feel the result and concentrate future trading where liquidity, fees, stability, and security deliver the best experience.
7. Durable conviction requires understanding and a credible Plan B
CZ needed roughly six months—from July to December 2013—to understand Bitcoin deeply enough to call it “the future.” At 35 or 36, he saw crypto as his chance to join a foundational technology rather than a three-month trade. Going all-in was rational to him because the downside remained survivable: if Bitcoin reached zero, he could return to bank IT and earn a six-figure salary.
The first crash still hurt. He felt “stuck” for about 18 months because selling raised the harder question of what he would do instead; once he survived a bear market near $200, the next one near $3,000 felt easier. That history explains his incredulity toward panic at $115,000–$120,000: “Seriously?”
His advice to a 23-year-old is deliberately double-edged: join startups earlier, gain experience, and launch sooner—but model the worst case and maintain a life you can still live if everything goes to zero. CZ founded Binance at 40 after 17 years as a programmer, developer, and manager; success is not reserved for teenagers, and urgency becomes dangerous when founders are “too desperate or too stubborn.”
Trading has moved from colocated data centers and limited market sessions to a 24/7 online world of second-by-second memecoins; media, he predicts, will similarly shift from national institutions to independent global voices with tens or hundreds of millions of followers, supported by sponsorships and even one-cent or ten-cent payments. His closing constant across both shifts: strong founders, projects, and communities survive setbacks by continuing to build.
Full transcript
Yes, sir. How are you, dude? Welcome to the stream.
I’m fine. Thank you for inviting me.
Of course. I’ll be frank, dude. I wasn’t sure if you would come. When I wrote that first tweet, I thought I would be writing for weeks. The response was instant. That was cool.
But yeah, I just saw it. Someone sent it to me and said, “Why not?”
Yes. I fucking love this.
I appreciate you coming, dude. I think we have something to talk about. We’ll discuss everything. A lot is happening.
I think you’re more active on Twitter now than ever. You’re lighting it up right now.
No, I was much more active before, when I was running Binance. I was on Twitter much more often.
Yeah, but it’s just that a lot of things have happened in the last week.
I travel a lot now, and when I travel, I just—
Yeah, but so much has been happening in the last few days.
Yes, there’s a lot going on right now.
We’ll delve into all this. Listen, man, I woke up this morning and Twitter was going crazy over this tweet from Jeff Yan.
Hmm.
What’s the story behind this? Twitter was going crazy. You retweeted something from 2018, it seems, involving one of the cohort members, Jeff from Hyperlid. He was there, and Twitter went crazy today. So what’s the story behind this?
I don’t know him, and I don’t think I’ve met him in person. I wasn’t really into all the Binance Labs incubation-project cohorts from the first season, so I don’t think I met him. I don’t think I’ve ever met him in person, at least as far as I know.
It was only earlier this year that Ella said to me, “Look, he was in the first-season cohort. Do you want to chat with him?” I said, “Yes, let’s talk to him and find out what’s going on.”
I don’t think he was ready for the investment. We didn’t try to negotiate a deal, but there was no deal to offer. They were already pretty big.
We like to invest in early projects. We like to get in at the early stages. That’s why we do incubation, residencies, and so on. We like to help them grow.
I guess it was more of a casual conversation. Unfortunately, I overslept because I set the alarm clock incorrectly. Since there was no specific purpose for the meeting, we didn’t postpone it. That’s all, actually.
Hey, be honest. Be frank. Do you regret missing that meeting?
No. At the time, it was just a few months ago, so it wasn’t exactly at an early stage. They were already valuable and extremely successful.
I don’t think that was the right target for us. We don’t make huge acquisitions, right? The biggest thing we’ve done to date is probably CoinMarketCap, which was a few hundred million dollars.
Oh.
I think they had outgrown that stage. There was no agenda, and that’s probably why we didn’t move anything. He was busy. I was busy. That was all. It wasn’t like we were trying to make a deal.
Okay. I had to ask. Twitter was just going crazy this morning.
To start, I’d like to ask you, CZ, what your goals are from this point on. The reason I’m asking is to set the stage: you quoted a tweet from Forbes, I think, where they estimated your net worth, and you said it was a little inflated. Objectively, though, you’re one of the richest people in the world.
I don’t think anyone would argue that you’re one of the titans to ever come into the crypto world. You just got out of prison and are now back in the news feed. You’re on Twitter, and you’re very active.
I’m curious about what your goals are and why you’re doing what you’re doing now.
Of course. I was never particularly focused on money before that. Binance’s success happened so quickly that it didn’t allow me to gradually learn how to handle wealth, enjoy it, and so on.
I was constantly busy. We were constantly “putting out fires” for the first few years, and then we were dealing with the U.S. government for a few years. It was very exhausting.
I come from a fairly modest family, so I was never used to a luxurious life. That was completely normal for me. I’m a very practical person. I like it when everything works.
I don’t care about brands. I wear simple clothes, but they’re comfortable. I sit on regular chairs. I don’t need a very expensive chair. I don’t need a very expensive watch. I just don’t have those things.
I wore a Garmin watch. It’s about a $300 watch, and it works.
Also, because Binance went from zero to the world’s largest crypto exchange in 5 months, and after 7 months Forbes put me on the cover, my friends said, “You must be very rich.”
I replied, “I don’t feel rich.” Nothing had changed for me. I didn’t have much more money, so I didn’t go through all these stages.
People usually go through these stages. First they have $10 million, and they buy watches and cars. Then they have $100 million, and they buy luxury homes. At $200 million, they buy yachts. I didn’t go through that progression.
Everything happened instantly, from zero to the cover of Forbes. I was like, “What?” I didn’t feel it. Nothing had changed for me.
