Yi He

Yi He grew up in rural Sichuan, China, where her parents worked in education. She later attended a university in Sichuan, but the available high-quality public reporting does not give a school name or degree that can be cross-checked. Before entering the cryptocurrency industry, she worked as a teacher, an assistant psychotherapist, and a television host, among other jobs. In her own post on November 15, 2022, Yi He stated explicitly that the day was her 36th birthday, from which her date of birth can be established as November 15, 1986.⁠[2][3][4]

Yi He said that at about 25, on a friend’s recommendation, she entered an open audition for a travel show host, although she had no professional broadcasting background and her Mandarin was not standard. When asked about her strengths in the final round, she listed the empathy she had gained from studying psychology, her ability to do her own makeup to save the team money, and the fact that she did not care about pay and valued the travel show for being fun in itself. She had expected to be eliminated in favor of a modeling champion and entertainers, but was instead signed and took part in location shoots in remote areas over a long period.⁠[5]

Yi He recalled that in 2013, when BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry had risen above $1,000, investor Mai Gang asked her to make an advertisement for a Bitcoin trading company. Before taking on the work, she read the white paper and studied Bitcoin; at a gathering after the event, Mai Gang introduced her to Xu Mingxing, who was looking for a head of marketing, which gave rise to her opportunity to join OKCoin.⁠[5]

In 2014, Yi He entered the cryptocurrency industry and took part in founding OKCoin, mainly responsible for brand, marketing, and user growth. During this period she met Changpeng ZhaoChangpeng ZhaoChangpeng Zhao (commonly abbreviated CZ) is a Canadian entrepreneur and the founder and former chief executive officer of Binance. He entered the Bitcoin industry with a background in trading-systems engineering and founded Binance in 2017; in 2023 he pleaded guilty in the United States to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program and resigned, personally bearing a $50 million criminal fine and a $150 million CFTC civil penalty, while Binance as a company separately bore billions of dollars in criminal and regulatory settlements; he served four months in prison in 2024 and received a U.S. presidential pardon in 2025. Since then he has mainly been involved in education, investment, and advisory work on digital asset policy.Open the full entry and pushed for him to join OKCoin as head of technology. Her official biography lists her experience as a co-founder of OKCoin as 2014 to 2015. OKCoin at the time connected fiat currency and digital asset trading, during a period of rapid expansion for China’s early trading platforms; Yi He’s contributions centered on brand positioning, community outreach, and commercialization.⁠[1]

Yi He said that Changpeng Zhao had years of trading background at the time but was working on a wallet business; she stressed to him that a trading platform would make better use of his experience and ability in trading system design, and on that basis persuaded him to join OKCoin. As she recalled it, she identified and recruited trading technology talent, while Changpeng Zhao took charge of the trading systems side he knew better.⁠[5]

In a historical interview published by Bitefan, Yi He reflected on her choice to move from television media to OKCoin and described Bitcoin as a cross-border social and financial experiment. At the time she saw spreading knowledge about Bitcoin and building an international trading platform as long-term goals. The page does not identify a verifiable original interviewing outlet or author.⁠[6]

After leaving OKCoin, Yi He joined the mobile video company Yixia Technology as vice president, taking part in brand and marketing operations for products including Miaopai, Xiaokaxiu, and Yizhibo. Binance’s official biography says she also took part in the company’s fundraising strategy, helping lift its valuation above $3 billion. Her growth and communications experience with internet content products later became important background for Binance’s early international brand building.⁠[1]

In later interviews, Yi He said she has held BNB since Binance’s early days and stated that she has not managed the position through frequent trading or selling. She summarized Binance’s competitiveness as long-term building, putting users first, and quickly solving product problems. Such statements are the subject’s own public accounts, not independently audited asset disclosures.⁠[7]

Yi He recalled working at Yixia Technology for about a year and a half, responsible for marketing products including live streaming, Miaopai, and Xiaokaxiu; the company had by then moved ahead with stock options, equity, and IPO preparations and had hired a CFO. Because she was exacting about the details of ad placements and had arguments with partner teams, the company later added an executive above her as her direct supervisor. She regarded this organizational change, together with her own results-oriented style and difficulty compromising on professional judgment, as the background to reconsidering whether to stay.⁠[5]

Yi He said that when Changpeng Zhao was preparing the ICO, he invited her to be an adviser; she refused to simply put her name on a document she had not studied closely and insisted on taking an actual part. While attending the Weibo Influencer Festival in Shanghai, she used a weekend to revise the Binance white paper, and she said she wrote about one-third of the first version; pay was not discussed beforehand. This proportion is a co-founder’s after-the-fact recollection and has not been independently verified against original documents with revision history.⁠[5]

Yi He recalled that when Changpeng Zhao first sounded her out about joining, she politely declined by saying, “I’m too expensive; you probably can’t afford me,” because Binance was still at an early stage. After the ICO was completed, Changpeng Zhao asked her, on the night before BNB went live, to decide quickly, saying that if the token rose, the original terms could not be maintained. Between the visible IPO path at Yixia Technology and the risk of a new startup, she chose Binance because she wanted to test whether she could extend her experience in brand building in China to a global platform.⁠[5]

Shortly after Binance launched, Yi He publicly announced on August 8, 2017, that she was leaving Yixia Technology and joining Binance as a co-founder, responsible for brand, marketing, and business development. She and Changpeng Zhao divided the work: Changpeng Zhao represented more of the technology and trading systems background, while Yi He drove user growth, the brand narrative, and operational systems. Over the following months Binance expanded rapidly into one of the world’s leading platforms by trading volume. Yi He joined after Binance was created, but her co-founder status reflects her building of the early organization and business systems, rather than simply corresponding to a legal registration or a single company founding date.⁠[8]

