Rachel Conlan - interview with Lukasz Stoczynski

fine that's fine cool excited to have you here Rachel thanks for coming to waro and uh yeah uh I've been anticipating this this conversation so we have um Rachel here who is a CMO of binance uh maybe you want to give a a few words of introduction to yourself yeah of course um first of all I'm very proud that I've learned how to pronounce this properly I don't know how many polls are in the room I'm going to say Yak shamash to everyone very Pride it's from my polish friends over the last 10 years in our they've like helped me master it um no thank you so much for being here um shockingly it's my my first visit to waro not the last one definitely not the last especially given the the role that Poland and Polish Community is playing in crypto especially you know globally at the moment um but no I arrived here yesterday um my role at binance is is really multifaceted I joined just under two years ago very quiet time for the business no stress no challenge um and I drive um Global Marketing and local marketing and obviously I'm one of an amazing team of 220 that work with me to essentially Drive our growth and encourage the growth of our community um and ensure that we're getting the message of crypto you know out and as the largest that's a that's a big obligation for US 220 people to manage seems a lot marketing and they are very low maintenance I see some of them over in the corner there but no no genuinely it's it's a privilege but to give you like a little Benchmark I have 220 people people our law enforcement and compliance is a thousand so and you know so it just kind of gives you a benchmark of you know the the big priorities although marketeers are naturally more efficient we can do like four you know four times the work of them I wonder how do you find time for all of this um cool thanks for for the introduction so I guess like uh where I would like to start with is to uh get a little bit of your view on the evolution of the crypto Market um so how have you seen you know the evolution of the market over the past few years obviously like you know with the FDX collapse that is like you know was a direct competitor to binance like you know how did you manage that like how how that impacted Market from from your perspective and like you know how do you see it changing like we've seen a lot of takes about you know centralized versus decentralized self custodial non-custodial Etc uh yeah so so how do you see this this is a big big question so I'll try and be succinct in my response to to make it um manageable um but look I I think you know it's a privilege to be in this industry at the moment given the spotlight on it I've been in the industry just over four years um three years working full-time in in crypto before that I was advising and you know the last two years in binance um as I mentioned at the top I I think there's a number of different you know of big trends that are driving the growth of the industry I think we've got technological advancement you know which has been the subject of a lot of today and I know tomorrow you know we're we're seeing really incredible advances in technology come from the industry that's impacting you know everyday uses and and real life utilities which is what's going to drive Mass adoption which is the big subject here um we've seen regulatory Clarity uh you know not enough yet it's still a bit ambiguous but I think you know with the emergence of MAA here in Europe um you know that will support what is a more safe and secure environment um for the the crypto industry and crypto community and one of the reasons why binance has committed so aggressively to this is because we see it as an obligation and as the largest that we ensure the user both the OG and the potential future user has a voice in deciding what that regulatory framework is because if we don't do that no one's representing that voice so 100% we're not just saying that to to keep governments happy you know it's it's a big part of um our philosophy H thirdly you know I know a big topic before um I came on was around payment integration like stripe PP we you know those typ of Integrations have put a a big Spotlight ecomic instability I spent the last couple of weeks in in the latam region you know in markets like Venezuela El Salvador this is a Lifeline for them to protect wealth you know it's um you know really critical uh but you know lastly I think what we have to have to refer to is you know what's happened since last December which is the institutional um influx looks from the ETF approvals okay you know I think what we've seen is a legitimacy I know amongst my personal friends and family who are not maybe crypto Skeptics you know it it's just created a positive perception of our industry whereas traditionally I think we were seen as quite Niche um and I think that's been seen you know from a marketing perspective I was with Google a few weeks ago and they were telling me that Google's Trends from the first quarter of the Year showed that Bitcoin was the most searched Financial product online like that's incredible you know when you think about that of all Financial products I'm not talking about digital assets so you know that that type of volumes are incredible and I think the numbers are also speaking for itself yeah yeah 100% like you know the the Bitcoin ETF has been the the most successful ETF in the history yeah so it's and from a binance perspective you know 2024 it was you know 2.27 trillion I know none of all of us are feeling the the end of the bull at the moment the the bear at the moment and we're all waiting for the big bull but we have to like recognize what's happened over the last year like the you know we're 2.27 trillion valuation market cap last year you know the start of this year we surged by 60% we're down we dipped a little and the whole industry is like it's the end it's just a little dip I mean I guess the prices here are not the the the most like you know key factor here in terms of the adoption like if we see the key players from you know institutions that join the market in the ETF space uh it's it's the legitimacy you know if we're getting the the biggest financial institutions going into Bitcoin and E ETFs it means that you know there is a strong need you know for