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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Cece, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good. Good. Thank you. Thank you
Speaker 1:for having me. So much for hopping on. Good day. Tell us about the book. What was the goal?
Speaker 1:Is this, an attempt to set the record straight or just tell your story? What what what motivated you to write a book at this moment in time?
Speaker 2:I think it's really just to tell my story. Yeah. And then, I was bored for I had nothing to do for a couple years. So I started writing a book when I was in prison.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then, I just finished when I got it when I got out. So, I thought, you know, it might be interesting story to share and stuff, you know, to let people know what my view is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What do you what do you think people get wrong about your story?
Speaker 2:Well, I think a lot of traditional media have many misconceptions about crypto, Binance, myself, etcetera. So I think there's a lot of media that's not accurate about crypto. So I think this is a very good chance for for me to share my perspective and have people understand crypto better.
Speaker 1:What specifically do people get wrong about crypto or you or Binance?
Speaker 2:Sure. I mean, look, from 2013, right, people think that Bitcoin's only used by drug lords, or for illicit activities. The truth is actually, if you look if you look at percentage wise, illicit activities in crypto is actually much, much less than your traditional finance. Mhmm. And then, by extension, a lot of the crypto players, a lot of crypto platforms get hit.
Speaker 2:And recently, you know, there's more attacks about, you know, just just random attacks on me about how I do business, who who I who I have connections with. So I'm a simple tech guy, so I just wrote the book, you know, the the way I wanted to tell it. Mhmm. It's a pretty simple language, pretty straightforward book.
Speaker 3:A simple guy. This is a simple guy.
Speaker 1:What Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I'm a relatively simple guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How how have you been processing the the new regulation that's been proposed in the in The United States? What do you think needs to change in the crypto industry? Because I take your point about the amount of illicit activity might be lower than in cash or the traditional financial system. But the goal, I think, for everyone that would agree is to get that to zero.
Speaker 1:And so what what do you like about the new regulation? What do you think is is reasonable, to ask for?
Speaker 2:Well, I think right now, US is making really good progress on crypto regulation. The Genius Act was passed in last July. But I think right now, there's still quite a lot of debates based on my layman understanding. I'm not an expert. I'm not a lawyer.
Speaker 2:I'm not a not a regulatory guy. But, seems like, no, there's a lot of debates about, stablecoin interest rates. So, I think it's a big important issue, but from my perspective, any clarity is better than none. Mhmm. So and and, we will not we'll I think the current, iteration of regulations will not get get everything right on the first try.
Speaker 2:Right? So there'll be some collaboration over time. Mhmm. So I think it's more important to make progress and and move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How how are you thinking about the broad trade off between, decentralization and anonymity and then, oversight reg and regulation? Like, feels like we've been moving towards more oversight, more regulation, more KYC. We've heard from some crypto leaders that that can lead to data breaches and other problems. But where do you sit on the level of regulation in the crypto industry broadly?
Speaker 2:So I think right now, the crypto industry, to be honest, is too transparent. It's actually extremely easy to track crypto funds. Like, the blockchain is a public ledger, and then if you couple that with a cup a few centralized exchanges KYC information Mhmm. You can track most of the transactions pretty accurately. So I think right now, there's a lack of preserving of privacy.
Speaker 2:But right now, the problem is many of the regulators and law enforcement people don't know how to use it yet. Mhmm. Some people do. I think some of The US law enforcement actually knows it quite well. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In other countries, they know they know it much less. So, hopefully, we'll get to a balance where I don't know where the optimum balance is, but, there should be optimal balance where, you know, we satisfy all the regulatory requirements, but we also need to protect individual privacy. Right? For example I'll you a couple examples. Please.
Speaker 2:For example, like, if if this company if your company pays everybody in crypto. Mhmm. And if you get one payment today on the blockchain, you can just trace to the address that I paid you and see how many addresses that address paid in the last week. You can you can figure out everybody's salary. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? So that's a privacy issue. Yeah. And if you if you stay at a hotel, you pay for the hotel, then people know where you you if people know your address and the hotel address, people will know that you're gonna stay at that hotel, which for some people may create security issues. Right?
Speaker 2:So there's little problems like those that are not solved yet. So we need to we need to strike a balance. It's hard to say exactly where the balance is, but I think over time, we'll we'll get there.
Speaker 3:How are you thinking about the interaction between AI and crypto? Generally, there's been a lot of excitement even from people in AI about crypto and intersection. But I'm curious if what your overall view is? And then if it's positive, some maybe specific examples of where you you expect to see it manifest first.