In an online media Q&A lasting about four hours, Yi He described Binance’s business structure at the time, saying its work was divided into segments including the trading platform, incubation and investment, information services, and charity, with trading still the core business. She also explained Binance’s attitude at that stage toward high-risk derivatives, token listings, and ecosystem expansion. The exchange reflects Binance’s early vision of expanding from a single spot platform into a multi-business ecosystem, but the plans in it were management’s judgments at the time and do not mean that all the projects were later carried out as originally planned.⁠[9]

In an interview with Sina Finance, Yi He discussed Binance’s plans for a public chain and a decentralized trading platform. She considered matching efficiency to be one of the prominent engineering challenges facing decentralized platforms, and stressed that open networks, technical iteration, and user experience need to advance together. The interview also touched on Binance Charity and industry adoption.⁠[10]

In an interview with CryptoSlate, Yi He described Binance’s plan to test a fiat trading gateway in Singapore, saying the product would work with local banking partners and implement know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering requirements. She regarded cooperation with regulators, banks, and local teams as a precondition for launching the fiat business, and offered a long-term view of the crypto market. The interview shows that Binance’s early global expansion had already extended from crypto-to-crypto trading to regulated local fiat on-ramps.⁠[11]

Responding on her own X account to a dispute over a project’s listing, Yi He said she was not responsible for the final review of Binance listings, and reminded projects not to mistake marketing contacts, personal relationships, or informal promises for listing decisions.⁠[12]

In an interview for “Bull and Bear Revelations,” Yi He looked back on two rounds of market and regulatory change, in 2013–2014 and in 2017. She said that when she joined Binance she already understood it as an international platform, and she regarded the trust of early BNB holders as a responsibility to keep building; she also summed up entrepreneurs’ judgment through market cycles as “seeing which way the tide is flowing.”⁠[13]

Yi He recalled that early on she believed leverage amplifies human weaknesses and had explicitly opposed Binance offering futures; after coming to understand the demand for hedging during the 2019 bear market, she pushed for an internal race between two futures teams. She also said that after the product launched, users were required to pass a test first, and a cooling-off period was set for users who repeatedly traded with heavy positions.⁠[14]

While introducing Binance DEX in a livestreamed interview, Yi He at one point said its matching speed was close to 1.4 million orders per second; that afternoon, she proactively corrected herself on Weibo, explaining that the figure was a slip of the tongue and that although the DEX could handle the trading volume of centralized platforms at the time, it still fell short of 1.4 million orders per second.⁠[15]

Yi He hosted an online roundtable, discussing industry judgments and career choices with several women entrepreneurs and professionals. She defined a “good blockchain project” first and foremost as a “good project,” arguing that technology labels cannot substitute for real demand, business logic, and sustained execution; in evaluating women in the industry, she repeatedly emphasized focus, conviction, and long-term commitment, rather than treating gender itself as a standard of a project’s value.⁠[16]

After Binance announced its Venus stablecoin plan, Yi He told BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry that before entering a country it would first make sure it complied with local rules, and that regulatory compliance should come before the technical solution; she also spoke of possibly using a new open-source chain, advancing the project through an independent association, building reserves with a basket of fiat currencies or crypto assets, and giving priority to government and corporate partners outside the West. The relevant architecture had not yet been finalized at the time.⁠[17]

In an interview, Yi He said that Binance Lending’s early returns came mainly from interest on loans for margin trading, that the first phase was trialed with short terms, caps, and a small number of assets, and that liquidity was matched through dedicated accounts and the timing of subscriptions and redemptions. She also acknowledged that users still lacked a clear way to directly see the flow of funds within the platform. Expressions in the interview such as “principal and interest assured” reflect the product side’s messaging at launch and cannot substitute for risk disclosures or an independent audit.⁠[18]

In an open letter to Binance’s Chinese-language team, Yi He broke the work ahead into six areas: futures, over-the-counter trading, compliance, security, technology, and external communications, and asked the team to return to product and user problems themselves. The letter also contained allegations of public-opinion manipulation by competitors, but the reporting did not provide sufficient evidence for independent verification.⁠[19]

In an interview, Yi He explained why Binance launched its futures and over-the-counter trading businesses relatively late. She said she was personally cautious about the risks of high leverage but believed users’ needs for hedging, arbitrage, and risk offsetting pushed the platform into the futures market; the interview also discussed Binance.USBinance.USBinance.US is a cryptocurrency trading platform for U.S. users, established in 2019 and operated by BAM Trading Services separately from the global exchange Binance. After the SEC sued its operator in 2023, the platform became crypto-only; it restored U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals in February 2025, and the SEC dismissed its case that May. Stephen Gregory has been chief executive since March 2026.Open the full entry, communications in the Chinese market, and competition among trading platforms. The statement reflects the weighing of demand against risk in product decisions and does not constitute a guarantee of the safety of futures trading.⁠[20]

In the interview, Yi He described her responsibilities at the time as broader than “head of marketing”: apart from the customer service department, she shared responsibility for most of Binance’s matters directly related to users. She said she did not directly manage money or people, but helped the company find better people and increase revenue, and discussed new business ideas with Changpeng Zhao when they arose; she cited the launch of Binance Labs as an example of her pushing a new direction. This is her own description of her internal responsibilities and is not equivalent to a formal organizational chart.⁠[20]

Yi He said Binance had about 600 employees at the time, of whom fewer than 200 were technology and product staff and about 200 worked in customer service and operations. She explained that the large customer service team stemmed from users being spread across different time zones and language markets, which required continuous coverage of global service. These figures are the company’s own figures as of the 2019 interview.⁠[20]

On December 12, 2019, Yi He’s original Weibo account showed that it could not be viewed because of complaints that it violated relevant rules; she then registered “Biquan Yiyi,” which again became inaccessible in March 2020. The public pages do not give specific violations or a complete platform decision that can be independently verified. This experience also provides background for her later explanation of why she had long lacked public communication in Chinese.⁠[21]

In an interview with Blockmanity, Yi He described India as an important potential market for Binance, emphasizing the importance of user education, local partnerships, and regulatory adaptation for expanding crypto services. She made no growth commitments that can be independently verified.⁠[22]

