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Richard Teng, chief executive officer of Binance Holdings Ltd., at an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore, on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. 

Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Binance CEO Richard Teng says the Trump administration has been a “fantastic” reset for the cryptocurrency industry.

“It’s an extremely different environment that we’re operating in,” Teng told CNBC on Tuesday.

In the span of 16 months, Binance has gone from a political outcast to a possible power broker in Washington. Once the poster child for regulatory defiance – Binance was slapped with a record $4.3 billion settlement with regulators and forced to oust billionaire founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao – the crypto exchange is now navigating a dramatically friendlier political landscape under President Donald Trump’s second administration, Teng said.

“We’ve benefited from this shift,” said Teng, who was appointed Binance’s CEO in November 2023. 

Teng’s comments come as the crypto exchange is in talks to have the Trump family take a financial stake in the company, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. That same day, Bloomberg reported that World Liberty Financial, a Trump-linked crypto bank that has not yet launched, is engaged in talks with Binance to launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin. 

If such deals were reached, it would mark a staggering reversal for a company that was once a pariah in Washington. 

Teng, a soft-spoken former regulator, was careful with his words when addressing the reports.

“I believe both World Liberty Financial as well as CZ himself have tweeted and denied the reports,” said Teng, who runs the exchange’s operations outside the U.S. 

As for the rumors about a Trump stake in Binance.US, Teng demurred. 

“.US and .com are quite different animals, right?” he said. “They have different sets of shareholders, different boards of directors, and different CEOs running the show.”

Binance structured the two exchanges as independent entities in response to regulatory scrutiny, aiming to ring-fence its U.S. operations from the broader international business.

Still, Teng is bullish on what the new political environment means for crypto.

“We went from four years of Operation Choke Point 2.0 to now – you have a very pro-crypto, pro-AI president,” he said. While Binance.com doesn’t operate in the U.S., he said, “We have benefited from all these pro-crypto policies.”

Choke Point 2.0 is how industry insiders refer to an alleged crackdown by legacy banks on digital asset firms during the Biden administration.

Teng described a rapid global expansion that brought Binance from 170 million to 265 million users in just one year.

“We have received a lot of approaches from different governments around the world,” Teng said, citing regulatory progress in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates.

Binance is now licensed in 21 jurisdictions, and its influence extends well beyond the reach of any one country. That includes sovereign wealth funds, some of which are starting to quietly allocate to crypto, Teng said.

In the background of all this optimism is the reality of Binance’s checkered past.

Zhao, the company’s founder and former CEO, was criminally charged, forced to step down and served a short prison sentence. Binance paid the multibilllion-dollar settlement – finalized in late 2023 – to resolve a raft of violations with U.S. regulators, including the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

One major front remains open: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil case against Binance and Zhao. 

The SEC and Binance in February agreed to a 60-day pause in proceedings as both sides consider a potential resolution. The stay comes amid a broader pullback by the SEC from several high-profile crypto lawsuits—signaling a potential regulatory reset under the new administration.

“We under-invested in compliance in those very early days,” Teng said. “But what’s important as a responsible institution is to acknowledge those early mistakes, make amends for it and invest greatly into compliance, which we are doing now.”

Binance now employs more than 1,300 professionals in compliance, roughly a quarter of its total workforce, Teng said. “The direction of travel is very clear. It’s one of compliance.”

The Nigerian government might disagree. 

One of Binance’s top compliance officers, Tigran Gambaryan, was recently imprisoned under harsh conditions. In Nigeria, Binance faced charges of alleged non-payment of value-added tax and company income tax, failure to submit tax returns and complicity in aiding customers to evade taxes through its platform. 

Alongside Gambaryan, who is a U.S. citizen and a former employee of the Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria has also imprisoned fellow executive Nadeem Anjarwalla, who is British-Kenyan. Both were charged and remanded in custody by Nigerian authorities. Anjarwalla escaped custody in March 2024, and Gambaryan was released several months later.

“The treatment he went through in Nigeria is not warranted,” said Teng about Anjarwalla. “We have always tried to liaise and work cooperatively with governments around the world.”

Since taking over as CEO, Teng has shifted the company from a founder-led startup to a board-governed organization. 

