Binance co-founder Yi He, in an interview with Bloomberg, rejected any parallels between her relationship with the exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao and the romantic relationship of former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried with his colleague Caroline Ellison.
“There is a fundamental difference: Caroline was an employee, and I am a partner. The relationships between co-founders require much more than dating relationships. The former are based on partnership, shared beliefs and go beyond gender boundaries; the latter are about chemistry, physical attraction and selfish desires,” she said.
Yi He and Zhao are business partners; they have children together and live in the same home in Dubai. However, she called him a “comrade-in-arms” and something like a dorm roommate. Yi He drew a parallel with Amazon when Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott participated in the company’s early years. However, she herself admitted that the comparison was not very apt — the former wife of the Amazon founder was not as actively involved in the business.
Yi He and Zhao have known each other for at least since 2014, when she hired him as chief technology officer at OKCoin and brought him into the crypto-exchange sphere. In 2017, Yi He, as a consultant, helped draft the white paper for Binance’s $15 million ICO and later joined the company.
Unlike most of the co-founders, Yi He was not technically with the project in its early stages. But her prominence in China’s crypto industry helped the exchange quickly achieve success, Bloomberg sources say.
The co-founder oversees Binance Labs, a multi-billion-dollar venture fund that has backed more than 200 projects, including the BitTorrent P2P file-sharing platform and the blockchain game Axie Infinity. She is credited with helping develop the BNB Chain network. She helps oversee institutional-client business and acquisitions like CoinMarketCap. Yi He also leads the platform’s listing team.
On June 5, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Changpeng Zhao. The regulator brought 13 charges, including selling unregistered securities. The investigation into the company is also being led by the country’s Department of Justice. Regulators in several other jurisdictions have also brought charges against the exchange.
“We respect regulators’ positions, regardless of whether they support the development of cryptocurrencies or oppose it. I understand that the overall aim of their work is good for protecting investors,” Yi He commented.
She acknowledged the possibility of Binance losing the proceedings and Zhao’s possible departure from the company. She said that backup top executives are being prepared for this scenario, the names of whom the entrepreneur did not disclose.
“I think everything will be fine. We are not a single point of failure,” Yi He stressed.
As noted, journalists identified parallels to the FTX case in the SEC’s suit against Binance and its subsidiary Alameda Research.
The former head of the latter Caroline Ellison pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to defraud investors. Sam Bankman-Fried has been charged with 13 criminal counts. In May, his lawyers filed a motion with the court to dismiss most of the counts, but it was denied.