Changpeng Zhao

So 2015, we tried to do a Bitcoin exchange, but we were not quite ready.

Pre-17, are you a known player in the crypto world and the Bitcoin world?

I think I had a bit of a reputation by 2017.

What would people say about you?

Who was CZ pre-starting Binance?

Like if somebody came up, like right now we're talking about Ben Reeves.

If somebody said, hey, CZ in 2017 pre-Binance, what would they say about CZ?

They would probably say CZ is a technology guy, been involved in the crypto industry relatively early, and worked in a senior position in a wallet company, senior position in an exchange company, and then built his own business as a technology exchange service systems technology company.

That's probably what people would say, yeah.

And so from there, now you have a reputation.

Are you at a point that if you start something, people want to work with you?

Generally, yes.

So now you start Binance.

When you start Binance, what were some of the big early meetings you guys had?

You know, you think about the meeting that everybody has seen with Jack Ma when he's doing Alibaba and he's there with five, six, seven guys.

I'm sure you've seen this video.

It's not black and white, but it's old video where you can tell it's not a...

Did you have a meeting like that where you said, guys, here's what we're building?

Yeah, we had a meeting like that.

We said, look, let's build this thing called a crypto to crypto exchange, right?