Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao absolutely doesn't want to say where his company's headquarters are located at Investors. To kick off the ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday May 7, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin had a pleasant chat with Zhao.
He spent much of his time explaining how Libra and the Chinese digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors of existing stablecoin suppliers; how Binance's smart chain doesn't step on Ethereum's feet - "depends on the definition of competition," he said - and how Binance has been incentivized to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent of the exchange.
A difficult question: where is Binance's headquarters?
Zhao managed to fly over a thorny question regarding an ongoing lawsuit. Then Shin hit by asking the only question Zhao didn't really want to answer, but many want to know the answer: where is Binance's headquarters?
This seemingly simple question is actually very complex. Until February, Binance's headquarters were thought to be in Malta. That all changed when Malta announced that, no, Binance is not under its jurisdiction. Since then, Binance hasn't said where, exactly, it's now based.
No wonder Zhao blushed and started to stammer when asked. Binance has many offices, he said, with staff in 50 countries. It's a new type of organization that doesn't need bank accounts and registered postal addresses. ”Wherever I sit, that will be Binance's office. Wherever I need someone, it will be Binance's office, "he said.
Is Binance a DAO?
Zhao perhaps hoped the host would move on to something simpler. But Shin pressed, “But even to do things like manage, say, taxes for your employees, I think you need a registered corporate body, so why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open by saying, for example , the headquarters is registered in this place. Why not say it? ”.
Zhao looked away again, perhaps hoping that the set time would have elapsed for the duration of the interview. They were less than two minutes from the end. “It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to tarnish it or hide it.
"We don't hide, we're out in the open," said Zhao. Shin intervened: "What are you saying? That you are already a kind of DAO [autonomous decentralized organization]? ” Zhao said that Binance is not a traditional company, but more a large team of people "working together for a common goal".
He added: “To be honest, if we classify ourselves as a DAO, there will be a lot of debate about why we are not actually a DAO. So I don't want to express myself. " And here time has run out. To close with an easy question, Shin asked where Zhao is working from during the current pandemic. "I'm in Asia," said Zhao. Shin asked if he could say which city. “I prefer not to reveal it. I think it's my privacy, "he replied, concluding the interview.