I have never withdrawn money to cash. I don’t have any more money in the bank. I don’t have any more money in my wallet. Well, I have a little more in my wallet now than before, of course, but it’s not billions of dollars—not the billions and billions that they keep talking about.
That’s why I didn’t develop those habits. As for what I want to do, I’m not poor, and I don’t need to prove it.
I’m happy to be a specialist in one thing, or a one-time entrepreneur. I don’t need to be a serial successful entrepreneur. I think I did pretty well.
I made mistakes, but they weren’t serious miscalculations. There was no fraud, and no users were harmed. I protected all of our users, BNB investors, and all the team members who have shares in the company.
I think the team did a good job. I defended the platform we created. I took responsibility for my own mistakes and accepted it with dignity.
When I was in prison, I thought a lot about what’s really important, because prison is actually very enlightening. First of all, you understand that health is the most important thing. If you’re not healthy, nothing else matters.
In prison, you don’t have normal access to doctors unless you die on the floor. They don’t care there, you know? So you need to eat healthy food and sleep well. Fortunately, there’s nothing else to do there.
It’s actually not bad. Then you think, “What do you miss the most?” They take everything away from you, right? You miss your family and your people. Human communication is what you miss.
After that, everything else becomes secondary. I miss delicious food and a comfortable bed, but I can live with that. Those are secondary things.
Even before I went to prison, it became abundantly clear that I could no longer operate or manage Binance. I still remain a shareholder.
So I thought, “What would be interesting for me? What would make me happy?” I thought long and hard about this.
I think animals are genetically predisposed, or designed, to strive to help their own species. When you can take care of yourself, helping others makes you feel better, right?
If I’m hungry, I need to fix it somehow. If I’m cold, I need to find a place to hide. But when I take care of myself, helping others brings me satisfaction.
Then I thought, “How can I help others? What’s the best way to help others?” At that point, I had already pleaded guilty to a U.S. federal crime. I didn’t care about my reputation anymore. In many ways, it was already a bit damaged.
At the same time, I cared about my authority. I hadn’t harmed any users, right? I hadn’t harmed anyone. So did I care more about power?
I had already left my position at Binance. Fame and power are opportunities for more money. I didn’t spend that much money. I haven’t spent even a fraction—not even a small part—of what is attributed to me.
I said to myself, “If these 3 things don’t matter, then what is important to me?” I think what’s important is that, in my old age, I want to know that I did everything I could to help others.
As long as I’m happy with myself in my old age, then I’ve done everything I could. That’s what I’m concerned about.
With that comes the question: what is the maximum positive impact I can make? If my capabilities are great, I’ll do more. If the opportunities are smaller, I’ll do less.
I thought education was a great field because it could scale instantly. If we create a digital platform that can educate everyone, then we can continue working on it.
After I got out of prison, it took a few months. That experience stays with you for a long time. It took me a few months to become active on Twitter again and communicate with people normally.
I was at home with my family and so on. After a few months, I thought, “Okay, I can still manage the investment portion of our portfolio.” This has nothing to do with Binance.com, the exchange itself.
I said, “Okay, I won’t manage Binance Labs, but I’ll participate in it.” We decided to do a rebrand.
I’m very committed to the BNB Chain ecosystem, obviously. Again, this has nothing to do with a centralized exchange.
I came back, we invested, and we helped other founders. Right now, I’m excited to help other founders succeed. I’m happy to be a coach, a cheerleader, or whatever you call it.
That’s pretty much what I do.
Given your position and history in the crypto sphere, do you feel a responsibility for how the industry will develop further?
No. First of all, I don’t feel that great.
I don't think anyone can feel solely responsible for crypto. I think everything will be fine with the industry. The industry will go through crypto winters and cycles, but each cycle is higher than the last, so I think the industry will be fine.
I'm not that big. I want to contribute, so if I look at what I know and where I've had an impact, it's the cryptosphere, right? That's what I spend a lot of time on today, talking to people. My connections are here too, and everyone wants to talk to me about crypto.
Crypto people come to me, and AI experts—well, some of them come, but not like the first ones. Biotechnology specialists—we invest, and we have to contact them ourselves because I don't know that field very well either. So, in the cryptosphere, I would like to continue. I will definitely continue to contribute, but I don't think I'm responsible for all of crypto. It's just too much.
I think there are many strong players and people who are contributing to crypto. So, yeah, I'm just a part of it.
I didn't want to put the responsibility for the future of the industry on your shoulders, but I was curious. Before we get into the specifics about memes, I wanted to ask you about crypto Twitter, especially its on-chain component, if I may say so. It's in a bit of a strange state right now, isn't it?
Look, Bitcoin just set a new all-time high. Today, the price fell by several percent, and if you scroll through the crypto Twitter feed, there is real chaos. If you look more broadly, a lot of events have happened in the cryptosphere.
We have a Trump administration that has really supported crypto. We have ETFs for Bitcoin, Solana, ETH, and all major crypto assets. Every traditional financial institution in the world is implementing stablecoins. From the outside, crypto won, right? Mass implementation has taken place. It has penetrated every vertical of the global economy.
But the situation with on-chain is somewhat strange, especially after the real boom of memecoins. This is still going on, but not on the scale it used to be, and I think there's been a bit of a stalemate where retail on-chain users aren't sure what's next or what to believe.
What is your optimistic vision of the North Star of where on-chain can go next?
I think I'll agree with you. But I think that the problems you described, while they are certainly challenges, are generally positive because they mean that the industry is growing.
Previously, in 2013 and 2014, everyone was into Bitcoin. Back then, it was called the Bitcoin industry, right? It wasn't the crypto or blockchain industry; it was just Bitcoin.
