AMA # 8 with CZ | Highlights
For CZ’s 8th AMA on Twitter, he covered several topics, such as fiat onramps, Binance Futures, Binance.US, and more!
On China
China is making some really big moves in the crypto sphere. There are a lot of questions [about whether a] central bank participating in crypto is good or not. My view is very simple. I think the more participation there is, the better. It's similar to when people say, “Hey are stablecoins really cryptocurrencies or not?” That's not so much the question in my opinion. The question is really, “Do they increase the freedom of money? Do they help with the money flow?”
If they make it easier for people to use money or for people to come into cryptocurrency, then that's probably a good thing. So I'm very much for cryptocurrencies and I very much welcome more countries to participate in crypto.
Our China P2P volume has just [gone up] tremendously. We're seeing a few million dollars a day in trading volume average. So considering most of the trades are done manually, it is actually a very high number, and considering the P2P platform is very new.
We have actually only released the iOS app for P2P trading in China yesterday or two days ago. So that's very exciting. I think we can expect the trading volumes from the Chinese markets to be high. Right now, we allow four different cryptocurrencies on the China P2P platform: BNB, BTC, ETH, and USDT. So that's going quite well
I do think China will move ahead very strongly in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space and for any country that's not considering this, I think they're now in real danger of being left behind. As many people say, there's a real race going on. So I think given that one of the largest populations on the planet is adopting blockchain. So I think we will see favorable competing regulations from other countries very soon.
Fiat Bridges and Onramps
We are adding a number of what we call fiat bridges or fiat onramps onto Binance.com. I think people already saw a lot of news with Russian Ruble, and that is going to go live very soon. And we are adding more fiat on-ramps around the world. We believe this is very important for lowering the barrier to entry.
We have already redesigned the Buy Crypto page on Binance.com. So if you go there, there are actually more options for you to buy crypto directly with fiat using a bank card, a credit card or a debit card. We added Nigerian naira support and we added a trading pair. That's actually the first fiat trading pair for Binance.com, and you can expect that there will be more pairs very soon.
Binance Futures
Binance Futures is growing really well. Every few days they reached an all-time high in trading volume. I think just now, the trading volume is over 200,000 BTC, which is quite a lot. The trading volume is now somewhere between 2-3 billion USD dollars. And most of the users are relatively new to Binance Futures. When the price is moving, we actually have very high volumes, people are actually moving to our Binance Futures platform.
For a new platform to have this kind of volume, I'm actually very pleased. I am also pleased that the platform is extremely stable. There's no auto deleveraging, the liquidation engines working really smoothly. Things are working pretty well.
We actually get two major upgrades on the infrastructure for Binance Futures platform live. So the live upgrade just happened and actually, people do not know about it. This is like core matching in the updates, and we're not talking about some cosmetic UI update.
We are pushing out more tutorial content for futures. I think that's what the community has been asking for. You can check out the Binance YouTube page for more video tutorials on how to use Futures/what Futures is, and Binance Academy has a number of content pieces.
We just added support for Binance Futures on Android. That's just released yesterday or two days ago. So if you're using Android now, you can trade Futures on the go. The iOS version is coming very soon, in a couple of weeks or so.
Binance.US
Our partner in the US has been working really hard to promote [Binance.US], and they increased the ACH deposit limit. We’ve also seen a corresponding increase in deposits and withdrawals after that change. The trading volume is nearly 30 million USD a day now, so it's actually growing very healthily.
Also, Binance.US has a public framework … about how they do listings. So they follow that framework and list coins on their own schedule, but the overall direction is [towards] more coin listings over time. So they have a framework and ensuring regulatory compliance. We're really the technology provider. If you haven’t signed up for Binance.US, just try it today. It is a very smooth platform. The onboarding is very smooth. They spend a lot of time optimizing the KYC onboarding process.
Mobile Apps, Referrals, Etc.
Download the Binance app on Android and iOS. There have been quite a number of updates on both platforms. The Android version is a little bit ahead, just because the releasing process is a bit faster, but do download that and try it, and there's a new feature almost every week.
We have a new referral program. You can earn up to 40% commission on trading fees for everyone you refer [to Binance], and you can choose to rebate a portion of that. So the people who you refer to and you can both save on fees. You should give that a try, that's a relatively new feature in the industry.
I think we calculated that the top referrers have earned more than a hundred million USD. So the referral fees do pay out quite well. If you have not referred people, you should try it.
What is the priority for Binance Futures? @HoldingsVan
Basically, we are more community-driven. So we're rolling out additional features based on what the community requests. Right now there are communities requesting a number of features, including more contracts, cross collateral, etc. I think we've already rolled out a number of features people requested, including the adjustment of the leverage. We're also doing quite a bit of work on our risk engine.
What will be the next Futures trading pair? @LukasBydzovsky
I think we will be adding higher trading volume pairs: most likely ETH, LTC, BNB, those will probably come very soon.