Speaker 2:Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I think what both AI and blockchain are big recent new big industries. I think there's really three big technologies in my in my adult lifetime.
Speaker 2:Right? There's AI, there's blockchain, there's Internet. Like, it's on those levels. I think a AI's AI's gonna use crypto for payments for transactions. They're not gonna use no.
Speaker 2:They cannot KYC through a bank. They cannot do they cannot do a selfie. They don't have a passport, etcetera. And, also, payments in every country is a little bit different. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Whereas crypto blockchain is the same across different countries. So, one you integrate with the blockchain once, it works globally. And it also handles micro transactions, large transactions, etcetera. And, also, crypto is gonna increase the, amount of transactions significantly. So the traditional payment rails may not be able to handle that.
Speaker 2:I think blockchain also have a lot of benefit from AI. I think right now, a lot of the applications are in blockchain quite difficult to build. I think with with AI, we can probably build, like, you know, safer safer tools for people to do self custody and safer tools for people to transact. So and I think so, today, the two industries, to be honest, have not really leveraged each other that significantly, but I think in the future, they will.
Speaker 1:Are you thinking about the risk of quantum computing to the cryptocurrency ecosystem broadly?
Speaker 2:I think there's some risk, but I think overall, though, any technology improvement is always gonna be good. More computing power is good for crypto. Mhmm. So quantum may break the existing encryption mechanisms. But with quantum computing, there's probably new well, there will be new encryption algorithm.
Speaker 2:There are already quantum approved encryption algorithms that quantum computers do not have an advantage to crack. So we just need to upgrade the protocol to use those encryption mechanisms. Also, more computing power with quantum, there's probably newer encryption mechanisms we have not even thought about Mhmm. That we can use quantum to encrypt, and decryption is always gonna be much harder.
Speaker 1:Sure. What about, non, quantum hacking? Throughout the crypto boom, there's been so many upstart projects. Many of them have been able to get to escape velocity, and they're still around today. A lot of them have had to go through hacks and adapt.
Speaker 1:And it feels like with the moment that we're in, in terms of AI's effect on cybersecurity, we could potentially be looking at maybe a bifurcation between the projects that have the resources to actually harden themselves against new cybersecurity threats and those who are maybe smaller upstarts and don't. How do you think that effect plays out?
Speaker 2:I actually think AI is gonna improve security for for most projects. Mhmm. Like, Anthropic Cloud. Right? So now they're I think if you play it like like that, you could potentially discover many flaws, at least they claim, in many projects.
Speaker 2:But I think projects can also use use their tool to fix their security problems. I think a big company like that, they already make a lot of money. They don't need to exploit smaller projects to hack and to do illegal stuff. So I think right right now with AI tools that's available, the developers can use those tools to find their own problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So but, of course, if you if you don't do that, then the hackers may do that for you, which is a typical problem in we have today anyway. Yeah. So, I think with AI, security is actually gonna get become better. I don't think it's gonna become worse. Sure.
Speaker 2:So, so I'm pretty com yeah. I'm pretty confident about that.
Speaker 1:Do you know who Satoshi Nakamoto is?
Speaker 2:No. Unfortunately, I don't. Even if I did, I would have said no.
Speaker 1:But Yeah.
Speaker 2:I honestly don't. Okay.
Speaker 1:Do you have have you how have you processed that question of who is Satoshi? Have you wrestled with it? Have you done a bunch of research to try and figure it out? Have you had various suspects at various points in time, favorite pet theories, wild card theories? Or has it sort of been a quick ride to sort of process that and then let go of that desire because it's the unsolved mystery.
Speaker 2:This is an interesting point. I should have put this in my book. Maybe the maybe the next edition. Yeah. But, I've come to peace with it.
Speaker 2:I think, I'm curious, obviously. Yeah. I mean, if there was one person I really want to meet in the world, that that would probably be him. But I think there are negative consequences if if we find out who he is. Right?
Speaker 2:For for example, if I couldn't lie on the oath, if people say, look. Have you met Satoshi? If say yes, then, you know, that's gonna our health is gonna break loose.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:I I think it's better if we don't know who he is. Yeah. It's better if we without knowing him, that, we don't have a founder centralization. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:For example, if you look at Ethereum with Talix there. Right? So there's a founder centralization.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:What makes Bitcoin unique is that we don't know who we well, the fund is no longer participating. He's he may not be around. He may not be participating. So, that makes it more decentralized. I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:And we should come to term I came to term terms with it quite a while ago. So even though I'm curious, I'm not actively looking. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you ever thought about doing a anonymous project, or do you have a reflection on why we haven't seen more projects effectively run, at least to my knowledge, the Satoshi playbook of maybe it requires some crazy ops act to go anonymous for a couple of years. But if it worked for Bitcoin, I would imagine that somebody would have thought, I'm going to do the same thing for this new project with slightly different opinions about how the technology is built. I haven't seen it happen, but what's your take on the idea of a new attempt at a Satoshi like founder in the crypto industry?
