The Story Behind 'Who is Behind Making Binance'

This article is transcribed from the HODLong podcast by Mable, Chief Growth Officer of STEPN and former partner of Multicoin Capital. To listen to the original podcast, please click on the link.

Original text compiled by: Rhythm BlockBeats

In this episode of the podcast, we invited Han Yang, the author of the article "Who is Behind Binance: The Borderless Company in 4,000 Resumes," to talk about the original intention of writing and the creative story behind this explosive article. BlockBeats has compiled the podcast content as follows.

You are now listening to Houlang, I am the host Mable. The purpose of this program is to explore the development of the Web 3 community with the audience, and to have conversations with guests including project operators, investors, and other ecosystem participants. We will also focus on the Web 3 community in Asia, and have the warmest Web 3 conversations.

Mable: Hello everyone, welcome to the latest issue of Houlang. Today, I have invited a friend named Hanyang who is not exactly a person in the Web3 industry. He is also the author of a recent popular article called "Who is Making Binance". Listeners who know Hanyang may have come across him through other channels rather than Web3. Let's have Hanyang introduce himself.

Hanyang: Okay. This program used to have various languages, and now it finally has Northeastern dialect. There were no people speaking Northeastern dialect before me, right?

Mable: No, there isn't.

Hanyang: You see, it really adds a bit of Northeastern flavor to the noble blockchain circle. Hello everyone, I am Hanyang. If you listen to podcasts, you may have heard of a few of my programs. I am the host of "Late Night Chat", "Monster Shangzhi", and "Social Technology Review". But now I mainly update "Late Night Chat". At the same time, I am also a freelance writer for Late Night, Sixth Tone, and T Magazine, and I usually write some texts for them. I also write articles for iFanr and Luanfan Books.

So you may see me in some strange places, but if you see the words "汉洋", it's probably written by me. I am currently starting a business and working on a project called AAAny, which is a social app specifically for AMA. This is my main identity. Another identity of mine is that I am a blogger from Northeast China and have taken a lot of content about Northeast China. So after the Binance article came out, some friends told me, "Hey, there's someone with the same name as you who writes about Web3." My friends who work in blockchain said, "Hey, aren't you the one who writes about Northeast China? Why are you writing about blockchain now?" Some people even think that these are not the same person, but they are actually me.

Mable: This doesn't really count as writing about blockchain, does it? This article is quite interesting, it starts off like a business biography. I still want to start from the beginning and talk about it. This article must have caused all kinds of reactions because it was first published on WanDian. Right?

Yes, it will be released later, along with the newsletter I sent out.

Mable: I think the comments below are quite interesting. Later, we can talk about the different types of comments, including CZ (Binance founder) who also reposted this article. I didn't expect that, and he even invited you to chat with him. I think maybe when you wrote it, you didn't have a specific intention or purpose, it was more like seeking advice. But anyway, they (Binance) seem to have a positive view of it, right? I find it quite interesting. Can you tell us about the original intention of writing this article?

This is quite interesting because I actually wanted to write about it at the end of last year when I was researching Crypto and looking for information. Many of my friends knew that I came up with a term to describe searching for things in the Crypto community - "digging for gold in the shit". I spent three to four hours a day scrolling through Twitter and reading a bunch of articles, but only 5% of the information was useful. There is just too much noise in the community, which is not uncommon in this day and age, but it is particularly rare to see it on such a large scale as in the Crypto community.

For example, let's take Binance as an example. According to its size and industry level, if it were placed in any other industry, such as the e-commerce industry or the hardware industry, it would have the same status as Alibaba or Apple, and even higher. There is a lot of information online about Binance, and there are many studies and discussions about it. However, the actual situation is that there is very little information available, so little that it is not proportional to its size at all. I wonder why there is so little information written about them? So, my feeling at the time was that since there is so little information available, shouldn't someone write about it properly? I thought I could write about it because I believe that to write about it, you must first be a Chinese person who can speak English, or at least someone who can speak both English and Chinese.

You may be a Chinese person outside of mainland China, but you still need to be able to speak Chinese. Many of Binance's materials are originally in Chinese, and many people also speak Chinese, so I feel like I have an advantage in that regard. On the other hand, I'm also curious about how Binance became so big. You mentioned earlier that this article isn't just praising Binance, but the people at Binance don't seem to mind. I think a big reason for that is that most of the coverage of Binance online today focuses on gossip and "dissing," as well as its disputes with the SEC. So when someone writes a normal article, it's considered a good one by Binance's standards.

This article would be insignificant if it were to be published in companies like Alibaba or ByteDance, as it would not create any ripples. However, writing about Binance would spark discussions. The reason for this is simply because there are too few people writing about it, and even fewer who write about it well. Hence, I, an unknown writer, have gained recognition by writing about it. If the same article were to be written about ByteDance, it may still attract some readers who work remotely around the world, but it would not have reached the same level of popularity as this article due to its quality and length. This is solely because Binance has been overlooked by many, and I happened to have spent time researching and writing about it, resulting in the article's current success.

So I'm curious, how do you feel when you read this article?

Mable: Actually, what I wanted to say earlier was that this point is very interesting. The way you described writing for ByteDance or possibly even Alibaba wouldn't achieve the same effect. This is because the majority of Alibaba's employees are still in China, while ByteDance has a global workforce. One key aspect of your article is the data on where these people are located and their educational backgrounds.

