Protocol | Benjamin Pimentel | Aug 17, 2022

Yi He is overseeing a $7.5 billion portfolio, with more investments to come, making her one of the most powerful investors in the industry.

Binance co-founder Yi He isn’t as well known as the crypto giant’s colorful and controversial CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.

The company has been essentially banned in CZ and He’s native China, which blocked the Binance.com site the year the company launched in 2017. Last year, Binance disallowed trades involving the Chinese yuan after China declared crypto transactions illegal. It seems like a painful irony for He, who came up with the Chinese name for the company, which translates as “safe coins.”

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That could soon change. The 35-year-old executive is taking on a new, higher-profile role at the world’s largest crypto exchange as head of Binance Labs, the company’s venture capital arm. With $7.5 billion in assets to oversee, that instantly makes her one of the most powerful VC investors in crypto.

• Binance, which now has more than 6,000 employees, operates from regional offices in Dubai, where He now spends most of her time, and France; she travels to Europe frequently.
• She grew up in a rural area in Sichuan province in western China, where her parents worked as teachers. “I’m from a very small village and a very poor family,” she said.  She met CZ at a crypto meetup when she was working as a vice president at a mobile video tech company. CZ invited her to join him in launching Binance in 2017.
• She agreed, though it was a rocky launch. Binance’s native BNB cryptocurrency crashed by 50% on its first day, though it quickly recovered, she said.
• “Many executives have underestimated her fierceness and resolve to win,” Wang said. “She’s learned to round out her rough edges, and folks value the continuity in her approach.”

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“Instead of shunning regulators, she’s been going head-on and engaging them,” he said. “She knows the winners in crypto will be regulated.”

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