Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has reiterated his belief that cryptocurrency can weather the 2018 storm and is on a fundamentally sound footing going into 2019. Speaking to Bloomberg, CZ discussed what the future will likely have in store for cryptocurrency and Binance’s expansion plans. Calling 2018 a “correction year”, he said that speculators would always cause price fluctuations in the market, but that the space will inevitably grow thanks to the “builders” who will make the applications that will help adoption grow.
Pushing Forward Aggressively
CZ also discussed Binance’s plans for 2019, which kicks off with the Binance Blockchain Week, held in Singapore at the end of January, and includes creating “10 more fiat exchanges” as well as the Binance decentralized exchange, which was previewed at the start of the month. Binance is also planning to release its own blockchain, Binance Chain, in the next few months, further illustrating how the company plans to cement itself as one of the key players in the crypto space going forward. Asked whether the impact of the 2018 bear market had affected their plans at all, CZ was unequivocal, stating, “We’re still pushing forward very aggressively.”
A Dominant Force
Binance launched in September of 2017 and quickly established itself as a favorite exchange among many investors, topping the volume charts throughout the bull run and into much of 2018. A recent study by Blockchain Transparency Institute found that nearly all of the top 25 exchanges were falsifying their volume data through wash trading and other means, sometimes by as much as 99%, but Binance emerged as one of only two exchanges to come through unscathed, with 100% of its top 25 traded pairs judged to be genuine.
In a young market where scams and falsehoods are something that investors have to navigate on a daily basis, a company that can demonstrably prove its legitimacy will have a great chance of being a pioneer in the space. If Binance can harness this and use it as a springboard for their ambitions, then they could well become a dominant force as the ecosystem evolves.
