Behind the team leading Binance

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Hello reader,

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across a post by a user who said that the CEO and founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, liked one of his memes on Twitter so much that he followed him on the social media platform.

According to the user, this simple action had a far greater impact than he anticipated. In just a few hours, they received multiple messages asking to buy their account.

Evidently, Zhao holds a lot of sway in the crypto industry, but he’s not the only one with a powerful position. In Binance, there are many people responsible for making it the largest crypto exchange in the world. In today’s story, we find out who these people are and the roles they play to keep the gears turning.

Today we look at:

• A breakdown of Binance’s org chart.
• What an Indonesian social ecommerce platform plans to do with its new US$6.6 million bag
• Other newsy highlights such as a former OpenSea employee being charged with money laundering and Amazon closing down its Kindle e-book store in China.

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Who’s running the show at Binance?

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Binance is a considerable behemoth in the crypto space. As the largest crypto exchange in the world, it employs over 7,600 people according to its LinkedIn page.

Leading them are 30 individuals who head various verticals within the company as well as certain regions where Binance operates. Let’s find out who they are and what their positions can tell us about the company’s priorities.

• A tough nut to crack: Binance officially operates in over 180 countries and yet, it says that it does not have a central headquarters, making it difficult to map out its organizational structure. Additionally, many of its top roles carry different titles, which begs the question of whether these positions have different responsibilities.
  For instance, leaders of operations in certain regions like the US and Australia hold the title of CEO, but the same can’t be said for leaders in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa region.

• Key hires: The company has gone on a hiring spree for compliance roles such as global money laundering reporting officer, senior director of audit and investigations, and vice president of global intelligence and investigations. Binance also recently hired a new CTO, Rohit Wad, who previously worked at companies such as Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

• Gaps at the top: Following the departure of Binance’s CFO in 2021, it appears that the firm has yet to find a replacement, a highly unusual state of affairs for a business as large as Binance. Apart from that, a special report from Reuters earlier this year revealed that the company’s chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, “lacked the experience to manage compliance at a company the size of Binance,” according to several individuals.

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