Richard Teng: "1.4 Billion People Excluded From Financial Services — Crypto Is Here to Solve That"

Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng grounded the exchange's 3 billion user ambition in a measurable global gap — and a strategy built around regulation, asset class expansion, and round-the-clock trading.Speaking at Binance Online on May 13, Teng credited his co-CEO with setting the bar high. "Kudos to Yi. The three billion was Yi saying that we need to aim very high, we need to be ambitious, and we need to serve our users much better."He pointed to financial exclusion as the addressable opportunity. "I travel the world quite a bit, including many frontier and emerging markets. And I see even today, one point four billion people excluded from financial services globally. That is something we need to solve. And crypto is here to solve that problem. That's why we are very passionate about freedom of money globally."Teng said the path to that user base runs through both product expansion and regulatory positioning. "We need to continue to run faster on user protection. How do we make sure that we become a multi-asset class, multi-jurisdictional platform? We brought a lot more new products throughout the course of this year, from precious metals to petrochemicals to stocks trading."He pointed to 24/7 markets as a structural advantage over legacy finance. "By allowing for twenty-four seven trading, institutions and retail love it because they can manage risk much better compared to traditional platforms. They can hedge their exposure, they can take positions as and when news comes in."On the regulatory front, Teng said Binance now occupies a position no other exchange holds. "We are the only exchange globally to have a home regulator that regulates us end-to-end by the FSRA in ADGM. And we are the most regulated exchange, with more than twenty jurisdictions regulating us."His conclusion: the 3 billion target is a discipline. "It forces us to really think outside the box on how to serve our users much better."