What's hot in crypto? Fireside chat with David Prinçay (Binance) and Vlad Dramaliev | ETHSofia

[Music] our topic with David today is really what's hot in crypto and it's uh there are so many things that are hot but we only have 15 minutes to cover the most interesting things so let's just jump right in maybe David if you want to like maybe do a uh a more extensive int introduction to uh what you do and who you are and then we can jump into the questions first thank you so much to come uh and to be here I know it's uh it's 1 p.m. and uh everyone want to go to the buffet so we're going to do it short 15 minutes I I wanted just to to give you a a first highlight about Bulgaria uh eth sopia is the first edition so far a very successful Edition I had the chance to participate to eth Paris to eth Milan to eth waro so I can compare there's much more people than in inth Milan so you can be proud of you thank you for the organization but also the the the Bulgarian Market is one of the most dynamic Market in Europe surprisingly uh when I took on the the marketing lead and I look at the data Bulgarian Market was actually on the top five of the market in Europe and that's surprising because we cannot expect that from a democra graphic standpoint uh it shows that in Bulgaria you have a lot of people that went into Innovation very fast and right now use crypto for a use case that is very specific which is a financial independency so so Bravo to you keep pushing uh because you're one of the countes that is leading adoption in Europe for crypto thank you so much for the for the nice words about e sopia we really try to make it the best event possible and I'm so far quite happy how it's turning out um so we can start with the first question um and it's related to the to the cycle because this crypto cycle actually any crypto cycle is a bit different than the previous one but what do you what do you think are the big biggest differences from this CYO and previous ones now the previous cycle was composed mainly on defi Innovation uh that enter into the game uh and uh everyone was quite interesting about the this cycle is particular because I would say that the Innovation are for not not yet uncovered you have real world asset you have ai llm that are entering into the game since two weeks but there is a very interesting Trend which is about mcoin um it's funny because when some mcoin got listed on binance a lot of project come to us and was like uh you need to list more seres project instead of mcoin but we need to Define seriousness uh inside uh mcoin uh what was funny when I was discussing with VC with people like that most V doesn't enter yet into mcoin because the liquidity is too small uh it's very risky it's very complicated we could see this as a disadvantage but actually the community is fed up of project where you build basically you buy a road map you don't have any promise that it's going to be achieved uh you know that VC entered before you at a better price and it's going to liquidate at another moment uh any big project also have a token unlock during their period which could be considered as unfair mcoin are DJ in this way where basically you enter at the same moment as everyone you have the promise that there's no VC inside the market because they're not yet entering ah your phone and uh as well but because of all those characteristic for now people consider mecoin as a much fair launch and fair distribution of the token to the community so that's surprising uh there's a drawback about mcoin is that it's still and we see it a lot of Insider Market but for now it's a trend that I think is going to last longer 3 to six months uh it's the new Ico let's say uh let's see how it's going to evolve but they're less stupid than what they appear to be where basically they try to build their Community First and after build an ecosystem around this that's a reflection that I had during like one two months saying like how could this work that much it's not only about the profit but because the promise of proect is done because of the absence of VC the absence of token unlock the absence of a secondary Market where basically the the biggest player get a better price at the entrance it creates a much more fair launch it still have its disadvantage so it's going to need to evolve but I just wanted us all to think collectively about this as serious un serious sometime you know unseriousness is a is a is a floating subject yeah absolutely me Co are definitely one of the biggest themes of of the pycho and uh there are some positives and negatives obviously there are so many of them uh and it's all centered around communities and how how big a community can be they they even call them Cults actually I hear uh in X that people are really mostly interested in meme coins that have this cult me mentality and it's a very interesting um I don't know like a event so to say uh from a from a marketing perspective how do you build build a like a Cod and then uh have a have a token around that so where do you think we are in the cycle also uh do you think there will be like an out season do you think the meme coins or some of them at least will um will further increase in in in their market caps and communities and yeah what do you think is going to happen in 2025 Maybe I I I'm very uh trying to analyze cycle by repetition of it um what we see uh a composition of a cycle it's it's funny because everybody is always speaking about um about the alving but actually the beginning of a bull cycle always begin after us election that's interesting because also you know there's a debate about which candidates is going to help better the crypto actually I think the result doesn't matter uh last cycle Biden was elected it was a bull cycle uh last last cycle Trump was elected it was a bull cycle so for me it's more a question of after the US election people have clarity about what is going to happen and then they take their investment decision big player small player medium player um it's funny as well to see that the ETF from BTC creating one of the biggest launch in term of ETF the amount of money that have floated into ETF on BTC is much more bigger than any ETF ever created so it is a success surprisingly eth ETF was not that much of a success compared to BTC is it going to ramp up after the US selection or not that's a question uh eth have some competition compared to for Solana but also some other blockchain s say there are some new layer one that