Valuetainment - ＂America Was The WORST Place To Live＂ - Binance Founder REVEALS Why He Fled The US

00:00:00.080 Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.

00:00:04.820 I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.

00:00:07.960 Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

00:00:12.320 I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting.

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00:00:30.000 living there yourself. You feel safe living in UAE, Abu Dhabi. You do. Very safe. When you think

00:00:35.860 about all the things that you can't, you can buy with money. You can go to a restaurant, customer

00:00:42.540 doesn't, you know, the waitress doesn't give you good service. You can buy the restaurant and say,

00:00:45.740 you're no longer here. You have that kind of money. You can, you can go to a sports game.

00:00:49.580 You don't like the team's management. You can make a massive offer the next day and buy an NBA team

00:00:53.280 or an NFL team. But when it comes down to security, living at a place, what, what made you pick

00:00:59.920 UAE out of all the places to live in? 0.79

00:01:02.120 I mean, it is the safest

00:01:03.440 country in the world.

00:01:06.440 You believe that? By far, yeah.

00:01:08.020 Tell me why. If you drop

00:01:09.960 your wallet on the street and it has

00:01:11.900 like, I don't know, $3,000 in there,

00:01:14.240 you come back in a week, you're still there.

00:01:16.680 You'll find it. And people who

00:01:18.000 find it will return it with the cash in there.

00:01:20.400 There's basically

00:01:21.660 zero crime. There's no petty

00:01:23.960 crime, no big crimes, etc.

00:01:26.140 And the fiscal security on the street

00:01:27.820 translates into financial security fintech it's just very well run um and uh and also the

00:01:34.620 leadership of the country is very pro-business uh very very smart very very uh calibrated um

00:01:41.100 extremely um visionary so it's one of the best places to be yeah do you do you think about the

00:01:47.240 importance of like what level of importance do you put on where to raise your family on the the

00:01:53.900 strength of the military of that country in today's turbulent times that we have?

00:01:57.940 Do you say, man, I wish UAE had a stronger military or no?

00:02:01.420 Well, I think I was actually surprised at how strong the military of UAE is.

00:02:05.280 I didn't know until there were missiles flying in and they were intercepting it.

00:02:08.560 I was like, wow, that's pretty cool.

00:02:10.640 And I didn't like, you have to think about it, right?

00:02:12.780 How much do you have to prepare that in advance to be able to intercept that many missiles

00:02:16.780 coming in and takes years and years of preparation?

00:02:19.580 So this foresight there, that's really hard to match.

00:02:23.000 I think UAE does rely very heavily on U.S. support

00:02:26.060 from military equipment technology.

00:02:30.780 They rely on us for that.

00:02:32.180 I think so, yeah.

00:02:33.600 So they're a very strong partner for the U.S.,

00:02:35.960 so I think they do quite well there.

00:02:38.460 But other than that, I think just the countries

00:02:41.960 are very well-governed.

00:02:44.060 If you have sensible leaders, you have smart leaders

00:02:46.540 that are fair and that want the country to grow

00:02:49.660 instead of growing their own pockets,

00:02:50.960 then you have a pretty good country yeah i saw a stat the other day and i wonder how you answered

00:02:55.300 this one in the 70s uh in the s&p 500 it showed that you know 85 to 93 percent of the wealth was

00:03:03.920 tied to tangible assets in 1970 yeah so if somebody was a billionaire and they lived in a

00:03:09.680 state they ran a business they couldn't move to another state or they couldn't move to another

00:03:14.880 country because it's tangible asset wealth that they have today we've gone from 85 yeah 85 to 93

00:03:22.880 percent back in the days to now it's the other way around 92 is an intangible assets patents you know

00:03:30.640 brands you know bitcoin crypto ai all this stuff that they're building moving forward do you think

00:03:37.200 this is going to be a threat to countries that don't know how to handle small business owners

00:03:42.400 or big businesses, that person can say, 0.97

00:03:44.320 great, I'm going to go move in UAE.

00:03:46.300 I'm going to go to Singapore.

00:03:47.200 How do you view that with how much of the wealth today

00:03:50.160 is tangible instead of intangible?