Binance carried out temporary maintenance after a trading halt. Yi He said in a community group that the problem lay in a data push module, that no data other than market data was lost or corrupted, and that futures could still be traded; the announcement at the time listed the scope of the suspension as also including deposits, withdrawals, spot, margin, C2C, savings subscriptions and redemptions, and some account transfers. These explanations of the cause of the failure and the status of funds come from the platform and the subject, not from an independent technical forensic conclusion.⁠[23]

In an online interview, Yi He introduced Binance’s “open platform” strategy: opening trading capabilities, technology, and product interfaces to developers who already had applications and users, and sharing revenue proportionally with the integrating parties, so that outside teams could cut the cost of repeatedly building trading infrastructure and acquiring customers. The statement reflects her business vision at the time of shifting from a single trading platform to ecosystem infrastructure; the reporting did not give uniform contract terms or the results of subsequent projects.⁠[24]

In a joint interview, Yi He described Binance’s long-term direction as underlying infrastructure: users could in the future use payments, wallets, or other services without needing to be aware of the Binance brand behind them. She said internal teams had no fixed boundaries, allowing similar directions to be tested in parallel, with user interviews, product experience, and market feedback determining continued investment; the role of managers was to identify people, match resources, and have those carrying out the work own the results.⁠[25]

Yi He further explained Binance’s internal horse-race mechanism: it did not want to draw uncrossable “turf” lines for employees; if someone found a task that no one was handling, or believed they could do it better, they could take it on themselves; once the results were validated, the team could become its own unit. As an example, she said Binance had once had two futures teams compete in parallel, observing user retention and feedback for about a month before giving more resources to the better-performing team, while retaining the lessons from failure.⁠[25]

Speaking about communication with the Chinese-language community, Yi He acknowledged that Binance had at one point nearly “lost its voice”: at the tightest point, the marketing, operations, and key accounts departments together had only one employee communicating with Chinese crypto media; she also cited the example that, the year before, the whole of Latin America had at one point been handled by a single person. She attributed the public relations problems of the time mainly to insufficient staff and budget, rather than to a deliberate effort to keep a distance. This detail shows that front-line communication capacity did not grow in step with rapid international expansion.⁠[25]

Fortune reported that Yi He did not begin systematically studying English until her thirties, starting about four years before the interview. The report described her as already able to complete a lengthy Zoom interview in English, relying on translation only when Chinese idioms or proverbs were hard to explain. She also continues to reach users through multiple channels, including TelegramTelegramTelegram is a cloud-based messaging service founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov. Launched in 2013 and based in Dubai, it supports private conversations, groups, channels, bots and access across devices. Cloud chats and end-to-end encrypted Secret Chats use different architectures.Open the full entry, X, and WeChat. This detail explains the language background behind her earlier focus on the Chinese market and her later gradual increase in international public expression.⁠[26]

In an interview with TokenInsight, Yi He discussed Binance’s flat management, the parallel development of centralized and decentralized products, and its project screening mechanism. She said Binance had no system for obtaining listing eligibility through payment and stated that listings were evaluated by an internal committee. The interview also recorded her views on industry growth and her BNB holdings.⁠[27]

In a WeChat Moments post, Yi He said that a wallet stolen in 2013 contained an ID card that she had previously reported lost, and that someone later used the identity information to register a company in Ningbo, generating about 300,000 yuan in tax arrears and a record restricting high consumption. She said that to prove she was not the actual operator, she spent about 200,000 yuan hiring lawyers and gathered materials such as police report records and early equity contracts, and that it took more than a year of handling before the dispute was brought to a close. The available material consists only of her own screenshot-style statement, without full business registration records, tax handling, police conclusions, or court documents.⁠[28][29]

Fortune’s video interview connected Yi He’s upbringing in rural Sichuan, her university studies, and her television media experience with her career path at OKCoin and Binance. She spoke about her early responsibility for brand and user growth, continuing to invest and build during the bear market, and Binance’s goals of seeking European licenses and expanding globally. The report provides a fairly complete first-person account but does not name her university.⁠[2][3]

Binance announced that Yi He would become head of Binance Labs. In an email interview with AxiosAxiosAxios is a US digital news media company founded in 2016 by former Politico executives Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz and launched in January 2017. It is known for short news items and industry newsletters in the “Smart Brevity” style, especially for its Washington political coverage, and publishes local news newsletters in cities across the United States through Axios Local. Since 2022 it has been owned by Cox Enterprises.Open the full entry, she described the bear market as a window for deploying capital and finding long-term projects, saying the investment focus included teams with technological competitiveness that could resolve infrastructure bottlenecks and build sustainable products. The assets under management disclosed by the firm at the time were Binance Labs’ corporate figure, not discretionary assets managed by Yi He personally, and should not be confused with personal wealth.⁠[30]

After taking over Binance Labs, Yi He told Forkast in an interview that its focus fell into three categories: infrastructure that supports the industry’s operation; applications with real use cases and sustainable business models; and tools that provide services around data, analytics, and security. She stressed that there was no need to rush into deals during a bear market, that an investment firm’s value lies not only in capital but also in guidance on product, technology, operations, and ecosystem connections, and that “Web3 plus what” mattered more than the generic “earn while you participate” label.⁠[31]

Yi He argued that because Web3 projects can raise money from users directly by issuing tokens, venture capital firms cannot prove their value through funding alone; the more important added value should be guidance on technology, security, token models, product, and community. She also required projects to answer the same basic questions as Web2 companies: what the business model is, what problem it solves, and where the innovation lies. On this basis she opposed investments that merely imitate popular projects and aim for short-term traffic and quick profits.⁠[31]

Discussing “X-to-earn” projects, Yi He proposed a concrete test: the key is not the “earn” but the “X”; if rewards stop being paid out, is the game or application still appealing, and are people still willing to pay for it? She believed that users who come in only to make money will leave once incentives weaken, and the number of users and the token price may fall as a result. This judgment constitutes one operational criterion she uses to assess the sustainability of token-incentivized products.⁠[31]

