 Hello world! We are here to reveal the most important and influencing person on coin telegraph first ever top 100 list. He grew up in a small village without electricity or running water. He is 99.99999% sure we are all living in a simulation and his favorite color is black. And the number one spot goes to... Oh really? Thank you so much. I'm really honored. I spoiled the surprise maybe. Sorry about that. Anyway, my first question is what is that you are particularly personally proud of having done in the previous year, 2019? First of all, thank you for ranking me as the number one. I'm really honored and I'm really flattered. I think I got chosen probably because of what Binance did and what the Binance team did. But I think the thing that I'm most proud of is really just leading the team and just bringing the team together. And just sort of constructing that team, keeping the team together, setting a very rough general direction. And then just making sure everyone's going in the same direction. In terms of the real execution work, I really didn't do that much. In 2019, Binance did a lot. Binance as a platform from the IEO in January to Binance Chan in February, Binance Dex in April, Margin in May, June-ish, and what else, July there was something, September with futures. So there's a lot of stuff that Binance did. In the bottom of the bear market, that sort of pushed things along. So I think people in the crypto space generally really appreciate that, the fact that we are always pushing our industry forward. So at least we do our part to do that. There are many other players who do that as well. So we want to work together to push this industry forward. So other than sort of just putting together a really good team and then leading them forward, I personally didn't really do that much. But the team did a lot of really hard work. Okay. So what are the plans for 2020? Sure, sure. Yeah. Absolutely. So 2019, to be honest, we've been really, really focused internally to building the products out. So there were many, many product launches. For 2020, there's going to be a lot of stuff. There's still continue to be a lot of product building and launches. So the open platform initiative is quite key. So we're basically providing more and more platforms for our other business partners to enable access to crypto for the retail. So it's more, before we were more like a B2C model. Whereas in 2020, we're moving towards a B2B2C model where we're working with other partners to enable the consumers to come into crypto. So we have a number of initiatives in that area. We continue to pushing futures, which is a very low cost way of trading. It is somewhat high risk in terms of the liquidations. It requires a different mentality of trading. So you don't want to put all your funds in one order. So you want to split them up a little bit. But futures, it is really a much cheaper way to trade both in terms of trading fees as well as capital requirements to trade. So we're pushing futures very aggressively. And we're also doing something that other people are not doing with futures traditionally. We're enabling futures for many of the altcoins. So this is typically very difficult to do, but our system has been relatively stable and we have some advances in terms of how to handle liquidity. So we're doing that now. We have a very large focus on global fiat expansion, so penetrating and covering global markets. So we want to turn on fiat access in 180 different countries. And I believe a large part of this will have to rely on our partners. And hopefully Binus Cloud can help with that as well. So those are sort of the very high level plans. There's a lot more details to it, but I can ramble on for a long time so I don't want to take too much time. What about personal plans for this year? Personal plan, I don't really have a lot. So my biggest goal is basically within the next couple of years, hopefully I can get myself into an even more unneeded situation. So nothing depends on me. So then after that I can probably relax to travel the world, etc. I'm doing quite a lot more traveling in 2020. I do plan to travel more now. I fixed my back. But right now the travel is more airport to hotel back to airport kind of gone. So I don't really do a lot of sightseeing. I don't do that much sightseeing right now. But I think for me though, I really enjoy what I'm doing right now. So I don't feel it's really work or it's really pressure. I'm pressured to do it. I'm really tired doing it. I feel I'm really lucky to have the chance to be doing what we're doing. Which is to increase access to crypto, increase the freedom of money for people around the world. So that's something I'm really really energetic about doing. I just feel I just feel really lucky to be in a position to be able to do that. So for me, for this year I'll travel around the world to wherever that's required to push more adoption on crypto. Okay, so you're famously workaholic. You're also famously minimalistic. No big houses, no yachts, not even a suit. Well, now that you can practically for yourself, whatever you want, I wonder when was the last time you did something for the first time? I actually can't remember that much to be honest. So my life's pretty simple. I haven't done anything crazy in the last couple of years. How did you celebrate the New Year? Oh, on New Year I stayed home. So I didn't go out to celebrate. Actually, I slept before New Year. I slept like before 12. That's a very rare time for me. It's actually quite rare for me to sleep before 12, before midnight. But actually on that day I got tired and just, you know, it's just another day. I recently passed my birthday. I