appears but they had some new layer one also before so so it's going to be a very interesting cycle in term of variety of the market before you had a little bit of a monopolistic element which was like time to Market was the advantage eth being the first actor having a layer one it took the Lion Share of defi this year it's different mcoin has not been developed on ethereum they've been developed on Solana they're still keeping on Solana very good Heth base so so so it's interesting to see that yet I think you know the architecture ofum all those kind of element make him quite a solid player for The Bu Market still yeah absolutely saana is definitely one of the more interesting projects and we see that a lot of Capital that is coming into crypto is actually going to to uh SOI and uh also Capital that is currently in other networks uh is also moving to to sui uh but you're also totally right about the ETF um yesterday I I read a tweet that uh the Bitcoin ETFs in total have generated or have attracted a net inflow of $20 billion since they launched in January this year which is a huge uh again like accomplishment it's better than gold exactly exactly so gold uh for the gold ETFs it took 5 years and for the for the Bitcoin ETF it just took like what 10 months so a massive success uh but then apart from the prices the prices that are moving and the technology that is developing uh we have also regulation the regulatory landscape and I guess this is also very much related to what's happening in the states everyone is looking forward to getting Gary gansler out of the the SEC uh but but in in Europe we have mic other the markets in crypto assets regulation so how do you how do you think this regulation is affecting binance's users uh in 2024 and Beyond um first M regulation is going to kicks in already kicks in for stable coin mid July uh then you have another step I to give you the different step mid July we've got the M regulations that apply to stable coin and we had uh to uh stop the launch pool on FD USD for the stable coin FD USD that that is the most painful things I had to do to be honest um then in in January you're going to have a normalization usdt FD USD need to be MAA compliant otherwise you're going to be able to trade in usdc on the platform and that's it that's one step the second step is going to be interesting in the fact that mik is going to kick in in January 2025 for centralized exchange and there's going to be a first uh symptom of MAA the first one is that every actor that didn't register previously with a crypto license m is going to take effect in January 2025 for all the other actor they have a grandfather period which is that because you were already on the process we give you we're going to give you six to one years to adapt to Mika so the real let's say date of Mika for Biden is going to be after the grand farther period because we've been regulated in many country in Europa we've been regulated in France in Spain in Italy in Poland in Sweden most of the country where a regulation was in place in Bulgaria yeah there is a regulation but yet it's not applied yet as well maika is a common rule for Europe yet it's up to the authority to exert this rule so in some country they're going to be very fast to adap that in some other countries they're going to give much more like time and flexibility it's up to each Authority in each country to do so so so that's very particular because so you know Mika is the first European regulation on crypto the aim of it is to create a framework a fit for all framework uh meaning that previously you had to adapt to each country one regulation and that was very complicated for local but also Global actor because the size of crypto Market it's growing but it's still a small size and in some country you need to take business decision you cannot have a dedicated platform with dedicated measure because each regulation is different and each regulation has different characteristic different requirements you cannot adapt the platform 27 times easily so having a fit for all is going to benefit in the midterm for the crypto industry and for the for the for All actors and at the end of the day you know a regulation I I love to use this parallelism but why a regulation let's think about aircraft regulation know we implemented aircraft regulation in the 1963 after a major accident in Las Vegas where two aircraft Collide each other there's been very bad casualty it was awful in order not to happen again we created a regulation to protect the user of aircraft and now thanks to this regulation that's why everyone can take a flight everyone can be secured the the flying an aircraft is becoming very simple for everyone very normal very safe it's the same for crypto uh regulation is here to prevent major accident major crash that could have happened before meaning the security of the platform the it security the segregation of the wallet uh the compliance fighting anti-money laundering and financial terrorism there's very important subject in finance and at the end of the day a regulation protect the user so once a regulation is applied it gives guarantee to user retail institutional it helps adoption at first it's complicated I'm not going to lie it's complicated for the authority because they apply a set of rules into a new domain and it's complicated also for actors because they need to pass this step you know it's really a you need to qualify you need to get better now in some in some standard it security uh crypto security securization of fund we're already above what has been imposed in by the regulation in some other we need to be more uh to ad up to this requirement it's a lot of work uh all over Europe from our team we have a lot of work to do but also you know it's a guarantee of quality once we pass this step the platform gets better for the user at the end of the day yeah I absolutely agree um actually regulations are part of the the Natural Evolution of the sector so if we want uh crypto and crypto assets to be uh commercially successful uh there is no other way than going through regulations um so there are definitely positives and you mentioned that for the for the business especially for the relations with banks I think uh Micah in particular will be very very uh positive and I have two more questions and then maybe we can go into uh the lun lunch break so uh you mentioned meme coins yeah but what do you think is the biggest innovation of this cycle because because yeah