Speaker 2:I actually really want to see that too. Yeah. I think that's a really, really cool idea, to be honest, but I think it's also very hard to do. Mhmm. Most projects fail even with the founders heavily promoting it.
Speaker 2:We know who they are, etcetera. For a new project, without knowing the founder, there's less trust in the community. Bitcoin was the first one. Somehow, it got, you know, slow it started very slowly. It took many, many years for it to get to where it is today.
Speaker 2:And for a new project to do that, it's very, very difficult. Yeah. And there there have been anonymous projects that, you know, that are basically rug pulls. Right? So, they're also the other side of it, people people lose trust with anonymous project.
Speaker 2:So, to do what Bitcoin did is very, very difficult. I would I would actually love to see more anonymous, fully decentralized, you know, projects. But what you mentioned is the OPSEC is also extremely hard. Yeah. It's so hard today to not leave any trace, both digitally and physically.
Speaker 2:Right? So, the fact that nobody has really announced who Satoshi is means that his offsec is crazy. Yeah. I don't I think 99.9 well, nobody else can do it really at this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What what do Americans miss about, crypto adoption globally? Because here, I mean, so many, at least at least younger generations, almost everyone has some exposure to digital assets or some experience buying, selling, maybe not, maybe not using it functionally for payments. But obviously, it's very different, in other parts of the world with with, you know, less, centralized financial institutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think America, for the last few years, before the Trump administration was, you know, fairly anti crypto. So many of the, founders left, many of the projects left, and many of the liquidity left. Right? There's, the biggest crypto exchanges are not in America, today.
Speaker 2:The biggest blockchains, the biggest stablecoin, they're not America based. So I think America misses that liquidity quite a bit. America right now has very forward looking regulations, and now people flocking back. I think the talent pool is coming back, but, some of the larger players are not backing America yet. So I would love to see that changing.
Speaker 2:I think right now, crypto if you if you buy crypto, Americans are probably paying the highest fees in the world, whereas if you buy anything else, America's usually paying the lowest price. So the, the cost to American consumers today for accessing crypto is quite high. So that's a disadvantage that America has today. But America has a large economy, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of VCs, and good liquidity in traditional markets. I think and I think America definitely has the ability to catch up very quickly.
Speaker 1:You were born in China. How are you thinking about geopolitical relations between The US and China? Tensions seem to have been rising for years. There's trade tensions. There's all sorts of geopolitical tensions.
Speaker 1:Is there any hope for de escalation between the two countries?
Speaker 2:I'm not an expert on the geopolitics of Yeah. Between different countries. And, also, my lamely understanding is both countries have leaders with pretty big personalities. Yeah. So they're very hard to predict.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I think the the president Xi in China's easier to predict than president Trump. President Trump is like a wildcard. Right? It's like which is which which which is in which is in his advantage.
Speaker 2:Sure. You can't predict what's what he's gonna do. And but I do think both both countries are large countries now with leaders who are smart and who are business driven. Mhmm. They want the economy to grow.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So if that's the goal, then there are certain then I'm optimistic that, you know, there's certain outcome to be reached. Between two countries, there's usually a fairly large zone of overlap that you can reach deals. Right now, it's just the personalities, and also both countries are quite proud, so they they all hire negotiators. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The negotiations at that level takes time. Yeah. So, but I I am, I am fairly I'm fairly optimistic that, you know, both the two countries will work hard on something that's beneficial for both. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You've written the book. What's next for you? What do you think the next decade looks like?
Speaker 2:I'm actually not too sure exactly. So I'm doing a a few different things right now. I'm running investment fund. Well, I'm not really running it, like, I support it. Sure.
Speaker 2:I do some mentoring in the space for new entrepreneurs. I run a, a free education platform, a Giga Academy, that provides free education to 240,000 kids now. And we've only been at it for, like, a year and a half. Mhmm. And then and, I also yeah.
Speaker 2:So and then I also advise different governments on crypto policies. Mhmm. So between those four things that keep that keep me pretty busy, the book was actually a huge distraction for me. I can imagine. It took a lot of time it takes a lot of time to write a book.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I'm glad to know it's it's out there, and there's an audio version coming out soon. And then after that, I'll put that, I'll put that on pause. Just let it be for a while and then figure out what to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What was the strategy for the audiobook version? Did you narrate it yourself, yourself, hire a human narrator, use AI?