Then, in 2017, Ethereum appeared, good altcoins emerged, and Ethereum introduced the ERC-20 standard. Everyone started doing ICOs, there were significantly more projects, and this caused a boom.
In 2021, it was DeFi, NFTs, and so on. DeFi remained, but NFTs became much smaller. They still exist, but they've become much smaller compared to their peak.
This time, as you said, we see a lot more. We see ETFs, memes, stablecoins, RWAs, and DApps. There are a lot more of them, which is good. I think the industry is getting bigger.
But I also see that, as you said, the industry has become more fragmented—both in terms of industry sectors and different groups of players and regions. There is some division, but I think it's just a matter of scale, right? The industry has grown, and I think there are now more institutional players. The government is coming in, institutions are coming in, Wall Street is coming in, and national reserves are coming in.
There are more different types of participants, and many of them are what we call traditional players. So now we have a mix of true, ultra-libertarian old-timers and those somewhere in the middle. This is roughly where I am. And there are still newcomers in this field.
There are different views. In addition, there are meme traders, utility-token traders, Bitcoin maximalists, and other people. We see more groups, but this is a decentralized ecosystem, right? We should welcome everyone's participation, and there should be a lot of diversity.
There must be discussions, some friction, and competition. There must also be cooperation. For me, it's a familiar thing—new areas, chaos, and so on. I am always open to such spaces and to very open industries.
So I think it's all for the better. We must support everyone. We should try to help everyone.
It's strange to see Bitcoin set a new all-time high, and then you scroll through your Twitter feed and see panic over a 1% drop. What the hell is going on? But that's just the reality of 2025.
Speaking about Bitcoin, you were on Farok's podcast about 5 months ago, I think. Greetings, Farokh. I think he did a great job. You gave a forecast for the price of Bitcoin of $500,000 to $1 million. Can we get an update on this? How do you feel about it now?
I still think this is a perfectly valid prediction. I have to be very careful with price projections. Number one, I don't know where this is all going. Let's put it this way: frankly, no one knows, and no one I've talked to really knows.
Price predictions are just opinions. But if you look historically at 4-year cycles, usually around October to December, that's where the peak is. Based on everything we're seeing, as you said, Bitcoin is close to its all-time high.
It drops by 1% or 2%, and everyone panics. But for those guys who have been in the industry for 11 years, Bitcoin used to fall by 50% in 1 day and could rise by 50% the next day. So, it's nothing. This is very stable.
It's all a matter of perspective. I am still very positive about Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole. So, yeah, I'm still pretty optimistic.
Getting into the niche and talking about things related to BNB, I think there are a lot of people watching this stream who came into crypto right at the end of the Solana season—memecoins, Axiom, AI—in 2024. Over the past month, this is probably their first experience interacting with BNB.
My question to you, to set the stage and outline the topic a little, is: how do you see BNB Chain in 2025, and what is its place relative to everything else in crypto—other networks and other infrastructure? What role does it play now?
If you look at the Layer 1 blockchain ecosystem today, you have Bitcoin, which is the reserve and the largest network. But Bitcoin has no programmability and no smart contracts.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are also kind of oversaturated, so the fees are usually high. They're overloaded, so it's worth knowing about performance and bottlenecks.
BNB Chain has been around for quite some time. BNB Chain is actually 3 different technical blockchains, right? There is Greenfield, which is a data-storage network. There is Binance Smart Chain—a blockchain with EVM smart contracts, and there is opBNB, a layer 2.
There are several others under construction, with different technological architectures. I see BNB Chain as a blockchain focused on utility as well as trading liquidity. Trading liquidity is kind of our foundation, right? That's where we have all our users, and that's what the community is.
Solana is very strong. But Solana at the moment is pretty much a blockchain for memecoins, right? They may grow, but right now they have a lot of memecoin traders.
The memes on Solana have been quieter lately, and recently there's been more activity on BNB Chain. Quite a few of those guys have moved here in the last week or so. This is great.
Based on the community feedback, I think the BNB Chain ecosystem, even for the memecoin community, is a little different because of the charitable nature of the BNB Chain community. They tend to be more of holders, so they're not jumping back and forth every day.
But yesterday there was a big market reaction to certain rumors—FUD—which caused a lot of trouble. Different networks are a little different, I think.
There are a lot of other interesting blockchains—the ones based in the US and the ones that are being built. Some other blockchains have a little less activity, but they also have interesting technologies, like blockchains built on Move, and other blockchains.
I think that's enough. I think we're still in the early stages of the industry, so we just need to keep building.
I don't want to focus too much on other networks or ecosystems, but I think that objectively, Solana and its on-chain activity are one of the main themes of this cycle that we're in right now.
Do you think BNB can outperform, sustain, and essentially win the on-chain and memecoin activity that Solana dominated until almost last month?
First of all, I think anything is possible. This is quite possible. In the last few days or weeks, we've seen more meme activity on BNB Chain than on Solana, but I'm just reading the news. I'm not really in the thick of things, as they say.
I think there were about 5 memecoins on BNB that reached $100 million or $500 million in market capitalization, which wasn't the case on Solana, right? So I think Solana has quieted down a bit in the last few weeks.
At the same time, I don't see blockchains as competing in this way.
I think every network has its own story. Every network is different. My understanding of Solana is this: They started a few years ago with FTX, and then FTX collapsed. The Solana guys were hit hard, but they made a phenomenal comeback, right?
However, during this comeback, they no longer had an exchange in the ecosystem, and this all happened during the Biden and Gary Gensler administrations. They were trying to recognize every utility token as a security, you know? So BNB, like all other tokens, was under legal action. If you launched a real project with a utility token, you would definitely get sued by the SEC—the previous SEC.
