The biggest expectation of this Binance Blockchain Week is finally here. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who just finished 4 months in prison, appeared at the main venue and talked about prison life, Binance, education projects, and AI. This is also CZ's first appearance after being released from prison.

After a $4.3 billion fine and 4 months in prison in the United States, CZ, who paid a huge price for freedom, looked chill, and his arm lines were more obvious than before. On the road to Bitcoin's record high of $70,000 this year, we can hear CZ's voice again after about a year, which is also a very good last day of Uptober.

The following is the full text of the speech:

Austin: I'm Austin from Altcoin Daily. CZ, this is your first interview since you got out. How was your experience in prison? It must not be very good?

CZ:It was definitely not as fun as it is now. The whole experience was very restrictive, I was deprived of my freedom and there was not much to do, but it also gave me a lot of time to reflect. I learned a lot of important lessons, such as, when everything is taken away from you, what do you miss the most? For me, it was actually the human connection that I missed the most. I missed my children, my family, my friends, my colleagues, and my community. I missed other things, but not nearly as much as I missed people. You miss food, a comfortable bed, but these things didn't affect me much, and this experience helped me refocus my priorities in life.

Austin: Do you think this is a fair sentence?

CZ:This is a very subjective question, and different people will have different views. There was a plea agreement, and I agreed to some of the terms of the agreement, and I am not going to say anything negative about it, and I accept the result.

As for the sentence, I got four months. Judges have a difficult job and different perspectives will have different views. Some people will think it is too light, some people will think it is too heavy. For the crime I committed - violating the Bank Secrecy Act - no one in the history of the United States has ever been sentenced for a single violation, and I am the first.

Just a few weeks ago, a bank was fined $1.8 billion for similar problems, but no one was prosecuted. Whether it is fair or not is not so important to me anymore, and the judge also said a lot of good things about me in court. Although I was sentenced, my sentence is indeed short compared to others. Most people in prison are sentenced to five years, ten years or even longer. So from that perspective, I am lucky, the sentence is over, and I am looking forward to it.

Austin: Did you make friends in prison?

CZ: Yes, you have to make friends. It would be hard to survive if you are alone. A few guards did recognize me and asked me what coins I should buy. I can only say that I had no internet and no information about cryptocurrencies in prison.

I made a few friends and I still keep in touch with them. To be honest, there are a lot of good people in prison. Many of them were sentenced to long sentences for very small things. Most of the companions I met were very friendly. Although some guards were a little indifferent, I did not suffer any physical harm. From this perspective, I am very lucky.

Before entering prison, prison counselors (this is an industry) gave me a lot of advice. They warned me not to save too much money in my account, only fifty dollars. When I went in, I found that other people had two hundred dollars in their accounts, which made me look like a "poor man". In general, I didn't encounter any problems. I also made some friends. Now I am trying my best to help them reduce their sentences through legal channels.

In addition, there is a friend in prison named Michael. He was imprisoned for 27 years for possession of marijuana forty years ago. Marijuana is now legal. He also obtained a college degree and read six books during his time in prison. There are indeed some excellent talents there, but it is difficult to achieve these in such a difficult environment. Every time I can use the computer for 15 minutes, I will be automatically kicked off the line after 15 minutes, and the computer cannot be pasted, only manual input. So in that case, if you want to adjust the position of a paragraph of text, you can only rewrite it. In Michael's time, there were not even computers. So, although the conditions are difficult, many people still work hard to study, read, and get degrees. There are many good people there

Relationship with Binance and judgment of industry trends

Austin: What is your current relationship with Binance?

CZ:I have stepped down as CEO and am no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. My shareholder rights have not been affected, so I am still a major shareholder of Binance to date. I can still request some information, but I cannot make decisions or give instructions. Overall, the relationship is still pretty good. Now there is a group of other people working hard, and I have been "forced to retire". The first month was a bit difficult. It was emotionally difficult to let go because I have invested a lot of effort in this company for seven years.

But I have always believed that a CEO's term of office should not exceed ten years because the world is constantly changing. Now with AI, I didn't spend too much time to understand it before, and I didn't have time to go deep into the details of DeFi. So now looking back, being forced to step down actually has a lot of benefits. If I resigned on my own initiative, people might think I couldn't hold on, but now it was forced, so no one complained.

Also, I have more time now, and I feel lucky. Although my reputation has changed, I still value my past achievements, which shows that there was no fraud and no users lost funds. So in some ways, my reputation is still solid. In addition, I am not young, but I am not too old, and I still have the energy to do more things. I am really lucky to have the freedom and resources to do what I want now.

Austin: I heard that you were banned from managing any cryptocurrency exchange for life. Is this true? Will you continue to invest in crypto projects?