Actually, I think the reason why people have different opinions on this is because it may not be true. Many people may think so, especially those who claim to work in a certain exchange publicly, not just mentioning it in TG or chat tools. However, many people may doubt the authenticity of this information from the beginning, which leads to diverse comments.

But actually, when I saw this, I had the same idea. I was thinking that people who work in this industry may not be willing to publicly disclose where they work. However, as you said, not many people use this objective method to write about Binance. Because it's too inconspicuous and too normal. Everyone likes to use eye-catching and sensational ways to write about it. So, because of its simplicity and mediocrity, even with so many other major media outlets starting to write about it, the article still caught people's attention. That was my first impression at the time.

Hanyang: For example, let's talk about data. First of all, the data quality of this article on Binance is just passable in my opinion. If the quality were any worse, I wouldn't be able to use it. But if we could improve it, the article would be better. So you can see that most of the data in that article is unusable. We found over 4,000 pieces of information online from people claiming to have worked at Binance, but we actually only used less than 2,000 of them. Half of those were eliminated, and the remaining ones were the ones I verified and deemed usable.

Mable: Why eliminate?

Hanyang: Because although there are more than 4,000 people, if we just sample directly and look at one person's resume every 10 people, we can actually feel whether this resume is true or false. For example, if he has several jobs at the same time, then his job at Binance must be part-time, or at most a nominal position. Or there are some traders who don't actually work at Binance, but they will write that they are trading at Binance, and it will also be counted as work experience. These resumes are generally screened out with a very large screening volume. There are also some resumes with strange experiences, such as studying all kinds of things in college, writing that they work at Binance, and writing that they work at various large companies. I also tend to think that these resumes are not very true. What kind of resume is true? It is that he goes to school normally, works in a company step by step, and then jumps to Binance. Generally speaking, when I receive this kind of resume, I will think: Oh, that should be more true.

Mable: This is a stereotype.

汉洋：Yes, it is a stereotype, but relatively speaking, as long as it meets my stereotype, it is much better than those that you can tell at a glance are "something". There are really many resumes that you can tell at a glance are problematic. Another point is the level of detail in the resume. For example, if it clearly indicates their position and responsibilities, then I tend to believe it is true, because if they were lying, they would just write "Trader" or "Marketing at Binance" without going into more detail. And because they are looking for a job and have posted their resume online, I can check them out, so they must have a purpose for doing so. Therefore, I tend to believe that resumes like this are genuine. After screening, there may still be more than 1,000, which I think is okay, and then I use them.

However, even if the remaining information is less than half, it cannot be said to have good quality. Some have very good quality, but some only write the country they are in without specifying the city, or write the university but not the major. For these cases, I may have to exclude them when doing statistics. For example, there are 1600 people as the denominator, but in the statistics of schools, it is very likely that 200 people did not provide enough information about their schools, so they cannot be included in the comparison. Therefore, it may not be possible to use them for comparison. However, I still use more than 1000 as the denominator because if the denominator changes for each comparison, it will make the reading experience for the readers too poor. They will have to check the total number of people each time, and the total number is not the same each time. Therefore, except for the school statistics with part-time jobs, I use the same number as the denominator for all other statistics in the entire article.

Mable: One thing I want to point out is that many people working in the Web3 industry are actually digital nomads, and it's quite normal for them not to disclose their location.

汉洋：Yes, so most of the time it can't be used. But there are still many people who write it, because there are some people in the Crypto circle who cosplay as digital nomads, and I think this is even the majority. Maybe it's my bias, but the real digital nomads who travel everywhere are very few. In fact, many people's digital nomads are fixed in another place. For example, I may be a British person and stay in Chiang Mai, which also counts as a digital nomad, but when I work, I am actually in Chiang Mai. I spend most of my time in Chiang Mai every year, and my work location is also written as Chiang Mai. I am still a digital nomad, but I have a fixed office location.

There are actually a very large number of people like this, and there are many people in Dubai in statistics who call themselves digital nomads. This is indeed because most of these people are not Middle Easterners, but although they travel there, they spend most of their time in Dubai throughout the year, and they will write about it. Another point is that this article is written superficially, which I admit, but the key is that the deeper things, I can't write them if I don't know them. I also want to write, of course I want to make this article deeper, at least two or three times longer. This is just because there is not enough information.

Mable: So when it comes to information, have you tried to dig up some non-public sources during your writing process? Because as you said, a lot of the public sources are just repetitive. Have you tried to find some people who may have worked in this industry before or are currently working in it? Of course, this may be difficult because most people tend to hide their identities.

汉洋: So, the information contained in this article may only account for 20% of what I know, with the remaining 80% coming from non-public channels. The information I found on my own cannot be written about because I did not disclose my intentions to the sources. There is an ethical issue here - if I did not say I was going to write about it, then I cannot write about it. Therefore, I only used two quotes from the interview because I explicitly told the source that I may use them in my writing. For the rest of the information, since I did not disclose my intentions, I cannot write about it. I believe that the source trusted me when they shared this information with me.