Therefore, memecoins simply declared that they had no value. They had no utility whatsoever. They were just for fun. At that moment, on Solana, as far as I'm concerned, they didn't care anymore. They were just going to pump and dump.
There is such a platform, it seems, called Pump, and at that time Binance and I personally were dealing with SEC lawsuits. I think if there had been a platform called Pump in our ecosystem, I would have been asked a lot of questions, even though it would have had nothing to do with me.
So we didn't have that kind of narrative. We just ignored it, and that's why most memes didn't appear on many blockchains. I think there's some history to it, but Solana is a fast blockchain. It's active and has good support, so I think it's a good blockchain.
But now I spend a lot more time on BNB Chain. Our portfolio projects know that the wallet supports Solana, and it also supports BNB Chain. Most of our portfolio companies are very open, but I obviously spend more time in the BNB Chain ecosystem.
We invest, help founders build, and there is quite a bit of activity there right now. Of course, there are challenges every day, but I think the blockchain ecosystem is very much alive.
The BNB Chain ecosystem is very lively right now. That's right, and I hear your comments about what's happening on Solana. The BNB infrastructure now looks very similar. It has its own launchpad standard, and the same thing is happening on BNB.
My question to you is regarding memecoins. You repeatedly spoke publicly in 2024 against them. I think you mentioned it a little bit on the Froak podcast, that you're not a fan of memecoins, and there were a few tweets. I won't read them, but you were against them, and now you seem to be pretty excited about them. I'm curious what has changed and why you are so passionate about memecoins now.
Okay, let me make a few small edits. I wasn't against memecoins. I was never against them. I just wasn't really interested in them, you know? I am not a memecoin trader. That's just a fact.
I'm not an NFT trader either. Do you understand? I have never bought an NFT. I also buy very few altcoins, although I support them all. I have Bitcoin, BNB—and that's basically it.
I don't invest in other blockchains, but I support all blockchain ecosystems. Binance supports many different blockchains. I work very closely with many developers and other specialists from various blockchains.
So just because I don't buy memecoins doesn't mean anything. I don't buy art. I don't buy paintings. I don't buy music. It's just not mine. I'm a tech- and functionality-oriented guy. I don't buy expensive watches. I have a regular digital watch that works. I play sports, and this is my little world.
Since I'm not really into art, NFTs, and memes, I never really understood them. I just don't really understand them. I'm not against them. I just don't get into them.
But I want to support any developing ecosystem. If users crave memes and they are successful on other blockchains, we will fund projects in these areas and invest in the developers of such platforms. We help others.
Founders come to me and say, "Look, I'm building a launchpad project." "I'm creating a new stablecoin." "I'm building a new platform for trading memes." "I'm building a perspective platform." I understand all this. Every day, 10–20 such people contact me. So if I like a team, I help them.
That's pretty much how I work. I have never been against memecoins, and if they come to BNB Chain, we should welcome them. We need to embrace them and provide the infrastructure to support them, because memecoins have their own unique needs in the blockchain space.
They need quick updates. They need real-time information about what is happening. This is a rather demanding area in terms of infrastructure. From my perspective, let's help all developers create the infrastructure to support this ecosystem.
Until today, I don't think I've ever consciously bought a single meme. Well, I have personally bought a few to keep and stuff. I tried buying a couple of memes just to learn how it works. It's not like I'm buying them for investment.
I'm not trying to be in the thick of things and do 10x overnight. That's not about me. One thing that has definitely happened is that the infrastructure and technology of BNB, specifically for memecoins, has really caught up. I mean, they are on par. I've traded a lot of these things. This has become really high quality.
If this trend continues, how much bigger do you think meme activity on the BNB network could become? The last month, I think, surprised everyone.
To be honest, it's really hard to predict, because memes are really fast. Something comes out and everyone jumps on it. There are some memes that remain relevant over time, right? Doge is probably one of them, and there are millions of new ones emerging every day.
Again, I'm not in what they call "the thick of things." I'm not trying to look for memecoins, so I'm not the best person to predict the size of the market and how it's growing.
I just want to help developers build the infrastructure to support this kind of activity. So, like many other people, I'm also a little confused.
I've never been a very good trader. That's why I don't trade. I don't buy or sell Bitcoin. I don't try to guess the timing of the market. I just buy and hold.
But I come from a developer background. I want to create tools so that others can do their jobs. I want these tools to be of high quality. So now I want to help other developers build these tools.
I see young people. They have more energy, more stamina, and they are more technically savvy than me. So I want to help them with that.
I think one thing that's happened that's a little bit unusual for BNB is the crazy growth of Chinese tickers, and a lot of people in the West are trying to figure out what the hell is going on. What do you think about this?
I think it's a big coincidence. From my perspective, the way it happened was very coincidental.
First of all, I experimented for a while earlier this year, in February, trying to buy a memecoin online for the first time. I used Trust Wallet. I thought, "How hard can this be? I've used Trust Wallet before, right?" It's a pretty simple interface. I know how private keys work.
So I used my Trust Wallet to make the purchase, and it was really funny because everyone laughed at me because I didn't know what I was doing. I got hacked, and nothing happened, et cetera. But I was just playing. It was a small amount of money—about $50 or $100, something like that.
I learned in the process, and for some reason, people pay close attention to everything I do. It got to the point where they asked me about my dog, my pet. I have a dog, and there's a story about it. There's a meme about it.
Basically, any tweet I posted, any picture, icon, or anything else I posted, they turned into a meme. For a while, I became very careful about what I published. But then it became awkward. I couldn't do anything normally.
