Video Interview: CZ , Founder of Binance; Farokh , Crypto Host
Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Translator: CryptoLeo ( @LeoAndCrypto )
Recently, crypto host Farokh interviewed Binance founder CZ in Dubai, discussing CZs views on the current and future of cryptocurrency, Trump, Meme, and previous experiences (Farokh also interviewed Trump in September 2024 about the second assassination attempt and the adoption of crypto in the United States. If you are interested, you can listen to the original video ). After the content was released yesterday, CZ also posted several times saying that this was one of the best interviews he had ever done, and it contained a lot of information that had not been shared before.
Odaily Planet Daily has compiled the key points. Due to the long conversation and frequent interactions between the two, this article does not adopt the QA format. CZ will narrate the key points of the interview in the first person. The following is the full text of the compilation:
1. Daily life and work in Dubai, Memecoin, CZs favorite fields and the politicization of Bitcoin
This section focuses on CZ’s daily life and work in Dubai, as well as CZ’s views on Memecoin:
Live, work and play in Dubai
Although I could choose to live anywhere in the world, Dubai is a really nice place, it is one of the best led countries in the world. I live here and I love it. Dubai is a bit crowded now, like many communities, it is developing very quickly and there are too many people here. Abu Dhabi is quieter, more reserved and more suitable for thinking, but it is also very powerful.
I studied computer science for 4 years at McGill University in Montreal, and I found a job that paid more than I could possibly earn after graduation, so I said I might stay for a little longer, and thats where I am now. I dont watch much sports or listen to music much, but I listen to audiobooks when I want to relax, but listening to just one book gets boring quickly, so I also play some small games like Candy Crush, which sounds a bit stupid, but it keeps me reading and studying.
I also relax with friends, have dinner, or chat, and I exercise a little every day. My life is simple, but it works out well for me. I think the definition of living a good life is that you are happy with yourself, you approve of yourself, you know you are doing the right thing, and you have a sense of purpose. You are able to take care of yourself and want to help others.
Because we work from home, there wasnt a lot of downtime, but now that Im out of prison its much better, because in prison everything else is taken away, and you realize that you miss your family the most, right? So after that, I have some downtime. I dont look at my phone, and I spend a little time every day talking on the phone like most people do at home, usually in bed. I also lie in front of the computer like I do in bed, because sitting for too long is not good for my back.
Broccolis Story and CZs First Meme Experience
My pet dog Broccoli is about two and a half years old and very obedient. When I first raised Broccoli, he was only one year old. I bought a bicycle from Amazon to walk him. He ran 13 kilometers for the first time. As for the name Broccoli, in Chinese, many people name their pets after colors. Broccoli is brown and looks a bit like a cake, but I think the name Broccoli is more interesting.
Of course, the most interesting thing is that after I came back from the United States, I probably didn’t pay much attention to the industry at that time, and I didn’t know that Memecoin was developing so fast. At that time, everyone liked Meme. There were not many real practical tokens in crypto at that time, so I thought I would figure it out myself, and the process was actually very interesting, but Memecoin was really difficult to learn. Once a picture was released, there would be a lot of community participation.
Like, I didnt know that everyone was going to want to ask me what my pets name was and ask me to post a picture. I didnt know if there was going to be that much PvP when you posted a picture. So I just thought it would be fun and I said I was going to post it 25 hours later and I was going to create a little hype. And then when I posted it, it felt like thousands of broccoli memes popped up and then there were like competing communities, and I learned a lot that way. One thing that was clear was that I would focus all of my communities around people who liked dogs, and that was a very strong cultural community element. I also learned that for meme traders, theyre exhausted, theyre in group chat all day, chatting, looking for anything new and so on. So, I learned a lot about memes.
But I dont think Im going to be a meme trader, Im not even a crypto trader. Ive always been a platform builder, and theres a difference between building a platform for people and trading yourself. But I think we follow the voice of the community, so we dont try to dictate where the community goes anyway. So if the community is all over meme coins, we want to support it. Thats why I said, let me look at the BNB ecosystem meme, so people want me to spend more time interacting with meme coins because I do bring a certain level of attention to BNB meme.
Then I also wanted to help the BNB ecosystem, but due to some previous restrictions, I was unable to participate in CEX, BNB ecosystem, etc., so I spent my time on the Meme I could make.
CZs promising areas
For crypto right now, I think AI blockchain needs AI, AI is a post-blockchain technology. Then there is DeSci, which has a positive impact on crypto in the long run, science is hard and takes a long time, but meme traders are not interested in it, they want to make a profit the next day. But I think the long-term development of science will have a huge impact on technical training, such as using smart contracts to raise funds for scientific projects and deliver on a project milestone or time basis, incentivizing millions of small research labs around the world to conduct research, and combining big data AI capabilities. I think we will see a big acceleration in drug discovery, understanding human biology, so all these things are developing.
