The multifaceted life of Binance co-founder He Yi, a staunch supporter of CZ

Back in 2015, Justin Sun and two other cryptocurrency executives took to the stage of a Chinese reality TV show. They wore jumpsuits with goat horns and white hats and performed a song called "The Twisted Goat Song."

Justin Sun, founder of blockchain network TRON, obviously hadn’t practiced this routine, as he kept imitating the movements of the woman on the right, who performed them perfectly, drawing applause.

He Yi was a TV host, and she fit right in. Soon, however, she took on a very different role, becoming the co-founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, with daily trading volume of about $8 billion.

Key Role

Now, six years later, Binance is embroiled in controversy amid a crackdown by authorities in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. As head of business strategy, He Yi appears poised to lead the six-year-old company through a challenging period.

She has stood by CEO and co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao almost since the company’s inception, and has continued to do so even as a number of other senior executives have left in recent months.

CZ and He Yi are both co-founders of Binance, but their public profiles are very different. While Zhao Changpeng (CZ) frequently gives interviews, He Yi rarely does so in English, which she has previously said is because her English is not good enough. CZ maintains a steady stream of tweets to his 8.6 million followers, while He Yi mainly retweets and likes messages about her and Binance to her 194,000 followers.

“There’s some confusion about my role and my job at Binance. I’m a co-founder of Binance, but I’m often referred to as the director of customer service, even though I don’t actually manage the customer service team.”

— Yi He, Binance

Her exact role at Binance is unclear. He Yi’s profile on the company’s website says she leads business, marketing and brand strategy.

For years, her official title was chief marketing officer. (In September, Binance appointed a new chief marketing officer: Rachel Conlan, the former head of global brand and partnerships at cryptocurrency exchange OKX.)

Even so, Yi He rarely uses the title. “I don’t really call myself a CMO, I always call myself the chief client services officer,” she told Bitcoin Addict Thai in a 2022 interview.

In the 2022 photo posted on her X account, He Yi posed with Binance merchandise.

Adding to the confusion, Binance last August appointed He as the head of Binance Labs, the exchange’s venture capital arm with $7.5 billion in assets and more than 200 projects.

Romantic Relationships

What is clear is that she has a very close relationship with Zhao Changpeng. In 2022, Reuters reported that the two had been in a romantic relationship, and other media also reported that the couple had two children.

Zhao Changpeng responded angrily to the Reuters report in a Binance blog post, saying his “children are not the focus of public concern.” He said Binance cooperates with law enforcement officials to track down the assets of organized crime gangs and that reports about his children would put them “in danger.”

In response to the Reuters report, a Binance spokesperson said: “Two adults starting a family together is not news. The media has known about their relationship for years (long before Binance was founded).”

Uncovering the personal relationships among senior executives, especially those at the top of a company, has long been considered a best practice in corporate management.

Ambiguous corporate culture

Still, He Yi has been tight-lipped about her relationship with Zhao. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year, she compared the two to war comrades and college roommates, then suggested that people were just trying to tie them together. She has always insisted that they are business partners and co-founders. In less formal interviews, she has called Zhao her boss.

Regardless, the lack of clarity about He’s role seems to underscore Binance’s murky corporate culture. With no fixed base and a string of operating entities around the world, Zhao designed Binance to be a new kind of business, adapting to a new kind of online marketplace that trades a new kind of product: cryptocurrency.

Regulators see it differently. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission called Binance’s model “an opaque network of corporate entities” in a June lawsuit against Binance and Zhao Changpeng.

In its own lawsuit, the CFTC said: “Binance’s reliance on a complex series of corporate entities to operate the Binance platform is intentional. It is designed to obscure the company’s ownership, control, and location.”

Binance and Zhao have denied the agencies’ allegations that they illegally operated an exchange and broker-dealer and offered unregistered securities to U.S. investors. Binance and Zhao have vowed to fight the allegations in court.

“From the outset, we have actively cooperated with the SEC’s investigation and have engaged in good faith discussions to resolve these investigations through a negotiated settlement,” Binance said in a statement on June 5.

As expectations grow that the U.S. Department of Justice may be about to file a criminal lawsuit against Binance, Zhao and He’s leadership may face more pressure.