“Now I report to the board of directors,” Teng said. “We have a board of seven members, including three independent directors and an independent chairman.”

For all the scrutiny Binance faces, Teng insists the platform remains dominant.

“At any point in time, we have more than 40% of global market share,” he said.

He dismissed concerns about Coinbase’s growing political clout and the momentum behind crypto exchange-traded funds, arguing that ETFs are a gateway into crypto trading. 

“A lot of users that start trading through ETFs subsequently advance to cryptocurrency platforms,” Teng said, noting that while crypto trades nonstop, ETFs are limited to business hours.

Binance took on its first institutional investment earlier this month in a $2 billion deal with Emirati state-owned investment firm MGX, which is an AI and advanced tech fund that counts BlackRock and Microsoft as partners. It’s the largest investment ever made into a crypto company and the biggest to be fully paid in stablecoins.

Teng said he sees the investment as a way to bridge crypto and AI. 

“We are utilizing AI on an extensive basis,” said Teng, noting that Binance uses artificial intelligence for customer service, security and compliance monitoring.This is the blockchain sector. We have to continue to utilize technology to achieve efficiency.”

Asked what keeps him up at night, Teng rattled off a list: Security, compliance, product innovation and opportunities for mergers and acquisitions.

“We want to make sure we run a very robust, operational, best-in-class platform,” he said.

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Binance staff detained in Nigeria as country claims crypto investments are devaluing its currency

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State of New York commits $21 million to support zero-emission mobility

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State of New York commits  million to support zero-emission mobility

While the Trump Administration walks back emissions standards and pretends science isn’t real, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is announcing plans to improve the quality of life for her constituents by investing over $21 million in support of zero-emission mobility and transportation solutions across New York State.

New York’s newly announced Clean Mobility Program will provide funding for scalable, community-led demonstration projects highlighting micro mobility, ride sharing, and community-managed “on-demand shared transportation” options.

The Governor’s office believes these solutions could help lower air pollution in the state while offering residents affordable connections to services, jobs, and transit. Objectively needed wins, in other words – and even more needed in traditionally underserved communities.

Governor Hochul gets it


NY Governor Kathy Huchul, via governor.ny.gov.

“Even as the federal government walks away from clean air and energy standards, New York continues to invest in modern, flexible and efficient electric transportation options that improve air quality and expand affordable consumer choices,” explains Governor Hochul. “Our priority is linking communities, including areas that have been historically marginalized, with resources that provide residents with a variety of flexible transportation options that allow them to conduct their daily business uninterrupted.”

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The program is the latest of the state’s recent EV funding initiatives, and the official release (on the New York State website) announced more details about The Clean Mobility Program:

The Clean Mobility program offers up to $21.6 million for projects across New York State and will award up to $3 million per project, with priority given to projects in disadvantaged communities, as defined by the Climate Justice Working Group.

Additionally, up to $8 million is set aside to fund demonstration projects located in specific areas of the state, including those served by the upstate investor-owned utilities. This includes a total of up to $5 million for micro mobility projects in the Central Hudson, National Grid, New York State Electric & Gas, and Rochester Electric & Gas region and up to $3 million for any type of eligible demonstration projects located in the Bronx.

NEW YORK STATE

Proposals for demonstration projects must include a completed planning document that includes community engagement, site identification and operations, project partner identification, technical feasibility assessment, and a policy and regulatory feasibility assessment. Any e-bikes or e-scooters deployed in these projects must meet industry and state safety standards to be eligible.

Proposals are due on September 25, 2025 by 3:00 PM EST. For more information on this funding opportunity please visit the NYSERDA’s website.

Electrek’s Take


New York City; by Benny Rotlevy, via Unsplash.

Times Square banned cars in 2009 and New York City implemented congestion pricing earlier this year, angering exactly the right people in exactly the right way for exactly the right reasons. In both cases, the plans worked, the problems were solved for, and the lives of the people of New York improved. Governor Hochul’s latest plan is sure to be the latest in an ever-growing line of green success stories.

SOURCE | IMAGES: New York State.


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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

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EVgo set to borrow up to a $300 million to build 1,500 new DC fast chargers

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EVgo set to borrow up to a 0 million to build 1,500 new DC fast chargers

EVgo has secured a massive, $225 million loan facility with five commercial banks in a bid to accelerate its expansion plans and add more than 1,500 new DC fast chargers to America’s EV charging landscape – and they have an option to borrow even more!

