CZ appeared on the Meanders of the World Podcast, discussing resilience, adaptation, and lifelong drive. The full conversation between the host Hanyang and CZ is as follows:
Busyness, Message Response, and Task Management
Hanyang: I have a small question, are you tired now?
CZ: Not too much, I'm okay.
Hanyang: Do you think you are one of the busiest people in the world?
CZ: No, definitely not. I think I might have been one of the busier ones in the past few years, but I shouldn't be that busy in the last two years.
Hanyang: I've known you for three years now. No matter what time I message you, you always reply, making me feel like you don't have a time zone.
CZ: I reply when I see the message. If I don't reply when I see the message, I will forget later. After a meeting, I might take a few minutes to check messages and reply. I check in the morning, and before I sleep. When chatting with friends, I will take a look. But if I'm focused on something serious, I won't check. If your message needs a quick reply, I reply first, or else I'll forget.
Han: Do you think you can reply to 500 messages in a day?
CZ: Yes, absolutely, for sure more. Sometimes right after I replied to one message, I need to find a previous message I replied to, and I have to scroll down for a long time. Within a few minutes, I can reply to many messages.
Han: Then I can imagine you must be dealing with a lot of things simultaneously. How do you ensure that your mind can keep track of every single thing? Like where this thing is at, and where that thing is at.
CZ: Even now, I still have a lot of miscellaneous things, and as a CEO, there are also a lot of miscellaneous things, so I'm not very good at keeping track. When someone comes to me, I tell them what to do, and then I don't actively follow up with them the next day or the next week. Generally, I don't do that. So I need the people I work with to be very proactive; they need to push you forward. If there needs to be another meeting tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, they need to schedule it, not me going to them tomorrow. If anyone works with me, and I need to ask them how the progress of this project is, I usually won't keep that person. And usually, in this kind of situation, there is a bit of a problem with the project. So I hope that this person needs to provide updates tomorrow or a week later; they send me a message, and then I will remember. I need very self-motivated, proactive people around me. Those around me are more proactive. Also, very important for me: you can remember three to five very important things in your mind, but these three to five things are what I need to do, and the rest is what they need to do; they need to proactively report to me.
If You Were to Redo a Global Exchange Platform with Today's Experience
Han: Speaking of three to five things, my second question is related to this. I have previously written about Binance and checked a lot of your public statements. An impression that was quite deep was that around 2017 to 2018, you would emphasize that the main idea for Binance was to make it a faster, more user-friendly, and more secure company. However, looking at your statements in 2025, especially this year, you would emphasize that you may have underestimated the legal, compliance, and political aspects to some extent back then. Assuming that today, with all your current experience, you could go back to 2017 and establish a global cryptocurrency exchange platform, would you set a few constitutions for yourself, or some rules that are absolutely unshakeable?
CZ: Anyway, looking from behind to the front is hindsight, and it's clearer. I think the first rule would be: Just don't touch U.S. users. From day one, just don't touch U.S. users. Their definition of a centralized financial platform is: if you touch U.S. users, you need to be regulated by the U.S., and you need a license in the U.S. They don't implement this 100% in everything, but they have the right and the ability to do so. Also, looking back now, in some areas, we didn't execute fast enough. Someone asked me online yesterday, aren't these two conflicting? Should you be more cautious or faster? Looking back, with today's experience, there are some things I wouldn't hesitate on, and some things I just wouldn't do.
Han Yang: Can you give an example? What is something that you wouldn't hesitate to do again if given the chance?
CZ: Many very minor product features. For contracts, I might do it earlier. Even some other financial products, I might do them earlier, with broader coverage in financial products. But some regions need to be completely blocked off. Another aspect is communication with regulators, which I might do more diligently. Firstly, this is not my strong suit, and secondly, we are not operating in a single country; we have to communicate with over 100 countries, which is challenging. So, in this area, I might do more.
Han Yang: But from a third-party perspective, Binance is already one of the most communicative exchanges with regulators.
CZ: Binance is certainly the most, not just one of them.
Han Yang: But you still feel it's not enough?
