Binance CEO Says He Fully Expects DeFi to Cannibalize His Crypto Exchange
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao acknowledges the contradictions inherent in trying to tap into the fast-growing business of decentralized finance, or DeFi, while trying to defend his company’s reign as the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The company’s new foray into DeFi, Binance Smart Chain, attempts to replicate some of the features of the Ethereum blockchain that have proven fertile for developers building decentralized, blockchain-based trading and lending applications that theoretically could one day challenge traditional lenders and Wall Street trading firms.
Like rival cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx, Huobi and Coinbase, Binance is trying to hold on to its central role in digital-asset markets as upstart DeFi projects like Uniswap, Curve, Balancer and SushiSwap attract a bigger share of industry trading volumes. Zhao has said that if decentralization wins out as the dominant business model for trading venues in digital-asset markets, Binance could still profit from its holdings of the BNB tokens.