Previously, I mentioned in my friend circle that this might be the article that took me the longest time to write for every single character. This is because I have been trying to find more information, but I have not been able to find suitable information that can be publicly shared. Therefore, this article has been delayed for a long time. The version that you are currently reading should have been completed two months ago, from collecting data online to writing it out. However, the reason why it has been delayed for so long is because I have been trying to find more information to make this article longer. But later on, I realized that if I keep delaying, this article will never be published, and I will always be lacking information and needing to find more things.

So at that time, I talked to the founder of Later, Xiaowan. She said that you should quickly publish this article and let everyone know that you are writing about it. This way, when you talk to others, you can clearly tell them that you are writing about this topic and they will also know what you are writing about. It's possible that someone may even want to chat with you about it and give you some inside information. I think her suggestion was spot on, so I sped up the process and published the article as soon as possible.

So many people might say that the article seems like an introduction? Because it really was an introduction, in the positioning of the entire article, the first article I wanted to write was a bigger thing, but the current version of that article is just me cutting out the introduction separately. The main reason is that if I don't put this thing out, I will never be able to finish this article. But now I can tell others that I am writing about Binance, what I want to write, if you are willing to chat with me and let me write about it, and if you don't want me to write about it, just tell me separately. Then I can openly talk about these things with others. So this is a very important reason why this version of the article is now being released.

Mable: I understand this because we talked about it before. So what other content did you originally want to include in the first article?

Hanyang: My original first article was about how Binance collaborates. Because my own company is remote, I was curious about how Binance manages to run the world's largest remote company. So the direction of the article is that Binance has people all over the world, working in different industries. The natural transition is how they collaborate, but because I don't have much information about the latter part, I can only focus on their personnel distribution and what they are specifically doing.

Mable: This point is not a particularly prominent highlight among many other points. I don't know why you would want to start with this aspect for Binance.

Hanyang: My motivation for writing is curiosity. If my friends are familiar with me, they should know that I don't write about anything that doesn't interest me. So the biggest reason I wrote about Binance is because my own company is remote. I have seen a lot of remote companies, and I used to work in open source, where many teams collaborate remotely. So I have always known the challenges and problems of remote work, as well as its advantages.

However, there is not actually a particularly large giant company that relies on remote work, and Binance is the first company to achieve this achievement, so this point makes me very curious. I know how they collaborate when they have 20 people, but what about when they have 200 people? 1000 people, 2000 people, 3000 people, and now they may have several thousand people. As such a large company with people in different time zones and facing different problems in different countries, how do they collaborate? I think this matter is very interesting in itself because no one has done it before. Whether there will be others in the future, I don't know, but it is certainly unprecedented. And I also want to think about what I can write next by looking at how they collaborate and grow. I definitely want to come up with some bigger themes and series, so I will start by studying how they collaborate.

I think it may be an interesting and relatively easy point of entry for me to study, so I took this topic as my starting point. Because when you look at the changes in a company's management style during its growth process, it usually reflects the changes in the company's stage. For example, taking a familiar domestic company as an example, if the founder of a start-up company begins to worry about management issues and starts taking some courses, then this company must be at a stage of change. You can take this change as a stage, what was the company like before this stage? What is the company like after this stage? I think there must be a stage where the company had a set of patterns before, but found that the pattern no longer worked and had to shift to the next set of patterns, and even this pattern may be changing. Each time this change occurs, it is actually a stage change for the company.

After researching this, although on the surface I am studying the changes in collaboration, in reality I am studying the company. The larger macro changes of this company are only reflected in the small matter of writing. So when I am writing, I can know what each stage is like and then study the next stage after completing the previous one. This is my idea.

Mable: You said this point is quite interesting. Mainly because there are too many writing companies around me in my daily life, so I haven't even thought about these points, including our own company. It's not realistic to say that we have a presence in all continents. There is no presence in Antarctica or Africa, but in various parts of Europe, America, Asia, and even Australia. So in my opinion, it seems that this has become a normal phenomenon in this industry.

But what you said is true. When there are only dozens of people, it's still manageable. Even with hundreds of people, it may still be okay. However, when there are thousands of people, it becomes extremely difficult to consider the legal and compliance issues from all around the world. This is indeed an interesting point. In fact, I even think that in this industry, all these companies may consider one question, which is whether what I am doing can be subject to the long-arm jurisdiction of the SEC even if I am not in the United States. Do I need to follow the standards of the United States to make my entity and ensure that this architecture will not be defined as a security by the SC? This has become a problem that all Web3 companies around the world need to consider. It is true that you may not have such a strong feeling when you are inside, but from the perspective of an outsider, I think this is still meaningful.

Hanyang: There are two points here. The first point is that we are crossing the river by feeling the stones. The stones are still there, but we don't know exactly where they have been placed. In fact, writing itself is a process of exploring where those stones are placed. This way, people in the future will know whether they can step on that stone or not when crossing the river, which is meaningful for the industry itself. Even for a company like Binance, if a new start-up company wants to become like Binance and grow rapidly, the problems it faces in the next 10 years are likely to be similar to those faced by Binance. Therefore, it is very important to know where the stones have been stepped on in this case, so we should find this stone and tell everyone. The other point is that this stone itself is like a historical archive, it is a slice of history, similar to a jade seal, telling everyone what Binance did at that moment. This has a material value for historical research. If you don't write many things now, it will be difficult to write them later.

