Changpeng Zhao

I saw the numbers, even Coinbase is what, a third of your size?

Depending on how you calculate, by trading volume, they're much less than that.

But by Bitcoin reserves, they're probably about, I actually don't know the numbers on top of my head anymore.

But Bitcoin reserves, Coinbase has a decent Bitcoin reserves.

They started early.

Got it.

So from that company you go to from China, how much longer after that do you start Binance?

So I left that company in 2015.

And it was two years later, in 2017, I launched Binance.

So at this point when you're leaving and you're working at these different companies, are you sitting there saying, I'm eventually going to start something?

I'm eventually going to start something?

Or that's not even on your mind right now?

So in 2015, I said, look, I'm going to do my own startup.

And I actually wanted to do a Bitcoin exchange, basically very similar to what Binance is.

But then the team I assembled, we only had tech guys and we don't have a marketing team.

And I wanted to do a Bitcoin exchange in Japan and none of us spoke Japanese.

So I tried to raise money from VC investors and they said like, no, there's no way you can do this Bitcoin exchange thing, but you can provide the technology for Bitcoin exchanges.

So we pivoted to a technology company, providing exchange systems to other exchanges.

And we did that for two years.

And then it was 2017, we said, well, there might be a chance that we can pivot to running a Bitcoin exchange ourselves.