What are the 5 most important decisions in the early stages of Binance? Today is the 9th anniversary of Binance's launch. Rereading @ CZ_Sinance's autobiography, I am trying to summarize the five most important decisions of my early years The most important thing is not necessarily the biggest investment at the time, but the choices of products, growth, brand mindset, and organization that will make long-term decisions for Binance once made 1/No longer providing technical services for exchanges, but going to their own end Before founding Binance, CZ had already provided trading systems for 30 exchanges through Binance Technology, accumulating rich technical experience. During this process, he identified some core issues There are many exchanges in the market, but there is a lack of stable performance, good experience, and global user oriented exchanges Therefore, CZ did not initially define Binance as a Chinese exchange, but rather wanted to do it ◦ Targeting global users ◦ Mainly providing cryptocurrency trading ◦ Supporting a large number of ERC-20 new assets ◦ Not relying on a single country's fiat banking system This is the most important strategic positioning of Binance in its early days At that time, many top exchanges mainly served BTC, fiat coin recharge, and local markets, but Binance directly seized the large demand for new token trading generated after the ICO outbreak in 2017. In the book, 'supporting ERC-20 tokens' was listed as one of Binance's core strategies to differentiate itself from its competitors in the early days 2/Issuing BNB, using platform currency to simultaneously solve financing, customer acquisition, and user binding In June 2017, CZ decided to launch Binance through an ICO. The team completed the white paper within a few days and subsequently raised $15 million through BNB. Binance was launched on July 14, 2017 Issuing BNB is not just a one-time financing, but also involves doing four things at the same time: ◦ Financing: Obtaining start-up capital without traditional VC dominance ◦ Customer acquisition: Holders participating in ICO naturally become the first users and disseminators of Binance ◦ Subsidy transactions: BNB can be used to offset transaction fees ◦ Binding growth: Platform growth, trading volume, and BNB value form a community of shared interests Traditional startups typically need to address financing, customer acquisition, membership systems, and equity incentives separately, while BNB has compressed these functions into one asset Later, BNB expanded from fee tokens to public chain Gas, Launchpad participation threshold, and the underlying asset of the entire Binance ecosystem, but its significance was already determined at the beginning of its establishment: Transforming users from platform consumers to long-term stakeholders in the platform's growth 3/Invite He Yi to join, instead of relying solely on the technical team to make products The initial advantage of Binance mainly came from the technical accumulation of the CZ and Binance teams, but the technology itself was not sufficient to establish a global exchange @Heyibantance participated in revising the white paper, proposed the Chinese name "Binance", and officially joined before the platform went live. CZ said in the book that one of the real purposes of inviting her to help revise the white paper is to bring her into the team The importance of this decision lies not only in finding a co-founder, but also in establishing a complementary structure CZ focuses on technology, systems, trading, and decision-making, responsible for enabling the exchange to operate. One sister focuses on brand, users, operations, and markets, responsible for making users willing to come and stay Many entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds believe that as long as the product is good enough, users will naturally come, but this is not true. Inviting Sister Yi to join shows that CZ is not just a technical personnel, but also proficient in the operation of commercial companies During the period of April 4th, allocate approximately 40% of the company's assets to compensate users for other projects On September 4, 2017, after China banned ICOs, the market rapidly declined BNB did not break at the time, but several other ICO projects on the platform had already fallen below their offering prices, and the project team did not have enough funds to refund as promised. Binance, as a platform, has decided to allocate approximately $6 million to compensate for user losses on behalf of the project team This money is equivalent to about 40% of the assets of Coin Security Company From a short-term financial perspective, this is not reasonable The loss was not directly caused by Binance. Binance has no obligation to repay other project parties. The company has just been established and cash is extremely valuable. Once the judgment is wrong, Binance itself may go bankrupt first But CZ and the team still decided to do it this way. The money purchased was not short-term traffic, but the most scarce thing users have for a new exchange: trust In the CEX industry, users are unable to fully verify the internal assets and operational status of the platform. Technical performance and transaction fees can be reduced, and currency can be increased, but whether the platform will prioritize protecting users in a crisis can only be proven through real events This compensation also laid the foundation for Binance's repeatedly emphasized values: Protect Users It may be the most expensive but also the highest return brand investment in Binance's early days 5/Globalization immediately after 1994, rather than waiting for policies to reopen After 1994, CZ did not choose to suspend its business or withdraw BNB's ICO, nor did it wait for domestic policies to ease Binance quickly decided to transfer its core personnel and business overseas, operating in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and gradually forming a global remote and distributed organizational model This decision has given Binance several major advantages ◦ Not dependent on a single market: Any policy changes in any country are difficult to hinder Binance's global business, greatly enhancing the organization's resilience. ◦ Global growth: Binance has been a global company since Day 1, highly compatible with the "global user" mentioned in the first part. ◦ Faster organizational expansion: Remote work and distributed recruitment allow Binance to quickly form customer service, operations, marketing, and technical teams in different countries Of course, this also has certain dual consequences, but it has greatly improved Binance's survival and expansion capabilities in the entrepreneurial stage, while delaying some compliance costs to the future Connecting these five decisions together forms the complete flywheel of Binance's early days Choose the fastest growing new asset market → Gather the first batch of users with BNB → Expand rapidly with technology and operations → Build trust with real money → Break free from the limitations of a single market and go global Binance caught up with a bull market in 2017, perhaps due to some luck factors; But there were many exchanges established during the same bull market, and only a few stayed, with Binance becoming the largest one The growth path of every successful company cannot be replicated, but key decisions often have commonalities. Reviewing the most important decisions made in the early stages of Binance is more valuable than simply telling entrepreneurial stories