Mable: Interesting, indeed. The key point here is actually the regulatory environment, and how it has changed. The Binance of two or three years ago, and the Binance of today, are definitely not the same. As it grows to a larger scale, it will inevitably need to make adjustments to its business practices and priorities. It's a delicate time right now, and many people don't realize the sheer size of Binance - it's a behemoth that can easily compete with many other top companies in the world. Perhaps those on the outside don't feel it. I don't know if you've had this feeling before, especially since you write a lot of business interviews, but I never realized just how big Binance was.

I may be the opposite, because I knew from the beginning that Binance was bigger than I thought. When I first researched the company, I thought it was about the same size as FTX, and I might have thought it was just a little bit behind first and second place when FTX was at its peak. Later, I found out that Binance was much bigger than FTX. At that moment, I realized that its size was definitely bigger than I thought, and then I started to look up a lot of information about it, to see what they said on their official website, and to look at the company's history. At that time, I knew that Binance's size in the blockchain industry was definitely bigger than Apple's size in the smartphone industry.

So in the end, I also compared it with Apple in this article, because I had this feeling at the beginning. Many people, especially those outside the industry, when they talk about Binance, they don't realize that they think blockchain is a small industry, which is already a common bias. Another point is that they think Binance is at most a big fish in a small pond, but that's it. There's nothing to pay attention to. So after I finished writing the article, I deliberately changed a paragraph. A friend told me that you have to let people outside the circle know why the company cares about it. You can't assume that they know how big Binance is. So I compared it with Apple, hoping that everyone would realize the absolute size of Binance. But after I finished writing it, I realized that not only people outside the circle didn't realize it, but people inside the circle might not realize how big Binance's size is. They may still think that Binance is a startup company, a relatively successful blockchain company, but in fact, Binance's size is already a giant in the Web3 industry.

Mable: This is what I want to say. It's not about Binance being in the blockchain industry or the Web3 industry, but rather that it is a giant compared to any company in the world. FTX can never be considered a true "second place" because it has no spot volume, so it's just a matter of having a big reputation and pushing compliance in all aspects. We talked a lot about this in a previous podcast, and another point is that they didn't realize how big Binance was in the previous two or three years because many people thought it was an Asian company. This was also a big idea for my former employer, Multicoin, at the time, that this kind of exchange token or value capture model might come more from Asian startups.

But was Binance still a startup company back then? Actually, many people in the United States may feel that there is regulatory risk today, so they are unwilling to hold too many positions. However, I think that many times it was because Binance was defined as an Asian company by some people. Now, of course, it is clear that they are not (an Asian company) because they have made a lot of efforts, including being very active on x (formerly Twitter). From the boss to the official account, and a series of recruitments, many overseas BD and employees. It cannot be said that there is an original sin, but indeed, as a Chinese entrepreneur, I feel very touched that he does not have so many advantages and is easily overlooked by many people.

Hanyang: I think for Binance, they hope to be ignored, but they have reached a level where they cannot be ignored. We may have discovered this a little earlier than others, but I think that's why I'm in a hurry to write. I feel like someone else would have written it if I didn't, and I can't be the only one who noticed.

Mable: Earlier, you mentioned that a friend asked you to compare their size with that of Apple. In your opinion, who is the target audience and readership of this article you published?

汉洋: First of all, the readers of this article are myself. It may sound cliché, but it's true. If you're not interested in an article, then it's not a good article. I'm interested in the topic, and I found the information intriguing. I discovered that there are people in certain places, including Binance, where I thought only companies could register. I was surprised to learn that people are actually working there. So, when I wrote the article, I was thinking about who would be interested in reading it. I believe it would appeal to those who are interested in the Web3 industry, but they don't necessarily have to be involved in the blockchain industry.

My target audience was actually people who are interested in the blockchain industry, but they don't necessarily need to be in the industry themselves. It's an article for a wider range of readers, so some popular science content should also be considered. This person may only be interested in blockchain, but they haven't studied it in detail, so it's not an article exclusively for insiders. It's more about making sure that if you're interested in blockchain, I should make it easy for you to understand.

Mable: You have been cooperating with Wandian for a long time. Because you chose to release it on Wandian, they should be the only media in mainland China that had the opportunity to conduct a long interview with CZ before. I am quite curious, when you were writing this, did you communicate with the people at Wandian about their feelings during the interview at that time?

Hanyang: But that article may not be found on WeChat now. You can check the recommended interview with CZ under my article. So many people actually don't know that WanDian wrote that article, similar to the Binance article. If you read it at that time, you read it. If you didn't read it at that time, you won't be able to find it even if you search for it later.

During the interview with WanDian, I actually asked a friend who works for WanDian about their operations. I felt that, like me, they couldn't ignore the size of Binance at that time, so they should contact them. I remember that it was WanDian who took the initiative to ask if they could interview CZ, and CZ agreed, although he only gave them two hours. However, they ended up chatting for three hours during the first interview, and then had two more interviews, each lasting at least an hour. I think the article was quite good. The best part was that the professional journalist spent a lot of time researching and talking to you for several hours, with different follow-up questions. Therefore, I think the quality of the article was quite high. I also saw the original manuscript, which was much longer than the final version. However, the final version was edited and arranged to make it easier for readers to read, so I think the final result was also good.

