Yi He at Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026: From 3 Billion Users to Becoming Global Financial Infrastructure
At the Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026, Binance co-CEO Yi He delivered a wide-ranging conversation that offered some of her most candid strategic signals to date — from an audacious user-growth target and a deliberate decision not to follow Silicon Valley's layoff playbook, to a clear-eyed assessment of how AI, crypto and traditional finance are colliding into a single, rewired global financial system.Three Priorities: AI's Singularity, Organizational Efficiency, and Crypto-TradFi ConvergenceAsked how she spends her time amid the current market cycle, Yi He laid out three focus areas beyond day-to-day operations.The first is what she called the "approaching AI singularity" — a moment she described as impossible to ignore and genuinely historic for humankind. She said she devotes significant thought to how AI will intersect with blockchain and finance, and what products and services will look like ten years from now.The second is organization and talent. Early-stage companies, she noted, are driven by the strengths of their founders. But beyond a certain scale, the question becomes how organizational efficiency can enable a company to "grow itself" — a challenge she said she continuously calibrates.The third is the deeper integration between crypto and traditional finance. Yi He pointed to unusually friendly regulatory signals from both the United States and the Hong Kong government, predicting an "earth-shaking" transformation ahead. In her view, the next decade could see global FX settlement migrate from SWIFT onto blockchain rails, and 24-hour, borderless asset trading — long the norm in crypto — become the global default.A Contrarian Stance: Binance Will Not Join the Big Tech Layoff WaveAgainst the backdrop of sweeping layoffs across major tech firms — many of which have seen their share prices rise on efficiency narratives — Yi He drew a clear line: "Binance does not plan to do mass layoffs like most tech companies in the name of cost-cutting."She shared an internal episode in which a Binance employee was caught moonlighting at multiple jobs, enabled by AI coding tools that boosted his productivity roughly tenfold. The employee was ultimately dismissed — but the incident reinforced her conviction that AI makes strong people stronger, rather than simply replacing them.Instead of shrinking headcount, Yi He said Binance's strategy is to use AI to amplify output and innovation across the existing team.The New Headline Number: 3 Billion UsersIn one of the most striking moments of the conversation, Yi He disclosed a target that she acknowledged sounds "a bit crazy" to outsiders: Binance is now aiming for 3 billion users, up from a previous goal of one billion. The company currently serves approximately 300 million users.The implication, she stressed, is that Binance is no longer positioning itself as an exchange. "It means Binance is global financial infrastructure," she said — one that must serve ordinary people in their day-to-day payments, savings and financial lives.She acknowledged user feedback on product friction and said she has spent much of the year personally pushing product optimization: "Give me a few more months, and we'll make it significantly better."AI Has "Grown Hands": A New Phase BeginsYi He offered a vivid framing of where AI now stands. Until recently, she said, AI resembled a highly intelligent but young child — smart, but prone to fabrication and lacking structural logic and continuous memory.Within just a few months, however, "AI has grown its own hands." She pointed to the recent wave of agentic capabilities being embedded in leading large models — AI is no longer a concept but an executor reshaping daily life.She was blunt about why coding has been the first profession transformed: "Because programmers are among the best-paid people in the world. Of course AI replaces the most expensive group first." Workers in traditional roles today, she suggested, resemble candle-factory workers at the dawn of electricity.On the US–China AI rivalry, Yi He pushed back against what she called "technological arrogance," arguing that the ultimate measure of AI is not geopolitical posturing but whether it actually improves individual lives — whether it warns a rural grandmother about a fraudulent health supplement, or gives a lonely elderly person someone to talk to.Quietly Becoming a Commodities PlayerOne of the most newsworthy disclosures came when Yi He revealed that Binance has begun listing major commodities including crude oil, gold and silver, and that trading volumes are already "significant within traditional market scale.""They may now see us as a threat, and perhaps shout 'down with crypto,'" she said — an echo of crypto's own early "down with Wall Street" slogans from 2014 and 2017. But she argued that convergence, not confrontation, now defines the market: Futu and Tiger in Hong Kong, and Robinhood in the US, all offer crypto alongside traditional assets.Her conclusion: "When you want to become foundational financial infrastructure, you shouldn't care too much whether you're labeled crypto or TradFi. Labels are a form of self-imposed confinement."Two Paths for Crypto: Dark Web or GoogleAsked how a crypto-native company should navigate regulation, Yi He drew a historical parallel. The early internet, she recalled, was dominated by hippie culture and dismissed as the domain of "geeks and freaks." Eventually, the industry bifurcated: those who turned left built the dark web in pursuit of absolute freedom; those who turned right built Google and Amazon, serving the global public.Binance, she declared, will "unwaveringly" take the second path.She also delivered a sober message to the industry: the early-adopter dividend is fading, and crypto is entering the "crossing the chasm" phase. Complaints grow louder precisely because easy gains are rarer. Her standing challenge to technologists has not changed: What is your technology for? What problem does it solve? Will anyone pay for it?Ten Years of Binance: "We're Not Building a Startup, We're Making History"Reflecting on CZ's newly released book and Binance's nearly decade-long arc, Yi He said her WeChat Moments have carried a single refrain since 2017: "We are not building a startup — we are making history."That path, she acknowledged, is never linear, and stigma comes with the territory. But she cast recent debates about AI's disruption of crypto as unremarkable: AI disrupts everything; Web3's disruption of finance is equally real. "Isn't finance a vast industry? Improving its efficiency even slightly is a remarkable innovation."Her philosophy: do hard but right things; advance a little every day.Advice for Web3 Newcomers: Don't Copy CZ's "Sell-the-House" MoveAddressing the large number of non-crypto attendees present, Yi He offered unusually direct advice:Buffett-style value investing applies in crypto too: if you don't understand the space, buy the leading assets. She described Bitcoin as "the largest decentralized asset" and BNB as "the largest centralized asset" — both reasonable small-allocation starting points.Distinguish between "revolving-door" and "one-way-door" decisions. Reversible mistakes are learning opportunities; irreversible ones require deep caution."CZ once sold his house and went all-in. I really don't recommend that."The best way to learn an industry is often to own a small piece of it — then iterate your understanding through action.AI follows the same rule: "Just start using it. Execution and cognition — iterate your cognition through execution."Above all: make sure your cost of entry is controllable.She also pushed back against zero-sum thinking: when a business creates real value and customers willingly pay for it, "earn the money you deserve to earn — that's enough." Growth, in her view, is a spiral process accompanied by controversy and pain. And among those who achieve financial freedom, she noted, only a small handful choose to keep going — driven by curiosity about how far the journey can reach.
