He Yi Speech in Hong Kong: Willpower and Sense of Direction

Edited by: Wu Blockchain

During the 2025 Web3 Festival and the Hong Kong Crypto Finance Forum roundtable discussion, He Yi, co-founder of Binance, shared her observations on Web3 and her personal reflections.

He Yi stated that the essence of Binance lies in three things: first, building great products; second, providing excellent service to users and employees; and third, maintaining effective communication with regulators. These three aspects form the core of our competitiveness.

Many Web3 startups face a common issue: they lack a viable business model. Their narratives are often too abstract for users to understand, and they rely on inflated metrics to get listed on exchanges — only to disappear shortly after. This approach is unsustainable. We cannot merely chase concepts. The real question is: whose problem are you solving, and how significant is that problem? How large is your user base? Does your product meet a real, urgent demand? These are the fundamental issues.

Whether or not you use blockchain technology is secondary — as long as you build something truly useful and are willing to give back to the community, you deserve respect.

Successful companies tend to share a few common traits:

1. Timing — riding the wave of the right era.

2. Positioning — doing the right thing based on your strengths.

3. Team — having a reliable and capable team.

4. Extreme willpower — the ability to endure the hardest moments.

Look at Nvidia, Tesla, or even Binance — there were many moments when it felt like a near-death experience. But we survived because we held on just one step longer than others. You need strong willpower and a firm sense of direction. You must know who you are, where you come from, and where you’re headed. Negative voices are inevitable, but you must withstand them and recognize that this is the “purgatory” every mature founder must go through.

The following is the full transcript of the roundtable discussion:

Moderator: Since the beginning of this year — especially after the Lunar New Year — you’ve become noticeably more active on X (formerly Twitter), which is a stark contrast to the past few years. Some people are even wondering if it’s being managed by someone else on your behalf. Could you share what changes have taken place behind the scenes?

He Yi: Long-time Binance users may know that I’ve always referred to myself as the “Chief Customer Service Officer.” Since 2017, I’ve been active in various WeChat groups, on Weibo, and other social platforms, engaging frequently with users. These interactions allow me to identify product issues and user needs more keenly, and to promptly relay them back to the product team.

Nowadays, the “Founder Model” is gaining traction in Silicon Valley — the idea that founders should be on the front lines. I believe we’ve followed this model from the very beginning. It’s just that my presence on Chinese-language social media temporarily disappeared because my Weibo account was suspended.

In the English-speaking community, everyone knows that CZ used to be extremely active online. Now that he has stepped down, we’ve realized that Binance’s communication with users in the Chinese-speaking community has become somewhat disconnected. That’s why I’ve returned to the social media “frontlines.”

In addition, I often emphasize to our management team that we are actually serving two groups: users and employees. External users need to feel heard, and internal employees need to feel supported. As leaders, we must foster an environment where employees are motivated to give their best and proud to say, “I work at Binance.”

The essence of Binance lies in three things: first, building great products; second, serving users and employees well; and third, maintaining effective communication with regulators. These three elements form the core of our competitiveness.

Moderator: What kind of progress has this high-frequency interaction brought so far? Have you identified any new issues in the process? And do you plan to maintain this level of engagement moving forward?

He Yi: Of course, I hope to “replicate” more versions of myself — encouraging more employees and executives to adopt a “Chief Customer Service Officer” mindset. Only when they can do it better than I can, will I be able to step back from the front lines.

But the reality is that we’ve already entered the Web3 era, where information dissemination has shifted from being “one-way” to “multi-directional” — everyone is now a node in the network. The challenge this brings is information overload: 99.99% of the information might be useless to you, but the remaining 0.01% — the real “gold” — can be incredibly valuable.

Moreover, when everyone becomes a KOL, information can easily get distorted or misrepresented during transmission — and sometimes even evolve into outright rumors. These rumors may be completely absurd, but you simply don’t have the time to clarify each one.

That’s why you need strong willpower and a clear sense of direction. You have to know who you are, where you come from, and where you’re going. Negative voices are inevitable, but you must be able to withstand them — and recognize that this is the “purgatory” every mature founder must go through.

