An employee at Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, told Globe Banner on Thursday that she feels fortunate to have female leaders, including Yi He, to look up to. Yi He, Binance's co-founder and chief marketing officer, is among the few women who hold senior leadership positions in the crypto industry.
“As a woman in crypto, it’s amazing to work at a place where female leaders are front and center,” the Binance employee told the Globe Banner. “Yi has professionalized our unit and is someone I look up to every day.”
Financial broker Forex Suggest analyzed major crypto companies earlier this year and found that 201 of 259 senior leadership positions, excluding CEO roles, were occupied by men, meaning 22.4% are held by women, Investment Monitor reports.
Bloomberg recently called Yi He "one of the most powerful players in the $1.2 trillion" crypto industry. When Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance's CEO and co-founder, asked Yi He in 2017 to be a consultant for Binance, she had already risen to prominence as a "crypto pioneer" in China.
“Even without taking into account personal relationships, I was the one who brought CZ into the cryptocurrency exchange business,” Yi He said. "CZ bringing me to Binance is based on the achievements I had already established."
Sources familiar with Binance's beginnings credit Yi He's prominence in the crypto community as contributing to the exchange's early success, according to Bloomberg.
In 2017, Yi He assisted in reworking portions of Binance's white paper for its initial coin offering, Bloomberg reports. Yi He currently supervises institutional clients and acquisitions, is attributed with growing the native BNB token, and oversees Binance Labs, the exchange's venture capital fund.
In response to the regulatory pressure Binance has been facing recently, Yi He told Bloomberg, "We respect the attitude of regulators, whether it supports or opposes the development of crypto. I understand that the overall intention of regulation is good in order to protect investors.”