As the FTXFTXFTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that operated FTX.com, moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021 and was valued at $32 billion in January 2022. In November 2022 it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection amid a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges. Its reorganization plan took effect in January 2025, after which the FTX Recovery Trust began paying creditors in stages.Open the full entry liquidity crisis became public, Yi He explained on her own X account Binance Labs’ decision to sell the FTT on its books, saying it was based on risk management rather than aimed at a competitor, and stressing that market participants should manage their own risk. The series of posts was a one-sided explanation by Binance management during the crisis.⁠[32]

In December 2022, Binance launched free online courses for the general public covering topics including blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralization, Web3, and trading strategies. Speaking as co-founder and chief marketing officer, Yi He said education is an important part of expanding industry adoption and helping users understand risk. The project extended her public education responsibilities beyond brand and user operations, but the courses were produced by the Binance Academy team.⁠[33]

After the FTX collapse, Yi He said in an interview that trading platforms should keep improving the transparency of their assets and business, and put security, risk control, and the protection of user assets before expansion. Speaking about Binance Labs, she distinguished between incubation, early-stage investment, and partnerships with mature projects, arguing that team quality, valuation, degree of innovation, and long-term ceiling should all factor into the judgment; on regulation, she said Binance had set up offices and applied for licenses in multiple places. The above statements on transparency, reserves, and licensing progress are all the subject’s own account.⁠[34]

Yi He said that what Binance’s management cared about most at the time was “business health” and “organizational health”: the former required the platform to keep running amid external controversy and market shocks, while the latter required about 8,000 employees to understand the corporate culture, conduct, and goals, so that the company could function without depending on any single CEO or COO. She also revealed that having 16 to 17 meetings in a day was not unusual, but said she preferred to spend her time solving problems, listening to community needs, and developing young employees, rather than making every decision herself.⁠[34]

In the discussion of transparency after the FTX affair, Yi He distinguished between two concepts: verification of reserves of users’ on-chain assets is not the same as the full financial audit undergone by a listed company. She said Binance was willing to have auditing firms verify its assets, but that the difficulties at the time also included whether large audit firms had the capability to verify a trading platform’s on-chain assets; she also said the platform had published on-chain reserves for nine assets and planned to keep expanding the scope. The numbers and progress are all the company’s figures at the time.⁠[34]

Facing controversy over new tokens’ performance and listings, Yi He said technical innovation is only one part of the review, and the platform also weighs user demand, project viability, token models, and market conditions; she said project wallets and market makers’ accounts are monitored, and some projects’ tokens are held in multi-party custody to limit unilateral disposal. She also denied that listings are decided through personal relationships.⁠[35]

When Bloomberg published an exclusive interview conducted in Dubai, Binance was facing lawsuits from U.S. regulators and global compliance pressure. Yi He said the crypto industry’s acceptance of clearer regulation is a long-term trend, and described her management responsibilities in areas including marketing, customer service, human resources, finance, and product. The interview reflects her position on regulatory disagreements and corporate governance.⁠[36]

Amid outside discussion of the sources of power and governance relationships at Binance, Yi He stressed that her position at the company was that of a partner and co-founder, not an ordinary employee hired to carry out instructions. She said she had already taken part in founding a crypto trading platform before joining Binance and was the person who brought Changpeng Zhao into the crypto trading business; Changpeng Zhao invited her to join Binance on the strength of her earlier track record in brand and growth.⁠[37]

In an open letter, Yi He said that because of its scale and regulatory pressure, Binance had strengthened processes including KYC, compliance, enhanced due diligence, high-risk customer checks, and authorized representatives, and that these requirements had created efficiency challenges. She asked the team to ground its competitiveness in product, service, and organizational rationality, and acknowledged that a large organization may be slower than a small team. The letter is management’s own explanation for internal and external communication and does not mean that the effects of the compliance measures have been endorsed by regulators.⁠[38]

Authority Magazine’s profile interview systematically traced Yi He’s experience before entering the blockchain industry. She said she had worked as a teacher, an assistant psychotherapist, and a television host, encountered Bitcoin in 2013, took part in founding a digital asset trading platform in 2014, and took part in creating Binance in 2017; she also looked back on the team’s internationalization after 2017, cross-cultural collaboration, and her own responsibilities in areas including business, investment, marketing, brand, customer service, and mergers and acquisitions. The experiences and leadership philosophy in the interview come mainly from her own account.⁠[4]

On November 21, 2023, Binance and Changpeng Zhao reached a criminal settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and other agencies; Changpeng Zhao stepped down as chief executive officer, and Richard Teng succeeded him. Yi He was not a defendant pleading guilty in the Justice Department resolution; she continued as Binance’s co-founder and a core executive, responsible for multiple businesses including marketing, customer service, human resources, finance, and product.⁠[39]

After Binance completed its leadership transition, Richard Teng and Yi He held their first joint Chinese-language AMA. The two discussed compliance building after the U.S. settlement, global regulatory cooperation, long-term investment, and Web3 startup incubation. Yi He stressed that the industry’s future would be built jointly by its practitioners and that she would continue to support long-termism; Teng reaffirmed three commitments: to users, to regulatory cooperation, and to ecosystem partners.⁠[40]

In a character letter submitted to a U.S. court and made public in April, Yi He recalled that in 2014 she had tried to use blockchain to improve the transparency of charitable funds; that in Binance’s early days in 2017 it had handled the recovery of assets users had sent by mistake; and that in 2018 the team had frozen funds related to fraud. She also acknowledged that she had lacked sufficient legal and management knowledge in the early days of the business. These accounts come from the personal letter she wrote for Changpeng Zhao’s sentencing.⁠[41]