00:03:51.700 I think that's a great point.

00:03:53.060 I think I agree with you 100%,

00:03:55.460 which is right now, if you look at the wealth today,

00:03:59.040 it's IP, it's technology, it's crypto.

00:04:02.120 They have no borders.

00:04:03.820 Even with like IP and technology,

00:04:06.040 there's some country limitations, right?

00:04:07.980 So if you run an IT company, like say AI,

00:04:10.160 you're running in the US or you're running in China,

00:04:12.100 you're still kind of confined to those countries, whereas in blockchain, in our industry, crypto,

00:04:16.980 there's no borders. Your Bitcoin is yours no matter where you are. You fly to a different

00:04:21.380 country, you don't have to even make a transfer. That crypto stays with you, right? And also

00:04:26.340 technology, startups. We've seen a lot of technology companies amassing very high valuations.

00:04:32.020 Those are the big drivers for the economies of countries and the world. They can be based

00:04:38.020 anywhere so and um this is good and bad uh so now countries with favorable regulations with good

00:04:44.700 leadership good regulations good environments want to track this top talents uh and talents are very

00:04:49.960 mobile now right you you get educated in one country you can move to different country very

00:04:53.800 easily um and you learn your skill you know you can also work remotely um for like you know binance

00:05:00.440 has remote work uh 5 000 people working remotely so all of this is possible now so in how many

00:05:06.020 countries to 5,000? I don't really know for sure, but more than 100 countries, I would say.

00:05:10.620 You have 5,000 employees working for Binance. They're all remote. In 100 plus countries,

00:05:15.300 everyone's remote. Pretty much everyone's remote. Wow. So I don't run Binance anymore, but no,

00:05:20.880 this is, the stats is pretty public. You still own 90% of it though. No, actually I'm a large

00:05:26.080 shareholder, but not 90%. So quite a bit less than that. But you still have majority control

00:05:31.500 You're above 50.

00:05:33.800 I'm the single largest shareholder.

00:05:38.540 Majority?

00:05:39.300 Yes.

00:05:39.780 Okay, got it.

00:05:40.500 So even though after all this, which we'll get into,

00:05:43.320 even though all that stuff happened, they said you couldn't be CEO,

00:05:46.380 still as a majority shareholder, you still carry a lot of influence.

00:05:51.400 I think influence, yes.

00:05:52.840 But I don't run the company.

00:05:53.980 I don't give them instructions.

00:05:57.240 But my shareholder rights are intact.

00:05:59.280 So I'm a shareholder.

00:06:00.860 so I get shareholder information.

00:06:02.960 That's pretty wild.

00:06:03.740 So 5,000 employees, 100-plus countries.

00:06:07.680 You're a thinker.

00:06:08.740 When I watch you in interviews and things you say,

00:06:10.800 I've watched you with Peter Schiff debate

00:06:12.720 on the way you brought the kilo of gold.

00:06:14.820 You're like, here, let's split it.

00:06:16.600 You're trying to kind of make the point

00:06:17.980 of the difference between traveling, airport.

00:06:22.100 Why live in UAE? 0.95

00:06:23.760 Why not live in America?

00:06:24.800 Why not, you know, from the outside yourself,

00:06:27.600 because America's always been known

00:06:28.920 as the land of all opportunities,

00:06:29.800 opportunities, you know, the place to be for entrepreneurs, do you as an outsider, you're not

00:06:35.100 an insider, do you view America as the greatest country to live in today, moving forward as an

00:06:42.260 entrepreneur? Okay, I'll give you a very blunt answer. Please. I think since the last one year

00:06:47.940 and a half, I think America is probably back to the best country, one of the best countries to

00:06:52.420 live in. But during the Biden administration, it was one of the worst places to live in, I think.

00:06:58.220 I basically just tried to stay as far away from the U.S. as possible during that time.

00:07:01.900 They were very hostile on crypto.

00:07:03.540 They were very hostile on our industry.

00:07:05.300 So I just wanted to stay as far away as possible.

00:07:08.120 So it was not possible to run a crypto business in America before.