And then there are other more obvious things like RWAs, big traditional companies doing this, like BlackRock. And then there are ETFs, which are also interesting because now we have traditional institutional money coming into crypto, and most of the money in the U.S. is institutional money, and its a little bit different elsewhere, but I think weve seen Bitcoins influence grow because most of the ETFs are based on Bitcoin. So I think theres a lot of things that are changing.
Bitcoin’s Politicization Conflicts with Its Decentralized Ethos
There are two sides to the politicization of Bitcoin. To some extent, as an early adopter of Bitcoin and a believer in decentralization, I kind of hope that the government will be the last buyer, especially the government buying Bitcoin. Some of us hope that all retail investors and consumers will buy some Bitcoin first, and then the government will start buying. Government purchases of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoins will be very beneficial to the price of cryptocurrencies, but it may also damage the original decentralized spirit of Satoshi Nakamoto. It depends on a balance point.
But in general, I think in the decentralized world, we cant control what other people do. Just like we cant control what the government wants to do, the situation in the United States now is like a complete reversal of what it was 100 days ago, so Trump has only been in office for 100 days, but they are very, very professional now. Cryptocurrency has made the US government smart enough to now realize that buying Bitcoin is a great thing. So now other countries have to follow suit, which is good for crypto.
And the United States has also triggered a domino effect in some ways, for example, I am providing crypto advice to Pakistan, and Abu Dhabi MGX has invested in Binance.
2. Crypto industry issues, social media coverage, and prison life
The second part focuses on the current problems CZ sees in the crypto industry, his views on false reports from foreign media, and his experiences in prison:
Crypto Industry Issues
CZ: I think there is too much money flowing into meme coins and people are too focused on meme coins, but meme coins are very short-term and 99.9999% of them will fail. CoinMarketCap tracks 14 million tokens. It is a high-risk area, but fortunately, most meme traders understand the risks and this happens frequently, so they accept it.
It also takes too much attention away from utility projects. I think for the last four years, under the last US administration, there was a lot of risk in running a proper crypto project. The SEC would sue you saying it was a security and so on, and luckily a lot of those lawsuits have been dropped recently, so now I think well see more builders. So I think the industry will move forward in a healthy way and in the right direction.
Foreign media distort reports and prediction markets
As for some of the smear articles about me by WSJ before, from my perspective, its like the traditional media, they pick you and try to target you, so they picked Elon, they picked Trump, he picked me, and many others. Then publish completely negative articles about you, fortunately, none of these things work now. I think the fact is that the things that people pay attention to are not completely controlled by the media, we can talk face to face like this, we have our own channels, and we have our own voices. So social media is a great platform, a great tool, so that we can make our own voices.
But some of the traditional watchdogs, like politicians, still read more traditional news. So sometimes they have a distorted view of whats going on. Unfortunately, theres only so much we can do to try to correct it, and now at least we have our own outlet. I was talking to someone at Bloomberg, and they told me that they were really considering getting rid of the investigative reporter unit. Because investigative reporters dont really investigate issues, they just investigate someone who has their own agenda set, and they look for any little thing that can be twisted into a non-news narrative, and its done a lot of damage to the companys reputation, because Bloomberg is a technology company, not a media company, so the media doesnt bring them revenue, and it also hurts some people, Bloomberg sells terminals, and they make a lot of money from the terminals.
I also heard that more than 30% of the news is actually written by AI, but those are big news, not investigative articles, and people read more big news. Of course, because these are data, facts, and they are released quickly, such as the market is falling, and there are actually a lot of discussions about this. So I think the media industry will change unless they change the norms. In some ways, I also agree that Polymarket is doing a good job, their predictions are better than the media, and this is also the role of cryptocurrencies.
Prison life and a bizarre ending
The experience in prison changed me in a way, made me realize that health is the most important thing, followed by family, and then work and other things. In prison, you dont miss good food, but you kind of miss my bed, miss my family, and you wont stop working, despite resigning as Binance CEO. Im a Builder, Im lucky, Im not young but not very old, so I still have the energy to do things, so, Im still active, but Im doing different things now.
Im providing some assistance, like Im advising other founders, meeting them, talking to them, learning from them, and Ive also built the Giggle education platform. So Im still busy doing other things, and you can always make a positive impact anywhere. Also, Im more cautious now than I was before. I also took a few months off after I got out of prison, I wasnt as active on X, and I didnt participate in any activities. It took me a few months to slowly integrate into society, and now I still keep in touch with a few friends there, and you can see friends everywhere there.
