Binance Labs head Yi He believes that there is promise in the cryptocurrency space despite the bear market.
Yi He, the woman who helped found the Binance cryptocurrency exchange with Changpeng Zhao, was recently appointed as the head of Binance Labs, the company’s venture capital arm.
With over $7.5 billion under her control, He is tasked with growing Binance via acquisitions and other deals.
In an interview with Forkast, He said there is a lot of promise in the bear market. When asked about Binance Labs’ investment strategies in the bull and bear markets, she said;
“We generally figure out what we really want no matter if we’re in a bull or bear market. In a bear market, I think we should make investments more aggressively, but not just for the sake of investing.
There’s this tendency in the investing industry to follow the herd and many funds are concerned that they may miss a four-year or five-year investing cycle. Some of our LPs have also suggested investing in more projects and investing faster. I’ve told them not to be nervous.”
She also talked about Binance Labs’ investment strategies and how it differs from some VC firms in the web3 ecosystem. He said;
“We all know it’s a good investment opportunity in a bear market, as many teams that only look to make some quick money would be forced out of the industry. It’s good timing now to support those who really want to run a good business and believe in this industry.
“A key difference in fundraising between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 is that Web3 projects don’t necessarily need to raise money through VCs. They might as well just issue tokens and sell them to users. In such a scenario, a VC’s role can be more valuable in offering guidance rather than giving money. This can include guidance on technical, security aspects or on the model of tokens. This is important as users, and the corresponding community is the core when it comes to running a Web3 company.”
The Binance Labs head also discussed the company’s investment in media companies, including Forbes and Twitter (via Elon Musk). She stated that;
“We’re still following the Forbes case. This is an investment related to its initial public offering through a back-door listing, in plain language. But there seem to be some difficulties, so they’re making adjustments. Perhaps some of their shareholders might want to dilute holdings.
In terms of media investment, when Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter, we thought it was a good chance as Twitter has a large user base and it’d be good for Web3 education.”
Binance remains the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, with over $15 billion in daily trading volume.