Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, stressed the importance the world's largest crypto exchange is placing on regulatory compliance in a speech at the DC Blockchain Summit.
The event Wednesday marked the first time Teng has spoken in Washington, D.C., since becoming CEO. Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, is still banned in the United States and has operated as Binance.US since 2019.
As the company comes up on its eighth year in business, a lot has changed, especially on the regulatory front. Teng said when Changpeng Zhao started Binance in 2017, the crypto space was "totally different."
"Crypto adoption was less than 1% globally," Teng said. "When you think about rules and regulations … in 2017 it was a totally different narrative. The regulators were not paying attention, the institutions were not embracing this, the rules were nascent at best.
"We operated in a very different landscape at that time," Teng said. "I think what's important for financial institutions — and I think financial institutions trip over all of the time — is that we learned from those past mistakes. We acknowledge them, we made heavy investments in them, and we correct them to try to institutionalize the firm and to ensure its function. We have done all this. We've now made huge investments into our compliance functions."
Teng said Binance has a global workforce of about 6,000. Of those, around 1,400 work in compliance.
"It's close to 25% of our global staff," Teng said. "It's a very key commitment and investment."
Binance, Teng said, is the "most regulated company," operating in 22 different jurisdictions.
Teng spent the majority of his career as a financial regulator in Singapore, eventually serving as the chief regulatory officer of the Singapore Exchange. He then served as CEO of the Abu Dhabi Global Market. In 2021, he joined Binance as the CEO of the company's Singapore branch and later became the regional head of Asia, Europe and the Middle East and North Africa.
His background on the regulatory side gave him experience balancing systematic risk and growth.
"For any financial institution and for any company to thrive, it must not only pay attention to the risks and financial aspects of it but also growth," Teng said. "Regulators [can't] regulate into the ground because if you do there's simply nothing to regulate."
The president's son spoke at a panel alongside the co-founders of the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial the day after it launched a new stablecoin.
Binance has seen continued growth since first taking the title of the world's largest crypto exchange in 2018, a year after its founding. Teng said Binance had 150 million users when he became CEO in November 2023. The exchange now has 266 million users and over $100 trillion in cumulative trading volume. Last year alone, Binance grew by 70 million users, Teng said.
Binance's trading volume globally is equivalent to several of the next largest cryptocurrency exchanges — like Bybit and Coinbase — combined. Earlier this month, Binance received a
Teng replaced Zhao as CEO of Binance in November 2023 when Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to criminal charges for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. The company paid a $4.3 billion fine to U.S. prosecutors after pleading guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws, allegedly failing to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions.
Binance previously ran afoul of U.S. regulatory agencies and was banned in the U.S. in 2019. With backing from other investors, the company launched the separate exchange Binance.US later that year to meet compliance requirements.
Teng said he first became interested in crypto while in the U.S. in 2017 at a conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
"I learned about crypto and the more I learned about it, I really believed that this was going to be the future of finance, but to go mainstream you need two elements: one is regulatory clarity and secondly, institutional adoption. I played my part to come up with one of the world's first crypto frameworks that's very comprehensive in nature to really support the industry and hopefully institutions will understand it and embrace it. We saw last year, in 2024, all these institutions started to embrace this space. It's heartening to see all of these new developments."
"I always believed that this was going to be the future of finance and it's developing very quickly. So, it's going to be quite interesting to be part of the industry and to support future innovation and growth."
Teng said a mutual friend introduced him to Zhao when the two were in Singapore. What was slated to be a short lunch turned into a much longer meeting.
"I spent two and a half hours with him and he came across as extremely open, extremely transparent, down to earth and humble about his vision for the future of what he wants finance to be," Teng said. In subsequent meetings, Teng grew to appreciate what Zhao was trying to do and accepted an offer to join the company.
"When I first joined Binance, one of my fellow colleagues told me: 'The crypto industry is a bit like Jurassic Park.' I said, 'Why is it like Jurassic Park?' [They said:] 'You're not sure what animals are lurking; there's plenty of changes around the corner; things are moving very fast, but at the very least we give you the right weapons arsenal so you can defend yourself. You can go and hunt and you can have plenty of fun.'"