CZ: Of course, first of all, according to my understanding, the words "lifetime" and "ban" did not appear in my agreement with the government. The agreement is that I step down as CEO, and there is no time limit. However, the agreement can be updated and the government will change. But I have no plans to return to the position of CEO. I feel that the team is doing a good job and does not need me to go back, and I don't want to go back even if I have the opportunity. I think the statement of "lifetime ban" is just an exaggeration in the media, and the actual agreement is public.

As for the second question, I will of course continue to invest in crypto projects. Now I mainly do two things: one is Giggle Academy, and the other is investment. Investments are mainly concentrated in three areas: blockchain, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. I no longer want to lead projects myself. I want to help other entrepreneurs develop their companies and provide them with funding, advice, resources and other support. I have some very important mentors, and I also hope to be a mentor to others.

Austin: Regarding the prospects of cryptocurrency in 2025, are you still optimistic about the next year?

CZ: I will try not to give any financial advice, but history does not represent the future. I can't predict the future, but I can analyze history. Historically, Bitcoin has experienced a very clear four-year cycle. 2013 was a bull market, 2017 was a bull market, and actually 2012 was a recovery year. Many people don't go back that far. 2016 was a recovery year, 2017 was a surge. 2020 was a recovery year, 2021 was a bull run. This year is back near the previous highs.

So based on the existing analysis, 2024 is a recovery year, and I don't know what will happen next year, but in the long run, I am still very bullish on the entire industry. I think there is a lot more to be built, and as more people use cryptocurrency, its utility value will increase. In the long run, I am still very optimistic.

Austin: Which aspects of crypto are you most optimistic about? DeFi or meme coins?

CZ: I'm not going to be specific about a certain area, because it's very difficult to predict which one will be the next hot spot. For example, in early 2017, I might not have predicted that ICO would become a hot spot, but by June the trend was very obvious, so it depends on which projects explode in certain niche areas. I met with some entrepreneurs this morning who combined AI with blockchain and came up with some very interesting ideas. If one of these projects explodes, then this field will become big. It's hard to predict, but I will continue to support other builders in the industry and see what happens.

Views on Regulation

Austin: Regarding legislation, what do you think the future regulation of crypto will be?

CZ:The legislation is improving gradually, and in some countries, like here, it's progressing very quickly. In some large countries, because there are many departments and many people, progress will be slower. But overall, the trend is positive. Let me give you an example. In mid-April this year, Elizabeth Warren announced that she would crack down on cryptocurrencies, just a week before I was sentenced. As a result, by June, Trump publicly supported cryptocurrencies, and by the end of June, both parties supported cryptocurrencies, and I was still in prison. So this also shows that when people need cryptocurrencies, the government will respond. Therefore, I think the overall direction is positive.

Austin: I live in the United States, and from my perspective, cryptocurrency has become an important election issue. Who do you think is more friendly to cryptocurrency, Harris or Trump?

CZ:Oh, I have no idea at all. I won't comment on any election topics because I have dealt with American law enough. I know that there are election interference laws in the United States, and anything I say in public may be taken out of context, so I don't intend to touch on this topic, or even get close to this "line", I just want to keep my distance. I think it's good that both parties support cryptocurrencies.

Austin: Okay, still from the US perspective, which policy or legislation do you think is the most important?

CZ: I think the most basic point is the classification of cryptocurrencies. There are a lot of controversies now, for example, in most other countries, they regard cryptocurrencies as currencies, Japan has recognized Bitcoin as a currency, and many other countries also regard Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. Of course, there are different types of cryptocurrencies, depending on the specific currency. But in the United States, this is indeed a big point of contention, and I don't want to comment too much.

About Giggle Academy

Austin: Let’s say we meet on stage at Binance Blockchain Week 2025 a year from now, not necessarily about price, but where do you think Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies will be?

CZ:It’s really hard to predict a year from now, but I think history will probably repeat itself and we will be in a relatively good position in the future.

Austin: I love that prediction, CZ, what are your plans next?

CZ:I’m currently spending at least half of my time on Giggle Academy, which I think is a very interesting and very impactful project, although it won’t be a very profitable one.

Austin: Can you explain what Giggle Academy is to those who are not familiar with it?

CZ: It is a digital education platform that specifically serves those who do not have access to education. There are currently about 700 million to 800 million illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds of whom are women. In addition, according to different reports, there are about 300 million to 500 million children who do not have the opportunity to go to school. In other words, there are about 1.2 billion to 1.3 billion people in the world who do not have access to education opportunities, mainly concentrated in very poor areas.