If you have not tried Futures, you should try it, but be very careful with trading Futures. The very simple advice I give to most novice Futures Traders: Don't put all your money in one order, especially if you are using high leverage. When you trade Futures, do split up your funds into multiple orders so that you don't get liquidated in one shot when the market moves against you. It is very high-risk.
But anyway, we do offer one of the highest leverage is for the people who are very comfortable using high leverage. So it's 125x. The reason we choose a hundred twenty-five acts as if you divide one well over 25 x you get 0.08, and that's very easy to calculate in the system.
What are your general thoughts about the Binance Chain adoption so far? @fishermancrypto
I've been very happy with the adoption of Binance Chian. So it is adopted very heavily now; 150-200 projects, each with their own coin/token, are on Binance Chain. And Binance DEX is working really well. The volume is still relatively low compared to a centralized exchange, but for any decentralized exchange, Binance DEX is already number one in trading volume for quite a long time.
And more importantly, the BNB is adopted in many places now, so there are probably more use cases than we can track right now. You can use it to buy airplane tickets, to make loans, to buy coffee, to buy ice cream, using vending machines. There’s just so many use cases now.
I do think very strongly that when the bull market returns, people realize how much further Binance Chain has advanced, and so I think that would be a good thing.
How do you intend to outperform similar projects, what is your competitive advantage against other projects and how do you plan to outplay possible competitors? @Barry_Linen
We don't really focus on what people call the competitors that much. We have our own playbook. We have our own strategy. We have our own to-do list, and we're really more focused on the things we need to do.
We view most of the other exchanges in the space as peers. So we actually want to find ways to work together with them to grow the industry. We believe very strongly that trying to gain market share in the small early stage of the market is not that productive. What's more productive is really to grow the industry together so that when the industry is bigger, everyone gets bigger.
When segwit? @europeanhodler
Segwit is still underway. We hope to turn that on very soon. We're doing some internal tests and checks. So that's coming.
Do you plan on adding more use cases for bnb? @Charlie_Crypto_
Yes. I mean we are always pushing for BNB adoption. But BNB kind of got its own legs now. So there are a lot of places that are adopting BNB without us asking and we only find out afterward. We do want to see BNB being adopted in more and more places. But BNB is a fairly independent blockchain now and the adoption happens on its own.
Will there be more options for fixed lending or will you be moving forward using the flexible option?@CryptoChris86
I think going forward, we will offer both fixed and flexible lending options. The flexible options do help determine the market price for some of the rates, and the fixed terms will have a higher rate. So it does serve two different types of users. We may increase the length for the fixed part now that we have a flexible option. So for the fixed part, we may increase to one month or three months or six months options, where you really have to lock your crypto away.
Binance recently enabled BNB P2P Trading for users in China. Any plans for India? @CryptooAdy
Yes. We do plan to roll out P2P trading services all around the world. So it takes a little bit of time because, for P2P trading, it does have some reliance on fiat mechanism, on the fiat transfers. We do plan to do that region by region around the world.
Do you have any plans to work with Chinese government or Chinese big company such as @AlibabaGroup since China wants to embrace Crypto? @Moultabix
We do have a Venus Project, which is basically a number of stablecoins. We do plan to work with governments and large companies to issue together. And we are working with a number of companies and governments publicly right now. So BUSD is actually part of the Venus initiative. BUSD is a stable US dollar stablecoin issued by Binance together with our partner in the US, Paxos. It is regulated and approved by NYDFS, which is one of the toughest regulatory bodies on the planet, and also BUSD is accepted by the Bermuda government for paying taxes. So that's a pretty interesting development as well.
Do you invest in other blockchain startup crypto markets? @SaschaFechn
So I don't do any personal Investments. I don't become an advisor of any project. I don't look at projects myself either but through Binance Labs. So everything I do, I do through Binance.
Binance Labs invests in private-run, early-stage companies. Binance X is a fellowship program where we give a couple will give somewhere between 5,000 to 15,000 USD to a developer, no strings attached, for them to develop some prototype ideas for like a month or three months.
What I found out is basically looking project takes a lot of time. And to be able to understand a project, I need to look at the white paper, look at the code, talk to the developer. Generally. I don't really have a lot of time to do that. So I'll leave that to our team.
Count CZ Dracula you were in Russia not long ago, what impressions did you have? Did you like Moscow? @CryptoBoy
Yeah. I love Moscow. It's a really beautiful city. More importantly, I'm really impressed at the turnout of the Binance meetup in Moscow. I think we booked a place that accommodates about 600 people. I think 1,300 people registered, and the place was just jam-packed. So everybody I interacted in Russia had a very good understanding of cryptocurrency. So I guess the strong mathematical background in Russia and also the strong IT background in Russia helped with the understanding quite a bit. I think Russia is a very important market for cryptocurrency.