From rural Sichuan girl to crypto queen – How He Yi helped build Binance from scratch

Binance’s icon and self-proclaimed “secret weapon” Miss He Yi was born He Ying (何英) in a rural Sichuan village in 1986, where both of her parents worked as teachers. She entered primary school at five and finished near the top of her class.

Miss Yi would later say that the household had little money, and she grew up doing hard chores like carrying water and chopping wood, along with spending most of her free time reading the few books her parents owned, which led classmates to call her a “bookworm.”

Yi started working as a teenager. At 16, she took a job promoting soft drinks at events. Soon after, she managed a bedding shop for two months, handling staff schedules and accounting.

In 2006, Yi would move to Beijing to attend an in-service master’s program in counseling psychology, where she earned a national psychological-counselor certificate. The field offered very few jobs, according to her, so she left it behind.

Yi then spent two years teaching at a private arts college in Lijiang, where she improved her management skills while running student groups.

Yi builds Binance with CZ and enters the top circle

Yi entered crypto before most people even knew what it was, including almost everyone at Binance, because she got into the market in 2009.

Then, in 2014, while working at OKCoin, she met Changpeng Zhao, famously known today as CZ, during a public blockchain event and offered him a job on the spot.

Three years later, in 2017, the two co-founded Binance, which would later become the world’s largest crypto exchange. Yi and CZ also became life partners, eventually getting married and having three children together, though they prefer to keep that side of their life extremely private, for good reason.

Federal prosecutors in 2020 had sought internal messages from Yi and other executives while examining the launch of Binance.US and the company’s early anti-money-laundering controls, which added to the public image of Yi as someone holding major power inside Binance despite maintaining a very low profile.

Today, Yi is the co-CEO of Binance, sharing executive control with Richard Teng, who had been acting CEO after CZ stepped down following his 2023 guilty plea to U.S. money-laundering charges.

When asked what he thought about her appointment, Richard said: “Yi has been there from the start, and she is the driving force behind a lot of changes and the growth of Binance.”

Yi defends CZ, faces U.S. scrutiny, and stays central in Binance’s structure

Yi’s role inside Binance had not always been public. Her social profiles listed her as Chief Customer Service Officer, but many of her responsibilities were not disclosed. In 2024, she wrote one of 161 letters asking the court for leniency in CZ’s case.

Writing in Chinese, Miss Yi called herself his partner and “the mother of his three children,” saying, “As CZ’s life partner, I’ve known him for nearly ten years, so I understand a side of him that’s often overlooked.”

A 2023 Wall Street Journal report described Miss Yi as a former Chinese talk-show host who entered a relationship with CZ while they worked together in Shanghai, and it said she took broad control over Binance’s marketing and investment divisions.

Binance later said she had “played a fundamental role” in shaping the exchange’s direction. In her own statement, Yi said she and Richard brought “complementary perspectives and a shared vision” for where the company should go next.