Many educational applications and projects are carried out in areas with rich educational resources, and are more supplementary to the existing education system. And I think now we have enough technical capabilities, combining game developers, graphic designers, teachers and AI, to make applications or tools to serve people who need education without relying on teachers.

In those places, the cost of teachers is very high and there is a shortage of teachers. It takes a long time to send teachers there. But now we can provide education digitally through a very interactive application, mainly on Android platforms, because Android devices are cheaper in these areas.

If we can help 100 million people get education, I think it is something meaningful to me, and I don’t care if there is a financial return, and I don’t think it requires a lot of money.

Today, of the world's 8 billion people, about 1 billion are in school every day, with an average class of 30 or 50 people, and about 20 million teachers around the world. But think about it, how many different ways are there to teach first-grade English? We repeat similar teaching processes millions of times every day, and if we can make these contents into applications, add AI support, and enable it to answer questions interactively. Although the initial investment may be high, requiring a few million dollars, once the AI engine is completed, the cost per course may be around a million dollars. 12 grades, 12 courses, 30 subjects, a total of about $300 million. Even with a lot of buffer, it's only $1 billion. I think we can create content that meets all educational needs today and covers 500 languages.

The US government spends $100 billion on education every year, and we only need less than 2% of the funds to provide education to children who don't have educational opportunities, and we can even do better than traditional face-to-face teaching. In a class of 30, the pace of teaching is limited by the slowest student; with a platform, we can dynamically adjust the course content so that students can quickly advance in their strengths. After accumulating a lot of data, we can also help students find jobs quickly. For example, an 8-year-old can do annotation work, which is also a good source of income.

My nephew has been managing a flight simulation community with 14,000 gamers since he was 12 years old. A 16-year-old can do customer support work, such as answering FAQs. A 15- or 16-year-old can be a game tester or coder. So I want to get children into the workforce earlier, not just get a college or high school diploma.

We can help employers find the right talent. For example, this child is at the top of the class in math, in the top 10%, and has completed many projects; other children have high emotional intelligence and volunteer to tutor younger children through the platform, etc. In this way, we can help children find jobs early, thereby helping their families, siblings, and other family members get more educational opportunities.

Of course, electronic digital education lacks interpersonal interaction, but it also has its advantages. My idea is to let older children coach and interact with younger children to make up for the lack of interpersonal interaction. For example, physical education classes are difficult to teach online, but the platform can organize 15-year-old children to lead 7-year-old children to do activities together, and the 15-year-old children can get points or credits for this. When employers come to recruit, such children will naturally be given priority.

We can design many different ways of interaction in the platform, but the problem we need to solve most at present is to enable AI to stably generate consistent video content. This task seems simple, but it is a difficult problem for AI. At present, teachers can quickly produce content, such as PPT, but these contents are usually designed for teachers to teach themselves.

However, in an environment without a teacher, we need the platform or application to deliver this content on its own. In this case, in order to attract children's attention, we need very interactive videos, animations and cute elements, which are usually not provided by teachers, and this is where AI can play a role. Right now, no AI model can generate ideal content. I have discussed with many top AI experts and we are working hard to solve this problem. However, this problem should be solved in the next few months to years. Once we have a breakthrough in this problem, we can deliver content in a digital way, and hopefully benefit hundreds of millions or even billions of children and people around the world and provide them with free education.

Austin: In the future, will some parts of Giggle Academy be integrated into Web3 or blockchain? I think everyone here wants to know, will there be airdrops to participate in?

CZ: Not in the short term, I don't want to get involved in things like issuing new tokens. So we may support existing tokens, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, etc.

We will build a reward mechanism to make the system work well, but we may not need to issue our own tokens. For example, if I want to hire customer support or community forum administrators, I can sponsor some BNB and use these funds to pay children, etc.

Also, another interesting thing I found today is that AI companies actually pay a lot of money to obtain human-generated data on the platform. If we get children and parents to agree to provide their data to AI companies for training, then the data generated by these children in the process of learning pronunciation, learning mathematics, etc. can be used to train AI, and parents may get paid from 10 to 100 US dollars. For our target users, this is a considerable amount of money. In this way, we can achieve a direct payment method of "learning is earning" without using tokens. AI companies will become sponsors of the platform, so we don't necessarily need to issue tokens to implement this model.

Of course, in the long run, I hope to gradually integrate the economic model of Web3 into the platform. This is a platform that accompanies children from the time they learn to speak until they get a job. Even when they are 70 or 80 years old, they can still continue to learn. By then, when they find a job, we can propose (but not force) them to consider donating a certain percentage of their income back to the platform in the next one to three years. Even if only a small number of people are willing to do this, I think we can build a sustainable platform in the long run. But this is a long-term plan, maybe it will take about ten years. But it doesn't matter, I have plenty of time.

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