Original Title: How Binance's Yi He became 'the most powerful woman in crypto'—and steered the company past its biggest ordeal
Original Source: Fortune
Original Translation: CryptoLeo, Odaily Planet Daily
Editor’s Note: Fortune recently interviewed Binance co-founder Yi He, discussing her efforts in the crypto space, the situation she faced during CZ's time at Binance and after his departure. Odaily Planet Daily has translated the original text.
In the 1980s, when Yi He was a little girl, she had to fetch water from a well and sometimes relied on a kerosene lamp for light. Today, Yi He has become a celebrity in the eyes of millions of Chinese people and has become a billionaire with her 10% stake in Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. As a co-founder and executive at Binance, she wields significant influence. However, her life has not been easy.
Another co-founder of Binance, CZ, was imprisoned last year in the U.S. due to a $4.3 billion plea agreement. This situation posed significant business challenges for Binance and Yi He, and for Yi He personally, CZ's imprisonment was a painful experience, as CZ is not only the CEO of the company but also the father of her young child.
Now, Binance has weathered the storm. CZ has completed his sentence. CZ's plea caused Binance to suffer a blow that could have paralyzed most companies, yet Binance remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Yi He played a crucial role during this period of Binance's development, and after years of wielding power behind the scenes, she is stepping into the spotlight to publicly manage Binance.
In this rare interview, Yi He shared with Fortune her journey from a poor rural girl to a cryptocurrency billionaire, the trials she faced during the Binance crisis, and her vision for a rapidly changing global financial industry.
Chief Customer Service, Approachable Yi He
Throughout her life and career, Yi He has overcome many obstacles, one of which was learning English. It wasn't until four years ago, when she was in her thirties, that she began to learn English. During a lengthy Zoom interview, Yi He performed well, only seeking help from her translator when struggling to explain a Chinese idiom or proverb.
Yi He understands the power of communication. At Binance, she is known for her exceptional marketing and customer service skills, which helped Binance become the largest trading platform in the world in less than a year. To this day, she takes pride in listening to customer feedback on platforms like Telegram, X, WeChat, and any other place where Binance customers can be found, insisting that others at Binance do the same. She requires every new employee at Binance to work on the front lines of customer service for a few weeks, a rule that is well-known.
In the interview, Yi He recounted a recent incident involving a college student who mistakenly sent $500 worth of cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet, a common mistake in the crypto world that usually means the funds are unrecoverable. However, Yi He took the time to track down and recover the misdirected funds, recalling that the student told her, "This money is nothing to you, but it means everything to me."
Yi He stated that her experiences growing up in a poor family in Sichuan Province allow her to empathize with such situations. She lost her father at the age of nine and, at sixteen, spent long hours selling soft drinks outside supermarkets. Although she eventually got into college (pausing to recall the joy of walking into a library for the first time) and became a television host, she noted that her background means she can still resonate with many of Binance's lower-income customers.
Yi He's story is reminiscent of Jennifer Lopez's song "Jenny From the Block," which tells of a beautiful woman who remains down-to-earth even after achieving success—exactly the type of story Americans love.
However, Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet (who previously worked with Yi He at Binance), stated that the situation is different in China. Eowyn Chen believes that Chinese people are less inclined to support the underdog and more likely to insult those who surpass their status. Yi He often becomes the target of satire in articles and on social media, which attempt to belittle and mock her, but her response is to return the negative comments to those who spread them.
She tells people, "Of course, I come from a poor background, but I am successful. Why can't you do the same?"
Yi He has been recognized by Bloomberg as "the most influential woman in cryptocurrency," rising to the top of the blockchain world through her intelligence, hard work, and confident personality—qualities she shares with co-founder and partner CZ.
Creating Binance
When CZ founded Binance in 2017, he established a distinct public persona with the name "CZ," which is now well-known to most people. CZ shaped the "CZ myth" by taking significant risks (such as selling his house in Shanghai in 2014 to buy more Bitcoin) and enthusiastically participating in the daily banter of the online community known as "Crypto Twitter."
CZ invited Yi He to join Binance in its early days, but Yi He had recruited CZ a few years earlier, persuading him to join OKCoin (now OKX) as CTO in 2014. Both were passionate about cryptocurrency, but they also shared other commonalities. Both CZ and Yi He spent their early years in rural schoolhouses without heating, and it wasn't until CZ's father immigrated to Canada that things began to improve; CZ worked minimum-wage jobs at Chevron and McDonald's during high school. CZ also tends to hit back at those who mock his background, even retweeting meme images of himself in a McDonald's uniform.