Moderator: You’ve mentioned several recent initiatives — such as the “Sunshine Airdrop” wallet campaign and the on-chain launch of Alpha 2.0. Is there a unified strategic logic behind these moves? What goals are you aiming to achieve?

He Yi: We have to acknowledge one thing: compared to the industry’s top-tier wallets, the Binance Wallet still has room for improvement. When our product isn’t strong enough, we need to work harder in other areas — to give users a reason to wait for us. We will do better.

At the end of the day, any product must return to the core needs of the user. Many people draw a clear line between wallets and exchanges, but in reality, users have long been using both services interchangeably.

If a wallet is just a wallet, then why are on-chain wallet users actively trading? And if that’s the case, why can’t an exchange also function as a wallet? Personally, I’m not a frequent trader — my exchange account is my wallet.

Today, many on-chain wallets require no KYC and no anti-money laundering (AML) checks, yet they allow users to trade millions of tokens. In contrast, centralized exchanges face much stricter compliance requirements and can only list a few hundred tokens. This isn’t a matter of one being superior to the other — it’s simply a different set of choices shaped by regulatory frameworks.

The reason Binance Wallet takes a more conservative approach is because we’ve been burned before — we simply cannot afford another compliance failure. This is about responsibility, not “foolishness.”

Moderator: So, would you say that Binance’s recent series of adjustments is actually a response to changes in broader industry trends? In your view, what fundamental shifts are taking place in the crypto industry right now?

He Yi: The industry is indeed changing. In the early years, cryptocurrency was a niche space for geeks and idealists. But today, even the most mainstream institutions — like the U.S. government — have started to embrace it. Why? Because once a technology proves its value and shows that it can improve efficiency, it will inevitably be adopted and utilized by the mainstream.

The crypto ETF is a clear milestone — it represents the convergence of traditional finance and the crypto world. Regulation is also becoming more defined, with more countries and regions introducing concrete frameworks.

On the other hand, the crypto industry itself has also evolved beyond its early focus on public chains and exchanges, expanding into a much broader application layer — including use cases like cross-border payments with stablecoins, DeFi, and even DePIN — which now carry real, practical value.

It’s similar to how Silicon Valley evolved — from the hippie movement of the 1960s to becoming the backbone of global technology today. Web3 is following a similar path: rebellious in its early days, but ultimately destined to mature and serve the broader public.

Moderator: What’s your view on the various “sectors” emerging now — DeFi, RWA, DePIN, and so on? Which direction do you find most promising?

He Yi: I think instead of asking “Which sector do you find most promising?”, the better question is: What problem are you solving? And is anyone willing to pay for your product?

The problem with many Web3 startups is that they have no real business model. Their narratives are overly abstract — users can’t understand them — and they rely on inflated metrics to get listed on exchanges, only to fizzle out afterward. This is simply unsustainable.

We can’t just chase concepts. Who exactly are you helping, and what problem are you solving for them? How big is your user base? Does this product address a real, urgent need? These are the questions that truly matter.

I’m also not a fan of the “Web2 vs. Web3” kind of labeling. At the core, human nature is the same — and so is the essence of doing business.

Whether or not you’re using blockchain, as long as you’re building something truly useful and are willing to give back to the community, you deserve respect.

Successful companies tend to share several common traits:

1. Timing — Seizing the right opportunity in the right era.

2. Positioning — Doing the right things aligned with your strengths.

3. Team — Having a reliable and capable team.

4. Extreme willpower — The ability to endure all hardships.

Take Nvidia, Tesla, or even Binance — there were many moments when it felt like a near-death experience. But we survived because we held on just one step longer than others.

Moderator: How do you view the concept of Web3? You’ve mentioned that you hope Binance can become the “Google of Web3.”

Moderator: We all know that Google offers a wide range of services — from search and email to video and other tools. In your view, what is Binance’s core service within Web3? Is it the financial services we’re familiar with today, or does it extend to a broader set of application scenarios?