Amid questions about price movements and information leaks before the RONIN listing announcement, Yi He said on her own X account that Binance would strengthen the isolation of project contacts, the confidentiality of announcements, and trading reviews of employees and related persons, and in a follow-up post listed six measures, including strengthening internal controls, offering rewards for leads on leaks, and holding violators accountable.⁠[42]

Responding to a case of a user’s stolen assets being transferred into Binance, Yi He explained that the platform can impose a temporary freeze, usually of no more than 24 hours, on suspicious funds transferred directly into Binance, but that a longer freeze or further action requires the authority handling the report to submit materials through formal law enforcement assistance channels; losses caused by on-chain fraud also cannot automatically be compensated by the trading platform. The post set out what the platform describes as its operational limits and advised victims to keep transaction hashes, police report records, and judicial documents. Whether assets can be recovered in a specific case still depends on where the funds went, the evidence, and the actions of authorities with jurisdiction.⁠[43]

After Binance reached 200 million registered users, Yi He said in an AMA that the platform handles abnormal trading through a combination of data alerts and manual review; regarding “high valuation, low float” projects, she acknowledged that both users and investors may come under pressure, and said the platform can improve screening and distribution but cannot determine secondary market prices. She also listed the factors in reviewing zombie tokens, including development progress, liquidity, major negative events, and regulatory risk, and regarded developing managers who can take over as part of building a long-lasting organization.⁠[44]

In a signed article, Yi He traced the evolution of token distribution methods through ICOs, IEOs, airdrops, and points/farming. She argued that platforms do not have long-term pricing power, and that high valuations with low float, hedging by professional teams, and operations using batches of accounts had undermined the sustainability of old-style “airdrop farming” strategies, so screening should return to fundamentals, real users, and a reasonable circulation structure. The article is a market judgment rather than an announcement of rules.⁠[45]

In a joint interview with several crypto media outlets, including Wu Blockchain, Foresight News, and TechFlow, Yi He discussed Binance Labs’ investments, Binance’s listing standards, employee misconduct, and internal controls. She said the evaluation of projects looks at product, users, business sustainability, and team execution, and also said that investment and listing are not simply tied together.⁠[46]

Yi He said in the four-outlet group interview that Asian projects often lag behind North American projects in fundraising brands and capital networks, with North America having firms such as a16zAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry that have invested heavily in blockchain over the long term; Binance’s investment team therefore needs to look for teams that truly have product, users, and execution but weaker fundraising channels. She also stressed that Binance’s investments and its trading platform listings are decided by different teams and processes, and that receiving investment does not mean qualifying for a listing. The statement is management’s explanation of institutional boundaries and cannot substitute for case-by-case audits.⁠[47]

Yi He described a review dilemma: if a token is widely promoted as “sure to be listed on Binance” before the platform has even been in contact with the project, the platform actually becomes more wary; some people also first promise projects that they can push through a listing and then, when their terms are not accepted, spread rumors to apply pressure. If the platform then does not list the project, it may in turn be accused by outsiders of insider trading. She used this to illustrate that rumors, marketing, and the formal review cannot be equated, and encouraged the investment team and internal employees to keep experimenting with new businesses to cope with unknown competition.⁠[47]

In a long post, Yi He described the listing process as a multi-stage collaboration involving business development, research, a committee, compliance, development, operations, and announcements, and said the related processes are subject to internal monitoring; if insider trading by employees is discovered, it goes to investigation and may be reported to the monitors stationed at the company and to law enforcement channels. She also stressed that there are trade-offs among user demand, compliance constraints, and project quality, and that Binance does not have absolute pricing power or say. These processes come from company management’s explanation and do not mean that every controversy has an independent investigation conclusion.⁠[48]

In a fireside chat at Binance Blockchain Week, Yi He summarized responsibility, accountability, and humility as key points of the company culture, and said the organization should gradually reduce its reliance on any single founder and carry on through processes and a talent pipeline. She also argued that crypto companies should cooperate with traditional finance and regulators so that blockchain applications extend beyond trading.⁠[49]

Yi He again explained on her own X account that she was not the final decision-maker on spot listings and that Binance’s futures business has no publicly open “listing application portal”; she said futures listings carry zero fees and a futures launch does not guarantee subsequent entry into the spot market, and she provided an audit reporting email address for projects to report impostor intermediaries.⁠[50]

In an official Binance public Q&A, Yi He addressed Binance Alpha, the Web3 wallet, and the risks of on-chain projects. She said the platform would provide project display, ranking, and risk warnings, but could not backstop every project in an on-chain environment; technical choices should serve specific user scenarios rather than chase technical buzzwords. She also acknowledged that Binance still needed to strengthen its Web3 wallet talent and product capabilities. The AMA was a communication about the product roadmap, and the plans described may change with the market and product iterations.⁠[51]

In January 2025, the former Binance Labs was renamed YZi Labs and turned into a family-office-style investment platform associated with Changpeng Zhao and Yi He, expanding its investment scope to Web3, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. Ella Zhang returned to oversee day-to-day management, and Changpeng Zhao took on a more direct investment guidance role. Yi He maintains a connection with YZi Labs at the level of founder and mentor, but her main public role remains at Binance.⁠[52]

After YZi Labs was renamed, Yi He stated explicitly in a community Space that she no longer served on the investment committee and would not take part in the firm’s investment decisions; the committee is mainly led by Changpeng Zhao and Ella Zhang.⁠[53]

In the same community Space, Yi He said Binance had two U.S. law enforcement coordinators, that internal audit had conducted more than 120 investigations over the past two years, that more than 60 people had been fired for violations, that about $30 million had been recovered, and that there were already two lawsuits or prosecutions. The reporting did not include a list of investigations, court judgments, or audit reports; these figures were self-reported by company management.⁠[54]

An industry survey published by Binance in 2025 referred to Yi He as Chief Customer Service Officer. The title reflects the “user-first” internal role she has long promoted: customer service is not just an after-sales department but is incorporated into product, risk communication, and daily operations. It does not conflict with her co-founder status, and it is also different from a statutory company director or the head of a single functional department. Public information shows that she also continues to take part in Binance’s strategy, brand, and key business decisions.⁠[55]