for those type of an asset for for those um um for this for for institutional so um so yeah that's that's like you know a big push for for for the industry I know and my secret love is I used to do a lot of work at Goldman Sachs in my former life um in agency world and you know a lot of my former contacts there were like nope we're never going into digital assets and then they had to file their public listing last week and it discovered that there's 500 million in Bitcoin sitting on there I p&l I I I just took a screen Rob and and sent it to a few of my senior contact there just to say now now you need us no but from look from a binance perspective and we are in a very privileged per you know position of being the largest but what we've seen at the start of this year is incredible you know we hit 220 million users added 40 million since the resolution alone oh that's that's huge we um have hit alltime highs like 120 1% spot trading volumes last month derivatives are at the highest level we're at twice our daily active users you know like it's just this incredible momentum so so kind of following up on on what you just said like what do you think is the current market State like obviously you know people are wondering whether we're still in Bur whether we're in Bull like um obviously you know the ETF approvals uh should be the signs that we're you know getting into the bull and and everything's going to be you know pumping uh which is not the case yet so like based on the you know you have got a huge user data for binance obviously you have got millions of customers so how does it look like uh from from that perspective like where we are in the market how is the retail looking into it institutions um if you can give us a little bit on well we're largely a retail platform you know institutional you know and Michaela will will kill me for saying this she heads up our Institution for Europe um but like retail in that Community is our rad and butter and we will never forget that and let's be clear you know any of the big traditional Finance institutions it's the same so we just did it reverse you know from uh so I think you know that where you see like a JP Morgan JP Morgan doesn't exist without their large retail base you know that they have in in us and Europe in terms of where we are and I hate doing predictions because I'm always wrong that like I am definitely not for do predictions let's just try to see like you know I think the the number like I think what we are is that uh we're at early adoption phase still I think that you know I think someone early earlier said that we're at Mass adoption we're far from that yet we're you know we're we're entering into a little bit of maturation um and I think we have a long way to go and I think we have a huge obligation as companies as individuals as communities um you know to continue to fly the positive narrative because you know while we're in our little Echo Chambers I think we tend to forget that there still as a whole we we're only a 5% 5 to 6% globally like one thing I will say is the Polish market you know in Europe stands Head and Shoulders Above the Rest of Europe so if you look at the penetration rates at the moment you're at like 6% globally you know in most European countries and and David is here he'll probably you know have the more specific figures but in Poland we're at 11.7% penetration we have 1. 1 million users in in you know in Poland who are um either trading hodling you know there's obviously a variety of use cases um and if you put that on top of what you can see from wandering around this conference and just you know I spent time we we hosted a 500 person Meetup last night and spending time with those individuals you realize it's not just about the trading or the hodling or the the wealth creation it's the Innovation that's coming out of here that's fascinating that's you know and I think that's where I love this industry so much which is attracted to me it's turning what was the traditional Financial Urban centers on its side like when like I'm old so when I um when I started my career it was like you had to be in London you had to be in New York you had to be in Paris Singapore Hong Kong if you were working in finance and you know now I would argue that that in the next 10 years we're going to see you know I'm in I live in UAE now we're going to see countries like Dubai ABD Dhabi you know cities like them take the you know take a forward glance places like Poland it's already happening I think it's but they just embraced it and I think that's setting a really good Benchmark for others but what you're seeing here in Poland you know I would argue that that could be the same here there's you know a huge opportunity to to unlock but marketing plays a big role in that which is what keeps me up at night and means I don't sleep 100 100% like so before we jump into your role and and like the general marketing which is also like part of the the conversation um how do you see the data like on the users activity versus I don't know the alltime highs from you know pre f like are we getting there yet like are we growing like what's the what's the retail comeback I would say because obviously we had like a huge outflux post FTX from you know all the trading activity centralized exchanges Etc you know this this this is the case in the bare market like how how how does it look like from binance's perspective the challenge with that is it's not like for like because while there is an immediate like and I'm going to be very honest and Frank with the room but if we see after our doj resolution I know that all of our competitors were waiting for there to be a mass Exodus everyone leaving our platform you know I think some of the the panel before were talking about um the fact that they expected everyone to move over to web three wallet off centralized exchanges as I said earlier we added 40 million users okay those users are all engaging with our Platforms in different ways you know I think that you know the the the um later stage users they need a lot of handholding they need a lot of help that's why we're introducing like a earn products which are really popular with those you know new users because they see it as an alternative to maybe what were their traditional Financial products you know