He Yi: The “cryptocurrency queen” who succeeded Zhao Changpeng to run Binance

Introduction: He Yi, a former talk show host, has extensive control over the marketing and investment departments of the crypto giant and is also the long-term romantic partner of founder Changpeng Zhao.

U.S. authorities have brought down the “king” of the crypto world, but the “queen” is still standing.

Zhao Changpeng was forced to end his leadership of Binance prematurely for anti-money laundering violations, as the government accused the world’s largest crypto exchange of serving as a conduit for international money transfers for terrorists, drug traffickers and sanctions violators.

He Yi emerged unscathed from the turmoil. She co-founded Binance with Zhao Changpeng and has been his main partner in running the exchange. She is also Zhao Changpeng’s romantic partner and has three children with him.

He Yi, 37, has taken over the maintainer role at Binance since Zhao Changpeng stepped down last month, calling critics “mediocrity and despair” on the site once known as Twitter X. In a sign of her status, she recently led a public communication for the platform’s Chinese-speaking users alongside the company’s new CEO, Richard Teng.

To some former Binance executives, she represents the company’s strategy to resist regulation, which led it to admit guilt and pay a $4.3 billion fine, the largest ever imposed on a crypto company. Binance is also battling a separate lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In Zhao's absence, He Yi became the company's largest shareholder, with broad control over its marketing and investment divisions. Despite the red flags in the Justice Department case, Binance remains the most powerful platform in the crypto space, processing billions of dollars in transactions every day. He Yi exercised her influence in electing Binance's new independent majority-owned board, according to people familiar with the board recruitment process.

Binance executives recently approached a number of candidates, including Ella Zhang, a close friend of He Yi who previously led Binance’s venture capital arm. It was not immediately clear if Ms. Zhang would respond to a request for comment.

Some former executives said that like Zhao, He Yi also ignored the importance of rules set by regulators to combat financial crime. Although not named, she was mentioned in Binance’s plea agreement for helping to find ways for U.S. users to illegally trade on the platform.

In early settlement discussions, the Justice Department had hoped that He would also leave, according to people familiar with the negotiations, but it is unclear why that ultimately did not happen.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on He Yi’s role in the case but said the company had acknowledged it had made mistakes in the past and had made improvements. The spokesperson said He Yi supported the change.

"I fully support the company's new direction, and I am eager to turn the page on this challenging but also learning and growing chapter," He Yi said in a statement.

Asked whether she was involved in recruiting new board members, Binance said the process included “review of possible candidates by relevant stakeholders.”

Zhao Changpeng's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

This account of how He Yi shaped Binance is based on interviews with current and former employees, court documents, internal Binance sources, and the company’s previous public statements.

Encrypted Love

He is a Chinese-born, Canadian-educated software programmer. She is a Chinese travel show host who grew up in a poor rural teaching family in Sichuan province.

Their love affair began in the crypto space.

He Yi first met Zhao Changpeng at a crypto conference in 2014. At the time, Zhao Changpeng was working for a company developing digital wallets and impressed He Yi with a speech on the potential of crypto. She later mentioned this in an interview with a British journalist. She then invited Zhao Changpeng to join OKCoin, a new Chinese crypto exchange she founded, as chief technology officer.

The couple started dating while working together in Shanghai. At the time, Zhao Changpeng was also in a relationship with another woman, with whom he had a child. They later broke up.

In 2017, Zhao Changpeng founded Binance, and He Yi joined him as co-founder and chief marketing officer. She played a crucial role in Binance's early growth and is more well-known in the Chinese crypto community than Zhao Changpeng. Chinese media called her the "No. 1 Sister" in the crypto world.

She has told employees to work hard to appease users when even the smallest issues arise on the exchange, and in one message told them to focus on combating any negative publicity.

She told a Chinese media outlet: “Even Changpeng Zhao looked at me and said, ‘You don’t have any hobbies.’ I replied, ‘My hobby is working for Binance.’”

She sent messages meant to cheer up employees during a difficult time, which some thought were a bit over the top.

“War is not just about ‘one arrow piercing the clouds, thousands of troops rushing to meet’, it also involves bloody battles and the conquest of cities and territories,” she wrote in a 2019 letter, quoting the movie “Kung Fu.”

He Yi recruited a group of volunteers, called the Binance Angels, to spread Zhao's message that crypto would liberate people from the traditional financial system. The initiative was successful but also came with risks, as complaints from some former Binance executives and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission allege that the Binance Angels coached users on how to circumvent U.S. and Chinese trading restrictions.

A Binance spokesperson said the company insists that Binance Angels “comply with applicable laws.”

