Regulatory clarity key for crypto adoption: Binance co-CEO Richard Teng
What do you think about the approach the Indian government has taken with respect to crypto regulation?
India is a very exciting marketplace with plenty of potential and untapped opportunities. India has ranked number one in grassroots crypto adoption for the last three years, according to the Chainalysis report. It has all the right ingredients for crypto adoption to take place very quickly. But we do need more clarity on the regulation front for the mass market to come in.
A case in point: if you look at what happened in the US, from an anti-crypto stance under president (Joe) Biden to now becoming the crypto capital of the world under President (Donald) Trump, that has created so many opportunities. Stablecoin market cap went up by more than 50%, transaction volume has tripled in the second half of the year, it has now surpassed double what Visa does daily. You can see how regulatory clarity brings about huge change.
Now, all the financial institutions are rushing to issue their own stablecoins because their superior architecture and infrastructure resolve many problems that archaic fiat channels have globally. Once that clarity comes through, India’s crypto adoptions will continue to skyrocket.
Will there be an inflexion point after which governments will be forced to look at crypto again? And are we on the precipice of it?
If the US, by being the largest economy in the world and having the deepest capital markets in the world, says that it wants to be the AI and crypto capital of the world, it is very dangerous for others to just ignore these two spaces because these are the spaces that you have to be competitive going forward to maintain a cutting edge. Any country that doesn’t invest enough of its own talent density and finances will likely suffer a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis those that do.
We already have UPI in India. Why replicate a similar infrastructure, especially when there is regulatory ambiguity?
UPI, as part of the payment and financial infrastructure, is important, but crypto complements it. UPI in India is for usage within India by and large, but crypto helps in borderless transfer. It never sleeps, it operates on a 24/7 decentralised basis, because of which there are so many things you can do, including programmability of different tokens. The utility is much stronger than what you see in traditional financial space.
Do you see CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) working across the globe? Do you see CBDCs as competition to crypto?
Five years ago, the narrative of a lot of central banks was that they’re going to push CBDCs, but now you can see some scaling back of that motivation. I don’t see it (as competition to crypto). If it comes about, it’s a good thing because it’s also a usage of blockchain technology and a testament of how blockchain will transform the world. In its purest form, if you have retail CBDCs that means everyone holding it has a claim on the central bank and you don’t want that because you don’t want to disintermediate the banks from their role as credit creators, thereby expanding the credit cycle of a country.
The banks play an important role on that front. Which is why we’ve seen some scaling back on these efforts, and a lot of central banks are now focusing on wholesale level CBDCs, which are used for interbank settlement, clearing purposes, and leaving banks to do what they do best, which is credit creation.
Do you think crypto can ride with AI?
To me, they are complementary technologies. You have to utilise both. AI can sift through large amounts of data, and is good at detecting trends and analysing. If you complement it with blockchain, which is immutable, it makes the data transparent to all. You can’t change it. Today’s accountancy is based on the double-entry system, which requires reconciliation. Imagine, once you have data on AI and you put it on the blockchain, you don’t need to do reconciliation because nobody can change those records.
How fast is Binance growing? Which geographies are the fastest growing?
Binance is an extremely young company, eight-and-a-half years old. We took about five years to reach our first 100 million users, then slightly more than two years to reach our next 100 million users, and then less than two years to reach the next 100 million users. We began 2024 with 170 million users globally, and ended last year with 300 million users. You can see the rapid pace of growth.
This asset class is very unique because for the longest period of time, institutions, corporates and regulators were just ignoring it. It was the retail investor who really embraced it. We saw a pivot in 2024-2025, that’s when institutions started to come in in a big way, the corporates and even the sovereign started to deploy it. We are still at a very early stage of the cycle, crypto adoption is currently 8% in the world, the next 10% will come very quickly.
With the Wazir X hack, people have become very cautious of crypto. How are you making sure this doesn’t happen at Binance?
We are fully aware of the risk. Last year alone, we helped our users avoid up to $7 billion in fraud and scams. We have invested greatly. Security is one of the areas where we invest the best talent. We recruit white hats at the best of competition and bring them into the organisation to do different things, like different penetration testing security.
We have nine layers of security protocol to protect ourselves. We educate as well, since it’s not only platform-level security that you have to be aware of, but also the user-level security. And we have set up a dedicated fund, called SAFU Fund, a safe asset for user fund that stands at $1 billion. If there’s an untoward event, that fund stands to compensate users. None of the regulators require us to do it, but it is our form of instilling trust to our users.