It was during their time at OKCoin that they became a couple and gained experience in running a large cryptocurrency operation. Today, this pair, who have never married but maintain a romantic relationship, work closely together as both parents and business partners. The Wall Street Journal reported that Yi He and CZ co-own YZi Labs, the venture capital arm of Binance, and hold at least 10% of the parent company.
Regarding her relationship with CZ, Yi He requested to remain anonymous but provided a written statement: "My personal life is separate from my career. As a co-founder, my achievements and abilities are often questioned because of my personal life," she wrote, while emphasizing that Binance has 280 million users.
Regardless of how this relationship plays out on a personal level, it has proven to be very effective on a professional level. Yi He's role at Binance is roughly equivalent to Sheryl Sandberg's position at Facebook. Sandberg helped build Facebook in its early days while helping the then-immature CEO Mark Zuckerberg find his footing.
In practical terms, this means that CZ serves as Binance's legendary spokesperson and product visionary, while Yi He drives significant growth for Binance through active promotional activities (including giving away cars). Her approach has been well-received by the overseas Chinese community as well as people within China. In China, although cryptocurrency is banned in some respects, it remains very popular, partly because it is an easily transferable asset that is not subject to government regulations.
A Binance employee who wished to remain anonymous described Yi He as a demanding boss, but one who also supports her employees and advocates for those around her. When discussing Binance's daily operations, Yi He stated that the company's core principle is "founder culture," a term used in the tech industry to describe companies that have maintained the spirit of early startups.
For Binance, its early development benefited to some extent from its willingness to quickly evade regulations and frequently move from one country to another under government scrutiny. While this strategy fueled Binance's astonishing growth, it also became one of the company's biggest weaknesses—this is precisely what led to the loss of its most prominent founder.
Post-CZ Era of Binance
By early 2023, the situation had become increasingly dire. The previous year, after the collapse of FTX, owned by SBF, the U.S. government doubled down on efforts to introduce policies targeting the cryptocurrency industry, particularly focusing on the largest player in the industry, Binance. For years, the company's lawyers had been in discussions with the Department of Justice over various allegations, but ultimately reached an agreement.
In September 2023, U.S. regulators announced a comprehensive settlement agreement that not only required Binance to pay up to $4.3 billion in fines (the largest such fine in corporate history) but also forced CZ to resign as CEO of Binance and admit to failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering measures. Meanwhile, both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters cited multiple anonymous sources stating that regulators were also trying to force Yi He to leave Binance. ("The plea agreement between Binance and U.S. regulators is public," a company spokesperson stated.)
Despite suffering heavy blows to its finances and leadership, two years later, under the leadership of CZ's successor Richard Teng, Binance remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange to date. Richard Teng, a former senior regulatory official in Singapore, helped Binance implement a series of compliance measures and shaped a new image indicating that the company had moved away from its early rapid and loose tactics. In January of this year, Binance also took a significant step by introducing a formal board structure, including seven members and three independent directors, among them Richard Teng.
Nevertheless, a former employee of the company told Fortune that power at Binance is still held by the early executives (CZ, Yi He, and two other early Binance executives, Lilai Wang and Wei Zhou). The employee added that Yi He has final decision-making authority on all personnel matters and holds the most power in customer experience decisions. Meanwhile, a Binance spokesperson stated that this claim is inaccurate and that the company's culture encourages employees to exercise a high degree of autonomy.
At the same time, a founder of a venture capital firm described Binance as a company run with an "iron fist," which, despite facing new legal restrictions and the challenges of operating a large global business, remains a market leader. This assessment seems to be supported by recent data from CoinGecko, which shows that despite new competitors emerging, Binance still holds the largest share of trading activity—39% of the trading volume on centralized exchanges in June.
For Yi He, Binance's continued dominance is a validation of her "customer-first" strategy and a testament to the personal belief of the company's founders in cryptocurrency—she believes this technology is transformative, comparable to the impact of the internet on traditional media and television.
Yi He predicts that cryptocurrency will accelerate its penetration into the traditional financial system through stablecoins and other blockchain technologies, achieving full integration in the next five to ten years.
On a personal level, Yi He stated that the mass adoption of cryptocurrency feels like another significant technological transformation she has experienced since her teenage years, when her home had no electricity or running water.
Reflecting on her journey, Yi He quoted a saying by Xi Murong: "Since we said it was good, let’s not say it hurts anymore."
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