'The inflection point for crypto is very close'

Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange when it comes to daily trading volume. So it goes large when it does anything.

Take its Binance Blockchain Week (October 30 & 31) which is taking place at the massive Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai and features some of the biggest names in the sector.

Ahead of this major event in the crypto calendar, Binance hosted an exclusive meet-up for the community, and The Crypto Radio sat down with Bader Al Kalooti, head of growth and operations for MENASAT at Binance.

“The agenda is quite impressive. We have a lot of very interesting speakers, a lot of fascinating topics that we're going to cover. So our agenda here is to drum up that excitement, raise the awareness and get ready for the big game.”

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, will be at the event, the announcement of which has raised the anticipation levels to new heights, given he recently spent four months in a US jail over money laundering breaches.

“We are delighted that CZ is home with his family. While he is no longer managing or operating Binance, we are excited to see what he does next.”

The current CEO Richard Teng attended the community event and will be one of the highlights of Binance Blockchain Week. Others include H.E Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of Dubai Future Foundation, and Fadi Ghandour, Executive Chairman of Wamda Capital.

“Fadi is the godfather of entrepreneurship in the MENA region, founder of Aramex, and will talk about how entrepreneurs are flocking into the web3 space to build, and how venture capital funds are increasingly allocating to the space.”

Education

Binance has built a strong reputation for its educational resources and these will be extended to its event at the end of October. “Education is the most important mission we have in Binance. For us, there is no crypto mainstream adoption without the right investment in education.

“We need to inform people what crypto is, what the benefit of blockchain is, and how they should engage with it. We'll hear from entrepreneurs, founders, regulators, leaders from tradfi, leaders from government to really have a holistic approach to educating our audience.”

User numbers have been growing rapidly at the exchange and The Crypto Radio was keen to find out the backstory to how it now has more than 250 million users.

“It took us five years to hit the first 100 million users, and then we hit the second 100 in only two years. So the velocity of adoption is increasing dramatically. That's a testament to, I would say, the increased awareness about web3 and blockchain and the industry carrying forward on its momentum.”

Momentum

In fact, the theme of the event is Momentum – as crypto adoption starts to increase.

“I think the inflection point for crypto is very close. I'd say in the next couple of years, we are really going to see that move towards mass adoption. Today, we're at 6% penetration, and crypto has been around only for, say, 15 years.”

Al Kalooti compared blockchain technology to that of the internet, which had a much slower inflection point of more than 20 years.

“So today we're almost 3x where the internet was, and that's just a sign of more things to come. And as regulations come in to clarify how the new players, whether it's institutional, government, retail, are going to partake in web3 and new captive comes in, we're going to have our hockey-stick moment as more use cases come online.”

And how as a company does Binance keep pace with that high speed of growth?

“You have to juggle a lot of things at the same time. But I think it's a combination of continuing to push the education agenda, working with regulators to optimize the regulatory frameworks, to govern the space, continuing to build amazing products that hopefully enable the killer use case, or killer use cases that come on chain and helping others build with us.”

Binance Labs invests in crypto startups, enabling others who are building trading products to capitalize and tap into its liquidity.

Before we parted ways, The Crypto Radio spotted a pair of custom-made Nike sneakers emblazoned with the Binance logo. “I was looking at different ways to embody the finance swag beyond the traditional stuff. So I actually custom made these shoes, and apparently they're a hit. So maybe we have a business idea to work on together.”

The man lives, breathes, and wears the brand.