In a signed article, Yi He described memes as vehicles for collective sentiment, subcultures, and shared community expression, arguing that celebrities, trending topics, or platform interactions can bring attention but cannot on their own create long-term value; whether a meme can survive across cycles still depends on sustained cultural consensus and community building. She also reflected that she had once underestimated the vitality of memes.⁠[56]

Yi He said that after her early Weibo accounts became unavailable and Changpeng Zhao left Binance, Chinese-speaking users and employees lacked a stable channel of communication, and this was why she stepped up her public voice again. She grouped her core work into three items: driving better products, serving users and employees, and communicating with regulators; she also acknowledged that Binance Wallet had once lagged behind in product experience and iteration speed. The remarks add to the motivations behind her move from behind-the-scenes operations to a more public role.⁠[57]

In an AMA, Yi He introduced the “New Sprout Program” for applicants worldwide, aimed at finding and developing young talent with a long-term interest in blockchain and the crypto industry. She said screening looks not only at technical background but also at innovative thinking, the ability to learn quickly, passion for the industry, and the desire to succeed, and encouraged people from different fields of study and stages of development to apply. The reporting did not disclose the number admitted, the length of the training, or subsequent retention results.⁠[58]

Fortune’s long-form interview focused on Yi He’s involvement in Binance’s operations and user service after the regulatory crisis. Using the team’s handling of small user losses and large numbers of customer issues as examples, she explained how “user first” shapes internal decisions, and spoke about founder culture, management systems, and the gradual connection between crypto services and traditional finance.⁠[26]

Yi He told Fortune that a university student had sent crypto assets worth about $500 to the wrong wallet; she spent time tracing them and helped recover them. The student told her that the money might be small to her but was everything to the student. The report placed this case alongside her policy of requiring new employees to work in front-line customer service for several weeks, to illustrate how “user first” is put into concrete practice. The details of the case come from the interview account, without a transaction hash or customer service ticket attached.⁠[26]

In a retrospective marking Binance’s eighth anniversary, Yi He listed several changes in her positions: she initially opposed the futures business and later revised her judgment after understanding the need for hedging and risk management; facing controversy over Alpha and meme products, she regarded users’ demands for fairness and opportunity as the reason to keep iterating. She used these examples to show that managers need to correct their thinking in the course of execution, and acknowledged that community feedback forces the platform to improve.⁠[14]

Discussing the origins of Binance Alpha, Yi He said that after seeing some projects with impressive backgrounds treat trading platforms as the last stop for exit liquidity, she began thinking about whether ordinary users could be given earlier access to opportunities. She summarized users’ demands as fairness and the chance to take part, not a guarantee of always making a profit; she also warned explicitly that memes lack a single responsible party and the support of long-term value, and that a name, contract address, or social interaction that includes Binance or herself does not represent a platform endorsement.⁠[14]

At the end of the article, Yi He summarized her approach to entrepreneurship through the framework of “dao, fa, shu, and qi”: dao is the underlying laws by which the industry and the world work; fa is an organization’s principles and values, including user-centricity, freedom, collaboration, being hardcore, and humility; shu is methods such as marketing and political maneuvering; and qi is products and tools. She believed that mastering only short-term techniques while lacking an understanding of underlying laws, principles, and product capability makes it hard to accumulate results over the long term. This framework is her personal management philosophy, not a formal Binance policy document.⁠[14]

After severe market volatility, Yi He publicly apologized for some trading issues and said that users who suffered losses caused by Binance itself could contact customer service to register, and the platform would review account activity case by case and compensate as appropriate; she also excluded losses from general market fluctuations and unrealized profits from the scope of compensation.⁠[59]

On December 3, 2025, Binance announced that Yi He would become co-chief executive officer, leading the company together with Richard Teng. The announcement said Binance had nearly 300 million users, that Yi He would continue to be responsible for product, user experience, and organizational operations, and that Teng has a background in regulation and financial services. The co-chief executive officer role is a formal expansion of her existing co-founder and core management responsibilities and also makes her one of the public representatives of Binance’s top executive level.⁠[60]

After being appointed co-chief executive officer, Yi He explained her division of labor with Richard Teng in a group media interview: Teng focuses more on regulation and external institutional relationships, while she continues to focus on users, product, technology, and organization. She said Binance hopes to become an institution that can operate over the long term, and spoke about compliance systems, AI applications, listing-intermediary fraud, the U.S. market, and trading liquidity. The goals and judgments in the interview represent her management positions on taking office, not a guarantee of future business results.⁠[61]

Explaining the co-CEO design, Yi He said Richard Teng, drawing on his regulatory background, is responsible for compliance and external communication, while she focuses on ensuring that the user-centric culture remains in the organization. She also revealed that she had taken over the HR department more than a year earlier and had been continually adjusting talent and organizational mechanisms, with the goal of having Binance run on systems rather than depend on any single person. She understood the co-CEO model as a complementary structure common in traditional finance and hoped it would make “1+1 greater than 2.”⁠[62]

Discussing women’s career development, Yi He opposed setting a ceiling for oneself in advance, and warned that “gender advantages” such as appearance, approachability, and ease of communication can in turn weaken professional recognition: what others respect may be only the way one communicates, not one’s business ability. She advised practitioners to become strong enough in a specific specialty such as marketing, growth, public relations, or content that evaluations move past gender and fall directly on their work, data, and judgment; business competition will not become less intense because someone is a woman.⁠[62]

Asked whether she would use prediction market votes as a tool for gauging user opinion, Yi He cited her own past misjudgments of futures and memes and said she no longer readily says “never,” though she also did not commit to adopting it. She believed that influential markets are easily swayed by interests, that each person’s positions and stances differ, and that the data usually reflects only one slice; because she had not yet spent enough time studying prediction markets, she declined to give a definite conclusion.⁠[62]