This week, EVgo announced that it has closed on a first-of-its-kind, senior secured, non-recourse credit facility with “top tier” banks for $225 million – and they have the option to increase their line of credit by $75 million more to fund additional network growth.

“This groundbreaking financing transaction sets a precedent for expanding high-power charging infrastructure by leveraging debt capital,” said Francine Sullivan, EVgo CLO & EVP Corporate Development. “Such resounding support from the global project finance bank market marks another milestone in EVgo’s plan to enhance value with our growing industry-leading fast charging solutions. We look forward to partnering with our banking partners to continue to grow our leadership position into the future.”

The credit card facility is being funded by a group of five “top tier” banks, according to EVgo, with the project being led by SMBC as Structuring Agent, Coordinating Lead Arranger, and Joint Bookrunner. Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, and ING Bank NV are acting as the Joint Lead Arrangers and Joint Bookrunners, while Investec Bank Plc is also on, though “just” as a participating lender.

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The companies involved are calling this new capital for public fast charging an important milestone that reflects both the maturity and profitability of the EVgo network, and broader confidence in the company’s management team.

“This financing demonstrates SMBC’s continued ability to lead innovative financing solutions for clients in emerging sectors across the broader infrastructure landscape,” said Juan Kreutz, SMBC Americas Head of Global Structured Finance. “We are proud to partner with an industry leader like EVgo on this pioneering financing as the company expands its network of accessible charging infrastructure throughout the US.”

Electrek’s Take


More public EV charging, including curbside, envisioned in Chicago plan
DC fast charging stations in Chicago; via EVgo.

The people running EVgo are smart. They understand that the loss of the $7,500 Federal tax credit isn’t the dealbreaker it’s being made out to be, and that the demand for chargers is only going to continue to grow. What’s more, the banks have done their research, looked at the projections, and decided the odds of getting their $225-300 million were pretty good.

Glad to see it. Now, for give me – I’m off to watch The Big Short again (for unrelated reasons).

SOURCE | IMAGES: EVgo.


If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

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Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone

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Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren’t corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality.

From that sparse office, they launched “Frontier,” Ethereum‘s first live network. It was bare-bones — no interface, no polish, nothing user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and let developers test decentralized applications. It was the spark that transformed Ethereum from an abstract concept into a living, breathing system.

Bitcoin had captured headlines as “digital gold,” but what they built was something else entirely: programmable money, a financial operating system where code could move funds, enforce contracts, and create businesses without banks or brokers.

One year earlier and 520 miles away in Zurich, Paul Brody got a call from IBM security: A kid was wandering the lab unattended.

“That’s not a child,” Brody told them. “That’s Vitalik. He’s a grown-up — he just looks really young.”

Paul Brody and Vitalik Buterin with IBM and Samsung executives at CES 2015, where IBM unveiled its first blockchain prototype built on Ethereum’s early code.

Paul Brody

At the time, Buterin was building the bones of Ethereum. The blockchain was still in its alpha stage, an early version of what would become a $420 billion platform rewiring Wall Street and powering decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets across the globe.

Brody, then leading a research team at IBM, remembers how quickly the idea clicked.

“One of the guys on the research team came to me and said, ‘I’ve met this really interesting guy. He’s got a really cool idea…It’s like a version of bitcoin, but we’re going to make it much faster and programmable,'” he said. “And when he said that to me, I thought, ‘That’s it. That is what I want. That is what we need.'”

With Buterin’s help, IBM built its first blockchain prototype on Ethereum’s early code, unveiling it at CES in 2015 alongside Samsung. “That was how I ended up down this path,” Brody said. “I was done with all other technology and basically made the switch to blockchain.”

Even now, as EY’s global blockchain leader, Brody remembers feeling a pang of envy. “This is a kid, and it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was jealous of Vitalik… to be able to do that.”

He added, “I don’t think opportunities like that could have been surfaced when I was that age.”

Now, a decade later, that experiment has quietly rewired global markets.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“It’s very impressive, just how much the space has succeeded and grown into, beyond pretty much anyone’s expectations,” Buterin told CNBC in Cannes on the sidelines of the blockchain’s flagship event in Europe.