There are a lot of people in prison who are over-punished, and its hard for them to find a lawyer, especially a very expensive outside lawyer, and they have no pictures, no internet, and can only use a very backward messaging system, and they can call their families, but this is what their families want to tell them, 15 minutes each time, 500 minutes a month, and I dont have internet either. So, there are friends everywhere, and there are people who send messages to tell me the price of Bitcoin.
But there are TVs in prison, mostly serials and sports, and I dont watch sports, so I dont watch TV. But some people in prison kind of want to learn about cryptocurrencies, and I like that its a channel, just like a financial channel. I can see the development of Nvidia, I know President Trump got shot, all of this happened during my time in prison.
I also saw that Trump was charged with 34 criminal counts, one of which was for taking documents into his bathroom, but you shouldnt charge your former president for taking confidential documents into the bathroom, if this happened in my company and some employee took confidential documents into the bathroom, I would give this person a bonus, he is working hard, he is working in the bathroom. I also saw that Trump attended the Nashville conference like a crypto professional, which was awesome.
It was interesting to see that the Democrats could also accept crypto after I was in jail for 2 months. Just five days before I was sentenced, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced the anti-cryptocurrency bill again.
Although I describe the prison experience in somewhat embellished terms, it is extremely difficult when you are actually going through it, I can laugh about it now but it was not funny, I would not wish that experience on anyone and at the time I was very resilient.
My first cellmate was guilty of a double murder, so once you are in jail, the people in jail dont care who you are, they just treat you as an equal, so I was not treated any special, I was told that I was under central surveillance in the jail. This meant that some central office was watching me.
But I was a white collar criminal, even if I was charged, I should have been a minimum security prison, but because I wasnt a U.S. citizen, even though I volunteered to fly there and deal with these issues, I was put in a minimum security prison, and my cellmate was sentenced to 30 years for murdering two people at the same time, but he served 12 years for good behavior. He was moved to a medium level cell and then down to minimum level, but I was put there, and the prison groups you by race. So they put their Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans in one category called Pacific Islanders. So, so I shared a cell with him for a few weeks, but we got along fine, so, but when it really came to it, I was scared.
The prison takes your photo, asks some questions and changes the script search, the prison is like a three-story building with two rows of salesmen facing each other. Most of the time you can walk around the prison, the cell doors are open, and there are about 240 people inside. As soon as you walk in, you will see some people have similar tattoos, such as big tall guys with face tattoos and head tattoos, they all look alike.
They were all yelling at each other, which is not fun when you walk by. The guard said to me that you are in room A Five, and when I walked there and tried to open the door, it was locked, but within 1 minute a vampire-like guard came and opened the door for me, and when I opened the door everyone knew that I was a new fish, in fact all the people were very polite and very friendly, and once you get to know them, they know that there is no problem with me.
They all looked like tough guys, but they were good people and had no problems with the prisoners or the guards. But the other hardest thing was mentally, I was always worried that they might keep me there for more than four months.
You know, there could be some other random issues that come up, which usually happen in a lot of emails. They could charge me again, like being imprisoned in the Hotel California, you can check in, but you cant leave. Thats what Im most worried about, and Im sure Ill get through it. But there were so many surprises during the period, even when I was taken to the halfway house, it was supposed to be a month and a half, the last month and a half, but at 14 days they arrested me again and put me in a detention center because immigration said my visa expired, so I was ordered to stay in the country, and we applied for a longer extension, they said no, and I said Im going to stay in this country in a jail.
They put me in a detention center, and then my lawyer found out, and it was illegal detention, and then they never took me back to the halfway house, and all of this is going to come out in the book Im writing.
3. SBF, Trump’s Crypto Methods, and the UAE Leadership
The third part focuses on some of CZ’s insights on SBF, Trump, and his meme coin TRUMP:
Its hard for me to comment on SBF.
Its hard for me to comment on SBF. I think, I dont wish the prison experience on anyone, but I think this kind of bad behavior involving fraud, scams, embezzlement of funds, this kind of bad behavior should not happen, and I also dont think that sentences in the United States are very long, you can reduce them. For good behavior, usually, every 30 days of good behavior can buy you 10 days off. So most people only serve two-thirds of their sentence. I feel for everyone in prison. Its not an easy experience. And being in prison for a long time does not make people honest. What I see in prison is people who have been sentenced to 10 years in prison, and they still wont change and no longer consider us changing ourselves.
They know most of them are doing it wrong, but some are overly punished and then they just go with it, and I dont know what the best way to correct that is, like, if you really want this person to change, you need to learn from your mistakes and then make changes.
