Original author: He Yi

PANews Editor's Note: Recently, Binance co-founder and CMO He Yi was named one of Fortune magazine's "Most Powerful Women in Business" for 2026, becoming the first crypto-native executive to be included on the list. In her lengthy personal essay, He Yi did not dwell on her personal success, but instead attributed this honor to the entire team, the community, and the era of change in the crypto industry.

1. From the edge to the spotlight

When I first learned that I would be included in Fortune's list of "Most Powerful Women in Business," my first feeling was that I was unworthy of such an honor, and my second feeling was that I had a great responsibility to bear.

This recognition bears my name, but it belongs to the Binance team, to Binance users, and even more so to Satoshi Nakamoto and every community member who turned this industry from an idea into a global trend.

A few years ago, it would have been unusual for a native crypto entrepreneur to appear on such a list; today, it's more like our industry gradually moving from the fringes of finance and technology into the spotlight. This isn't my "achievement"; I simply witnessed the wave sweeping in, bravely boarded the surfboard, and clumsily learned to ride the waves. But this recognition represents another step in the blockchain industry's long journey from niche geek players to mainstream everyday life. The road ahead is long, and we must build and refine it step by step, one small step at a time—that's what we do every day.

I often refer to myself as the "Chief Customer Service Representative," and I really like that title. At Binance, all colleagues who move into management spend their first month working as frontline customer service representatives, and then rotate through different roles every quarter—I did the same. The logic is simple: what you can't see from your office, your users are watching for you every day.

Last year in Dubai, a young Kenyan man stopped me as we were leaving an event. He sends his monthly salary home to his mother through Binance. He didn't ask about blockchain architecture or token economics. He just wanted me to know how much faster his mother receives her money now, and how much less money is lost on the street. He didn't need to be "educated" about cryptocurrency; he needed a usable product.

He is not an isolated case. Over the past five years, more than 34 million people have completed remittances through Binance Pay, totaling more than $87 billion. Based on the World Bank's global average remittance fee rate of 6.36%, we have saved users more than $5 billion—this money did not disappear into the hands of intermediaries, but returned to family dinner tables, children's tuition fees, and start-up capital for small businesses.

2. We have to dismantle that door.

I was born in a small village in Sichuan, the kind of place that's hard to find on a map. When I was a child, there were occasional power outages, so I had to use kerosene lamps to do my homework. Girls in the village would go to work in factories before they were even 16 years old, using other people's ID cards.

When I was nine, my father passed away. My uncle said to my mother, "Girls go to so much school, it would be better to save the money for your son to get married." But my mother was exceptionally determined. She worked as a substitute teacher and farmed, single-handedly supporting the whole family and sending me to teachers' college.

Over the years, I've often been asked: Why are you still working so hard even though you're already financially independent? To be honest, not everyone has the opportunity to change the world, but I'm making history. Since I'm already here, why not give it a try? As the ancients said, "When poor, cultivate your own virtue; when successful, benefit all under heaven."

In second- and third-tier cities in India, there is a group of women aged 36 to 50. Their mothers had never had their own bank accounts, and neither had they a year ago. Over the past year, they have become one of our fastest-growing user groups. Those who were ignored are quietly reclaiming their right to know and make decisions—their own judgment, their own money, and their own family's future—from the outdated system, entering a faster, more efficient, and lower-cost financial world. Like me 12 years ago, they are beginning to think about "what is money?" This is more important than any grand narrative.

Over the years, Binance has done tens of thousands of small things in rural areas of South Africa, Brazil, and India: scholarships, training programs, and basic financial literacy classes. They are all small, but they are happening one by one. I don't like the term "empowering women." It sounds like someone has a key and decides whether to open the door for you. What I prefer to do is tear down that door and let more people in. They should decide for themselves what kind of person they want to be and what kind of life they want to live.

3. From 300 million to 3 billion

When we said Binance would serve 1 billion users, outsiders thought we were daydreaming. Today, we have over 300 million users, and 1 billion is no longer a distant dream. So this year, we've changed our target to 3 billion.

To be honest, before I said that, I also thought about it: Is this number right? Do we deserve it? But one thing I am sure of: If we don't set our goal here, no one will set it for these 3 billion people.

Three billion is roughly the number of adults worldwide who are not yet part of the formal financial system. This means that what we need to do is not just create a cryptocurrency trading platform, but a financial infrastructure capable of supporting the daily lives of three billion people.

AI is reshaping productivity. But if productivity belongs only to a few companies, it's not a revolution, it's a new monopoly. Over the past year, we've gradually made many tools previously only affordable to specialized institutions accessible to ordinary users: enabling someone who doesn't understand coding to use AI to optimize their decisions; enabling someone new to encryption to ask questions in natural language. Finance shouldn't be just a language for a select few.

Blockchain aims to solve another problem: ensuring that everyone who uses AI can share in the value created by AI. Only by combining these two goals can the path from 300 million to 3 billion be realized.

Someone once said something very simple: If you don't like the world, then change it. I went from a small village in Sichuan to a county town, then to a provincial capital, and then to the world. I know better than anyone that the world you want, like Rome, won't be built in a day.

So let's go back to work, making steady progress every day, so that no effort is wasted.

— He Yi, co-founder and co-CEO of Binance