Yi He did not equate nearly 300 million users with a perfected product. In the group interview she directly listed four problems still needing improvement: the user experience is not smooth enough, localization is not as meticulous as that of local trading platforms, technical stability still needs to improve, and the public image of the industry and the company needs to become more positive. She said Binance’s advantage may be only that it is “a little bit better” than competitors, and that the core is still continuing to care about users; these were an internal list of problems at the time she took office, not a record of completion.⁠[62]

Yi He summarized Binance’s biggest challenge at the time as “talent density.” She believed the company competes for talent not only with crypto peers but also with AI companies, traditional finance, and internet giants; the ideal candidate must both understand financial products and the crypto industry and truly believe in the business, rather than seeing the job merely as writing code in exchange for a salary. She also mentioned practical barriers such as relocating across countries, and regarded finding the best people across the whole industry as one of her important responsibilities.⁠[62]

Yi He explained that what she admires about Duan YongpingDuan YongpingDuan Yongping is a Chinese entrepreneur and investor, born in 1961 in Nanchang, Jiangxi, who graduated from Zhejiang University in 1983. He built the Subor and BBK brands, co-founded Guangdong BBK Electronics in 1995, turned to investing in 2001 and in 2006 won a charity lunch with Warren Buffett. He has made large donations to Zhejiang University, and from 2026 he publicly said he was buying shares in Pop Mart.Open the full entry is not his record in secondary market investing but his building of companies into efficient organizations that can keep running and iterating, allowing the founder to step away from day-to-day management; at the same time, the original organizations went on to produce several entrepreneurs who started businesses of their own. She regarded this capacity for “the organization itself to grow” as something Binance wants to learn, and linked it to her own push for systematized HR and reduced dependence on the founder.⁠[62]

Yi He listed her three priorities after taking office as: continuing Binance’s culture with putting users first at its core; raising the efficiency of the whole organization, rather than of individual teams, through building systems; and bringing AI more deeply into product, research, customer service, and operations. She acknowledged that she does not come from a technical or traditional product background, but believes technological innovation is the long-term driving force. The three items describe the areas to which she was preparing to devote more time.⁠[62]

Yi He said that when the market turns jokes she casually posts into meme tokens, it puts her under the pressure of being “praised when it rises and cursed when it falls,” to the point that she is afraid to express herself normally. She believed that what most traders really need is an asset to carry sentiment and trading, and that they do not care whether a token is named after her, an animal, or an emoji. This explanation adds to the boundary she later repeatedly drew: personal remarks and interactions cannot automatically be interpreted as an endorsement of issuance, listing, or investment.⁠[62]

In a public speech after being appointed co-CEO of Binance, Yi He looked back on doing promotional work at 16, actively seeking a chance to host on television, and later entering the Bitcoin industry. She summed up these choices as acting first and then learning through action, and said Bitcoin made her rethink money and global collaboration; regarding her new role, she framed her goal as to “make history” with Binance. This was a statement of values upon taking office, not a new business metric or performance commitment.⁠[63]

Yi He said a WeChat account she rarely used had been hacked, and that the attacker used Moments posts and private messages to promote a meme token, leading some users who trusted her identity to trade it and lose money. She said she would use her personal BNB to airdrop to users who had traded the token through Binance’s keyless wallet and Alpha during the period of the incident and had incurred absolute losses.⁠[64]

Yi He described her working style as direct and results-oriented, and when she was younger even close to “indiscriminate attacks.” She believed that being the best requires clear demands and standards and cannot end with “good enough”; but as the number of employees grew, the challenge shifted from personally doing things to the utmost to making high standards settle into the organizational culture. She also acknowledged that she is not good at complex interpersonal relationships, and that her insistence on professional judgment had put pressure on some colleagues and partner teams.⁠[5]

She hopes Binance will be like the Amazon rainforest: different plants can grow freely, forming a diverse and sustainable ecosystem, rather than everyone revolving around a single leader. She also said that whether one holds a CEO title is not important; what matters is how much responsibility and how many tasks one takes on. As for social media feedback, she said one should distinguish criticism that exposes product problems from arguments deliberately staged for traffic, responding to and improving on the former while ignoring the latter. The metaphor rounds out the imagery of her systematized view of organizations.⁠[5]

In a video interview with Bonnie Blockchain, Yi He systematically looked back on growing up in a mountain village in Sichuan, early part-time jobs, television hosting, encountering Bitcoin, joining OKCoin, and working with Changpeng Zhao to build Binance. She linked her career turning points to curiosity, a low concern with gains and losses, and a sense of responsibility. A published transcript provides a fairly complete oral history, but the childhood details, conversations, and personal motivations come mainly from her own recollections.⁠[65]

YZi Labs’ EASY Residency program lists Yi He as one of its mentors, alongside Changpeng Zhao, Ella Zhang, and others, providing selected founders with guidance on product, growth, organization, and ecosystem. The program uses a year-round application and concentrated showcase mechanism and covers Web3, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. Yi He’s role in it is that of a public mentor and ecosystem adviser, which runs in parallel with her primary role as co-chief executive officer of Binance.⁠[66]

In a public Q&A at a BNB ChainBNB ChainBNB Chain is a multichain blockchain ecosystem with BNB as its native asset. Its core includes the Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible BNB Smart Chain, the opBNB layer-2 network and the decentralized storage network BNB Greenfield; its history traces to Binance Chain, launched in 2019.Open the full entry event in Hong Kong, Yi He discussed BNB Chain, Bitcoin’s long-term value, AI and Web3, user trust, and the risks facing ordinary investors. She argued that a project’s value should be judged by looking at real users, sustainable revenue, and whether value is returned to the token and the community, and reminded ordinary participants to limit high-risk positions and form independent judgments.⁠[67][68][69]

Answering a question about advice for young women, Yi He set out, in order, courage, understanding, execution, and ambition. She believed that a person seeking a breakthrough when resources are scarce can start with at least one of them; she particularly emphasized the role of courage in taking the first step, encouraging people not to stay where they are out of fear.⁠[70]