00:07:12.260 I think now it's more possible.

00:07:14.660 So I think in the last year and a half, we're seeing a 180-degree reversal, which is great for the U.S. economy, I think. 1.00

00:07:22.040 Now, would you consider ever coming down here and living here or know you're happy in UAE? 0.99

00:07:25.460 I think right now my life is pretty set up and it's not easy getting U.S. passports, etc.

00:07:32.560 So I'm pretty content where I am.

00:07:36.020 But I think we will definitely want to do more business and invest more in the U.S.

00:07:39.660 So if I'm a friend of yours, I know you do some mentoring as well for some of the founders that you work with.

00:07:45.820 And if I ask you, I say, look, I've got a bunch of different places to live in.

00:07:48.680 In crypto space, should I go build my hub out of America or should I build it outside of America?

00:07:55.040 What advice would you give me?

00:07:56.560 I think today I would say definitely do have a presence in America,

00:08:01.740 but you may want multiple presences

00:08:03.300 because the crypto regulations today are country-specific.

00:08:07.320 U.S. regulations doesn't service the rest of the whole world, actually.

00:08:11.360 I think UAE is actually one of the very few places

00:08:13.980 that offer global crypto licenses for crypto exchanges, right?

00:08:17.960 And that's fairly new as well.

00:08:19.540 So we're still at the early stages of this regulatory frameworks

00:08:24.900 in different countries.

00:08:26.620 And U.S., I think, is progressing extremely well,

00:08:28.900 extremely quickly.

00:08:29.760 I think there was some progress on Clarity Act

00:08:31.580 even last night.

00:08:34.040 And so, but I think, yeah,

00:08:36.080 U.S. is definitely one of the places to be.

00:08:38.040 But I wouldn't say,

00:08:39.980 I always have a global view on business.

00:08:43.120 I wouldn't focus on only one country.

00:08:45.620 I think we're living, as we said before,

00:08:47.840 we're living in a world where the country borders

00:08:49.500 are much fuzzier in terms of technology,

00:08:51.580 in terms of digital assets.

00:08:54.380 So have a global view.

00:08:57.340 We no longer need to do business in one country and then expand to another country and then expand to another country.

00:09:02.980 No, you can do parallel progress.

00:09:06.760 So even if you did get a passport to come down here, you would still choose UAE today?

00:09:11.840 I think today my life is pretty set up in the UAE right now. 1.00

00:09:14.360 I will probably just stay there. 0.66

00:09:15.380 uh yeah i i wonder again the whole point with me is do countries realize what's going to happen to

00:09:23.420 the future of these wealthy entrepreneurs who their assets are intangible that they can no

00:09:30.120 longer bully them with regulation because they got a 200 other countries that would love to have

00:09:34.380 them maybe not all 200 let's just say 100 of them they can go to have a decent life and then 10

00:09:40.220 countries that are very competitive for business say uae singapore some of these countries you can

00:09:44.460 go to i wonder if as bad as it is today we see reports of people leaving california with the

00:09:50.140 whole wealth tax i don't know if you're following that closely or not and we see what they're

00:09:53.660 talking about in new york and a trillion dollars left new york and california during covid california

00:09:58.640 just lost another trillion dollars and their net migration rate report came out that they're even

00:10:03.580 losing more people now and they want to offer this five percent tax billionaire tax on the

00:10:08.680 couple hundred people that i have there i wonder if they're going to realize how horrible of a

00:10:13.780 move this as long-term because you can go anywhere today i wonder if they'll figure that part out

00:10:18.640 what do you think uh well what i hear is a lot of companies moving into taxes in the u.s right i

00:10:23.480 don't know the details but generally at a high level i think high taxes um doesn't work that

00:10:28.420 well um when you can when you impose high taxes or high transaction fees or just generally high cost

00:10:33.680 for doing business a business move away um basically you're you're taxing on a much smaller

00:10:39.240 volume you actually get less net tax i think uh or less net fees or income or revenue higher

00:10:45.940 whatever you call it um the concept is about the same and as you said um the now now there are 200

00:10:51.760 countries they are kind of actually competing for favorable regulations for businesses favorable

00:10:55.960 environments for businesses um so yeah i do think that that uh that place that uh that that that

00:11:03.800 consideration is definitely in play uh so it's not it's not like you know the business won't move

00:11:08.380 then you can just tax the hell out of them.