didn't celebrate either. So I had no more dinner with the people I had dinner with all the time. I'm non-materialistic because it's kind of hard to carry. Anything that's physical, anything that's like tied down, it's kind of hard to carry a non-mobile. I like to keep mobile. I like to be able to sort of move to living in a different city every month if I want to. So that aspect really appeals to me. And with a shared economy, it's so much easier now, right? So you don't need a car. You have Uber everywhere. You have Airbnb's. You have like service apartments. So you don't need that. I don't need to buy a house. And I really, I don't like boats. So if I want to take a boat ride, I'll rent it. It'll be fine. So I don't feel the need to own a lot of stuff to have a really complicated life. Just keep everything simple. Great. Really inspiring. Okay, but we all know that you took a big risk when you sold your house that you had in 2014, if I'm not mistaken, to go all in on Bitcoin. Since you're also a world-known poker player, I bet you knew you had a good hand, did you? Still, anyway, that's really kind of nuts. So what made you decide to take such a big risk? Sure. So for me, it was actually quite easy. Yes, I did push all in on crypto in 2014. And this is after Bitcoin went up to $1,000 at the end of 2013. And it was kind of on the way down a little bit and going back and forth. So for me, at that time, I started learning about Bitcoin in 2013. And I read the white paper. I went to a few different conferences. The one that was really, really standing out is the December conference in Berlin. It was the December conference in Las Vegas in the US. So I went there. It was a very small conference, maybe about 200 people total. But everyone in the crypto space today were there. Charlie Lee was there. Matt Rosig was there. Vitalik was there. So a bunch of people are all there. And it's the same crew. It's the same sort of people. The group of people is really, really nice. And I remember one guy teaching me about repo. And repo was pretty complicated to use. You had to set up gateways, you have to trust them, stuff like that. And the guy was teaching me about how to set it up. And in the process, he transferred some repo to me. And when I was done, I was like, OK, now I understand how to use it. Let me transfer this coins back to you. He said, well, no, you can keep it. And you can use it to teach the next guy. I looked at it. I was like, well, the coins at the time was about $500, US dollars. So it's not a huge amount of money, but it's also not a small amount of money. So I thought that community was really, really nice. So at that time, I had a really high confidence in Bitcoin succeeding, in cryptocurrency succeeding. So I understood the technology. I understood the financial aspect of it. And you already had a really nice community behind it. And also for me personally, the situation was I sold my house. Not only did I sell my house, I also quit my job. So no house, no job. But I was only jobless for two weeks. So I was looking, I quit my job before getting a new job, but I was looking for jobs in the cryptocurrency space. I bumped into blockchain.info very quickly and landed a job there in two weeks. So for me, it was like, OK, I can sell my house. I can live without, I can afford to pay rent, and I can afford to take care of myself and whoever else, my family that I need to take care of, just by my salary. And even if the cryptocurrency goes down, I can always go back to the banking industry and get a job there. I'll be fine. So it's not like I took a job where my living standard would be severely impacted. Again, I was not living luxuriously, but I had a decent lifestyle. It's not luxurious, but a decent place to stay, etc. So for me, the risk was totally tolerable. I know 100% that if even crypto fails, I can get a job in a bank. It's not a big issue. So for different people, that risk appetite and that risk situation is different. So I would not recommend people who are struggling to pay off mortgages on their house and who need a guaranteed income from their investments to pay off some loan to sell their house and to go out on crypto because crypto is highly volatile. But for me, so when I went in, I sold my house, bought Bitcoin, Bitcoin was $600 US roughly. Within about three months, Bitcoin dropped to about $200. So I lost 2 thirds of the house. But my lifestyle didn't get totally impacted. Psychologically, there's an impact, but my lifestyle didn't change that much. And it stayed at $200 for two years. So two years later, it finally went up. But my lifestyle was still okay. So I was still doing other things and things were okay. So basically, my advice to somebody else is that you got to look at your own situation. If you can tolerate that kind of risk, if you can handle that kind of risk, then it's okay. If not, then don't push all in like that. Were you always able to handle risks? I mean, you seem such a calm person. I don't know, do you meditate or was it some learning process for you? Or you are born like this. So I'm always a very calm person. So in my working life, so in Binance, I've never shouted. I've never shouted. I've never yelled at anybody. I've never sort of become really agitated. There were times where there were very high stress. So like I can tell you, Binance, when you're running the change globally, there's a lot of stressful situations with different regulations, with security hacking, all of those situations. There were very, very high stress situations. I'm usually very, very calm. I also have a low heart rate. So my resting heart rate is like 50-something. So in my working career, I