In a timely interview, Vishal Sacheendran from Binance offered insights into the cryptocurrency giant’s operations amidst major changes.
Sacheendran, Binance’s Head of Regional Markets, stressed the company’s dedication to staying compliant and shared insights on its future goals. Speaking to BeInCrypto, he discussed how one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges is tackling regulatory hurdles, adapting connection with its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) , and planning its next steps.
What progress has there been in the policy of Binance in global regulatory compliance, especially after what happened to CZ?
It’s a bit unfair to say that we have only been paying attention to compliance from when CZ had a settlement. Compliance was our focus for four years or more. Even though we’re just a 7-year-old company, we’ve always paid huge attention to compliance over the past years.
If you look at the (US) DOJ’s settlement, what happened was from our initial years as a company when rules and regulations were not in place, and they mention that we have done a good job with the compliance program since then.
Currently, we have about 500 to 600 compliance employees and we continue to invest heavily in their team. We are hoping to hit close to 700 to 800 by the end of the year. So, we are one of the most regulated crypto firms out there. We just had our 19th registration with India a couple of weeks ago.
All in all, we’ve done pretty well in the compliance space. I don’t think the settlement with the US regulators has anything to do with our current compliance pace.
How is the relationship between CZ and Binance going to be after he is released?
He is only the ultimate shareholder. He’s not involved at all and that was a part of the settlement. He won’t come back and you can see it in the statements. We have a statement. He’s not involved in any of the operations.
There are a lot of speculations that the prices of Binance-related tokens might go up once that happens, too.
You should be more hyped about the US federal rate cuts. That is going to be more influential than anything else.
What is the industry outlook for crypto?
2025 is going to be a very interesting year for crypto, and we just hope and see what happens next. There is a lot of good stuff coming with the regulations slowly catching up to innovation. You can see regulators trying to grow the industry instead of looking at it from their own perspective.
Binance has been putting a lot of effort into education in the crypto space. What are your major achievements?
We have to start looking at crypto education from the grassroots level. In Kazakhstan, we are working with universities and high schools to teach kids about blockchain, about crypto.
Our users are becoming more knowledgeable, too. For people who want to invest, they need to know what they’re investing into, do their research extremely important, and not just follow the hype.
There’s a huge effort being placed on education not just with Binance Academy, but also in the work that we do with the regulators, law enforcement agencies, with governments across the world. Our compliance teams work with law enforcement agencies across the world, giving them training. We give cybersecurity training to a lot of people.
Just like how you did mandatory AML and KYC training when you joined a bank, I think these things should be mandatory — for crypto, too. Education is going to be the key for them to understand the industry and how to treat it.
Which jurisdiction seems to have the most reasonable regulation for the crypto industry?
Every jurisdiction is different. For example, Japan was one of the first jurisdictions globally to come up with a crypto framework. They treated crypto from an AML registration point of view.
If you look at a comprehensive framework for crypto, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) was the first one in Abu Dhabi and I was part of the team that rolled it out. Everyone has a different risk appetite and different perspectives on how they should regulate crypto.
The ones that will be successful are the ones that are going to ensure that they don’t kill the industry but regulate it. The crypto regulators either regulate it, prohibit it, or take no action. I think regulation is the key.
For specific jurisdictions, you can see the adoption of crypto in the markets in MENA, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Thailand, and India have the highest crypto adoption globally.
There are other jurisdictions that are not there yet. It could be for multiple reasons. They don’t have the risk appetite for it and that’s a huge drain on talent.
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