I wanted to tweet freely, and at some point I said to myself, "Fuck that. I'm going to tweet freely." If people want to make memes, let them.
Somehow, it became the culture of the memecoin space on the BNB network, and a significant part of it is Chinese. Recently, He, the co-founder of Binance, responded to a tweet by saying something like, "This is Binance life," and so on. She's obviously much better at Chinese. She writes poetry, and she's more literary and creative.
People turned it into a tweet. It was sometime earlier this week, I think it was Tuesday, which was the Mid-Autumn Festival. I first posted a tweet that said something like, "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival," and then deleted it. I reposted it and wrote, "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. Post your best memes."
I thought it would be interesting to start an activity in the community. But, of course, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a Chinese holiday. So all the memes were Chinese: the moon, mooncakes, the moon, and so on.
Then they created tickers in Chinese. It was a play on my name; they changed it to a female version. It was quite creative, but only Chinese speakers could understand the meme, and that's why it became more popular.
I had a few interactions, and the Chinese community became more active. Then it all just went up in smoke. I think that's what attracted a lot of the Solana community.
People started—Western users started—posting, "I'm learning Chinese on Duolingo." This was completely unplanned. It just gradually grew into this.
Yes, yes. I sit there clutching Google Translate, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Amidst all this meme madness, the controversial launch of Meme Rush took place the other night, and many people had many opinions about it. There was a mechanism where you could buy tokens with a market capitalization of up to $1 million only if you passed KYC on Binance. So people in the US couldn't participate until a later point.
I don't know how much you can say about this, but I would like to ask: What is the purpose of launching something like Meme Rush?
I wasn't involved with Meme Rush at all.
I only found out about it yesterday. I found out when the community was a little confused. I was like, “What is this thing?” In fact, I didn’t even know it was called Meme Rush. When I saw it, I thought, “Okay, there are some problems here, right?”
First of all, like the community, I wasn’t sure what it was because I don’t spend much time on Binance.com. I shouldn’t be in control of it. I can still get information, but I usually don’t ask. I just leave them alone. I didn’t know they were launching it. After it launched, I didn’t know what it was, and then the community started reacting. I thought, “Okay, there seems to be a misunderstanding about what this is.”
The community understood that, from now on, Binance.com would only list tokens from that channel, which is not true. That was not the intention, but somehow it turned into a negative for all the other existing meme coins, as the community understood it. So I was just as confused as everyone else. I was like, “Okay, what is this thing?” I started asking questions about it and realized that it was actually a misconception.
By the time I figured it all out, I had already flown to Bahrain yesterday morning, very early. On the way, as soon as I landed, I saw this and had to attend a few meetings. I met with the head of the central bank there, and I participated in a panel discussion on stage. I was in meetings all day while this was happening, and everyone was accusing me of supposedly selling meme coins. I was like, “What’s going on?”
By the time I figured it out and they cleared everything up, the market had already dropped a lot. But I think that’s one of the risks of meme coins, because they have no price support and they’ve been growing so fast in recent days. I was very shocked. I think that’s actually what happened.
Yes. Thank you for that. I want to ask you one more question related to memecoins before we move on to other topics: What should BNB do differently from Solana?
While I was reading the tweets and thinking about this issue, I want to give a shout-out to Frank DeGods. He has a really interesting thesis. He seems to have been the first to write that BNB has a unique advantage thanks to Binance.
This is actually vertical integration: the meme coin launches on a fork, gets onto Aster, gets access to Binance Alpha, and, if successful, to a Binance spot listing. I don’t think anyone else—not Solana, not Base, not any other ecosystem—can do that.
Was this a vertical strategy, or did it happen by chance? Do you see this as an advantage that could make on-chain activity on BNB even more active?
No, first of all, it was definitely not planned. For the first 6 and then 7.5 years, I was busy with a centralized exchange. I didn’t plan any projects for BNB Chain. Everything happened organically.
Then, when I got out of prison, a few months later, I decided I wasn’t going to waste any more time on a centralized exchange. So what should I spend my time on? I started looking at decentralized things.
I think Binance.com—the largest centralized exchange—is definitely an advantage, but it is not exclusive. Binance.com still lists tokens from all blockchains, including meme coins from everywhere.
However, the community feels this connection. This is one community where quite a few of the participants are more closely connected, as most of them probably own BNB to a certain extent. Most of them are probably more cooperative with each other.
There is definitely a certain advantage here. This is one more cohesive community. It is more cohesive, but it is not closed. Binance does not exclusively list BNB Chain projects or tokens, like Trust Wallet.
In fact, it seems to me that the Solana ecosystem is probably more closed, if you think about it. Phantom only supports Solana. It does not support BNB Chain. Whereas Trust Wallet supports BNB Chain, Solana, and many other blockchains.
Our ecosystem is actually more open, in my opinion. That’s why, when the Solana guys want to create a bridge to BNB Chain, they have to use Trust Wallet. They can’t use Phantom. Phantom only works on Solana, as far as I know.
Other ecosystems are actually much more closed than ours. We’re a BNB and Binance ecosystem, so most of the people hold some BNB and are more aligned in that regard. There are benefits, but it’s an open system. It’s not a “closed garden.”
Since you did me a favor and came here, I’ll return the favor and see what can be done with Phantom on the BNB network.
I’ll see what I can do.
Mr. CZ, we welcome Phantom’s support of BNB Chain. So, we talked about memecoins, and I think the other obvious story of this cycle was the development of perp DEXs.
I want to talk a little bit about Hyperliquid. A good way to approach it is: Why do you think there has been such a surge in the popularity of perps in crypto right now, and why do you attribute such early success to Hyperliquid?