Buterin said the change over the past decade has been staggering. Ten years ago, he recalled, the crypto community was “just a very small space,” with only a handful of people working on bitcoin and a few other projects.

Since then, Ethereum has become “this big thing,” Buterin reflected, with major corporations now launching assets on both its base layer and layer-two networks. Parts of national economies are beginning to run on Ethereum infrastructure, a far cry from its cypherpunk origins.

But Buterin warned that mainstream adoption brings risks as well as benefits. One concern is that if too few issuers or intermediaries dominate, they could become “de facto controllers of the ecosystem.” He described a scenario where Ethereum might appear open, but, in practice, all the keys are managed by centralized providers.

“That’s the thing that we don’t want,” he said.

Prague to the Riviera

Two years earlier in Prague, CNBC met Buterin at Paralelní Polis, a sprawling industrial complex turned anarchist tech hub in the city’s Holešovice district. The building’s labyrinthine staircases and shadowed corridors felt like a physical map of the crypto world itself — part resistance movement, part experiment in reimagining power.

It was a place built on Václav Benda’s concept of a “parallel society,” where decentralized technologies offered refuge from state surveillance and control. It’s the kind of place where Buterin, a self-described nomad, found himself at home among cypherpunks and cryptographic idealists.

At the time, Buterin described crypto’s greatest utility not in speculative trading, but in helping people survive broken financial systems in emerging markets.

ETHPrague 2023 was held at Paralelní Polis in the Czech Republic.

Pavel Sinagl

“The stuff that we often find a bit basic and boring is exactly the stuff that brings lots of value,” he told CNBC at the time. “Just being able to plug into the international economy — these are things that they don’t have, and these are things that provide huge value for people there.”

Even in Prague, where coders worked to make payments fast and censorship-resistant, the technology felt like a resistance movement — privacy-preserving, anti-authoritarian, a lifeline in countries where banking collapses were common and money couldn’t be trusted.

This year, Buterin keynoted Ethereum’s flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals — the same red carpet venue that hosts movie stars each spring.

It was a fitting symbol of Ethereum’s journey: from underground hacker dens to a network that governments, banks, and brokerages are now racing to build upon.

Brody, who currently leads blockchain strategy at EY, says what matters most is how deeply Ethereum is integrating into traditional finance. “The global financial system is really nicely described as a whole network of pipes,” he said.

“What’s happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure,” Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance.

Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow.

Ethereum Co-Founder Joe Lubin on Ethereum Treasurys as the cryptocurrency turns 10

Becoming the plumbing of Wall Street

Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of all stablecoin activity.

Between Circle’s IPO and the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, now signed into law by President Donald Trump, regulators have new reason to engage with, rather than fight, this transformation.

Data from Deutsche Bank shows stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year — more than Mastercard and Visa combined. The bank itself has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync, a fast, cost-efficient Ethereum layer two designed to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Digital asset exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to capture this crossover between traditional securities and crypto.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it’s launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC.

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there’s a misconception about what institutions actually want.

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Institutions are choosing various layer twos to meet specific needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum’s base layer.

“The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability,” Brody said.

He added that the fact it isn’t the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times “is secondary to the fact that it’s overall the most widely adopted and flexible system.”

Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset.

Engineers, he said, “love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard,” and Ethereum has become precisely that.

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, in Cannes for Europe’s largest annual gathering for the blockchain.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem.

“Institutions choose Ethereum over and over again for its values,” Stańczak said. “Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance.”

When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it’s treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it’s delivered. “That’s what Ethereum guarantees,” added Stańczak.

Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain.

Scaling without losing its soul

Ethereum’s path hasn’t been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it’s too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors.

In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum’s energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in Prague, where he finds refuge with like-minded programmers looking to change the world through cryptography-powered technology.

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The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise.

Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to “the finish line” in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger.

Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch.

There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum “a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place.”

Buterin believes the real change won’t come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it.

“This type of disruption doesn’t feel like overturning the existing system,” he said. “It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don’t even have to look at the old thing if you didn’t want to.”

Ethereum marks 10 years of development. Here's what's next for the network
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