After chatting with them about the article, their biggest impression was that CZ was easy to talk to. Many founders of big companies have a certain attitude of "I'm the CEO, hurry up and finish talking so you can leave." However, they didn't feel that way with CZ. He was approachable and willing to talk to journalists.

Obviously, CZ is easy to talk to, while some founders may not be willing to interact with reporters too much or give short answers during interviews, which may not be exciting. CZ is obviously a good interviewee, although I haven't talked to him specifically. Although he and I have arranged a phone call online, we haven't set a time yet. But at least from that article, he seems to be a founder who is easy to talk to.

Mable: I think most people in this industry actually realize the importance of information dissemination, so they are more willing to express themselves. Of course, what to express? Is being misunderstood the fate of the speaker? It is, but if you don't speak, you will have no way to make more people understand what you are, so I feel that this is also a very interesting phenomenon in this industry. It is different from listed companies. If the executives of listed companies don't allow you to speak too much, it is easy to cause some words to be said, which will cause price fluctuations, and then the China Securities Regulatory Commission will come to you. This is quite different.

For example, Elon Musk is always online. However, if you really talk about CEOs of publicly traded and regulated companies in the United States, even if they are very talkative themselves, the legal department often controls them more strictly. So I think this is a very interesting phenomenon.

Hanyang: I think the founders of the blockchain industry are generally quite eloquent, without any derogatory meaning. I found a problem, that is, people in the blockchain industry can speak for themselves, but they can't speak to others. If you ask them to post a tweet and write something about themselves, and then interact with the community, they are quite good at it. Traditional companies actually lack this point. Many of their people really can't speak, but many people in the blockchain industry are particularly bad at communicating with the outside world. For example, how do you introduce this thing to ordinary people? How do you deal with traditional media? How do you deal with public relations events and communicate with the general public? I think this is not done very well.

I think Binance cannot remain silent about everything. You have posted a lot of content and there are many things online, but you don't interact with anyone other than yourself. If you don't let them write about you, then they will do it themselves. That is uncontrollable because you haven't provided them with information.

So, I remember chatting with an Economist journalist in China in 2019, and he mentioned that Chinese companies were particularly unwilling to accept interviews from overseas media at that time. This led to a problem where overseas companies and media had to rely on their own judgment when writing about them, because they couldn't talk to anyone and didn't know what the final outcome would be.

So he felt at the time that he should have talked more with the outside world, because only when you talk enough, these journalists will know how you speak and will stand on your side to consider. I think the blockchain industry is actually the same. Everyone is very good at talking to themselves. But once you involve them in communicating with the wider world, they often fall into a self-indulgent state or simply don't speak and just read what I wrote. This state is actually not right, and you still need to learn to deal with the wider world.

Mable: Yes, but have you noticed that the point you just made has a specific context? It tends to occur more often in situations where Asian companies are interacting with Western media.

汉洋：You have a keen observation. Yes.

Mable: It's not that my observation is very keen, it's because my past experience tells me this. In fact, there is often a big contradiction, because Multi point originally had another partner who was responsible for our PR-related things full-time. Western funds care so much about this that they will require the portfolio of startups to do a lot of positive communication in some emergency crisis public relations. But they will wonder why I need to say this? He often can't understand.

There are also some other situations like this, where many founders in Asia and Pan-Asia think that just doing it is enough and they don't need to communicate so much. This kind of practical view is actually good, but in today's fast-paced information dissemination, it may become a handle. Because, as you said, in the West, especially in the media, their so-called ethics are quite different from what we see in commercial media in China today. Over there, they will clearly tell you which ones are paid and which ones are not.

For Western media, anything you say can be written down unless you explicitly ask them not to. Many people are not aware of this and may say something they think is just small talk to a journalist, only to have it published. On the other hand, Western entrepreneurs, especially those from New York and Los Angeles, have grown up in a commercial environment and are more aware of this situation, so they may be better equipped to handle it.

Hanyang: This is actually a very big challenge for Asian entrepreneurs. Let's talk in Chinese. The content environment in Asia is completely different from that in Europe and America. Your experience in dealing with content in China cannot be directly applied to dealing with Europe and America. It is definitely a big misunderstanding. Because I am spending time studying the differences, and I need to deal with them myself. So when I was studying these differences, I realized that some of my methods in China are different from those in foreign countries. For example, the definition of some manuscripts, how to arrange the first release, and how to provide manuscripts are all different.

The reason why I chose to cooperate with WANDIAN is because they are more like some traditional Western media in this regard. For example, all your sources need to be Double Checked, how do you handle your ethical and moral issues? Most domestic media in China do not care about this, but once you cooperate with overseas media, you actually care about this issue. For example, when a domestic company holds a meeting, they invite a bunch of media teachers and give out red envelopes for PR articles.

This is not a particularly common occurrence overseas. It may still happen in the blockchain community abroad, but in the traditional media circles, this situation is basically non-existent and certainly not mainstream. So I think this is a misunderstanding that many people have, and we need to learn to speak out from ourselves. Especially for Chinese entrepreneurs of this generation, you are facing the global market. How to speak to people around the world, understand the differences and differences between different cultures, and what are the sensitive and taboo areas? How can we cooperate better? No one wants to harm you, but they may just not understand you, so I think this is still very important.

