Binance Fireside Chat Takeaways

This past Monday, Illini Blockchain got the opportunity to host a fireside chat with the Chief Strategy Officer of Binance — Patrick Hillmann. Led by the one and only, Luke Clancy, the chat provided tons of insight into Patrick's work and his vision for the future of web3.

The chat lasted just about 1 hour and 20 minutes and I surely could’ve listened for another hour. It was a huge success, hosting over 80 students from the UIUC community with the main purpose of showing students a path to non-technical success in web3, and letting Patrick give real, actionable, and relatable advice for students thinking about future careers in the space.

In this post, I’ll highlight some of the big questions that were asked and the notes that I took along the way. I wanted to make this more “real” and not edit too much out. So keep reading to hear Patrick’s story from a University of Illinois student to eventual C-Suite at the biggest crypto exchange in the world.

Learn more about Illini Blockchain here. And thank you to Luke Clancy for helping me recap this great event.

His Journey

• Dream job in finance didn’t work out so had to pivot
• Slept on a park bench for the first night working in Brussels for the State department (love the grit)
• Worked for crisis management. Was at Penn State before the Sandusky scandal 2 months before. Was at Target for their big crisis
• Was at GE when Trump was elected. They made him the white house lobbyist.
• Chief innovation office and managed WHO’s covid crisis. Facebook was also one of their clients.
• He was then recruited to work at Binance in Singapore. Thought this was his one shot to get into web3 and took the chance

What We Asked Him

What mentalities/models/frameworks attribute to your success when thrown into new environments?

• Failure. Been around crazy successful people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Obama, & Jack Dorsey. They all accept failure all the time and improve. It gives you confidence when being ok with failure
• This mentality also lets you say yes to many things that might be more uncertain. You can always learn from these failures.
• Making sure never to spoil a relationship. Connections are the world's greatest currency. All of the opportunities he has gotten have come from his network.

When you do fail how do you approach uncovering the insights of a failure?

• Say what exactly went wrong and reflect on the situation. Talk to a supportive friend that you trust. Try to find what you truly want.
• For example, he wanted a firm with more freedom that had a great culture with a younger staff. This helped him narrow down more of what he wanted.

How to leverage connections?

• Go to all the events like hackathons, Binance meetups, & Illini Blockchain events.
• Don’t necessarily apply to random internships. The best jobs and best people are working through your network by constantly making these connections wherever and whenever.

How to get into crypto as a technical or non-technical?

• Failure is fine just always somehow make forward progress (life is non-linear). Look for the smaller projects & companies that are in the space. You don’t have to be the top engineer at Binance out of college. You can apply to similar stuff and work your way there. Show that you can do similar things to your dream job.
• Be flexible with what you do and where you work.

What excites you the most about working at Binance?

• The uncertainty. Everything that is being built at Google has already been built. You’re not an innovator you’re a caretaker. Binance & web3 is the exact opposite. We have barely scratched the surface of this future.
• Crypto will continue to grow and be regulated for consumer choice.
• Binance is an incredible company. They’ve incubated massive companies like Polygon & FTX. They are by far the biggest crypto exchange (bigger than New York Stock Exchange & London Stock Exchange combined). They are also the 3rd largest NFT marketplace. And, they have a great leader.
• Certain in web3’s uncertainty but more importantly certain in its attention & direction.
• In 1993, David Letterman was interviewing Bill Gates. Microsoft was live streaming the first baseball game. David Letterman asked why they needed this and why they couldn’t just use the radio. They both laughed it off. Meanwhile, neither had a clue how the internet was going to absolutely change everything with our lives. web3 has that same potential. It makes society more efficient. And it makes everything cheaper.
• For example, if you want to donate $10 to someone through any big site, only about $1 will be donated in the end because of all of the middlemen taking a cut.
• We are just scratching the surface of how society can leverage web3.
• For example, they want to grow NFTs. Not because of the Bored Ape Yacht club, but because of Tesla & Aston Martin & others. They are attaching NFTs to every car so that they can take more data for a myriad of reasons like improving the next product (without ever breaking anyone’s privacy).
• It’s no surprise that traditional companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are throwing tons of money into the industry.
• To get started, build something and fail and learn. Eventually, it may take off (you never know).

What projects should people work on?

• Binance is looking for founders with a vision for their project because they found a problem that web3 can solve. The founders have a clear understanding of the issue and foresee a practical use case for it.
• To get there, you need to develop a fundamental understanding. Then just run with it.

What is the best mentality for a country that wants to leverage web3 tech in terms of regulators and policymakers?

• The US used to have sole ownership over the software space (and partly in the hardware space).
• Now, Europe and the Middle East are racing forward to adopt pro-crypto regulatory frameworks that still allow for innovation.
• Need to have firm regulations to protect users and loose regulations to enable company innovation.

If you could recommend any book, blog, or podcast what should we listen/read to

• Coin Bureau — personal favorite podcast
• No Rules Rules — a book about the development of Netflix (CZ’s favorite)

If you could put a quote or phrase on a billboard that anyone could read

“Everybody has a plan until you punch them in the face” — Mike Tyson

• As long as you can maintain that forward momentum, you will be alright in the end.

Q/A

What is your opinion on CBDC’s especially for Western Nations?

• The US government has been trying to create a payment system for the last 18 years. Governments aren’t usually built for speed and innovation especially democracies which require consensus and take a lot of time to get there. “A panel is a horse by committee”. He thinks there is a real place for them until stablecoins replace them. He doesn’t see them replacing cryptocurrencies though.

Why do you still think blockchain is still ground zero and why might it be too late after 12 years of crazy growth in web3?

• It’s not even close to being too late.
• Everyone thought Coinbase would be the biggest thing. Then Binance came along.
• Everyone thought Bitcoin would be the only thing, but then Ethereum came along.
• We haven’t scraped the surface of how we can utilize smart contracts.
• He doesn’t think true adoption will happen in the next 5 years. More like the next 10. However, it is still exploding in the middle of a bear market.

What do you think about decentralization since Binance is centralized?

• Defi is where they think the industry wants to go. New users will look at centralized exchanges in the beginning before they branch out. Wallets are still super complicated. Centralized exchanges are a boom for the industry in the short term in the next 10 years. New projects will chip away from the Defi industry. CEXs are important for users to feel safe.
• Talked about a $500 million hack that was able to be frozen and saved using the BNB Chain because it was in part centralized by Binance.

How do you recommend people learn to the extent where they can begin building?

• Every successful project was built on the bones of 1,000 dead projects. So, you should create an idea no matter how small. Build it. Fail. Reset. Look at what worked and what didn’t work, then take those learnings and start another new project. Then fail again. And again.
• You can also check out some Illini Blockchain resources.

Our 4 Big Takeaways

1. We are just scratching the surface of web3 innovation & global impact. Tons of industries will be affected (not just finance).
2. Being willing to fail & learn from failure is the biggest indicator of future success.
3. Anyone (technical or non-technical) can break into web3 if they work consistently work on projects and maintain forward momentum. The more you work on it in public, the better.
4. Connections are the world’s greatest currency. Form & grow connections constantly. You never know what could happen.

Closing

Can’t thank Patrick enough for tuning in! It was unreal to hear about his story and his advice was super valuable.

Big things coming from the Illini Blockchain crew so make sure to subscribe to our public calendar & newsletter for future events.