He Yi led the marketing strategy for a separate U.S. exchange launched in 2019, which Binance claimed at the time was completely independent. “He Yi is calling the shots,” one employee said in a message to another that year. The Justice Department said the exchange, Binance.US, was a ploy to distract U.S. authorities from the main Binance.com platform.

As her marketing efforts attracted a large number of users, He Yi also accumulated her own wealth.

She owns at least 10% of Binance’s Cayman Islands holding company, according to people familiar with the exchange’s finances. She once told a Binance business partner that her stake made her one of the richest women in the world. At the peak of the crypto market in 2021, former executives valued Binance at more than $300 billion. A Binance spokesman said that as a private company, the company would not share such details.

At the time, He Yi and Zhao Changpeng lived together in a mansion on Singapore’s Sentosa resort island. He Yi hosted a small wedding for two colleagues on their $11 million yacht, named “Da Moon.” A Binance employee wrote on Instagram: “Crazy rich Asians getting married on a yacht of a very beautiful lady.”

Employees generally believe that within the company, He Yi is regarded as the second most important person after Zhao Changpeng.

Yet in front of employees, Zhao treated He Yi like an employee to show he wasn’t giving her special treatment. During one company call, he told her she needed to improve her English, former executives said.

Signing Ronaldo

In 2021, Binance brought in executives from outside the crypto industry to reshape its compliance and marketing efforts.

The new marketing team told He that Binance needed to forge partnerships with respected institutions and launch traditional advertising campaigns to gain credibility with the public and regulators, people familiar with the campaigns said.

He Yi wanted Binance to follow other crypto exchanges and run a large-scale advertising campaign during the following year’s Super Bowl. However, the executives told her that this was risky given that Binance’s global exchange business did not have a license in the United States. Ultimately, the company decided not to run a Super Bowl ad.

In 2022, Binance signed soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo to a three-year contract worth about $60 million, covering the player’s time, promotions and appearances, according to former executives involved in the project.

A Binance spokesperson said those details about Ronaldo’s contract were inaccurate but did not provide further clarification.

Binance’s vice president of global marketing has pushed an aggressive publicity campaign aimed at maximizing returns on the expensive deal, including television ads in key markets.

After the Ronaldo campaign was launched, which ran on Twitter and television, He complained to her team about the lack of immediate returns in terms of user numbers and project costs. The vice president subsequently left.

It’s an example of what the former Binance executive called He Yi’s “graveyard projects.” The former executive, along with other former executives, said she often blamed the people leading her projects when they didn’t meet her expectations.

A Binance spokesperson said the Ronaldo campaign exceeded the company’s goals, including new user registrations, and generated “billions of media impressions.”

The spokesman denied the characterization of He's project as a one-off project. "We encourage trying new things, making mistakes and continuous improvement," he said.

A spokesman for Ronaldo did not respond to a request for comment.

Building Blocks

Another of He Yi’s projects planned to create a Netflix-like movie studio. She proposed making a series similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with early Binance employees as the main heroes. The idea was shelved.

Under He Yi’s leadership, Binance produced a series called “Building Blocks,” in which crypto entrepreneurs compete to get Binance’s investment, similar to “Shark Tank.” The contestants and judges of the show appear as computer-generated avatars, and Binance said it was the first reality show based on the metaverse.

He Yi served as a guest judge on the premiere show, which received 4,400 views on YouTube. A producer who was responsible for producing the show was laid off.

In 2022, He Yi has been pushing Binance to support a project that plans to sell digital identities from the Pacific island nation of Palau to the outside world for $248. The project will enable residents of countries where Binance is banned, including China and the United States, to access its trading platform.

Executives warned He that the Palau plan could bring reputational and legal risks. However, according to some former Binance executives, she pushed forward because she wanted to provide a backdoor route for Chinese users. When the WSJ reported on the project earlier this year, Binance stopped accepting Palau ID cards.

A Binance spokesperson said the company did not work with any partners after conducting due diligence on the project.

Later in Zhao’s tenure, as negotiations with the Justice Department deepened, a former Binance executive said He Yi took over more of the day-to-day management of the exchange.

Weeks after Binance laid off more than 1,000 of its more than 8,000 employees this summer, she criticized employees on the company’s chat platform for reacting emotionally rather than rationally to the layoffs. She tried to motivate employees, saying Binance would emerge from another “rise from the ashes.”

When the U.S. Department of Justice announced Zhao Changpeng's plea agreement, He Yi made more succinct remarks. She wrote on Twitter: "A new page, moving on." (WSJ)