To be honest, I don't think Binance has done a good enough job in this regard. While Binance is open with their information and willing to be interviewed, it's not that they don't want to do it well. Perhaps it's because Binance has grown too fast, and what they need is just an increase in trading volume and user numbers. However, in other aspects, they still need to catch up with companies of similar size that have been around for 20 or 30 years. This is something that needs to be addressed, such as how to deal with more media outlets.

Mable: This is a very typical thing. I feel that Web 3 companies that have expanded rapidly have this problem, where the growth rate of corporate governance does not match the growth rate of business volume.

Hanyang: Not only WEB3, but any startup company will have this problem. In fact, according to the report, many companies will face this challenge, growth is too fast, so the problem is covered up. But once the growth begins to slow down, the problem begins to emerge. This is not directly related to WEB3. As a startup company, you will definitely encounter this challenge. Perhaps because for Binance, or for the blockchain industry, the extra challenge compared to other industries is regulation and public opinion. This is a very important issue, and it has a greater impact on the business, so it is more serious. If you are a new consumer company, what pit do you need to fill? It may be the supply chain and so on, but obviously Binance does not need to fill the supply chain pit, but what it needs to fill, or what any blockchain company needs to fill, may be related to regulation and public opinion.

Mable: Did you have any unexpected research results during the process of writing this article? I mean, up until the deadline for writing this article, did you have any research results that surprised you?

汉洋: There is one thing that I feel particularly deeply about, which is the evaluation of Binance by former employees. It is very interesting, including the evaluation of CZ and He Yi. Generally speaking, since everyone is still in the industry, they will not say particularly bad things, just be polite and praise a little. For example, when talking to people who have come out of Baidu, Alibaba, or Tencent, they may criticize, but they will also be polite on the surface, saying that they have learned a lot of things and so on.

But Binance is different. When people from Binance come out and evaluate something, you can clearly tell that it's not just polite words. For example, someone might talk to me about several major decisions made by Binance and think that they were all done very well. Usually, that would be the end of the conversation. But not with Binance. They would continue to ask themselves why they did things the way they did, even after creating and running their own business. They would also ask me how other people I talked to felt about the matter.

Basically, everyone I meet in the industry talks to me like this. They think about what Binance is doing right and ask me what I think about it. You can tell that they are really thinking about this point. This kind of praise is not just polite or insincere. These people truly believe that Binance must be doing something right, and they want to reproduce the process of making the right decision, including when they evaluate CZ and He Yi. He joked with me that he had also studied what time CZ goes to bed, but couldn't find out. He also thinks about how he made the decision to reply and why he made some decisions and not others. So this point makes me feel particularly interesting. It presents a more three-dimensional Binance to me, showing a more complex aspect outside of a giant trading platform. This is a company that can stimulate people's thinking, because these people who come out are also constantly thinking about what the company did before. This is something I find rare. I don't see this in many other companies I talk to. Once they come out, they come out, and the company is just my former employer, and it has nothing to do with me.

Of course, there may also be a reason that the people who are willing to chat with me are curious about this matter. Those who care about this matter, the people who do not care about Binance's current situation, will not chat with me. But at least I have a very strong feeling about this.

Mable: Which nodes? Can you say that?

Hanyang: For example, during the early turbulent period of Binance, how did they manage to persevere through the time when they fled from China, and how did they eventually come to a stop?

There are some people who knew CZ in the early years and say that he is definitely not the same person as he was a few years ago. How did he become the person he is now? He could have retired after achieving success, so why did he persist? What keeps him going? What drives him to continue?

There are also those who feel that Binance grew very rapidly in terms of management, but for example, Sister One can still have direct conversations with front-line employees and ask me if other companies have this kind of management style where the founder still pays so much attention to these details. Some people also ask if they are paying too much attention to details.

Mable: Two things to consider when it comes to a person's decisions in the historical context of a company and their approval of the company itself.

汉洋: Yes, but you can hear from their tone that they don't dislike this company. They feel that they have learned a lot from this company, which is something I can clearly feel from direct communication. Because my principle is to meet and talk, never to make phone calls, so I try to meet and talk with most people. During the process of meeting and talking, you can feel his tone and his feelings, even if he doesn't have any emotions, at least he won't hate this company.

Mable: What I really feel deeply about is my past work experience, which has allowed me to interact with employees from many different departments of various exchanges. Over the years, I have come to know many people from Binance, and their abilities and skills are very high. There are even many whom I would like to work with if given the opportunity, although of course, they may not necessarily want to work with me. By this, I mean to say collaborate.

So overall, I feel that when people decide to join this company and do something, some of them, whom I know, are no longer at Binance, but they really wanted to do something on this platform. You can clearly feel this point, which is quite rare. Because I think many people actually choose to go to the exchange, rather than, for example, a certain project party, maybe just thinking simply, thinking that it will make money quickly. I think there were really quite a few Binance employees at the time who really wanted to do something here, or felt that this position was an unprecedented historical opportunity. Binance's position in the industry allowed them to accomplish many things that others could not, leveraging the advantage of this resource, and also allowing them to realize some of their own ideals or ambitions. I think this is not seen in other exchanges.

汉洋: To put it simply, in the time period from the founding of Binance to 2021, including the working hours and intensity, for most of the people I have talked to, if they didn't have something they wanted to do, they wouldn't have been able to stick around. Anyone who has worked at Binance for more than a year definitely has something they want to do, otherwise the workload would be too exhausting to slack off.