we do have certain elements some certain maybe like protocols or projects ideas um teams that are unique to this cycle uh but in terms of innovation what do you think is really interesting you know blockchain didn't invented a lot of things right now we are parallelizing the finance the economical traditional finance and we are developing standard tool inside the and inside blockchain so that just to to speak about invention um if I had to point some uh interesting Innovation actually the ETF is one of the most impactful uh things that's going to happen why we always said uh that people should have one or 2% of their Finance inside Bitcoin that could be a good way to diversify an position to crypto ETF created something in us but also in Hong Kong Etc which is that the 401 which is a retirement plan in us people canot invest Bitcoin on it technically before it was technically not possible meaning that you're going to have a part of the population that's going to actually put 1 to 5% of exposition to crypto now it's going to create a volume but it's going to create also a best practice if you are into the financial sector you all know that Finance people they don't know what they do they just replicate common standard and best practice when a lot of people in us are going to put 1 to 5% on their retirement plan on bitcoin is going to become also a standard practice in Europe in other place ET so that's interesting to see that the second element of invention and of what we can observe in binance and it's more of a sad news actually is that we see also some country where the economics and the tokenomics of those country is not that good uh the the national currency inflate very high thinking about uh some country in specific in latam Turkey as well and and there Bitcoin has been massively adopt massively adopt as a payment system as a way to keep the money outside of the bank but in a secure place so it's interesting because um those country the bank were there the system was there it's not about unbanked country yet the promise of the central Authority was not fulfilled and when the promise is not fulfilled field we observe that Bitcoin take a large adoption so it's not that cool to observe that to be honest at the end of the day we're speaking of country where the economy Falls and there is some people that leave a great problem yet but we observe that into the technology that Bitcoin is used as a way to protect against inflation against those element and unfortunately uh in the coming years there's going to be many more countries that's going to go to this pattern and there's going to be many more populations that's going to need to protect their asset to protect their value and that's going to go to the way of Bitcoin or to the way of others but it's going to go to this way yeah absolutely and and we also see that not only Bitcoin but specifically stable coins are being uh quite widely used by like in people in in countries from say Africa or sou South America for remittance but also for protecting themselves from their local currency by going into into Dollars um and um final question so how do you because you know uh there are so many centralized exchanges and there constantly new centralized exchanges appearing disappearing um and crypto users have been wronged uh numerous times by Central and decentralized uh and and trust is really the uh the most valuable currency in our space it's generally the most valuable currency but specifically in crypto trust is everything so how does binance uh generate trust with its users what do you guys do better than the others I think first as you said uh we see that the user they trust binance also because we are here since seven years we have been very res when the market deep the withdrawal are activated there's no question about our Reser fund you you you know we me also as a user before I was in binance I trusted binance because I saw them face the different step of blockchain um the largest withdrawal that we lived it was during Luna crash uh during Luna crash we got like in 24 hours if I remember it was like 15 billion of dollar of outflow at no point our withdrawal system was stopped the liquidity we were able to manage it I think there's not a lot of bank that would be able to process that when we gave the data to some authorities they were very surprised by Your Capacity to execute and this is you know the trust it's like a relationship you you you builded along the way so with seven years of practice you know we are still young still young company and we started as a startup and I love to have this startup physic of spirit and and also but we're becoming a financial institution true regulation through all those elements but trust is important and trust you measure it because you're like okay if they were there before they're going to be there after if they leave this it's still small than that and let's say um um trial along the way binance lived a lot of them we uh even personally uh even uh even like this yet we always made some things that was very important one the security of the user second the security of the fund and keeping our promise to the community you know um I I I used to work with a lot now it's Richard that is CEO of binance and he was my boss before being CEO of binance the business decision in binance are very simple we put the user first so if it's benefit to the user there's no brainer we go for it it's not about the benefit of the company and then the benefit of the user the benefit of the company is the same line as the benefit of the user that that's an advantage that we have when you're not quoted on the stock market Etc is that you can take your own decision you don't need uh to to please uh some some people that are outside and and and our motto our DNA is to be a company that is uh done by user made by user built by user I've been a big user of binance I've been a binance angel then I've been a binance director of France then I I registered the company with all the team it was a formidable Adventure but at the end of the day I'm a binance user and I have this etics that I wouldn't do anything that I wouldn't like as a user so so that's how I think U we succeed a lot which is uh uh to put the user at the center of all our strategy in term of development of product we we we develop product based on user feedback we spend a lot of time with the community one uh funny thing is that uh every month I spend one day on customer service some