Richard Teng, Managing Director of Binance Holdings Ltd., during an event organized by the Foreign correspondent association in Singapore, Tuesday September 17, 2024.
Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The CEO of Binance, Richard Teng, said that the Trump administration was a “fantastic” reset for the cryptocurrency industry.
“It is an extremely different environment in which we operate,” Teng told CNBC on Tuesday.
In 16 months, Binance went from a political pariah to a possible power broker in Washington. Once the poster child for the regulatory challenge – Binance was slapped with a record regulation of $ 4.3 billion with regulators and forced to pass the billionaire founder, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao – The Crypto Exchange is now sailing a dramatically friendly political landscape under the second administration of President Donald Trump.
“We benefited from this change,” said Teng, who was appointed CEO of Binance in November 2023.
Teng’s comments came while crypto exchange is in talks for the Trump family to take a financial participation in the company, according to A Wall Street Journal report Earlier this month. The same day, Bloomberg reported This World Liberty Financial, a cryptographic bank linked to Trump which has not yet launched, is engaged in talks with Binance to launch a stable coin in dollars.
If such transactions were concluded, this would mark an astounding reversal for a company that was once a pariah in Washington.
Teng, an old soft voice regulator, paid attention to his words during the fight against relationships.
“I believe that the World Liberty Financial as well as CZ himself tweeted and denied reports,” said Teng, who directs exchange operations outside the United States
As for rumors on a Trump participation in Binance.us, Teng dismantled.
“.Us and .com are very different animals, right?” He said. “They have different shareholders’ sets, different boards of directors and various CEOs that perform the show.”
Binance has structured the two exchanges as independent stitches in response to a regulatory examination, aimed at ringing the closing of its American operations from larger international affairs.
However, Teng is optimistic about what the new political environment means for the crypto.
“We have gone from four years of operation Choke Point 2.0 to now-you have a very pro-Crypto president, pro-ai,” he said. Although Binance.com does not work in the United States, he said: “We have benefited from all these pro-Crypto policies.”
Choke Point 2.0 is the way in which the initiates of the industry refer to an alleged repression of the banks inherited on digital asset companies during the Biden administration.
Teng has described a rapid global expansion that brought the binance from 170 million to 265 million users in just one year.
“We have received many approaches from different governments from around the world,” said Teng, citing regulatory progress in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates.
Binance is now authorized in 21 jurisdictions, and its influence extends far beyond the scope of a single country. This includes sovereign funds, some of which are starting to allocate quietly to the crypto, said Teng.
In the background of all this optimism is the reality of the Binance checkered past.
Zhao, the founder and former CEO of the company, was charged criminally, forced to resign and served a short prison sentence. Binance paid for the Multibillion -Dollar regulations – finalized at the end of 2023 – to resolve a series of violations with American regulators, including the Ministry of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
A major front remains open: the civil affair of the Securities and Exchange Commission against Binance and Zhao.
The dry and the binance in February accepted a 60 -day break In the procedures, the two parties consider a potential resolution. The stay comes in the middle of a wider decline in the dry from several high -level cryptography proceedings – indicating potential regulatory reset by virtue of the new administration.
“We have sub-invited in compliance in these first days,” said Teng. “But what is important as a responsible institution is to recognize these first mistakes, to make amends and to invest considerably in compliance, which we do now.”
Binance now employs more than 1,300 professionals in compliance, or about a quarter of his total workforce, said Teng. “The direction of the trip is very clear. This is a compliance.”
The Nigerian government could disagree.
One of Binance’s best compliance officers, Tigran Gambaryan, has recently been imprisoned in difficult conditions. In Nigeria, Binance was confronted with accusations of alleged non-payment of added value and corporate income tax, non-puncture of income and complicity to help customers escape taxes via its platform.
Alongside Gambaryan, who is an American citizen and former employee of the Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria has also imprisoned its executive colleague Nadeem Anjarwalla, who is British-Kenyan. Both were charged and placed in pre -trial detention by the Nigerian authorities. Anjarwalla escaped the guard in March 2024 and Gambaryan was released several months later.
“The treatment he followed in Nigeria is not justified,” said Teng about Anjarwalla. “We have always tried to file and work in cooperation with governments around the world.”
Since taking into account as CEO, Teng has transferred the company from a startup led by the founder to an organization regulated by the board of directors.
“Now I am coming from the board of directors,” said Teng. “We have a board of directors of seven members, including three independent administrators and an independent president.”
For all the faces of the Binance of Control, Teng insists that the platform remains dominant.
“At any time, we have more than 40% of the global market share,” he said.
He rejected concerns about Cornerbase An increasing political influence and the momentum behind funds negotiated in exchange for crypto, arguing that ETFs are a gateway in the crypto trade.
“Many users who are starting to negotiate via FNBs later progress towards cryptocurrency platforms,” said Teng, noting that although the crypto is constantly negotiating, the ETFs are limited to opening hours.
Binance concluded its first institutional investment at the beginning of the month in an agreement of $ 2 billion with the public investment company Emirati MGX, which is an AI and an advanced technological fund which counts Blackrock and Microsoft as a partners. It is the biggest investment ever transformed into a cryptographic company and the biggest to be fully paid in stablecoins.
Teng said he considered investment as a way to reject crypto and AI.
“We use an AI on an extended basis,” said Teng, noting that Binance uses artificial intelligence for customer service, security and compliance monitoring. “”This is the blockchain sector. We must continue to use technology to achieve efficiency. “”
Asked what keeps him at night, Teng has shaken a list: safety, compliance, product innovation and opportunities for mergers and acquisitions.
“We want to make sure that we run a very robust, operational and best in class platform,” he said.