Speaker 2:So, one of my friend, Michael Santos, is gonna narrate it. Okay. So he well, we had this sort of agreement verbally from a long time ago. And, also, Amazon doesn't allow AI generated voices Interesting. Yet.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that. So you you are human read or audio book. Sure. And then I've been playing with AI quite a bit myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The AI cloning of of voice is I can't tell the difference from my own voice. Yeah. It's and it's it's just better. It's it reads more smoothly. It's better than my own reading.
Speaker 2:So in certain, we on certain other platforms or in certain other countries, we may use an AI generated voice that clones my voice to to try to read it. I haven't finished that yet. There's still little quirks here and there. Some sometimes AI make very obvious mistakes. You know, you you pronounce this Chinese names wrong, which I would not make that mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You pronounce this sometimes you will say, like, when I write $400, you say $4.00 $0. Sure. So I would not make that mistake. But 99% of the time, you actually read better than me.
Speaker 2:So, we'll see. So I might do two different audio versions. We're still playing around with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I wonder, after Jassy's letter today, if he's still gonna be anti anti AI voices. Yeah. Yeah. He's I did have a one last question.
Speaker 3:I'm just curious. How how did you process the prediction market boom over the last two years? Sure. There had been, you know, long people had long had predictions that prediction markets would intersect with with crypto and and be really big, and yet there was attempts in the twenty tens that didn't really reach critical mass. So I'm curious, you know, how you process that that that entire period.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think I today, I do think prediction markets has a huge potential, and it's already pretty big. Like, the the top players are pretty big already, and there's, like, hundreds or thousands of upcoming platforms as well. And, also, if you look at the regulatory landscape, the CFTC chairman, Michael Silek, he talks about prediction markets multiple times. I every time I watch him talk, he seems to mention prediction markets.
Speaker 2:So it seems like the regulators and the, traditional market is also moving in. So, and as you said, there have been many attempts previously, but then timing is important. Some ideas, you know, even even though the ideas are very obvious, if you implement them too early, they don't get get traction. You have to implement the right idea at the right time. I don't know what all the ingredients are for prediction markets, but somehow now seems to be the right time.
Speaker 2:The previous attempts have struggled, and now it seems to taking off. So I'm a big proponent for for anything that's new and interesting, and I think prediction markets are very interesting. They're the the price discovery and truth discovery, they're kind of using price to discovery truth. Right? So which is actually a very which is not usually the reverse for what we do.
Speaker 2:We like, information drives trading volumes. So that that's a very interesting dynamic. I think and also the EZ Labs, the fund I'm I I'm involved with, we invest in multiple prediction markets, so we'll see which ones work. But I do think that it's a huge potential, and it's it's hot. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it works.
Speaker 1:Are you how are you thinking about any of the previous crypto booms or narratives or themes, coming back, things like NFTs or crypto gaming? Are you optimistic on any projects, DAOs that had their moment in the sun and didn't quite release reach escape velocity? Do you think anything will have a second wind in the near future?
Speaker 2:I do think so. I think many things will have a second wind, but the second wind will most likely be a little bit different. Yeah. There'll be something that's you know? Like, even prediction markets today, they're different from the sort of prediction markets four or five years ago.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So every iteration, there will be some tweak, and it's usually that little tweak that makes it a little bit different and maybe the microenvironment. So I do think that some of the things that, you know, that were there, like the I think thousands will not disappear. Mhmm. I think thousands haven't really took off, to be honest.
Speaker 2:You know, the concept being there for years. Yeah. It's like, you know, in the '19 in even in the February, video streaming doesn't really work. Right? Like, know, this type of even today, this this type of call sometimes will Internet doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the microphone doesn't work. Yeah. Right? So, you know, we get into those situations a lot. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So a lot of things take a lot of time to mature. So I think the DAOs, the NF NFTs, again, I don't the next iteration may be slightly different, but you may still be called NFTs or n NFT two. You may be a different name. But I think tokenizing art is probably gonna come back at some point multiple times. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know when it will really hit big and stay. Yeah. NFTs, think, honestly, we saw we saw, like, a we saw a we saw a rise and then and and then and then a downward trend.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's hard to say, but I think all of those things eventually should be much bigger than they were today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Congratulations.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Congrats on the launch.
Speaker 1:I recommend everyone go check it out and hear, CZ's side of the story. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. Thank you,
Speaker 1:soon. Goodbye.