He Yi: Thank you. I’m actually not someone who likes to be easily defined. I believe that when we try to define something, we should look at it from a longer-term, historical perspective.

For example, if we look at the development of human society, we can divide it into three major stages. The first was the agricultural era, where land was the primary means of production. People relied on farming for food, and social structures were organized around families, led by patriarchs and elders — this was true in both Eastern and Western societies.

The second stage was the Industrial Revolution, which required factories and assembly lines. As a result, mass education emerged — with the primary goal of training enough workers. Even today’s elite business schools and MBA programs, at their core, are fundamentally about teaching people how to manage labor.

Now we’ve entered the information age — but what exactly is the most critical resource or means of production? Many people still don’t have a clear answer. So when we talk about Web1.0, Web2.0, and Web3.0, what we’re really trying to do is reclassify the stages of the information era. Web1.0 was about news and information — but does that mean the era of television and radio counts too? Web2.0 connected people through the internet, and Web3.0 is about using blockchain technology to drive certain transformations. But these definitions are often far from precise.

We often see new buzzwords emerge every few years — like the metaverse, or RWA (Real World Asset tokenization). But in fact, many of these concepts have already appeared over the past decade — they’ve just been given new names.

So rather than getting stuck on defining what Web3.0 is, we should be asking: what can we actually do to make the world better through technological innovation? This brings us back to Binance itself. Our slogan has never changed since the beginning — “Exchange the World.” What we’re building is a network, a platform that enables people to trade, make payments and transfers, access information, and even create groups and chat with friends.

That’s why I believe that when a company or entrepreneur is building a product, instead of getting caught up in whether it’s a Web3 or Web2 product, the better question to ask is: What value are you actually creating for users? What are you offering? And are users willing to pay for it? That’s what truly matters.

We can’t pursue technology just to follow trends or satisfy our own vanity. I often mention an example from Steve Jobs. In one of his speeches, someone questioned why Apple claimed to be a great company when its technology wasn’t as advanced as Google’s or Microsoft’s. His response was that technology must serve the user — if it doesn’t, then it’s meaningless.

So if you ask what Binance is trying to achieve — our vision for blockchain technology goes far beyond just being a trading platform. In our ecosystem, you’ll find infrastructure like BNB Chain, which plays a role similar to that of Amazon Web Services or Alibaba Cloud. It’s designed to empower new entrepreneurs to explore and realize new possibilities.

Moderator: What do you see as the main obstacles in the transition of Web3 from a niche for geeks to a mainstream phenomenon? And how are Binance and the broader ecosystem working to bridge that gap?

He Yi: If we look at the history of many technologies, we’ll see that they were not widely adopted by the public immediately after their invention. Often, there is a period of dormancy — until a particular catalyst emerges to reactivate interest, leading to widespread adoption. Take electric vehicles, for example. They are actually a very early technology, but it wasn’t until recent years — driven by environmental and energy concerns — that they truly took off.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology follows a similar logic — it’s fundamentally a great technology. What blockchain brings is the ability, for the first time, to enable global collaboration and trust without relying on a centralized organizational structure.

So when it comes to adoption, people often talk about the need to “educate users.” But I don’t fully agree with that notion. I studied education myself, and I’ve always disliked being lectured. That’s why I believe users don’t need to be educated — what really matters is whether what you’re doing is actually useful to them, whether it delivers real value.

The development of internet technology followed a similar path. When I was a teenager, I used to sneak into internet cafés to go online — back then, I didn’t even have an ID card, and people thought kids like me were “troublemakers.” At the time, there was even a label: “internet-addicted youth.”

But look at today — an 80-year-old grandma is using Pinduoduo to “bargain with a click.” Was she “educated” into that behavior? No, she was brought in by the application itself. A 60-year-old uncle buys fruit on Pinduoduo because the app genuinely helps improve his life. So instead of worrying about how to educate users, the real question is: how do you build a product that truly meets their needs?