CZ: The coverage is still somewhat insufficient. And if you really want to do this, the cost is very high. It's not just about money; you need to hire good people, spend a lot of time, and manage this. When you hire a lot of people to do all of this, the CEO of the company may end up spending a lot of time overseeing this. These are all costs. If you do this, the product may suffer. Because Binance is global, the number of countries that need to be communicated with is particularly high. Most companies usually only need to deal with one regulatory body. The regulator's expectation is that while most traditional companies spend 30% of their time on them, they also expect you to spend 30% of your time on them. But spending this 30% of time with over 100 of these regulators is very challenging. So it's not just about adding people. It's impossible for people everywhere to act on their own; they still need to report upwards, and many decisions need to be made. Therefore, senior management will spend a significant amount of time. There may be other ways to do this better.
The Unspoken in "CZ's Life in Binance"
Han Yang: When I read your book "CZ's Life in Binance," I had a particularly strong feeling. Sometimes, when writing about past events, you can get stuck in a feeling of not knowing what to do. Some things are too complicated, such that you don't know how to explain them to others. Is there something that you now see as particularly important back then, but people today actually underestimate, yet as an author, you find it difficult to explain to the readers?
CZ: There is definitely this feeling. Sometimes, the emotions at that time cannot be expressed. For example, in 2019, there was a hack where withdrawals were suspended for a week, but trading continued, and the entire system was updated. I basically didn't sleep for that week, maybe napped here and there, while the engineers basically didn't sleep for three to five days. The pressure at that time, I feel, was not expressed clearly in the book. And also with law enforcement agencies in very few countries. Some law enforcement agencies are very unreasonable, even illegal. They used public funds for trading, lost money, and then asked us to compensate. The communication pressure was immense. Among these, some are described in the book, some are not yet in the book because of various reasons, and they cannot be included in the book now. So, when writing a book, there are always many things that cannot be included. Some things that are included sometimes cannot be described comprehensively. But that's just how it is.
Han Yang: Your answer makes me feel very intrigued. From what I understand, your response may be about a specific incident where someone was underestimated. However, listening to you, it seems that you feel a certain degree of regret, indicating that it was difficult to express your emotions at that moment through words.
CZ: Yes. I feel that my ability to express myself is not that strong, and my writing skills are not that strong either. So at that time, there was a lot of internal pressure or thoughts, and overall, I did not express them clearly enough in the book. I wrote the book using simple language because my proficiency in Chinese and English is limited, so I used very simple language to describe what happened. At the same time, I didn't really want to spend too much effort describing what I was thinking. I just feel that for the readers to read and experience for themselves what kind of feeling I had at that time.
The Two Most Stressful Times
Han Yang: Now that you have gone through all of this, looking back on everything, which event do you think really caused you a tremendous amount of stress?
CZ: I think there were probably just two, which is relatively simple. One is the ICO. After our ICO, as soon as trading started, the price dropped. The pressure was very high for those two weeks. The other was dealing with the U.S. issue. I was basically stuck in the U.S. for over 10 months. They told me at the time that when I come, I would have to wait for six months and then spend four months in jail. If it was 100% certain, you know what's going on. When I went, I felt that going to jail was a very low probability because no one had ever gone to jail just for a violation of U.S. banking secrecy laws, never before, I was the only one. We had no fraud, no users were harmed. So I thought there was a possibility of being under house arrest in the U.S. for a few months. House arrest was simple for me because I usually don't like to go out, as long as I can be online at home. The biggest pressure point in the U.S. at that time was there was a lot of uncertainty. I wasn’t sure if they would eventually let me go, or if they would keep adding more and more things, just keeping you hanging. The pressure of uncertainty during that time was very significant.
Han Yang: It sounds like you were sleeping well?
CZ: I usually sleep well. I haven't slept well these past two days, but it's intermittent. I sleep well about 80% of the time. I usually sleep for 6 hours at night, and I will take a nap during the day, probably half an hour to an hour, so combined, it's about six to seven hours, seven to eight hours. Rarely do I get 8 hours of sleep; usually, about 7 hours.
How CZ Handles Pressure
Han Yang: Before I met you for the first time, I had already written an article about Binance. Many friends said, if you meet CZ, you should ask him what question. The vast majority of people hope I will ask: As Binance, a company that has grown so rapidly, and as a founder, you will undergo significant changes in a short period, and there will be immense pressure. They want to know how you actually deal with this pressure and transformation.