00:11:10.860 When you increase tax from, I don't know, from 1% to 10%,

00:11:14.140 you might have less tax income.

00:11:18.000 It's not that straightforward.

00:11:19.820 Being close to Iran, what is your opinion on what's going on with Iran?

00:11:24.240 Well, I didn't follow geopolitics that closely before.

00:11:28.020 I'm just like a business guy doing crypto, etc.

00:11:30.240 But after the war started, I'm really not... 0.88

00:11:34.480 I live in a country that was attacked by Iran.

00:11:37.680 UAE did not initiate any attacks.

00:11:40.700 And UAE was the most missile attacks from Iran

00:11:44.040 out of all countries.

00:11:45.560 I think it's just because of the physical proximity

00:11:47.520 because they're just across the water.

00:11:49.720 But even being the most attacked,

00:11:51.760 they didn't retaliate, right?

00:11:53.040 So UAE held back.

00:11:54.280 They probably could, but they didn't.

00:11:56.160 This goes to the wisdom of the country leadership.

00:11:58.740 But living there, seeing missiles flying overhead, 0.62

00:12:01.440 can't make me support Iran. 0.72

00:12:03.880 So yeah, so I'm against all war.

00:12:08.040 And also, based on my limited understanding, 0.99

00:12:10.680 the fact that Iran hit every country in the Gulf 0.57

00:12:13.980 is a bit crazy. 1.00

00:12:15.800 I wish the war would stop soon.

00:12:17.460 I wish people come to their senses.

00:12:21.040 And also, based on what I'm reading,

00:12:23.120 it's just like there's no leadership there.

00:12:25.080 There's no leadership in Iran.

00:12:26.420 It's pretty chaotic.

00:12:28.140 I really wish we can help.

00:12:31.480 Somebody puts order in there

00:12:33.040 and then people can move on to build businesses. 0.91

00:12:36.180 You think it's unified Gulf states, like against Iran?

00:12:41.120 I'm not too sure.

00:12:42.580 I'm not an expert on this topic, but it doesn't seem to be super unified.

00:12:46.160 I think everyone has different opinions, right?

00:12:48.160 We see UAE withdraw from OPEC, which is pretty significant,

00:12:52.780 and also which is pretty strategic.

00:12:55.360 So there are some – I wouldn't say everything is aligned.

00:12:58.460 You have multiple countries, you have multiple personalities,

00:13:00.560 you have multiple people involved.

00:13:02.340 It's a dynamic environment.

00:13:03.620 Again, I'm not an expert on this kind of –

00:13:05.680 No, I ask that because you're also not a regular guy, though.

00:13:09.120 You have a lot of money.

00:13:10.320 You have a lot of influence.

00:13:11.100 You build one of the fastest-growing companies, $2 billion.

00:13:13.400 At the time, it was the fastest.

00:13:15.200 The total amount of money transactions that's been done in Binance, I saw $125 trillion.

00:13:20.360 I think I saw a number like that.

00:13:22.060 So it's not like you founded just a regular company.

00:13:26.220 It's a big company with a lot of influence and compliance.

00:13:29.040 And I know when you're saying not all the Gulf states, UAE, Saudi, Saudi dictates prices for oil.

00:13:34.000 said it's probably not happy that UAE left

00:13:35.840 and Cutter left in 2019.

00:13:37.380 I was just wondering what your opinion would be on that

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00:13:48.020 We had the choice to make it cheap.

00:13:50.000 We chose neither.

00:13:51.600 Instead, we chose Toscaniro.

00:13:53.760 We chose true Italian craftsmanship,

00:13:56.520 each pair touched by 50 skilled hands.

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00:14:32.840 We'll be right back.

Valuetainment - May 14, 2026

＂America Was The WORST Place To Live＂ - Binance Founder REVEALS Why He Fled The US

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