never really yelled and screamed at other people either. So I have a calm demeanor. I don't know why, just sort of the personality, I guess. I don't meditate that much. I find meditation a little bit boring to be honest. I don't need it. I'm already very calm. I'm also usually very optimistic as well. So I've tried many different startups and a lot of them have failed. But even in those situations, even at the times where we had to dissolve a company, I was incurring debt. I know I had to pay back. And I did eventually, but at the time I remained relatively calm. So there's a couple of things that helped me mentality-wise. There's one phrase where somebody told me that had a really impact on me in my early years. So when I was younger, somebody said, Hey, Sizi, do you know what happens when you're at the bottom of your valley? So sort of if you look at life and you're at the bottom of the valley, the origin is like, let's say if you walk to the bottom of a valley, what do you do? And the answer is pretty simple, just keep walking. As long as you keep walking, then you eventually get out of the valley. So that was very, very useful to me. So whenever I feel like a lot of stress, I don't know why I just keep remembering that story. So that helps a lot. There's many other little things I do to help myself, but yeah. So there's a lot of different stuff. Tips from Sizi, how to stay calm in the crypto world? Well, great motto that you shared. Thank you so much. Are you still a coder within your heart? How much time do you spend programming nowadays? Yeah, so for the last year and a half or so, I've not done any coding. So I didn't write any code that was using Binance. So all of the Binance code base was written by somebody else. So when Binance started, I was kind of already leaving the coding kind of stage. Whereas even in the early years of Binance, like a year and a half ago, I still wrote some scripts to do some random stuff for myself. Not so much for Binance, but in the last year and a half or so, I haven't really had a lot of chance to do coding at all, which is something I really want to go back to and try it. But with coding, you've got to have a chunk of time that you've got to sit down and look at it, stare at the computer screen, uninterrupt it. Unfortunately, right now, my time is really, really segmented. So there's a lot of interrupts. I tell other people that now I have a memory of Goldfish. I can't remember anything longer than seven seconds. So everything's like in segments. But it is what it is. It's kind of what the job is right now, and it's okay. I'm fine with it. So hopefully in a couple of years, when things settle down, I can go back to learn some new programming languages and learn the code. But do you think that in the modern crypto industry, in order to find a startup, it's better to have a programming background or an MBA? I think both are okay, to be honest. I think we have seen successful cases in both cases. Having a technology background really helps on the... I would say you typically want to have both, to be honest. So even an MBA who doesn't have a technical background, but if he could learn a simple programming language, just some basic stuff and write a very simple program so that they understand a little bit and read a little bit about the high levels of the technology, how to deploy servers and how to run a cloud. Just sort of very high level stuff. When you start a business, you are forced to deal with everything. You've got to deal with technology, you've got to deal with business. You've got to deal with business models, BD, business development, deal negotiations, you've got to deal with marketing, you've got to deal with customers' servers or post-product sales service. You've got to deal with compliance, legal, accounting, finance, HR. So you have to deal with a lot of these things. I would say today I'm definitely not an expert in any of those areas. But as an entrepreneur or a CEO or a leader of an organization, you have to know a little bit in each place. So I definitely come from a stronger tech background, but I've been doing startups for, I don't know, 10, 15 years before I started Binance. So I do have a little bit of the business acumen through experience. And then the other stuff like all the HR and the main finance stuff, they're important as well. So I'm not super strong in any of those areas. So I rely very heavily on our back office staff for those areas. So I think basically you need a little bit of everything when you want to run a startup. Two years ago you told us that you try very hard not to be number one, because it entails a lot of problems, stress, as you said also today, especially with regulators. So do you still agree that it's difficult? Is it still difficult for you to be this number one or you just gave up and decided it's okay? Actually, so today I think, so two years ago it was mainly the regulatory uncertainty and also not enough. Crypto is only the beginning. Crypto is not really widespread. So crypto still only reaches a very small percentage of users. So I think the situation around the regulatory front has changed a lot. I think today many governments are pro-blockchain, pro-cryptocurrency. There are much clearer regulations on how to run a cryptocurrency exchange and what to do and what not to do, etc. There's still a lot of room to improve and there's just a lot of uncertainties, but today is much, much better than two years ago. So I think today it's okay to sort of push forward, get market share and you will not be the lonely one at the top then all the regulators go to you. But today it's actually much harder to do that because there are a