Spicy food and pandas

He Yi grew up in a rural village in China's Sichuan province, famous for its spicy cuisine and the homeland of most of China's pandas.

She said in a speech at Binance's fifth anniversary celebration that her family background was not good. Her parents were teachers, and her father died when she was nine. According to Chinese media reports, she worked in schools and as a psychological counselor. But her career peaked in 2012 when she got a job hosting a TV travel show. She showed humor and affinity. In a show called "Beautiful Destinations", He Yi traveled to Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, trying different tasks.

At a wet market in Guangxi, southwestern China, she picked up wriggling crabs, worms and even grabbed a stingray by the tail for a photo. It tried to get into her handbag. Another time, she lifted a big, fat worm and handed it to the show's director. Another woman ran away screaming. "Come and touch it, come and touch it," He Yi said with a smile. The director eventually agreed to pick up the worm after two local children joined the chase, screaming the whole time.

Then, He Yi ate it. She didn't seem to want to eat it, but she ate it anyway.

Recruitment CZ

She played down her acting career. In her own words, she was "a pathetic and stupid TV host".

But it didn’t last long. In 2013, she discovered Bitcoin. Like many people, she had a lot of questions about this new currency. “A lot of people said Bitcoin was a Ponzi scheme or something like that,” she said in a speech celebrating Binance’s anniversary.

Despite having no technical background and no marketing or management experience, she dove headfirst into the emerging industry. Her boldness paid off when she landed a position at Okcoin.

Founded in 2013 by Chinese entrepreneur Star Xu, Okcoin was one of the most popular exchanges in China and was eventually rebranded as OKX globally.

As with Binance, it’s not easy to pin down her exact role at Okcoin. Her Binance biography states that she is a co-founder of Okcoin, although she did not join until a year after its founding.

As part of her work, she hired Zhao Changpeng, a Chinese-Canadian man living in Shanghai.

She is a prolific communicator on social media platforms such as Weibo and is active in encrypted Telegram and WeChat groups

In 2017, Zhao returned the favor and invited He Yi to join a new exchange called Binance.

One of her first tasks was to rewrite the Binance white paper, according to a Bloomberg interview in June. But as a more well-known figure in Chinese cryptocurrency circles than Zhao, He Yi has put the nascent exchange in the spotlight.

She is a prolific communicator on social media platforms such as Weibo and is active in crypto Telegram and WeChat groups. Nicknames for Chinese influencers and celebrities are common online, and she is often referred to as the “cryptocurrency queen.” (Sun Yuchen, her former dancing partner, is called “Brother Sun.”)

Yet even as Binance grew into the world’s top cryptocurrency exchange, Chinese scrutiny of the industry intensified. In 2019, Chinese regulators shut down her Weibo account, along with those of other prominent cryptocurrency advocates like Eric Sun. But her acting talents occasionally shine through. At Binance’s anniversary celebration, she went off-topic in front of a large crowd about dieting and exercise, and how she got back in shape after having two children.

“Maybe I can show you guys,” she said, lifting her top to show off her abs to a cheering audience.

Executive turnover

However, there may not be so much cheering these days within Binance, which has experienced a wave of executive departures over the past six months as U.S. regulatory pressure has increased.

Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman and Binance Senior Vice President of Compliance Steven Christie left in July. Matthew Price, Director of Global Intelligence and Investigations, and Leon Feng, Head of Asia Pacific, also left the following month.

Meanwhile, Binance has made a series of strategic retreats by withdrawing its license applications in Germany and Austria, pulling out of Canada, and clashing with officials in the U.K. Amid this chaos, investors pulled $3.8 billion from Binance in June.

No hobbies

As for He Yi and Zhao Changpeng, they live in Dubai, a growing cryptocurrency hub. He Yi remains a staunch supporter of her industry. She believes Web3 will attract more than a billion people in the next five years. In her speech, she mentioned that Binance is her life, and the mass adoption of cryptocurrency means serving customers correctly.

He Yi's obsession is so great that she has almost no interests and hobbies.

“Even CZ, he looked at me and said, ‘You don’t have any hobbies,’ ” she recalled at the anniversary party. “I said, ‘My hobby is working for Binance. You’re my boss, you should be happy about that, right?’ ”