Richard Teng, CEO of Binance Holdings Ltd., on Tuesday, September 17th, 2024, at an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore.
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Binance CEO Richard Teng says the Trump administration has been a “great” reset for the cryptocurrency industry.
“This is a very different environment in which we operate,” Teng told CNBC on Tuesday.
Over the course of 16 months, Binance became a political outcast to Washington power broker. Poster child for regulatory rebellion – Binance was slapped in a record $4.3 billion settlement with regulators, forced to expel billionaire founder Changpeng “” Zhao – the crypto exchange is now navigating a dramatically friendly political landscape under President Donald Trump’s second administration.
“We benefited from this shift,” said Teng, who was appointed CEO of Binance in November 2023.
Ten’s comments arise as a crypto exchange is in discussion to help Trump’s family build a financial interest in the company, according to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month. That same day, Bloomberg reported that World Liberty Financial, a Trump-related crypto bank that has not yet been launched, is engaged in talks with Binance to launch the dollar page stubcoin.
If we reach such a deal, it would mark an incredible reversal for the company that was once a pariah in Washington.
Teng, a softly spoken former regulator, had been wary of his words when he addressed the report.
“I believe both Liberty Financial and CZ itself tweeted and denied the report,” said Ten, who runs the exchange’s operations outside the US.
Teng has been deliberate about rumors about Trump’s interests on Binance.us.
“.us and .com are completely different animals, right?” he said. “They have different sets of shareholders, different boards, different CEOs running shows.”
Binance aims to compose the two exchanges as independent entities in response to regulatory scrutiny, hoping to sound US operations from a wider range of international businesses.
Still, Teng is bullish about what a new political environment means for cryptography.
“We’ve been going up to now from 2.0 Operation Chalk Points for four years. You have a very pro-crypto, a pro-ai president,” he said. Binance.com is not working in the US, but “we benefit from all of these pro-cryptography policies,” he said.
Chalkpoint 2.0 is how industry insiders refer to allegations of legacy bank crackdowns over digital asset companies under the Biden administration.
Teng described the rapid global expansion that brought Binance to 170-265 million users in just one year.
“We have received many approaches from various governments around the world,” Ten said, citing progress in regulations in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates.
Binance is currently approved in 21 jurisdictions, with its impact well beyond the scope of one country. It includes sovereign wealth funds, some of which are beginning to be quietly allocated to crypto, Teng said.
Behind all this optimism is the reality of Binance’s checkered past.
Zhao, the company’s founder and former CEO, was criminally charged and forced to resign and served in a short prison. Binance paid the Martivir Riondollar settlement, finalized in late 2023, to resolve violations with US regulators, including the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trade Commission.
One main front remains open. This is a civil lawsuit against Securities and Exchange Commission’s Vinanence and Zhao.
In February, the SEC and Binance agreed to a 60-day suspension in the lawsuit as both sides are considering potential resolution. This stay comes amid a broader pullback by the SEC from several well-known crypto lawsuits. This will thwart a potential regulatory reset under the new administration.
“We didn’t invest in compliance in very early days,” Ten said. “But what’s important as a responsible institution is to acknowledge these early mistakes, compensate for them, and invest a lot in the compliance we’re doing now.”
Teng said Binance currently employs more than 1,300 professionals in compliance, employing about a quarter of its employees’ total body. “The direction of the trip is very clear. It’s one of the compliance.”
The Nigerian government may not agree.
Tigran Gambaryan, one of Binance’s top compliance officers, has recently been jailed under harsh conditions. In Nigeria, Binance faced charges of suspected non-payment of VAT and company income tax, failure to file a tax return, and helping customers avoid taxes through the platform.
Along with Gambarian, a US citizen and former employee of the Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria also jailed Executive Nadeem Anjalwara, a UK Kenyan. Both were detained and detained by Nigerian authorities. Anjarwalla fled custody in March 2024, and Gambarian was released several months later.
“The treatment he experienced in Nigeria is not justified,” Ten said of Anjalwara. “We have always been trying to work together and work with governments around the world.”
Since taking over as CEO, Teng has shifted the company from a founder-led startup to an organization governed by boards.
“Now I’ll report to the board,” Ten said. “We have a seven-member board of directors, including three independent directors and an independent chair.”
On the Binance aspect of all scrutiny, Teng argues that the platform remains dominant.
“We’ve always had over 40% of the global market share,” he said.
He dismissed the concerns Coinbase The ETFs claim to be a gateway to crypto trading, and the momentum behind growing political influence and crypto exchange trade funds.
“Many users who start trading via ETFs will then advance to cryptocurrency platforms,” said Teng, noting that ETFs are limited to opening hours while Crypto is trading non-stop.
Binance received its first institutional investment earlier this month in a $2 billion deal with Emirati state-owned investment company MGX, an AI and advanced tech fund that counts BlackRock and Microsoft. This is the biggest investment ever in a crypto company and the biggest investment paid entirely in stubcoin.
Teng said it views the investment as a way to bridge Crypto and AI.
“We use AI extensively,” Teng said, noting that Binance uses artificial intelligence to monitor customer service, security and compliance. “This is the blockchain sector. We must continue to use technology to achieve efficiency.”
Asked what would keep him in the night, Ten rattles off the list: security, compliance, product innovation, opportunities for mergers and acquisitions.
“We want to make sure we run a very robust and operational best-in-class platform,” he said.
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