CZ: First of all, in the early years when I just got started, I did sleep a bit less, and it was more fragmented. Sometimes at night, I would only sleep for three to four hours, and that's when the pressure was higher. But I have always had a habit of taking naps. If you take a half-hour nap during the day, you will feel much more refreshed. In addition, regarding this pressure, I don't know how I developed this personality, but I am a person who can withstand pressure. I have been like this since I was young.
For example, when I was young, if my parents were arguing at home, and my sister and I saw them arguing, both of them might not be in a good mood. When the two of us went to school together, if our parents were arguing, it would affect my sister's mood at school. After I went to school, my friends couldn't tell that I was in a bad mood; they wouldn't notice that my parents were arguing. My sister's friends would say, "Why are you in a bad mood today?" Then I would isolate this, separate the two things. When I am dealing with company matters, many people have told me: in one meeting, you are dealing with very high pressure, like how to negotiate with American lawyers, how to litigate, how to handle this American case; the next meeting might be about a product. Maybe one or two people attended both meetings, and they would say, "Wow, how can you be so calm in the product meeting?" For me, it's just two different things. There is still pressure, I can definitely feel the pressure, but generally, I keep these things separate.
Secondly, in terms of resilience, my worldview has always been like this. I rarely set goals for myself. I don't say that I must rank number one, or that I must have a certain amount of money, or that I must earn a specific sum, or that I must grow by a certain multiple, or grow by a certain percentage each year. I usually don't set goals like these. I just do my best. If the market is not good this year, the company's performance may decline, but I did my best, I didn't slack off, and I didn't make any major mistakes. I handle problems in the same way. No matter how difficult the problem is, I just do my best to deal with it.
In my book, I mentioned that I believe in the simulation theory, I believe that this world is simulated, so it's like a game. It is simulated, but that doesn't mean this game is not important. But in this game, as long as I do my best, what else can I do? When faced with difficult problems, I try my best to solve them; when faced with simple problems, I also try my best to solve them. As long as I do my best, whatever the consequences of the difficult problem are, I leave it to fate. If I have this mindset, the pressure will be significantly reduced. The pressure is still there, but it's like resigning to fate. Whatever happens in the end, will happen. You do your best to handle it, and after handling it, you can only wait, just lie down and win.
The Thing Founders Often Underestimate and Whether Effort Really Pays Off
Han Yang: How is your stomach?
CZ: My stomach is pretty good. Sometimes my intestines are not great, but my stomach is fine.
Han Yang: We are quite similar. Sometimes when I eat raw fish or something not very fresh by accident, my intestines may feel a bit unwell, but my stomach is fine. Because I am increasingly realizing that the more excellent founders you talk to, the more you will discover that resilience is a particularly important prerequisite. When people usually talk about entrepreneurship, they discuss PMF and growth, but many people overlook the founder's resilience. In fact, I think in terms of entrepreneurship, everyone can easily see the product, technology, IQ, or EQ. But what they often don't mention is resilience. I think as a founder, anyone successful must bear a lot of pressure. So as a founder, I want to ask a question about founders. Now that you are investing, you will definitely meet a large number of founders, and you are also an outstanding founder yourself. What do you think are the things that a founder should know—including what you should have known when you just started your business—but that someone who has not achieved particular success, who has not gone through this journey, cannot imagine?
CZ: Most people underestimate the difficulty of doing something. When most people start a business, they always think that what they consider a common case is actually a very good case. Eighty to ninety percent of startups fail. But as a founder, he is always more optimistic. I think first is being optimistic, second is the resilience I just mentioned, and third is the ability to adapt. Some people are very smart, but sometimes they cannot adapt. Their IQ may be very high, but their adaptability is very weak; they need a structure that is difficult to change. But in entrepreneurship, you not only need to be smart, but you also need to be able to change, to accept change, and to adjust at any time. Another thing is that the founder must love what he is doing. Without this passion, nothing else can be sustained. This thing is too exhausting, all startups are too exhausting.
