Changpeng Zhao lays out his 2025 focus on BNB Chain, stablecoin 2.0, prediction markets and AI agents in a post‑pardon, builder‑first reset.
- Changpeng Zhao shifts from exchange operator to mentor‑investor, focusing on Giggle Academy, YZi Labs and BNB Chain builders.
- He pushes a “stablecoin 2.0” thesis: native, high‑liquidity, yield‑bearing assets on chains like BNB, beyond USDT’s 1.0 model.
- YZi Labs backs multiple prediction markets and RWA plays as BNB Chain scales throughput, users and native liquidity.
Changpeng Zhao’s 2025 could have been a quiet fade‑out. Instead, the pardoned Binance founder is spending his time scaling an education app, seeding early-stage projects through YZi Labs, and quietly lobbying governments from Dubai coffee shops. “Whether you call it freedom, closure, or finally ‘turning the page,’ at its core it’s the feeling of being able to move forward unburdened again,” he said, stressing that his day‑to‑day routine remains anchored at home—and in the gym—rather than on trading floors.
Changpeng Zhao doubles down on Binance
The four pillars of that new routine are now clear: Giggle Academy, YZi Labs, the BNB Chain ecosystem, and direct advisory work with policymakers from Pakistan to the UAE. Giggle Academy, a free education platform with “more than 90,000 kids already using it,” has grown into what Zhao calls a long‑term commitment, backed by a roughly 60‑person team iterating the product in weekly cycles.
YZi Labs, meanwhile, functions as his main investing and mentoring vehicle. “I’m more of a mentor and coach—working with founders and developers, helping them grow,” Zhao said, noting that the firm evaluated over 1,000 projects in 2025 and completed close to 70 investments, many of them building directly on BNB Chain and feeding into its EASY Residency program. That builder‑first approach now includes a dedicated $1 billion Builder Fund targeted at DeFi, AI, real‑world assets, and biotech on BNB Chain—a pool that arrives just as the network pushes toward “CEX‑like” confirmation times and record user numbers.
On‑chain, BNB (BNB) Chain has quietly shifted from “undervalued and overlooked” to one of the industry’s busiest settlement layers. Daily active addresses hover around 2 million, with previously published figures near 2.4 million, while on‑chain transaction volume grew by about 600% year‑on‑year, putting BNB Chain among the top networks by throughput. In parallel, BNB’s spot and derivatives markets have turned into a magnet for volatility traders: after an October crash wiped out nearly $19 billion in leveraged positions across the market, BNB only dropped around 10% before rebounding, later trading in a volatile $1,100–$1,340 range and printing new all‑time highs above $1,330. Order books on major exchanges now show thick resting bids clustering just below $1,100 and a stubborn sell wall in the $1,330–$1,370 band—a structure that tells you exactly where the next liquidation cascade or squeeze will start. If BNB loses that $1,100 shelf, this rally dies fast; a clean break above $1,370, by contrast, almost certainly drags in fresh momentum accounts aiming at $1,450–$1,600.
Yet Zhao spends more time talking about stablecoins than price action. He is blunt: “What we’re seeing today is still mostly ‘stablecoin 1.0,’ and true 2.0 is only just beginning.” The legacy model—deposit dollars in a bank, issue tokens like Tether’s USDT on chain—remains dominant, with network effects keeping USDT in the lead even as it offers little in the way of yield. “USDT isn’t particularly competitive when it comes to yield, and that creates an opening for other stablecoins,” he said, pointing to newer designs like Ethena, where “yield mechanisms are built into the design” and where YZi Labs has taken a stake.
BNB and YZi Labs, where do they go next?
On BNB Chain specifically, he frames stablecoin competition as an “open garden” rather than a horse race. USDT circulates on BNB Chain as a wrapped asset, but Zhao argues the real story is the arrival of genuinely native options: USD1 as a U.S.‑backed collateral model, earlier experiments like FUSD that stalled due to clunky issuance, and newer plays such as the $U project, which he says “has some potential as well.” The endgame, in his view, is simple but brutally hard to execute: a stablecoin that is easy to trade, widely listed, and still offers sustainable yield. Ignore any design that can’t hit all three.
Prediction markets are the other narrative he refuses to dismiss as a fad. Zhao credits Kalshi and Polymarket with dragging the category into the mainstream during the last U.S. election cycle, where Polymarket saw more than $3.6 billion in betting volume and effectively front‑ran traditional polling with sharper odds. “In many cases, its outcomes were even more accurate than traditional polling, because participants are putting real money on the line,” he said. YZi Labs has backed multiple early‑stage prediction platforms, including BNB Chain‑based projects like Probable and the newly launched Opinion, where Zhao confirmed the firm is only a minority investor.
Crucially, he insists this is not a winner‑takes‑all map. “This isn’t a ‘winner-takes-all race.’ In any market, multiple players usually coexist,” Zhao said, drawing a line from exchanges to stablecoins to prediction markets. That logic also underpins his skepticism toward subscription‑based AI trading agents; the more a profitable strategy is sold, the faster it breaks. Platform businesses—exchanges, prediction markets, even RWA tokenization rails—can scale on fees and spreads, but shared alpha is, in his words, a self‑extinguishing product.
If there is a single through‑line in Zhao’s 2025 playbook, it is patience. “Success takes time,” he said, likening BNB Chain’s trajectory to Nvidia’s decades‑long climb and describing building as a “marathon mixed with a boxing match.” Mission‑driven founders, not tourists chasing the next memecoin meta, are the ones he wants to fund—and the ones he expects to still be standing in 2027 when today’s narratives have been repriced, recycled, or revealed as pure exit liquidity.