lot of exchanges all over the world and you have to compete with literally thousands to be conservative even probably more exchanges all around the world. So I think the risk of being the biggest exchange is much, much smaller now but at the same time it's much harder now to be the really big exchange all the other exchanges are competing very fiercely. So I think that's changed. But we're still at the early stages, we want to see more exchanges because right now for example all over the world if you can see more exchanges we can see more people coming into crypto and most of the local exchanges will not be able to provide the full suite of products that Biden provides. For example if you look at futures, margin, staking, lending a lot of these products are very hard to do for smaller exchanges where they mostly focus on fiat to crypto, mostly the local fiat to bitcoin. And if they can do that well they make the cake for us bigger as well so we encourage other exchanges to come to launch and to run their businesses. So that's kind of the situation today. Okay, thank you very much. You are definitely one of the most famous crypto people in the world. So my question is do you like being a public person? What is the most exciting thing about this and what is the biggest challenge for you? So to be honest if I had a choice I would probably choose to be personally I would choose to be like not famous but I think for the way we started our business we did the ICO so we had to have a public face we were raising money from like public so we raised money from like 20,000 people and so we need a public face and for Binance to continue to grow having a face does help I was actually hoping there would be a better face to be honest I don't think I'm a super good, I don't think I'm a very good public speaker I also don't think I'm a very, they're much better looking people much more polished people but unfortunately for Binance it's me So Binance is kind of stuck with me for now. That is not true, you are a great speaker, public speaker. Yeah so but I think because we do hold people, we do hold custody of the funds and Binance.com is a custody exchange we hold custody of people's crypto and having a face is really really helpful for establishing that trust that's just human psychology I know we're in an industry that technically we don't need trust but there's still a lot of trust that's needed in a lot of different places and also almost every other Binance person doesn't like to be too public they all like to be like really they're already hands down working on delivering building products so I'm kind of forced to be the public face so I'll do what I can Okay, if you could clone yourself or make a digital copy of yourself and like make this other you do everything that you do now and be free to do whatever you want, what will it be? I would love to make a clone to do all the work I think I'll make a lot of clones to do a lot of work and then we can do like I don't know 10 different interviews at the same time but I should clone myself as well then so yeah but it's not possible right now but also if I really freed myself up I think most likely I am quite interested in two other aspects number one is biology, actually biotech I think as humans, as our species so one thing I'm doing right now is increasing the freedom of money which I think will help our species to advance significantly I'm doing a little bit to contribute in that whole thing but I think as a whole if you can increase the freedom of money then our species will advance and when our species advance on that front then we'll have more money, more funding power to do much more research like biotech, like space exploration, like AI, a bunch of other things I think Elon Musk's doing the space exploration thing I'm actually less interested in that I'm more interested in biotech and potentially AI I think that in both of those areas there could potentially be a lot of more research and more improvements to be made I think I would want to do, there's a lot of people doing AI already so I think if I have nothing else to do I may want to look into biotech as sort of the next thing to look at learn about, potentially invest in a few different startups or research projects, et cetera that could potentially help us to understand ourselves better and cure some of the diseases better, et cetera so with the coronavirus going on right now we don't have a vaccine for it I'm sure the vaccine will come in due time but maybe we can help fund it to speed it up and we can do more genetic, bio-genome type of projects to understand ourselves better so I'm kind of interested in those areas too Speaking about cloning, it made me think that I think I've heard that you like the simulation theory is it true? Yes, yes, so I believe 100% we're leaving a simulation well basically 99.999% we're leaving a simulation so mathematically it's basically 100% and what does it mean? Like for you as a person who creates a whole empire within an industry what does it mean that we are living in a simulation? Sure, sure, so let me share this a little bit so the reason I believe in simulation, I believe we are in a simulation is the world we're taught in we have a couple hundred billion years of history and so that's the time spent that I think our universe kind of exists and if I look at my life, when I was born, there was no running water there's no electricity, I was born in a little village and then when I was a kid, so when I was a kid I was pumping water out of the well so later on we had running water, we had electricity we had computers, we had cell phones, we had AI we now have Alexa, all this advanced stuff