Han Yang: Just now you also said you need to do your best. How do you determine that when you were doing Binance back then, some of your efforts—there is often a saying that you should not use tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness—how do you determine whether what you are doing is macroscopically useful, or are there things that only make you feel at ease and just make you feel like you are working hard?
CZ: Anytime you feel that something is just making yourself work hard, then you don't need to do it. What you do must be meaningful. If at any time you feel that this thing is just something I did to make myself happy, you basically don’t need to do such a thing. You’d rather not do anything and take a break. Resting is also a form of adjustment. Sometimes when you are very tired, you can take a break. This is not laziness. If you don’t take a break, you won't be able to go further. As an entrepreneur, there's no need to deceive yourself. Most investors won't watch you work for hours, and so on all day. So this is entirely self-regulated. Most entrepreneurs don’t need external forces to push them. From my perspective, if I have nothing to do, I listen to books. I usually don’t listen to music. Sometimes when I take a break, I can do it too.
Han: Do you watch short videos now?
CZ: I occasionally watch, but not too much. I have a habit that if I watch for a bit, I get bored. Because the current recommendation algorithm is too standardized, after watching three or four videos, they are all the same, and I lose interest.
Today's "Consensus" in the Crypto World
Han: Let me ask you a blockchain question. The pioneers of blockchain and cryptocurrency had many visions for the entire blockchain and crypto world, some of which have been realized, and some have not. The word I am most often asked about here is consensus. In the past 10 years, I feel that there has been a significant change in everyone's consensus on consensus. What do you think today, especially for you, when we talk about consensus in the crypto world, what does this consensus refer to? What do you still believe in? What do you think we are still not doing well enough?
CZ: The word "consensus" has a special definition in blockchain: Blockchain is the first technology in which a group of people can distrust each other but can together maintain a ledger. So, in this sense, this is a kind of consensus. There is also some consensus on the industry. I think some have been achieved, and some have not. The most fundamental achievement is that Bitcoin has never disappeared. Bitcoin has value. Whether it is a currency or a commodity is a label put on it by others; each country can label it differently, but it is a valuable thing, it has a use case, it has value.
And this industry has been growing. This is a new monetary technology. So, at the very basic level, there is no problem. Some consensus has still not occurred. For example, payments are still quite limited. It's not like it hasn't happened at all, but it hasn't reached what we imagined: about everywhere using this payment method after about ten years. This is also because the current payment system in most countries is still good, and most people do not make cross-border payments. Those who do cross-border payments are gradually growing. And some things have not been realized. For example, because this is a consensus mechanism, should the government's real estate certification use blockchain? It would be much easier with blockchain. Anything that needs certification can be blockchainized. It seems that the current implementation in this area is not particularly widespread. It does not mean it cannot be achieved in the future, just that the current implementation progress is not particularly extensive.
Regarding blockchain itself, I think the performance improvement is still too slow. Creating a new blockchain, upgrading with new technology on Bitcoin, is quite challenging. Because once you upgrade Bitcoin, there is a possibility of community voting leading to a fork, so the upgrade of Bitcoin is slow. But because it upgrades slowly, it is particularly stable, which is also an advantage. So, there are advantages and disadvantages. So, in the ideas of many of us from the early days, many have been realized, and many have not. But the whole industry is still evolving, and many things that we cannot imagine have happened. Regarding RWA, even a year and a half ago, I was a bit skeptical if RWA could even succeed, but now it has grown rapidly.
To be honest, stablecoins, I myself had some doubts about them five years ago. I wondered how long stablecoins could last, as I didn't fully understand them at that time. Stablecoins have their own use cases. So, things like these were something we hadn't thought of before. Something I hadn't thought of before.
The Underestimated Figures Outside the Industry
Hanyang: Because whenever people mention blockchain, they always bring up a few names, like yours, like a certain lady, and then Vitalik and these people. In your opinion, including when you were writing your book, you must have thought about many people, is there anyone who is underestimated by those outside the industry? For example, someone who is very important to this industry, but people outside the industry actually don't know about him. Or are there some events like this?