Mable: Of course, I think there are not many opportunities to slack off in this industry. Actually, what I want to say is that many people have given feedback on this article, and they feel that it is just the beginning. What other series of articles do you plan to write in the future?

Hanyang: Actually, I want to write the whole story of Binance company. I am very interested in leaving a record of history, including our program to save Northeast China, writing about the plague that happened 110 years ago in Northeast China, and some other things. I write with the perspective of providing material for people who will study history in the next two or three decades.

So my attitude towards Binance hasn't changed. I hope to remember as much as possible about the company and what has happened before, leaving a first-hand record for future research. So I have always been interested in this matter. For example, after writing about how Binance collaborates, I may write about how Binance manages these things. But if possible, I hope to write about the history of Binance. How did this company come about? What decisions did they make when facing historical turning points? What were the thoughts of the people involved? And what did they do right or wrong?

Mable: But for example, managing Binance requires you to know a lot of people working in the company. This is not an easy task.

Hanyang: Aren't we doing this now? So if anyone wants to chat with me, I can skip writing and you can satisfy my personal curiosity by coming to talk to me directly. I am grateful for this platform and this episode that has made everyone aware of me and willing to chat with me. Because it is definitely difficult, 100% difficult. But since ancient times, anything related to history has been difficult to write about.

Mable: If you didn't have to worry about financial resources in all aspects, what topics would you like to explore and write about for Binance? I mean, the topics you are discussing now or the ones you want to write about may be determined by the resources you can access. So, if you didn't have to consider those issues, what topics would you like to explore and write about?

Hanyang: First of all, I am short of resources and money, which is unavoidable. But if you let me daydream and assume that I have everything I need, I think I would start writing from CZ's work in Japan, or even earlier, when I was working at McDonald's or gas stations. I want to write about how this company has come to where it is today, documenting every step along the way.

CZ learned about blockchain and Bitcoin through playing poker, and he decided to pursue this industry. At the time, both those who invested in him and those who did not had their own thoughts. This includes the decisions made by Binance after its establishment, the challenges faced, and the social environment during this process.

I think the interaction between Binance and society is a very worthy topic to write about, because the success of any company cannot be attributed solely to itself. It must have a direct and significant relationship with the era and society it exists in. If Binance had the same execution and resources in 2013, it would not have been able to achieve what it has today because there were not as many blockchain users at that time. Therefore, I think the society and era are also important factors. I am interested in the overall development of Binance, as well as what the society and era were like at that time. If possible, I would like to explore and describe as much as I can. However, I must consider resources and financial constraints, so I am essentially groping in the dark. I can never see the whole picture and give everyone the truth. That is just wishful thinking.

I hope there are investors among our audience, but when it comes to this, do you know what I think of? A few days ago, Baozi told me that you have the potential to become Michael Louis in due time. He used to write interviews not by the side of the interviewees, but when he gave FTX to SBF, he was in the Bahamas, interviewing many people. My question to you is, if you had the opportunity to do an interview up close like Michael Louis, and the information you collected was mostly positive, would you choose this method?

Hanyang: When writing about any historical events, we can only try to get as close to the truth as possible. There is no way to guarantee that we can provide the truth to readers. Therefore, any expectation from readers for the author to provide the truth is unrealistic. In my opinion, it is also interesting to explore how to uncover the mysteries when resources and funding are limited.

History always reveals its true face at the most critical moment, and you have the opportunity to see more at that moment. So, no matter what the final outcome of that thing is, or who the interviewer is, if I am lucky enough to have that moment, I will write down as much as possible. Therefore, for a writer, the temptation is great. The opportunity is right in front of you, so you will not consider whether the person being interviewed is biased or not. If I have the opportunity to write with Binance this year, I will definitely go for it because it is a rare opportunity. Another point is the final outcome of the writing, which I think depends on the writer's personal style and how they handle positive and negative materials. Even if the company is the most powerful in the world, like Apple, it is difficult for a writer to only have access to positive information.

With your tone and choice of words, you unintentionally reveal a lot of details. These details are what a writer needs, or rather, what any creator captures. After capturing these details, how do you use them? It all depends on personal judgment. Writing is about constantly making different decisions. So I'm not worried. If you follow the interview, it won't make the situation overly positive. It's not possible to only interview people who are biased. If you can chat, you definitely want to chat with people from the SEC, as well as regulators from various countries.

So I'm not worried about this matter, what I'm worried about is not having that opportunity, because that opportunity is not something that the writer can control. Michael Louis, first of all, has a good writing style and produces a lot of good content, both of which I can't compare to. The most important thing is that I think he has good luck. He happened to catch the opportunity during those major events, and his ability is actually very strong. Many people overlook his ability to seize opportunities when evaluating Michael Louis, which is really difficult to learn and requires a lot of luck. He has both the ability and the luck, and he really seized it. All I can say is that I envy him. Most writers may not have the chance to touch it once in their lifetime, but he has caught it so many times and every time he has seized it.

Before, it was because he knew how to mine, but FTX is his choice, because for those like Big Short before, he found those people. After the fact, when he interviewed them, he definitely didn't just watch the trader short on the spot, right? So it's still different.