but that just happened in the short history over the last 40 years and if I think about the next 40 years would it be possible for me to say hey, I want to lie down there and I want to simulate my life again? I think we probably will be able to do that and there are other simulations that's going on as well for example, if you look at Nintendo Super Mario we can simulate the guy moving forward and moving backwards the tricky part is I don't know what kind of simulation we're in are we being simulated by a higher being in a different dimension or are we just sleeping there dreaming simulated by ourselves or our own kind but either way, both of those simulations are possible guaranteed within 100 years from now and if you look at say 100 years, let's say 500 years so in 500 years that's guaranteed to be possible with the speed that technology is advancing right now and within 500 years we can realize that what are the chances this is the first 500 years within a couple hundred billion years so probably 1 in a billion if you do 1 in a billion, then mathematically it's 0.99999% that we're in a simulation and mathematically it's basically 100% we're in a simulation but whether we're in a simulation or not it doesn't matter too much to be honest it does have some impacts on how you think about life just because we're in a simulation doesn't mean life is not important it doesn't mean that if I die I'll wake up and nothing matters maybe we're in that kind of simulation but we don't know at least I don't know so maybe we die, we're like Super Mario Super Mario dies but he doesn't jump out and talk to me the next respawn may or may not be him, we don't know so just because we're in a simulation doesn't mean it doesn't matter it still matters very much so we still want to live a good life or live a meaningful life make our contributions and do what we're supposed to do what we're supposed to do as a human at least in this simulation that I mean I believe that human species are supposed to help other humans or almost any animal species are designed to help other animals of the same species so we're designed to help other people so we're designed to help ourselves and help others and what about climate and nature? doesn't mean that actually climate change doesn't exist within the simulation theory? it probably means that it does exist so the tricky part is we don't know what kind of simulation we're in so we could be in a simulation when some things are partially simulated and some things are not simulated and even if we're in a full simulation where everything is simulated the climate problem is still a problem that was thrown to us it's a challenge that we need to resolve we need to help solve so even if it's a full simulation everything in the simulation still matters there's a coronavirus that matters there's a flooding in places, the climate changes all of those things are challenges that thrown our way and we should try our best to help where we can it doesn't mean that we're able to solve every problem even if you're in a game, you don't solve every puzzle but I think the current simulation we're in we should do our best to the ability we can and for me it doesn't mean I will solve every problem I'll just focus on a few problems where I can make the most impact but that's how I believe that's why I do believe in simulation theory very strongly but there's another aspect of the simulation theory have an impact on the way you view this world and life especially with the early topic you talked about when you deal with how do you deal with difficult situations stressful situations, etc sometimes you say it's just a simulation, it's just a game you just got to keep doing what you're supposed to do and there are certain parts of luck, there are certain parts of randomness and there are certain parts of maybe designing the simulation that will set you back so all of those things are present but your role or at least my role in here is just to do the best I can so I just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep marching forward so that simulation theory takes a much lighter view I'm not the center of the universe but I'm here to do what I'm supposed to do and let's just do what I'm supposed to do so it makes life a lot easier actually that's fascinating, thank you so much okay, last five minutes I wanted to dedicate to some lightning questions sure not in terms of lightning networks but in terms of flash questions see your mountains I'd probably choose mountains if you ask randomly like that I do like ocean sports as well, I do like a lot of ocean sports okay, beer or wine? beer scent valentines or a usual day? a usual walking day, yeah I didn't doubt about that McDonald's or Burger King? Burger King because at least some of them accept Bitcoin and Biden's coin great, okay black or yellow? black okay, because we share the same colors within our logos yes, yes, actually I have a coin telegraph hoodie and the color scheme is the same, yeah okay, snowboard or work? I think now it's mostly work I really enjoy snowboarding but you can't snowboard all the time you can do like a couple days a year, yeah, it's good enough okay, the last question, simulation or reality? it's definitely simulation, yeah we are in a simulation, there's no reality thank you so much, there is no reality but there is CZ the winner of Top 100 of Coin Telegraph and I'm very happy to have passed this hour with you thank you so much, that was a great pleasure thank you so much for having me, cheers, thank you thank you everyone, this was CZ and check the full article on cointelegraph.com and don't forget to like, subscribe and hodl subscribe and hodl