CZ: Yes. I haven't thought about this question in detail, but definitely. There are many technical people who, later on, gradually faded away — or were quite active in the early days but are not very active now. Especially those core Bitcoin developers. In the beginning, there were probably around a dozen people who had direct email interactions with Satoshi Nakamoto. Among them, several individuals started their own projects, etc., some successful, some not so successful, but quite a few of them gradually stepped back. These people actually made significant contributions. There are also many entrepreneurs who may have been active in the early stages, made significant contributions to the industry, but then either sold their companies or handed them over. For example, at that time, Blockchain info was run by a young man who, at 22, created Blockchain info, which was the largest Bitcoin traffic website in the industry at that time, the Bitcoin block explorer where you could check transactions, it was also a wallet, and it was quite popular at the time. This young man is named Ben Reeves. Later on, he — being a very introverted person, sold the company to someone else and withdrew slowly. He is British and became quite low-key. I estimate that if you really want to dig into it, you might uncover hundreds of individuals like him.
The Reason for Still Working
Hanyang: I have one last question for you. What do you think is still motivating you to keep working today? Because you could totally not work, but clearly, although you are not one of the busiest people, you are still a very, very busy person. What makes you happy?
CZ: I think it's just about being alive, right? We definitely have to seek happiness. We could play golf all day, spend all day by the seaside, and these things would get boring. Doing them occasionally might make you happy, but they may not always make you 100% engaged in doing that thing, so you may not be particularly happy. In my understanding, any creature that can help its own kind is something that brings a lot of joy. Our genes are designed that way. If it doesn't help its own kind, the fighting power of the entire species would be weaker, and it might be naturally selected out. So naturally, in our genes, it is selected that when we can take care of ourselves and take care of our fellow beings, taking care of others, we feel a very happy feeling inside. Whether others say thank you or not, you don't have to worry about that. At least for me, that's how I see it. So our genes are designed this way, it's a very fundamental thing. And how do you make use of this? For me, if I do something and I feel it's helpful to many people, it makes me quite happy. This is not much related to making money or fame for me. I feel that if I do something and it helps many people, I feel happy.
Just like why I still spend a lot of time working on this free educational platform, GuGua Academy. Every time I have a meeting with them, it makes me happy. I heard that we are now teaching 1.2 million children, and at the beginning of the year, there were probably only tens of thousands of children. When I hear this number and then look at this app, I feel very happy. So why do I still do it? Just because it makes me happy. What else makes me happy? I am happy when I eat good food, but I can't eat too much good food, or I will get too fat. There are many things that you are limited in doing, but when you do something that contributes positively to society and humanity, it is basically limitless. The only limits are my energy and my time. So, I'll just do my best, do as much as I can with the time I have.
Han Yang: Is your back feeling better now?
CZ: My back is much better now. I have had two surgeries, two minor surgeries for lumbar disc herniation. It took about two years to slowly recover and rehabilitate. Now, if I sit for a long time, my back still feels uncomfortable, and when I move, I still feel that my back is weaker compared to normal. But I have recovered to a point where I can go skiing, I can go kite surfing, and now I can sit here for an interview for an hour or two without a problem. Most of the time when I work at home, in the morning when I make phone calls, I lie on the bed, and there is a small stand on the bed where I put the laptop on my body to use it.
Closing Segment: The Building to Leave Behind
Han Yang: The conclusion of all our interviews is the same question: If you were to choose one building in the world to be modeled and permanently preserved, which building would you choose? It can be any building, not necessarily your own. Many people choose their own room, their own school, and so on.
CZ: I'm not an expert in this. I think many buildings have significant modeling value, but from my perspective now, the older the building, the more modeling value it has because the older it is, the more likely it is to deteriorate. Like the Acropolis of Athens in Greece, and like Machu Picchu in Peru in South America, which I haven't been to. I have been to the one in Greece. And in India, they talk about the Seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal. I think these things are—but in turn, many people have already modeled these. But I think the quality of the modeling you do is still quite high, so it's okay to model them many times. Like where we are in Bhutan now, the buildings in Bhutan actually, when you look at the exterior, have a deep cultural heritage, and there are many old buildings. I think these are all quite good. So, I think I'm not an expert in this area, I'm just saying whatever comes to mind.
Hanyang: Great, thank you.
CZ: Thank you.
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