Speaking about ambition, she said that in Chinese culture people are often reluctant to talk about it openly, but that wanting to achieve things and improve one’s life should not in itself be something to be ashamed of. She explicitly applied this view to both men and women, not just to the young women the question was about.⁠[70]

Yi He also linked personal economic outcomes to one’s understanding of the industry and the times. She believed that even industry participants who once made large gains may lose their former advantages if their way of thinking cannot adapt to change. This is her personal view on updating one’s understanding, not a judgment of any particular person.⁠[71]

In her explanation, understanding cannot stop at putting forward ideas or commenting on others; it should be translated into action: putting ideas into practice, learning, iterating, and improving execution in the process, and then further updating one’s understanding through that process. She therefore regarded understanding problems and taking action as mutually reinforcing.⁠[71]

At a public forum, Yi He summarized her current work as three main lines: combining AI with financial products, building the organization and talent, and connecting with the traditional financial system. She said she does not favor reducing AI to a tool for mass layoffs, but rather first having high-performing employees use AI to raise efficiency in research, customer service, and operations; “serving 3 billion users” and “tenfold efficiency” are long-term goals and judgments she put forward, not figures already achieved.⁠[72]

In a long interview, Yi He said that at 4 she asked on her own to go to school, and that she later enrolled in a teacher-training program at Yibin University; unwilling to accept being a rural teacher as a fixed life path, she kept looking for greater career opportunities through reading, hosting, and entrepreneurship. She said that after encountering Bitcoin she began to rethink “what money is,” and summarized growth as four mutually reinforcing elements: understanding, execution, courage, and ambition. The school information comes from her own interview and has not yet been independently confirmed by the school or academic records.⁠[73]

On May 18, 2026, the Hong Kong financial weekly Economic Digest published a cover story on Yi He titled “We Are Making History: The First Lady of Crypto on Web3’s Financial Equality Revolution.” Presenting her as co-chief executive officer of Binance, the article reviewed her upbringing and entry into the blockchain industry and discussed Web3 financial infrastructure, the relationship between traditional finance and blockchain, and Binance’s development goals for the next decade. The report quoted Yi He as saying: “We are not starting a business; we are making history.” She also said she hopes Binance will reach 3 billion users in the next decade and become global financial infrastructure and a gateway to finance.⁠[74]

Fortune’s official 2026 “Most Powerful Women” profile page lists Yi He at No. 64, with her organization given as Binance, her title as co-founder and co-CEO, and her country/region as the United Arab Emirates. The page lists her customer relationship and marketing skills as important capabilities in the company’s global expansion, while noting that Binance still faces ongoing scrutiny on the compliance front.⁠[75]

In a signed article, Yi He said Binance managers must work in front-line customer service during their first month and then continue rotating each quarter, using direct contact with users to check products and processes; she also described cross-border payment tools such as Pay as infrastructure for reducing remittance friction, citing company figures that about 34 million people had made more than $87 billion in remittances over five years, saving more than $5 billion based on World Bank average cost estimates. Both the rotation system and the business figures come from the company’s own account, and no independent audit has been seen.⁠[76]

On her own X account, Yi He responded to VIP users’ comments on service tiers, response speed, and complaint routing, saying she would review VIP tier rules, service processes, coverage hours, and escalation mechanisms, and asking users to submit verifiable cases through in-app customer service or dedicated channels. The post shows that she continued to intervene directly in customer service governance during her tenure as co-chief executive officer; the improvement plans in it are management commitments, and their actual effect must be verified by subsequent product rules and user case records.⁠[77]

In response to community discussion about whether Changpeng Zhao had resumed involvement in Binance’s operations, Yi He publicly said that Changpeng Zhao has not been involved in Binance’s day-to-day operations at all since 2023; as for Aster, she described it as a BNB Chain project invested in by YZi Labs, with Changpeng Zhao serving only as an adviser. This is the sitting co-CEO’s public explanation of governance boundaries, not a document from a court, a regulator, or the board.⁠[78]

Yi He publicly announced that Binance had officially entered the Philippine market, continuing the market arrangements previously pursued through local partners and a regulatory sandbox framework.⁠[79]

Yi He said on social media that the public should not treat her likes, replies, or other online interactions as market signals, and need not judge her position through donations or by searching for “subtle clues”; she said she is not opposed to memes but hopes related projects on BNB Chain will have better aesthetics and quality.⁠[80]

After Binance’s ninth-anniversary livestream, Yi He proactively corrected a slip of the tongue on her own X account: she had earlier said the platform had helped users recover about $800 million in mistaken transfers since 2021, but the correct figure should be more than $8 billion. This cumulative figure comes from company management’s own account; the scope of the statistics, the currency conversion, and the definition of “recovery” were not fully disclosed in the post.⁠[81]

In an interview with the Hong Kong Economic Journal, Yi He described Binance’s next stage as moving from a crypto trading platform to a “super financial app” covering payments, trading, and wealth management, and set out a long-term goal of reaching 3 billion users. She also spoke about cross-border financial infrastructure, regulation in different regions, and organizational backstops; in a feature on page A5 of the print edition the same day, she linked taking on a mission with accepting more challenges, shouldering social responsibility, and helping more people improve their lives. The above are statements of her strategy and values.⁠[82]

Yi He said that crypto and tokenized markets, which run around the clock all year, do not wait until Monday to absorb weekend information, and price discovery continues while traditional securities markets are closed. Binance also disclosed a seven-week observation of bStocks: in its sample, weekend prices on average reflected 92% of the size of the Monday opening gap, and in 41 samples with gaps of more than 3%, they indicated the same opening direction. These figures come from Binance’s disclosure, and the observation period and product sample are limited, so they cannot be directly generalized as a rule for all securities markets; weekend trading depth, participant structure, liquidation, and slippage risk may still differ significantly from those on weekdays.⁠[83]