Let me give you an example. When we hosted BBW in Dubai last year, we met a young man from Kenya who was working there. Every month, he used our platform to send his salary back home — it was fast, convenient, and low-cost. You don’t need to explain the underlying structure of blockchain to him. All he needs to know is that the product works well and saves him money — and that’s enough.

Nowadays, many people treat “wallets” and “exchanges” as entirely separate entities, but I don’t see it that way. How can we be certain that users aren’t utilizing their exchange accounts as wallets? My exchange account is my wallet. Why must we distinguish between wallet users and exchange users when the boundaries between the two are inherently blurred?

There’s a segment of power users — tech-savvy enthusiasts — who insist on having 100% control over their private keys. They want exchanges to have zero access, as that gives them a sense of security. But this is more of an idealistic, geek-driven notion. For many everyday users, they lack security awareness and don’t know how to properly manage private keys. For them, a centralized exchange is their wallet.

Today, many wallets are also offering trading services — for example, enabling users to trade directly without KYC or AML procedures, and access millions of tokens. In contrast, centralized exchanges are subject to strict compliance processes, which limit the number of tokens they can list.

At their core, they’re doing the same thing: serving users. Wallets meet the demand for accessing tokens that centralized exchanges can’t list — and they do so without requiring KYC. From this perspective, they’re essentially part of the same business category. There’s no hierarchy between them.

You attract users because you’re solving a real pain point. Whoever provides the service wins the market.

Moderator: How should Binance contribute to building a more positive and constructive image for the industry? And how can we guide the public and regulators to better understand and embrace this entirely new field?

He Yi: What I want to say is — whenever the price of crypto fluctuates, the media immediately jumps in with headlines like “Bitcoin is once again on the edge of a cliff,” right? Honestly, I’ve seen the “Bitcoin is dead” narrative more than a hundred times. But this is just the reality — every emerging technology goes through a phase of bubbles. Whether it was during the Industrial Revolution or the dot-com era, massively inflated valuations — sometimes a thousand times over — have all happened before.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t real companies or technologies driving progress emerging from the bubble. You have to look beyond the hype — there is also solid development and genuine innovation happening underneath.

It’s just like during the Industrial Revolution, when people were building railways — not for show, but to transport energy and raw materials, to organize a more efficient industrial system. And yet, there were still people wielding spears and swords trying to stop the railways from being built. Some of you younger folks might not have seen those old movies, but there are scenes like that in films such as Once Upon a Time in China. Those who opposed it were, in fact, driven by a fear of change.

The same thing happened during the early days of the internet. When I was a kid and snuck online, teachers would say I was “going down the wrong path.” Even students with scholarships had to go online in secret — they couldn’t let their teachers find out. Every time a new technology emerges, it naturally triggers fear. That’s human nature. People prefer a world that is stable and orderly. They like things to be listed as Rule №1, Rule №2, Rule №3 — because it gives them a sense of control and security.

The crypto industry, from the very beginning, has carried a certain spirit of rebellion. When Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper, he was essentially acting as a revolutionary — with a strong intention to challenge the traditional financial system. Many of the early participants in the space were idealists and geeks by nature. And to some extent, this shaped how regulators perceived the entire industry — as a group of anarchists trying to overthrow the existing order.

I think that’s a misunderstanding. It’s true that many people in the space are still idealists — but what really matters is whether we can find the sweet spot between technology and idealism. That balance point where we stay true to the original vision of the technology, while also making it practical and accessible — so it can truly benefit everyone and serve a broader public.

We’re indeed seeing more and more regulators and traditional financial institutions beginning to recognize that this technology can actually benefit human society. It has the potential to make systems more efficient, more transparent, and to solve many previously unsolvable problems in a much more elegant way.

But there’s still an issue of “information lag.” This has always been the case throughout history: when the general public continues to receive mostly negative information, they tend to label it as a “scam” or a “bubble.” The same thing happened when the dot-com bubble burst — people called it a Ponzi scheme. But in the end, the internet fundamentally changed our lives.

