The Ambition of Binance
Part1 The story of Zhao Changpeng
Zhao Changpeng, the founder of Binance, was born in Jiangsu. His parents are both educators and his father was a university professor. In the late 1980s, their family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. After studying computer science at McGill University in Montreal, Zhao Changpeng moved to Tokyo and New York. He originally developed a system for matching trade orders for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and subsequently developed futures trading software on the Bloomberg Terminal.
In 2005, Zhao Changpeng chose to resign and moved to Shanghai to set up his own company, Fusion Systems. This company subsequently developed the fastest high-frequency trading system for brokers.
In 2013, Zhao Changpeng learned about Bitcoin from a poker-playing venture capitalist. Then he began to get involved in several different cryptocurrency projects.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that he also served as the Chief Technology Officer of OKCoin, the trading platform between legal tender and digital currency. We cannot tell whether He Yi and Zhao Changpeng had already begun planning the future map at that time . (After leaving OKCoin, Zhao had a fierce verbal battle with OKCoin )
All along, Zhao Changpeng is considering to set up providing a pure digital asset trading platform without legal tender. His instinct told him that if there was no connection with financial institutions, the risk and regulatory complexity would be lower.
After several job-hopping, with many unhappy incidences, Zhao Changpeng finally decided to joined hands with He Yi to create an exchange — Binance. The two rely on their own monetary accumulation and resources, transforming Binance a famous domestic exchange.
Part2 9.4 event: “Binance no longer provides services to users in mainland China”
In September 2017, the Central Bank of China classified ICO as a form of illegal financing, and the price of cryptocurrencies plummeted. This event marked the start of the dark moment of the cryptocurrency circle. A series of regulatory policies that followed were like body slam, swarming the entire domestic currency industry, and leaving no gaps to the elite.
Therefore, Zhao Changpeng and He Yi moved overseas. Many of other industry heads including Xue Manzi, and Bao Erye moved to hide in the United States, Canada, Japan and other places.
In fact, since the date of the birth of the Binance, only only crypt-to-crypto currency transaction was allowed, and the server was built overseas. These precautionary measures naturally circumvented policy supervision.
Under the 9.4 event black cloud, a large number of domestic exchanges were shut down, but the enthusiasm of the crypto markets can never be extinguished. The virtual currency players enticed a huge amount of spurred funds to the next trading place. Furthermore, various project parties were also looking for a place to live. At that time, Binance which was once ranked among the second tiers became the first choice.
Since then, Binance has entered the exponential growth period.
Before the policy came out, binance was at most a second-tier platform, and the project party always tended to ignore it. But after the 9.4 transit, the situation changed dramatically — “We have to beg them to issue our coins.”
Part3 vagabondage
With the global nature of the blockchain, Japan has become a best place where Chinese’s cryptocurrency players go. However, shortly after Zhao Changpeng settled in Japan, in March of that year, the Japanese Financial Services Agency issued a warning to Binance based on the revised fund settlement algorithm. The Japnese government was cautious of the fact that Binance did not register in Japan, and might cause losses to investor . The Financial Services Department even threatened to cooperate with the police in criminal charges if Binance did not stop its operations.
The panic of Binance has spread rapidly, and BNB plunged. Zhao Changpeng tried to defend on Twitter, but he could not appease everyone. Obviously, Japan has not been able to become a place to live. He Yi with a high EQ was ridiculed by this idea of decentralized office.
Since then, the company has been constantly in the news: opening an office in Malta, discussing with Taiwan’s relevant personnel about the possibility of landing in Taiwan, as well as promoting blockchain and cryptocurrency in Africa.
Perhaps the team is determined to insert the flag of the cryptocurrency in every color block of the world map.
Part4 3. 7" we’re still a chip company”
The head quarter has not yet fully taken root, nonetheless, Binance has been involved in a larger technical dispute.
In the middle of the night of March 7, 2018, there was a system failure in Binance. Many investors found that their accounts were hacked, and the virtual assets were transferred to Bitcoin without them aware of the situation. There were more than 20 kinds of currency involved.
In the early stage, the hacker controlled a large number of users’ API interfaces through phishing and intrusion. (The so-called API is an interface that can perform automated transactions. The hacker controls the API and can operate the user’s account, buy and sell.)
The hacker first replaced the digital currency in the user account with bitcoin. Then, the hacker used Bitcoin to buy an unknown small currency, VIA. This move makes the VIA/BTC market instantly flood into more than 10,000 bitcoins. The price of VIA was pulled up by 110 times.
However, the hackers simply did not intend to withdraw the coins from the currency. They have already bought VIA at low prices on other small exchanges. After the price of the VIA currency rose, the hackers sold them at high prices on the other 9 exchanges.
After the wave of bitcoin was created, the hacker once again profited from the empty order. According to the news, hackers made at least 200 million US dollars in this incident.
More interestingly, in order to solve the problem, Binance has managed to roll back all abnormal transactions.
As we all know, the blockchain technology rose to today’s fame because of its technical characteristics such as immutability. However, Binance decided to invalidate the transaction. This move is still criticized by many technical believers.
Part5 Creation plan:” who says digital currencies can’t become legal currencies?”
Recently, a number of people familiar with the matter said that Binance has bought an entire island, and is preparing to issue cryptocurrency on the island to make it a legal currency. The country would be a blockchain country.
They called it the “Creation Plan.”
“Who said that digital currency can’t be a legal currency? They just want to break this definition.” Many marvel at Binance’s ambition .
Can you imagine that a project, established for less than one year ago, used to be expelled by the Japense government, but have a valuation of more than $3 billion?
It is worth looking forward to Binance’s further development.
