He Yideng on the list: Since you're here, you might as well stay

Author: He Yi, Co-CEO of Binance

1. From the Margins to the Spotlight

When I first learned that I would be included in 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.

A few years ago, it would have been unusual for a native entrepreneur from the crypto industry to appear on such a list; today, it feels more like our industry has gradually stepped from 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 the wave. But this recognition represents another step in the long journey of the blockchain industry moving from niche geek players into everyday life. However, the road is still long; we must make steady progress, step by step, to build and refine, and that 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 must first work in frontline customer service for the first month and return to rotate every quarter—myself included. The logic is simple: the things you can't see from your office are what users are experiencing 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 money now and how much less money disappears along the way. He didn't need to be "educated" about what cryptocurrency is; he needed 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, with a total volume exceeding $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's hard to find on a map. When I was a child, we occasionally experienced power outages and had to use kerosene lamps to do homework; girls in the village would go to factories with someone else's ID before they turned 16.

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

Over the years, I have often been asked: Why are you still working 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, and since I'm here, why not give it a try? As the ancients said, "When poor, one should cultivate oneself; when prosperous, one should benefit 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 them 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, 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 be 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 tear down that door and let more people come 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 outside 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 right? Do we deserve it? But one thing I am certain of is that if we don't set this goal, no one will set it for those 3 billion people.

3 billion is roughly the number of adults worldwide 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 many tools that were previously only affordable for professional institutions into the hands of ordinary users: enabling someone who doesn't understand code to use AI to optimize decisions; allowing someone who is 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 share in the value created by AI. Only by combining these two things can we hope to support the journey from 300 million to 3 billion.

Someone once said something very simple: 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 no effort is wasted.

May 27, 2026