玩家何一：來都來了，那就把門拆掉

Editor's Note: On May 27, Binance co-founder and joint CEO Yi He was selected for the Fortune magazine list of the "Most Powerful Women in Business." Binance officially stated that Yi He's inclusion marks the first time a crypto-native executive has been featured on this list. This is a significant milestone not only for Yi He and Binance but for the entire industry. Yi He subsequently expressed her gratitude in a post and reflected on her journey. The following is the original text.

1. From the Fringe to the Spotlight

When I first learned that I would be selected for the Fortune "Most Powerful Women in Business" list, my first feeling was one of unworthiness, and my second was a deep sense of responsibility.

This recognition bears my name, but it belongs to the Binance team, to Binance's users, and even more so to Satoshi Nakamoto, and to every community member who turned an idea into a global wave.

If, a few years ago, a native entrepreneur from the crypto industry appearing on such a list would have seemed unusual; today, it feels more like this industry has gradually stepped from the fringes of finance and technology into the spotlight. This is not my "achievement"; I simply saw the wave coming, bravely stood on the surfboard, and clumsily learned to ride it. Yet this recognition represents another step in the long journey of the blockchain industry from niche geek circles to the daily lives of the general public. But the road is still long, requiring us to make steady progress, building and polishing step by step – that's what we do every day.

I often call myself the "Chief Customer Service Officer," and I love this title. At Binance, every colleague entering management spends their first month working as front-line customer service and must rotate back every quarter – myself included. The logic is simple: What you can't see sitting in your office, users are watching for you every day.

Last year in Dubai, a young man from Kenya stopped me as the event was winding down. He sends his salary home to his mother through Binance every month. He didn't ask about blockchain architecture or tokenomics. He just wanted me to know how much faster his mom receives the money now, and how much less money disappears along the way. He doesn't need to be "educated" on what cryptocurrency is; he needs a product that works.

He's not an exception. Over the past five years, more than 34 million people have completed remittances through Binance Pay, with a cumulative volume exceeding $87 billion. Based on the World Bank's global average remittance fee of 6.36%, we have helped users save over $5 billion – money that hasn't disappeared into the hands of intermediaries but has instead returned to family dinner tables, children's tuition fees, and the startup capital for small businesses.

2. That Door, We Must Tear It Down Ourselves

I was born in a small village in Sichuan, a place you'd be hard-pressed to find on a map. When I was a child, the power would occasionally go out, forcing me to do homework by kerosene lamp. Girls in the village, not yet 16, would use other people's IDs to enter factories.

When I was nine years old, my father passed away. My uncle told my mother, "Why spend so much on a girl's education? You might as well save the money for your son to get married." But my mother was extraordinarily resilient. She worked as a substitute teacher and farmed the land, single-handedly supporting the entire family, young and old, and managed to send me to teachers' college.

Over the years, I've often been asked: why, having already achieved financial freedom, do you still work so hard? To be honest, not everyone has the chance to change the world, but I am making history. Since I'm here, why not give it a try? The ancients said: "In poverty, one cultivates their own virtue; in success, one seeks to benefit the world."

In tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India, there is a group of women aged 36 to 50. Their mothers never had a bank account in their lives, and they themselves didn't have one until a year ago. Over the past year, they have become one of our fastest-growing user groups. Those who are not being listened to are quietly taking back their right to know and their right to decide, along with their own money and their families' futures, from outdated systems. They are entering a faster, more efficient, and lower-cost financial world. They are like me 12 years ago, first starting to think, "What is money?" This is more important than any grand narrative.

Over the years, Binance has done thousands of small things in rural South Africa, Brazil, and India: scholarships, training, and basic financial literacy courses. They are all small, but they are happening one by one. I dislike the term "empowering women." It sounds like someone holds the keys and then decides whether to open the door for you. What I would rather do is tear down that door, so more people can walk in. They should decide for themselves who they want to become and what kind of life they want to live.

3. From 300 Million to 3 Billion

Back in the day, when we said Binance aimed to serve 1 billion users, people thought we were dreaming. Today, we have over 300 million users, and 1 billion is no longer a distant dream. So this year, we changed our goal to 3 billion.

To be honest, before I said this out loud, I also thought: Is this number right? Are we worthy of it? But one thing I am certain of is this: If we don't set this goal, no one will set it for those 3 billion people.

3 billion – that is roughly the number of adults in the world today who are still not part of the formal financial system. This means what we need to build is no longer just a cryptocurrency exchange, but a financial infrastructure capable of supporting the daily lives of 3 billion people.

AI is reshaping productivity. But if productivity only belongs to a few companies, that's not a revolution; it's a new monopoly. Over the past year, we have increasingly handed tools, once only available to professional institutions, to ordinary users, one by one: allowing someone who doesn't understand code to use AI to optimize their decisions; letting a first-time crypto user ask their questions in natural language. Finance shouldn't be a language for the few.

What blockchain aims to solve is a different issue: ensuring that everyone using AI gets their fair share of the value created by AI. Only by combining these two things can we possibly pave the way from 300 million to 3 billion.

Someone once famously said something very simple: If you don't like the world, then change it. I came from that small village in Sichuan, step by step to the county town, to the provincial capital, to the world. No one knows better than I do that the world you want, like Rome, cannot be built in a day.

So, let's get back to work. With persistent effort, every bit of contribution will not be in vain.