It’s true that the blockchain industry has faced problems at certain stages. But that doesn’t take away from its potential as a foundational technology for building a more efficient financial system. What we’re witnessing is a systemic process of evolution — where both the negative and the positive coexist, but the overall direction of progress remains clear.

Moderator: In the crypto industry, we often talk about being “crypto native,” and now we’re starting to hear the term “AI native” in the AI space as well. If we combine the two — “AI crypto native” — what kinds of opportunities do you think this convergence might create?

He Yi: Actually, I spoke about this topic around two years ago — right when ChatGPT first started gaining traction. While I’m personally not a big fan of overly defined labels, I do think these concepts help people better understand a world that’s changing rapidly.

I’ve always believed that AI represents a revolution in productivity — it significantly reduces the amount of human labor required in certain fields. Blockchain, on the other hand, is fundamentally a revolution in labor relations. It’s about how platforms and users can build a positive and sustainable relationship loop.

Many people question this idea — how could blockchain possibly change labor relations? But Binance is actually a good example. Back when we raised funds, our valuation was relatively low — only $15 million. Yet today, many users who held our tokens have received substantial returns. This process itself reflects a restructuring of the production relationship: the growth and success of the platform can be tangibly shared with the community and its users.

When the leap in productivity driven by AI and the reshaping of production relationships enabled by blockchain come together, the resulting transformation will be profound. But when that time comes, there will still be two core challenges that need to be addressed:

First, where do your “means of production” come from? Many entrepreneurs haven’t fully thought that through. In the context of AI, the means of production is essentially “data.” And this “data” should be understood in a broad sense — not just as personal information, but as every resource capable of powering models and underpinning value creation.

Second, what problem are you actually solving, and who are your paying users? Only when you’ve solved a clear problem and created real value for your users can a business model become viable. And only when your product generates real revenue can you potentially share the fruits of that success with token holders and community members.

Many projects today have good technology and strong ideas, but they’re not making money, which leads to users accusing them of “founders running away” or “projects crashing.” In reality, this might simply be due to not having found a sustainable revenue model. This brings us back to a very traditional question: Do you have a healthy, sustainable business model?

I know this perspective isn’t mainstream in the crypto space, and many people would say that my “traditional business logic” doesn’t understand Web3 at all. But I stand by this position: when you have the ability and resources, you should focus on projects that genuinely improve the lives of ordinary people — projects that people are willing to pay for. These are the kinds of projects with long-term viability, not those relying on short-term Pump & Dump schemes.

To take it a step further, even if you have a product, a clear logic, and a profitable model, the willingness to give back to the community is also a significant challenge. In traditional IPOs, it’s quite common for founders to exit after the company goes public. But in the crypto world, every token you issue becomes a responsibility that you bear. Your token-holding users are watching you. This pressure and sense of responsibility will force you to constantly evolve the organization and pursue long-term sustainability.

This is also why I’m still pushing forward today. I used to think that once I made a hundred million dollars, I’d retire. But when you realize the expectations of your users and community, you develop a new sense of mission to keep pushing things forward, making the organization more efficient and the business healthier.

If you are AI Native or Crypto Native, I believe that entrepreneurship itself isn’t the most frightening part, and failure isn’t something to fear. What really matters is whether you have unwavering willpower and conviction. When everyone tells you that your venture is doomed to fail, no one will pay for it, and you’re just digging your own grave — will you still be willing to persist? As long as your underlying logic is clear, your abilities match, and you have faith, you should pursue it and make it happen.

Entrepreneurship is inherently a hardcore game of survival. It’s not that half of every 100 companies will succeed; the reality is that out of 1,000 or even 10,000 companies, only one may make it. And throughout this process, what truly matters isn’t just intelligence and talent, but willpower, an open mindset, and the ability to continuously grow.

So what I want to say is, whether you’re Crypto Native or AI Native, you can always start over. This industry is changing so quickly, especially after Deepseek went open-source, which has essentially brought everyone back to a completely new starting line. We’re all back on the same footing. So it’s never too late — the key is: can you persist?