CZ Slams IPOs at BlockDown 2020 Conference

Binance founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, took aim at initial public offerings, or IPOs, and venture capital fundraising while speaking at the recent BlockDown 2020 conference.

Despite the recent decline in crypto investment, Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, expressed confidence that the blockchain fundraising markets will produce exponential growth in the coming years, emphasizing the boom and bust cycles of investment into other tech industries.

IPOs leave the public ‘holding the bag’

Speaking at BlockDown 2020 on April 16, CZ described distributed ledger technologies, or DLT, as driving creative destruction in global fundraising practices, arguing blockchain fundraising has allowed individuals to raise money globally in a decentralized fashion for “the first time in history.”

Binance’s founder also criticized traditional fundraising methods such as IPOs, stating:

“Institutional investors cash out, the CEO gets a big bonus, the retail guys get left holding the bag, and then the company [becomes] a really large public company, and the CEO takes big packages and then leaves, and then the government has to bail them out.”

Zhao added that traditional fundraising methods have been “played [for] too long,” emphasizing that ”a lot of people know how to play it and they do game [the system].”

Blockchain fundraising to grow exponentially in coming years

CZ characterized the 2017 initial coin offering, or ICO, bull market as “too hot,” describing the recent decline in blockchain fundraising as an “overreaction” to the over-exuberant bullishness of the last ICO boom. He also notes the impact of the global economic slowdown on the broader capital markets.

“Now, we are definitely a tough market economically speaking,” he stated, adding: “There is a lot of uncertainty, there is a lot of volatility, there is a lot of fear. So naturally, right now, it is a really tough time to raise money.”

Despite the recent slump, Binance predicts crypto fundraising will increase over the longer term, stating:

“I think [the] number of blockchain fundraising activities and the fund raised will continue to increase on a year-to-year basis over the next 10 [to] 20 years.”