CZ Explains Why ‘People FUD About Binance’

Recently, CZ, Co-Founder and CEO of Binance, which is the world’s largest crypto exchange (by trading volume), explained why he believes there is so much misinformation spread about his company.

On 23 December 2022, CZ told his over eight million followers:

“Some in our industry hate centralization. Regardless if a CEX helps with crypto adoption at a faster rate, they just hate CEX. Everyone is allowed to hold their views and voice their opinions. Nothing wrong with that… Some lose money on trading or experience other issues may blame and attack us. Not all cases have black-and-white right-or-wrongs…

“Some industry players view @Binance as competition. We have seen some go to extraordinary lengths to lobby against us, or loaning sums of money to small media that’s worth many times the media outlet’s market value, including buying their CEOs houses, etc… Per above, some media gets paid to FUD us. Some are entirely ‘owned’ by a ‘competitor’. Some may wrongly think that we cut off their funding sources (we didn’t, they failed on their own), and blame us, regardless of how illegitimate their funding sources may have been…

“Crypto have not reached mass adoption yet, probably less than 5% globally. Many people are still skeptical about crypto. Some media have readerships that are more traditional, and will tend to align with their views. Nothing wrong with that… Same goes for politicians, policy makers, etc. Not all of them are cutting-edge progressive. Being conservative is not wrong. I have met leaders who want to ‘protect’ their banks instead of ‘disrupting’ them with crypto…

“And then there are generalizations. ‘If one CEX is bad, then all other CEXs must be bad too.’ Especially if they liked a CEX before, who later turned out to be bad. Then, they must hate the other CEXs with a stronger vengeance… There may be a tiny number of people who are jealous, or just plain racist against Chinese-looking Canadians. Who knows? We don’t care… Writing about ‘Binance’ gets you more clicks. If you write about a small exchange, you get less clicks. Size has pros and cons.“

On 18 December 2022, Binance made a rather surprising announcement:

On 14 December 2022, CZ shared his thoughts on people holding their own crypto.

According to a report by Alys Key for Decrypt, during an AMA session hosted on Twitter, CZ said:

“For most people, for 99% of people today, asking them to hold crypto on their own, they will end up losing it… Most people are not able to back up their security keys; they will lose the device,” he said. “They will not have the proper encryption for their backup; they will write it on a piece of paper, someone else will see it, and they will steal those funds. And also today, very fundamentally, if a person passes away, they don’t have a way to give to their next of kin. Whereas we have a standard operating procedure [for that]…

“I always try to educate people so they understand there are risks,” he said. “Holding your own crypto in your wallet is not risk-free; I actually think more people lose money holding their own—lose more crypto when they’re holding on their own than on a centralized exchange.“

On 13 December 2022, Binance.US announced on its blog the introduction of a new feature called Pay that “allows users to easily send, request, and receive crypto with friends, family, and contacts on Binance.US.” There is “instant settlement for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any of our nearly 150 supported cryptocurrencies on Binance.US” and “all Pay transactions feature zero gas and zero transaction fees.”

On 6 December 2022, CZ took to Twitter to address some of the “wrong narratives” he had come across in the past few weeks:

“Crypto doesn’t need saving. Crypto is fine. It’s the beauty of decentralization. We are just part of it. We want to help other good projects that may be in a cash crunch because of recent events. It’s in our collective best interest… FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars of user funds. Period… Lying is never with good intentions…

“No healthy business can be destroyed by a tweet. However, there was a tweet that may have, Caroline’s tweet 16 minutes after mine on Nov 6. Data shows it was the real cause for people to dump FTT… She gave her floor price away…

“SBF perpetuated a narrative painting me and other people as the ‘bad guys’. It was critical in maintaining the fantasy that he was a ‘hero.’ SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders…

“We don’t focus on competitors because it’s a waste of time and resources when the industry has only touched 6% of the population. We want multiple exchanges, multiple blockchains, multiple wallets, etc, to co-exist in the ecosystem… Back to Building!“