Trump’s Crypto Tactics and the UAE Leadership
I think he started to become more popular. Like at the time he was charged with 34 crimes, that was crazy. And then he ran for president. I was like, okay, this is going to be great. And then Trump became a crypto professional and you could see that he was really pro-crypto and not just talking about it. Obviously, thats good for our industry and for anybody who has criminal charges, and I was able to see it from prison, so I think were in a very lucky industry with a very professional president of the United States, hes very smart, although Ive never spoken to Trump.
As a foreign company, as a foreign citizen, we cant make election donations, we cant donate to any politicians. This is one thing Im very careful about, I dont do anything related to elections, even with Binance US, Im still a major shareholder there. Theres a lot of news saying that Im trying to exchange our equity for a pardon, which is completely untrue, I havent discussed the issue of Binance US equity with anyone, a lot of these stories are made up.
I am very optimistic about China-US trade and believe that some consensus may be reached sooner rather than later.
Regarding Trumps TRUMP coin, because I have heard many versions of the story from different people. Some say that TRUMP has a very close relationship with him. Some say not at all. Actually, I dont know that much. I know there will be a TRUMP TOP Holder dinner on May 22, but I am not a TRUMP holder. You know, because of media reports, I try to avoid certain relationships with politicians, otherwise the media will link us in some way.
Also, I think the leadership of the UAE is very advanced, they are very smart and visionary, and they know how to deal with very difficult problems. They understood blockchain earlier, and they also understood that they need to develop other industries that they have in addition to oil. I think blockchain is an important industry. AI is also, and the leadership here is very aware of these future technologies. Also, the leadership here has a very good relationship with the United States, but I dont know the specific details, but they have deep cooperation in areas such as AI and blockchain.
4. CEXDEX, CZ and Binance and 5 small predictions
The fourth part focuses on CZs optimism about DEX, his decision not to return to Binance, and his five predictions for the hosts questions:
CZ: Both CEX and DEX are tools to enter encryption, but I think the future is DEX
CZ: Many people think that CEX is different from DEX, but I think this is a wrong view. CEX and DEX are just opposite terms, but they are all tools that provide blockchain access, just different ways of access. So for any Builder and solution provider, we should provide everything. Centralization is just a means to provide access. We have also made a lot of investments in CEX, DEX, Perps, blockchain development, and many other ecosystems.
But DEX is still a market with huge potential. It is in its infancy and there is still a lot to do. I think the current fully transparent model may be the best, or it may not be. But the current fully transparent approach is not suitable for everyone. For example, a big account opened a short order of $300 million, but he did not want the transaction to be seen by everyone. The trading methods of whales and ordinary users are different.
The future is decentralized, and DEX will be bigger than CEX in the future, and we hope to invest heavily in these areas. Yes, invest in projects that will affect the CEX business, in fact, we have invested in multiple DEXs and DEX Perps, etc., but I don’t care about that now.
There is also news about the listing of tokens on CEX. Short-term speculators will regard listing on CEX as the last dance of the project token, but for real Builders, this is just the beginning.
PS: The next paragraph is about the group chat between CZ and other exchange executives: about the dispute with SBF, etc., which will not be translated for the time being.
Can I return to Binance?
Even if I could return to Binance, I dont think I would go back. Im lucky to be forced to retire. If I retired voluntarily, I would probably burn out all my energy because Im a bit of a workaholic. I work at least six days a week, usually six and a half days, and I have meetings on Saturday and Sunday. When Im not working, Im always thinking about work, trying to train my brain to think. I also have some extracurricular activities. I like kitesurfing. Im still learning it. I can do a little jump, but I cant land well, but its on the water so its okay.
Most people define me as a workaholic, but I dont think I will return to Binance as CEO, and Binance has excellent leaders now. The company has run very well in the year and a half without my involvement, and I am still a shareholder, so I still benefit. Binance is a cutting-edge team, and we hope to continue to push and grow the team.
My role now is more of a mentor, a coach, kind of like a coach on the sidelines, really new entrepreneurs, so Im not likely to lead another project myself, even though Im still working very hard. Im much more relaxed now than when I was leading Binance before, I dont think I have the stamina to do it again, it requires too much effort, work, and mental strain, Im satisfied with a one-time attempt, like someone who got lucky once.
I’m not trying to prove that I’m a capable serial entrepreneur, I’m doing great, but I think my role should be more focused on helping multiple founders grow. That’s my mindset right now.
5 Predictions
What will the total market value of the crypto market be at the end of this year (end of the cycle): Maybe 5 trillion. I don’t know what it will be at the end of this cycle. It’s a difficult question to answer.
What will the price of Bitcoin reach in this cycle: $500,000-1 million;
Can TRUMP outperform DOGE: I’m not sure;
Can the market value of fartcoin reach 10 billion US dollars: I don’t know, I don’t even know what the current price is, it is highly unlikely;
Would you get another dog: Not any time soon.
