(Bloomberg/Suvashree Ghosh) — Binance Holdings Ltd. named co-founder Yi He as co-chief executive officer in the biggest change to its top leadership since Changpeng Zhao stepped down from running the crypto exchange two years ago.
She will share the title with Richard Teng, who succeeded Zhao as CEO of the world’s largest crypto trading venue in November 2023. Yi He and Zhao, who resigned after pleading guilty to anti-money laundering and sanctions violations, have children together.
Zhao was pardoned by US President Donald Trump in October, removing some of the regulatory overhang that had dogged the billionaire and the exchange he started for years. Analysts have said the pardon could make it easier for Binance to consolidate its US operations, which remains structurally separate from the global exchange.
“The impression is that: Now with the pardon, let’s scale up the business,” Ben Charoenwong, associate professor of finance at INSEAD, said of Yi’s appointment. “We had taken a defensive stance as a firm because of potential regulatory pressure, but now we’re gonna be more clearly active at the helm.”
On her X profile, Yi He until now described herself as Binance’s chief customer service officer. She has less of a public persona than Zhao, who spent the past year crisscrossing the globe meeting with public officials, regularly speaks at crypto conferences and is a prolific poster on social media.
Behind the scenes, however, Yi He has significant clout. She is credited with fueling the growth of the Binance-initiated BNB Chain, and has also helped supervise the firm’s institutional client business, as well as acquisitions like CoinMarketCap.
A former host on Chinese television, Yi He’s limited proficiency in English was a big reason she never became the face of Binance, she said in an interview in late 2023. She first broke into the crypto scene at the OKCoin exchange in 2014, hiring Zhao as chief technology officer for the platform. After he left to set up Binance, Zhao asked her to be a consultant at the firm in 2017.
Together with Teng, “Yi will guide Binance through its next phase of development as we strengthen our global regulatory foundations and continue building a trusted, transparent, and responsible platform for digital assets,” according to a post on X by Binance on Wednesday.
Zhao and Yi He built Binance into the world’s dominant crypto exchange, often capturing in excess of 50% of all spot trading. But years of fraught relations with regulators around the world came to a head in late 2023, when Binance and Zhao pleaded guilty in the US to failing to implement anti-money laundering safeguards.
Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement and Zhao spent four months in jail. He was released in September 2024.
Teng, a Singaporean national and former regulator himself, was seen as a safe pair of hands to guide Binance through its regulatory troubles. He set about bulking up the exchange’s compliance department, and has often spoken publicly about Binance’s efforts to clean up its act.
Binance hasn’t entirely put its legal issues behind it. Late last month, more than 300 victims and family members of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas sued the exchange, claiming it “knowingly facilitated” crypto transactions by the group.
Zhao and and top Binance executive Guangying Chen were named as defendants in the suit, while Yi He was not.
–With assistance from Emily Nicolle.
(Adds context about Yi He’s career, history with Binance in the seventh paragraph.)
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