Of course. First of all, perps aren’t something completely new, are they? There was dYdX, and there were a lot of other projects before that.
But I think Hyperliquid is pretty good in terms of how all the transactions are tracked on the network, using vaults, and they’ve done a pretty good job with marketing. They brought in James Wayne, who was placing a billion-dollar order there. So it’s just a lot of hype. I think that’s probably the best way to describe it.
But I always thought that traders need their own privacy when trading, right? Every Wall Street trader I talk to doesn’t want others to see their orders in real time. Maybe later it will be fine, but even then they probably don’t like people seeing their orders because people can reverse-engineer their algorithms. Once they do, they attack them.
In my opinion, if you know exactly how another person is going to trade, there is always a way to play against them so that they lose money, right? For me, this aspect of transparency never made much sense. That’s based on my 20 years of experience in the trading industry, on Wall Street, in the cryptosphere, on centralized exchanges, and so on. It just doesn’t make sense. I can’t accept it.
I posted a tweet, I think it was in early June of this year, maybe 3 or 4 months ago, and I got about 30 offers that same day. Then Esther said, “Look, we can implement this hidden warrant.” I replied, “Do it.” Someone else said, “Okay, we can make a completely private protocol.” So I said, “Act.”
We invested—I actually invested—in a whole bunch of these projects. Given the relative volumes, I think that, if not in this cycle, then in the next one, in 4 years, they will definitely match the trading volumes on centralized exchanges.
That would be my next question: How big is the total addressable market for decentralized exchanges? What needs to happen for them to bypass centralized exchanges? What needs to happen for them to overtake centralized exchanges?
I think there are 2 factors at play here. For most newcomers to the cryptosphere, when they want to use an exchange, they first choose a centralized exchange.
Of course, yes.
They want to use an email, password, and support. They don’t want to deal with addresses, keys, backups, MEV, and other complexities, right? When you use a DEX, you see a lot more random strings of characters on the screen. You have to look in the explorer and deal with all these things, so I think the experience is not the best for beginners.
Centralized exchanges are far from saturating the market right now. I think somewhere around 90% of people are not yet in the cryptosphere, and when they come, they will first go to centralized exchanges.
At the same time, over time, decentralized exchanges offer more product choices, more access, and more of all sorts of things. There is more early-stage access. I think DEXs will give you access to early-stage tokens, coins, memes—whatever you want to call them. That’s the cutting edge, right?
Over time, as people get used to managing their own private keys, backups, security, and so on, they’ll start to migrate. In the long term—20, 30, or 50 years from now—I think everything will be on-chain.
During the transition period, depending on the speed, if there is a large influx of traditional users into the space, centralized exchanges will be better. Later, they will slowly flow to DEXs, I think.
CEXs are also much more regulated. They will have fiat channels, banking channels, and so on. They won’t disappear. The traditional financial industry won’t disappear overnight. It will probably take a century.
Both options are needed, but I really think that, in the future, the decentralized space will become quite large.
I think this path makes sense, right? Onboarding through a CEX, diving deeper into crypto, and then moving to a DEX. What do you think needs to happen for Aster to truly overtake Hyperliquid and become bigger?
Well, I guess it depends on the day and time. This is already happening to some extent. I think these are 2 different uses, so even with this small change in features, these are very different use cases.
If you want to trade openly, with everyone able to see, you can use Hyperliquid. That’s great. If you want to have some level of privacy, I think Aster is more open to native deposits, right?
You can deposit native Solana tokens through Aster. You can deposit more assets, and it supports more blockchains natively.
Again, I think it’s more open. It’s a misconception that this is just a perpetual on the BNB Chain. That’s true, but it’s very open.
I think there’s a lot here. In the end, both are new products. Both have literally been around for less than 1 or 2 years. Aster is actually a derivative of ApolloX, an older product, so it has a little more history, but both products are very new.
The future can belong to anyone. It could be new players—who knows? Being first doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll always be the greatest. Sometimes being second is even better because you learn much faster.
Well, that’s the OpenC dilemma, yes, the OpenC thesis. Why don’t they just add this kind of privacy functionality to the dark pool? Do you think they will do this, and would it change Aster’s thesis if they did?
First of all, I think they definitely could. I would say they should—that would be my recommendation to them. But exchanges don’t compete on just one function, right?
Over time, there will be different features and different philosophies. Different founders have different visions. They will copy each other, and there will be many different features. Exchanges don’t compete on individual features.
How you protect users and how you deal with errors also matters. Both of them will move to L1 blockchains in the future, right? So how they’re structured, what technology they use, and, once they move to an L1 blockchain, what ecosystem they can bring around that blockchain—that matters.
It’s much more than just one function. I think that’s what we’re seeing at this stage, but they’re both going to evolve.
Yes. I like this look. I also want to ask you as a supplement: what, in your opinion, is the most important indicator for assessing the success of these derivatives exchanges?
There was a small dispute when DeFiLlama, who were on my stream recently, seemed to stop tracking Aster. There was this crazy influx of volume, and I know there are incentives like airdrops and all that stuff. They seemed to be saying, “We can’t understand where the real volume is, where the fake volume is, and where the fake trading is. Until we figure this out, we’ll stop tracking Aster. We’ll come back to this later.”
What do you think is the metric people should pay attention to in order to decide who wins in DEXs, if I may say so?
I think this is not just one indicator. If it were one metric, it would have to be the number of users plus volume.
It’s an age-old problem. Even when running a centralized exchange, people say, “Look, how do you spot wash trading?” But if you look at it from the exchange’s perspective, how do they determine whether it’s a trade or not? Two people pay commission for the trade, right? If you have zero commission, then that’s a different matter.