Mable: But do you remember we had a conversation before? He said even on the day when FTX crashed, he still believed that this company was fine. That's why I thought earlier that if you were in this company, you would probably only be exposed to positive information, or there would be a peaceful atmosphere.

Hanyang: I also have a deep impression of that. His exact words were: "I think I am the person who understands crisis the most. I have only encountered crises in my life, but until the day FTX had problems, I thought this company was fine. If something like this happens, I don't know what I would do now, but maybe it's only in that situation that you can see what it really looks like. It is possible that because you are too close to the company, what you write is actually from a very company-centric perspective." A big shot in China made a transmission for a giant company, and I think the transmission was completely worthless. It was written entirely from the company's perspective and had very little value. Mable: When he was writing this, he also mentioned an interesting point. He said that he had been thinking about how to end it because he had previously written about "The Big Short" and other things after the fact, but this was an ongoing situation. It was the first time he had written about something ongoing and he didn't know how to end it, so it was very dramatic.

Hanyang: Actually, the most important thing for a writer is problem awareness, that is, what problem you are writing with. The reason why I say it cannot be a particularly company perspective is that the company perspective does not have problem awareness, it only speaks what the company wants to say, and you do not have your own questioning and problems about this issue. So what I am mainly researching now is what kind of problem I should hold when writing about Binance.

Mable: I want to talk about an interesting comment that I remember seeing under an article that was supposed to be published later. Some people replied saying, "This doesn't seem like it was written by someone in the industry." I even saw some friends reposting it on their social media and commenting that the author clearly wasn't part of the industry. What do you think about these types of comments?

Hanyang: I think this may be a point, not to trouble anyone else. Some people say that this was not written by someone in the industry because everyone knows that if you are in the industry, you will know that Binance has some situations that are not mentioned in this article. I think this is a reasonable evaluation because there are some things that I don't want to cause trouble for anyone, so it doesn't seem like it was written by someone in the industry. And indeed, I didn't find it. If I did find it, it would be selective expression, but in my information, I don't have that thing because it may be hidden well, so I don't need to delve into it here.

Another point is that people have a misconception about writing. They think that the best person to write about a topic is the expert who knows the most about it. For example, if you want to learn about rocket science, you should read something written by a rocket scientist. If you want to learn about aquaculture, you should read something written by an aquaculture expert. This is better than reading something written by a journalist. However, this is not always true. Writing about blockchain, aquaculture, or rocket science is a profession that requires time and practice to perfect.

I don't agree that only insiders can write the best about this thing, because you may be very knowledgeable about things in your circle, but your skills in other areas may not be enough. A good writer needs to extract the issues that everyone cares about from things he doesn't understand, and tell everyone in a reasonable, truthful, and interesting way. Of course, I may not have this ability, I am practicing, but I don't think I agree that something only has value if it is written by insiders.

Unless you have also honed your writing and storytelling skills, I believe that you are lacking in that area. For example, Binance has many interesting stories on Twitter or in some blogs, but they cannot be spread and require some time to think about. The ability to tell stories and write is a skill, and it is also a circle. You cannot assume that just because you have studied blockchain for 10 years, you automatically understand writing. Therefore, writing about Binance and writing these articles are the same.

Mable: What surprised me the most was the number of people, including CZ and possibly He Yi, who thought this was a very positive article. I didn't say it wasn't positive, and CZ may not have thought it was positive either, but he may have thought it was well-written and decided to publish it anyway. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but everyone's attitude towards the message conveyed in this article, I believe, may have been a bit unexpected to you as well.

Hanyang: Very unexpected. When I wrote this article, I specifically told Wandian, "You must only publish two articles, don't let more people read it." As a writer, I feel a bit embarrassed about it. If this article were to be included in a collection of Wang Hanyang's works 100 years later, it wouldn't make the cut. I have high standards for my writing. That's why I initially thought of just sending out a newsletter for a small group of readers. My goal was to tell others that I wrote this article and ask if they wanted to chat with me about it. However, when I woke up this morning, Twitter automatically prompted me to turn off notifications because there were too many.

And during the process of writing this article, I was afraid that this article would be just about writing about Binance's remote work and so on, without mentioning the challenges they face, including their confrontation with the SEC and news of their layoffs. I added these to balance it out. But perhaps because there are too many negative reports about Binance, my balanced article is seen as irrelevant to them.

Mable: You actually don't know if Binance will like this article or if they will ask you to delete it. You didn't even consider that it might end up spreading widely.

Hanyang: I didn't think they would want to delete it. Of course, this is not a complaint. I feel that their PR team is not very proactive in public relations management, or maybe they just don't care. I didn't think they would delete it, but I'm worried that they might not be happy. There's also an interesting point. Binance's operations team contacted me very quickly, much faster than the companies I've worked with in Web2. Binance should still be monitoring these things on the internet, and their speed is very efficient. This speed is definitely faster than any Web2 company I've ever seen.

Mable: There is one point that because everyone in this industry will crazily refresh their social media feeds, so they will open it from time to time and take a look, so I am not surprised.

It is true to some extent, but because I may have written more about Web 2 companies before, I may be a little surprised. However, if you are in the Web 3 industry, you may think that this speed is normal.

Thank you for today's sharing from Hanyang.

Thank you Mable.

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