people they go to the chat and they see David CS David and it's me and I'm responding and uh and that's something that we do all uh every uh every every month because it's important that uh you know the the the humidity of the Approach at the end of the day we serve user uh for $10 or $1 million it doesn't matter it's a question of promise and I used to help a lot of user when we launched the binance card we had a bit of a issue there was some transaction that didn't pass for they passed meaning the money was gone but the transaction didn't pass so the users they were not happy and the reimbursement would happen like one week later and I I used to to to to check the telegram channel of the binance card every day to take the user ID to give them to uh to the C team in order to accelerate the process whether it was $10 $100 or 1K it it doesn't matter actually it's even more important to spend some time on the little things because they mean a lot about your approach your focus if I get up and I say oh this problem cost only $10 it's not important uh that means a lot you see there's there's $100 $10 problem there's maybe one problem of uh 1K you need to solve the $110 problem because there's 100 user behind them and one user is as important as another the second element as well is that uh uh we tried to serve and the superiority of our technology made us the best matching engine we have the biggest liquidity in this type of Market the the liquidity is really the the GameChanger but at the same time uh we don't give any advantage to the big player compared to the the retail actually we prefer the retail to have a competitive Advantage compared to the big player very interesting yes and you're definitely one of the most Innovative exchanges uh always absorbing the new teams and always presenting new uh new coins new tokens new services to the users um and we can talk uh I guess a few more hours more but uh I think potentially people are hungry so maybe it's time to to end it here uh we are a bit over time but maybe if there's like one or two questions I I think we can take them they if they're very quick um yeah two questions I saw two hands that so so maybe we can give the mics to uh these two people but please be very quick and then uh we can all go and enjoy uh lunch together right here in the front uh thank you for your speech uh very quick question uh do you think that uh someday CZ will ever come back to binance could you repeat do do you think that someday CZ will ever come back to bance uh will CZ ever come back to B well it's not up to me to respond to it to be honest um CZ just been released and we're all happy yet the the CEO has been uh has been now appointed and I think uh no this is not going to come back that's sad yeah and also it's interesting what's happening in the cryptosphere in comparison to what's happening in the banking sphere because uh I've never heard of any Bank executive getting the same treatment uh at CZ ever uh and we've had some like massive massive fines for traditional financial institutions and no one has ever been treated in the same way so um yeah I'm I'm not a fan of uh of these devil standards uh and that's why I've been in Bitcoin for such a long time for for more for more than two 10 years actually and one more question here hello David hello David my name is MIL M and I have a question and first of all thank you that you explain very well about the ETF as a narrative into the in the crypto world but in the past few years we saw the the defi the nft narratives what about the dein narratives and AAA narratives as a crypto utilization is is something that binance believe because as I can see for the last two research by binance and coin market cap ASO it's a narrative that couple of millions users already participate few millions and there's multiple question inside your question uh uh we see that defi is still a good narrative and it's working well yet it's working well in new ecosystem Uh there's Big player in ethereum I don't see new player coming inside ethereum I'm thinking about Cur Finance I'm thinking about those kind de dein narrative de centralized physical infrastructure networks and AWA real world assets smart um Let me let me still like go over every sector and then we go to deine at some point at the end sorry uh nft they need to evolve that's a certainty we see the volume of openc we see the volume of binance nft platform still small and and and to be honest the the the haded value of nft right now as a use case is uh complicated let's say that's one now real world asset well we're going to see what the player are going to do what Black Rock there's always a news about Black Rock investing into a real world asset dine is interesting yet uh it has to prove uh right now there's a lot of buzz word around theine yet no major like leading actor inside of it there's protocols that are promising something the road map looks shiny the VC and turned into the different project and I would say that deine as such as all other emerging project right now for Trend are competing with mecoin now you know what is funny with a with a bull market is that it's one narrative after the other one narrative jump off then it goes to a certain maximum level and then there is another narrative that jump off so is it the time of depine right now no right now the trend is the mcoin will it be maybe yes but there is some things to learn about mcoin to apply to the launch of the token on dine right now what I'm seeing on dine is um the same type of launch of the previous Nar narrative The Narrative before mcoin this is problematic you need at each wave to take a little bit of the previous wave and to integrate it into uh your next Trend and and for not depine didn't take it they will they will and I think that it's going to be a category of success for the next trend to be defined for me deine create a very good proposition but such as every other proposition that are around the market so I would say that this kind of narrative if you believe in it it's the right moment to invest because they're not yet you know trending Etc yet for me they need to evolve taking into consideration what happened on the last Trend all right guys so please thank David for being here with us thank you David very much you thank you and uh you can enjoy the launch which is uh outside and to the left in the uh open stage room and please come back here in about 30 minutes so we we continue with the program [Music] going