With an airdrop, it’s a little different too. People are trying to farm airdrops, and that actually encourages them to trade more. But at what point does it become wash trading, and at what point does it not? Again, this is a very subjective question.
I think it would be smarter for DefiLlama to just put a mark saying, “What’s going on now is an airdrop.” This is a fact. Then people understand, “Okay, this volume was generated through an airdrop.” Different airdrops are a very common phenomenon for many projects. Even Hyperliquid did it and is doing it now.
This trading volume may depend on airdrops. The number of users could mean the number of addresses or the number of users on the DEX. You have no accounts; you only have addresses. So how do you count it? People can screw this up. One bot can control 1,000 addresses.
There’s also revenue, commissions, and so on. Therefore, I think we need to look at a combination of indicators. Ultimately, people will gradually gravitate to where the best price is for users, which is usually on exchanges with the best liquidity, lowest fees, greatest stability, and security.
Users are really concerned about these things. Nothing else matters.
Yes, that was one of the questions I wanted to ask: how do you even determine what true volume is? Do you have a definition of what that even means?
This is it, actually. I have an idea. For most people, if you want to buy $1,000 worth of tokens and that token is listed on 2 exchanges, just buy $500 here and $500 there. Compare how many tokens you got on each exchange for $500.
Then withdraw them and compare the result in your wallet. This way, you’ll see deposit and withdrawal fees, if any, as well as slippage and all the other costs that affect the final amount. Many users do this, not entirely systematically, but they feel the difference, stop at exchanges with a better experience, and subsequently trade there 1,000 times more.
Yes. Logically. Okay, I have a transition question, and then a quick blitz if you have another 10 minutes.
My transition question is about the famous story of how, over a decade ago, you learned about Bitcoin, quit your job, invested all your capital, sold your house, and went all in. The on-chain space is currently at a state where, as they joke, the average holding time for an asset on Solana is 17 seconds. Everyone is trading memecoins. No one can hold anything for even a short while.
You invested all your capital at one time, and it seems like you held on for 2 or 3 years until Bitcoin finally worked. What mental framework is needed to begin developing a belief in a thesis like the one you had about Bitcoin?
It took me about 6 months to fully understand Bitcoin. I first learned about Bitcoin sometime in July 2013, in the summer of 2013. By December of the same year, I said, “Okay, this is the future. Now I understand it. This is the future.”
It takes a lot of time to gain that kind of conviction. For me, it was simply that this was the future. I was about 35 or 36 years old then. For me, it was a fateful decision. It wasn’t like I was just going to buy this to make money tomorrow, next week, or in 3 months, and then get out.
I was too young when the Internet revolution happened. I had just graduated from college. Now I was 35. The next big thing would come in 15 years, and then I would be 50, which is too old. There is so much hype around AI right now. I'm 50. I'm 48. So I'm too old to jump into this.
I thought, “Listen, I was 35 or 36 years old then. This is my time.” I was lucky because this was a technology that would change the future. When you have that vision, it’s not about making a quick 3-month income and getting out. I’m in this industry because this is the future.
Once I understood the technology, everything became very clear to me. There were no more doubts. It wasn’t like someone could say something and change my mind. It was the future, period. This industry is the future. I just had to find the right thing, and Bitcoin is the future.
Bitcoin is the flagship. Nothing challenged it, especially at the time, and even today I don’t think anything can match it. Therefore, my conviction always remains. I’m not here for easy money. I’m not here as a trader. I’m here because I know this is the technology of the future.
I’m a technologist. I’m a programmer. This is the industry I want to be in. I was in my early 30s, and I wanted to be in it completely. I didn’t have much cash, so I had to go all in, quit my job, and work in this industry.
Many consider this high risk, but for me, even if Bitcoin fell to zero, I could come back and get a job at a bank as an IT specialist. I would receive a 6-figure salary. Everything would be fine with my life. That was my backup option. I had a retreat plan.
So even if I risked everything financially, my backup option was pretty solid. When Bitcoin crashed a couple of years after I bought it, it was a bit painful, but I thought, “Either I’m really wrong, or not everyone has realized it yet.”
I couldn’t sell. If I sold, what would I do next? I was stuck for about 18 months, and then Bitcoin started to grow again. Once you get through the first cycle, future cycles become easier.
I went through a bear market at $200, and then the next one was at $3,000. I went through $200, and now I’m at $3,000. What are you complaining about? Now, when the price drops to $115,000 or $120,000, people say, “Oh, it fell.” Seriously?
You look great for 48. I think it’s the lighting or the pose.
I try to take care of myself. I exercise and try to stay in shape.
I have a few quick questions for you. How old were you when you made your first million dollars?
I think it was around 2016 or 2017, just before Binance launched.
Just before Binance, where did you work in 2016 or 2017?
First, the price of Bitcoin rose during that period. I wasn’t tracking or counting all the time, and besides, my business, BJtech, was doing well. It was a B2B business, and things were going very smoothly.
So I was financially independent—barely—just before Binance.
Who do you think is the most talented person you’ve ever worked with or competed with?
I worked with very smart programmers. One of my first bosses was 7 years older than me. He was a brilliant programmer, but unreliable. When he focused, he was very sharp, but he focused probably 5% of the time.
So I learned from him how to write better code, but the more important lesson I learned was to be more reliable.
Yes, logically. One more question for you: You were involved in trading from the very beginning of your career, right? You worked at Bloomberg, you worked at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and now we’re discussing meme coins on BNB and Solana. How much has the trading game changed since you first got involved in the field compared to where we are now?
