He Yideng ranked: Since you're here, you might as well

Author: He Yi, Co-CEO of Binance

1. From Marginalized to Spotlight

When I first learned that I would be selected for Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" list, my first feeling was one of unworthiness, and my second feeling was the weight of responsibility.

This recognition bears my name, but it belongs to the Binance team, to Binance's users, and more importantly, to Satoshi Nakamoto, to every community member who has transformed this industry from an idea into a global wave.

If a native entrepreneur from the crypto industry appeared on such a list a few years ago, it would have seemed unusual; today, it feels more like our industry has gradually stepped out of the margins of finance and technology into the spotlight. This is not my "achievement"; I simply saw the wave coming, bravely stood on the surfboard, and clumsily learned to ride it. But this recognition represents another step in the long journey of the blockchain industry moving from niche geek players into the everyday lives of the public. The road is still long; we must make steady progress, step by step, to build and refine. This is what we do every day.

I often refer to myself as the "Chief Customer Service Officer," and I really like this title. At Binance, all colleagues entering management spend their first month doing frontline customer service and must rotate back every quarter—myself included. The logic is simple: the things you can't see from your office, users are observing every day.

Last year in Dubai, a young man from Kenya stopped me as the event was ending. He sends his salary home to his mother through Binance every month. He didn't ask about blockchain architecture or token economics. He just wanted me to know how much faster his mother receives the money now and how much less money disappears along the way. He doesn't need to be "educated" about what cryptocurrency is; he needs a usable product.

He is not an isolated case. Over the past five years, more than 34 million people have completed remittances through Binance Pay, totaling over $87 billion. Based on the World Bank's global average remittance fee of 6.36%, we have helped users save over $5 billion—money that hasn't disappeared into the hands of intermediaries but has returned to family dinner tables, children's tuition, and startup capital for small businesses.

2. They Should Decide for Themselves What Kind of Person to Be and What Kind of Life to Live.

I was born in a small village in Sichuan, a place that is hard to find on a map. When I was young, we occasionally experienced power outages and had to use kerosene lamps to do homework. The village girls would enter factories with someone else's ID before they turned 16.

When I was 9, my father passed away, and my uncle told my mother, "It's better to save money for your son to marry than to let a girl go to school." But my mother was exceptionally resilient; while working as a substitute teacher, she farmed and managed to support the entire family, sending me to a normal university.

Over the years, I have often been asked: Why do you work so hard when you are already financially free? To be honest, not everyone has the opportunity to change the world, but I am creating history. Since I am here, why not give it a try? As the ancients said, "When in poverty, focus on self-improvement; when prosperous, help the world."

In second and third-tier cities in India, there is a group of women aged 36 to 50. Their mothers never had their own bank accounts, and they didn't have one a year ago either. Over the past year, they have become one of our fastest-growing user groups. Those who were once unheard are quietly reclaiming their rights to information, decision-making, and the future of their families from outdated systems, entering a faster, more efficient, and lower-cost financial world. They are asking themselves, just like I did 12 years ago, "What is money?" This question is more important than any grand narrative.

Over the years, Binance has done thousands of small things in rural areas of South Africa, Brazil, and India: scholarships, training, and basic financial literacy courses. They may seem small, but they are happening one by one. I don't like the term "empowering women." It sounds like someone is holding the key and deciding whether to open the door for you. What I prefer to do is to take that door down, allowing more people to walk in. They should decide for themselves what kind of person to be and what kind of life to live.

3. From 300 Million to 3 Billion

When we said that Binance aimed to serve 1 billion users, people thought we were dreaming. Today, we have over 300 million users, and 1 billion is no longer a distant dream. So this year, we have set our target to 3 billion.

To be honest, before I said this, I also wondered: Is this number correct? Do we deserve it? But one thing I am sure of is that if we don't set this goal, no one will set it for these 3 billion people.

3 billion is roughly the number of adults globally who have not yet entered the formal financial system. This means that what we need to do is no longer just a cryptocurrency exchange, but a financial infrastructure that can support the daily lives of 3 billion people.

AI is reshaping productivity. But if productivity only belongs to a few companies, that is not a revolution; it is a new monopoly. Over the past year, we have gradually put tools that were once only affordable for professional institutions into the hands of ordinary users: allowing someone who doesn't understand code to use AI to optimize decisions; enabling someone encountering crypto for the first time to ask their questions in natural language. Finance should not just be the language of a few.

What blockchain needs to solve is another issue: ensuring that everyone using AI can receive their fair share of the value created by AI. Only by combining these two things can we possibly support the journey from 300 million to 3 billion.

Someone once said a very simple thing: If you don't like this world, go change it. I have walked step by step from that small village in Sichuan to the county town, to the provincial capital, and to the world. I know better than anyone that the world you want is like Rome; it won't be built in a day.

So, let's get back to work.

Steady progress, and efforts will not be in vain.

May 27, 2026

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