Oh yes, it has changed a lot. In the traditional world, there are special data centers on the stock exchange; there is colocation. The market is open 6 or 4 hours a day, right? There is a morning session and an afternoon session. There is a pre-market, auctions before the opening, then the market opens at 9, closes at 3:30, and after that you can do maintenance on the systems.
Now it’s 24/7. Everything is online. It’s every minute, every second, and it’s meme coins—it’s completely different. The technologies and fundamental concepts are similar, but the content is very different. Some of the concepts still work, but the technology has advanced and the industries have changed.
Another question: If you were starting over and were 23 years old in 2025, what game would you be playing right now? Whether in crypto or some other area of technology or finance, since this stream is watched by a lot of young people, particularly from the Solana community, what vertical would you focus on right now?
I’m going to give you some pretty controversial advice, so take it skeptically, with a certain amount of doubt. I would have been involved in startups much earlier.
I think that in the future, if you work in an office, that’s fine, of course, but the real opportunities are in startups. I would have joined startups much earlier to gain experience and launched my own startup sooner.
But again, this is extremely high-risk. When you do that, you always have to think about the worst-case scenario. What’s the worst that could happen if everything comes down to zero? How will your life turn out? You have to be confident in saying, “Listen, I can still live my life.”
This is something you should have as a backup option. Once you have that backup option, your life will be okay. So I would have been involved in startups much, much earlier.
There’s a balance here. Too early, without experience, you’re guaranteed to fail and hit a wall, so try to avoid that. Have a plan B.
Yes, got it. My least favorite narrative, the thing I hate most in the crypto community, is the idea that you have a limited time frame to succeed. If you know the famous GCR tweet, you have a few years after college to take crazy risks and achieve elite status, or you’ll be stuck in the underclass forever.
I think that’s part of the psychology that fuels the 17-second asset-holding time in Solana: “I have to make that one super trade, or I’ll be an employee for the rest of my life.” What do you think about how much time the younger generation has to succeed?
They have a lot of time. I’m just a typical counterexample to what you described. I founded Binance when I was 40. I’m 48 now, so I spent the first 17 years of my career doing different things. I was successful. I was a good programmer and a good developer. I became a manager in a large organization, but it’s never too late.
There is a misconception that many, if not all, founders are very young. In fact, the average age of founders is quite mature, around 40 years old and above. But I would say that you have to go through a lot of failures to become successful, because startups and all these new things are really hard.
You can start early. You want to try everything as early as possible, but you have to control the risks so you don’t have a real meltdown. You can make mistakes, but you have to be able to rise after failures. Also, don’t be too desperate or too stubborn.
We have seen failures caused by the founders’ mentality. They want to achieve great success very, very quickly. These are smart people, but they act too hastily.
True. That’s why I like your stories—it’s the antithesis of the idea that you have to be successful at 19 or you’re a failure.
Okay, I’ll let you go after this. This is actually the last thing I want to ask. Where do you think crypto media is heading? Do you have any advice for what I do—streaming? I run a media company in the crypto space, and you communicate with many people involved in crypto media. How do you see the development of this direction, and how can I most effectively win by trying to dominate this niche?
I think, first of all, traditional media will disappear. This industry will be completely reformed, and social networks will become increasingly powerful. Many independent small media outlets are emerging within social networks. Some of them will eventually become not so small. Some will have tens or even hundreds of millions of followers, and they will have quite influential voices.
The main thing is to do your job well. I also think the world is getting smaller. Previously, every media outlet was tied to a country. In the future, I think this stream will probably be watched by people from 100 different countries, right?
Crypto allows for microfinance and micropayments, so people will want to pay for each episode—10 cents or even 1 cent. If you have a large enough audience, you can make very good money, I think. Then you can do sponsorship deals and so on.
I think the world needs strong, reliable news sources right now, and traditional media is just not doing a good job of it. So this is a great opportunity, in my opinion.
I love it, and thank you to Counterparty and everyone who helped make this stream possible. And yes, in summary: I tried really hard, Mr. CZ. As one person to another, thank you for coming. I don’t mean to flatter you, but when I started this media company, we spent a lot of time wondering how we got to the point where we finally invited CZ to stream. You’ve come at the perfect moment, when things are pretty crazy.
As a crypto person, I am, of course, your fan, and I support what you’re doing. Good luck to BNB, and good luck to everything based on it. Is there anything you would like to conclude with? Maybe something that excites you, something you’re working on, something you want to say, or something you think people should pay attention to? Where are you now in this regard?
I have nothing to add. The crypto industry is never going to be an easy ride. There will always be many challenges, setbacks, and problems. I think strong founders, strong projects, and strong communities get through these problems, right? Problems will arise, and we as a community will solve them in the best way possible.
Personally, I can say that I have faced some pretty difficult problems in my life. I’ve had both very good times and very difficult times. But we’re here, and we want to do the right thing as long as everyone is doing the right thing. We are not harming anyone. We’re not trying to harm anyone. We are not involved in any scams or anything like that. Then we continue to build the industry.
You can create memes. You can create utility tokens. You can create tokenized securities. There are many different directions, and that’s actually very good. I’m a builder, and I firmly believe that as long as we keep building, this industry will continue to grow. This industry will grow because there are builders, because this is a new technology that is much better than what we had before for money.
I’m very optimistic. I think this week is pretty tough. This is such an unstable week. But next week, when we look back, everything will be fine. It will just be a small thing, and things will get better.
CZ, you’re the best, bro. I’m glad you’re back on Twitter. You’re like our optimistic uncle who supports us all. Honestly, it was an incredible pleasure. It’s an honor for me, and we’re rooting for you, man. I really appreciate your time.
Thank you very much, Michael.