but with the more sophisticated traders that we're seeing you know start to enter in from Trad fight they're like eating up our spot they're eating up derivatives you know future where they can there's limitations on that with with regulation you know we recently launched Futures copy trading after you know uh a big debate about whether we should um and that's been one of the most popular launches we've had since we don't do everything perfectly but you know we operate on a basis of we speed to Market get it out and then use the users to help us understand where we optimize and how we improve we we have a product called binance build on the do which is where we're constantly inviting users feedback and insights and you will be able to see whether that's been picked up by our product team and then we will track how that's been optimized so you know I suppose to go back to your question though you know I would argue that we're already from a derivatives perspective we already beating 2021 bull Behavior yeah yeah yeah so but that is just like you that's why I'm saying it's difficult it's not like for like CU just the sheer volume of new entrance into the space okay is such that you know it just means that the the numbers we're playing with are just so much bigger and that makes it really important for the technology to be the best it is so we need latency we need speed you know no matter what way you're um you know you're engaging with our product okay very cool uh uh so moving over kind of from the market State more to your role at binance um obviously being a CMO uh huge uh responsibility having you know so many markets um underneath um you know uh to manage so uh how does m binance do marketing like is it different globally than locally uh if you can tell us like you know how how do you get those users how do you get them to stick with binance like as you as you mentioned you didn't have such a huge outflux of people post FTX so like how do you manage to do it from marketing perspective I think crypto marketing is a case study in itself I have a really dear friend who's a professor at Harvard that I was looking up to study with and we talked about that and she's like it just blows all of the traditional marketing rules at the window I will make you laugh though you know 20 years ago when I started my career if you made it to CMO you were sitting back you had teams working for you you had a couple of hours of meetings a day you know 20 years on I'm like this is the hardest I've ever worked and the most challenged I've been cerebrally um but look if we look back to you know the founding principles of marketing um in crypto I think there is the principles are still um very much part of like how we do marketing at binance today so it started you know with what was um you know essentially the projects like you know uh Bitcoin and etherum they were sharing their white papers like and that was their form of education and it was the technologists that were embracing that and acting as the ambassadors you know then we moved to the Ico era where there was lots of hype and speculation and that was the marketing but unfortunately that led to a lot of scams you know post that post Ico we saw big focus on community building which I think is where um Finance have been you know unprecedented in what they've achieved and I think they've done that look I'm standing on the shoulders of giants I'll never claim to build the Playbook I just enhance and optimize The Playbook now I I think more recently Marketing in our industry and for binance specifically has to be about you know building trust and rebuilding trust for those that we lost you know over the last 5 years I think it has to be about transparency it has to be about focusing you know on security um and and that's one thing that we really have doubled down on um you know as a business um user obsession is core value you know we talk about it on a daily basis we try and live it as much as we can at the size we're getting to that it's hard you know to ensure that you're constantly doing that and doing it in an agile way um but you know in in the forums that we're doing with education being such a basis of that like thinking about how do we get the right message into the hands of the person and meet them where they are in their crypto journey is really important you know online forums are really important social media has been the fuel of this industry yeah obviously you know we we just you have to be on crypto Twitter I know and you have to be obsessive on it like I wake up I don't even check I've got little boy I I I check him second I check crypto X first which is really worrying but now it's telegram Discord you know for forecaster like you have to keep up yeah I know I know exactly um but look I I think you know social media is um essential part whe whether you're an established crypto brand you know or I get a lot of questions from new projects or you know stud to launch projects and I'm like just focus on community make sure that you're building a base that can continue to act as your um might pieces they act as spreading your message because wor the might is still the most most critical channel here um and I think also for us we're a global exchange but we operate in a you know over 150 countries at the moment and we are speaking we should be speaking every language you could so what we try and do is Ure that with our marketing we have Global messages that we know resonate but we go very deep into our region and our localities to understand like what does that user want how do we talk to them what are the products we should be serving up with them what are their barriers at different so is you mentioned that you like adjusted the The Playbook to the crypto so do you adjust it even more based on different countries different regulatory jurisdictions yes definitely um you know obviously and I'm really lucky I've worked in three regulated Industries before I joined binance and pharmaceutical in liquor which is highly regulated um as well as Bank so um what what what I understand um and what I learned from that is paying attention to regulations is really important so we have 45 legal ambassadors that's jobs as marketeers is to just understand the financial promotions and you know and the the different regimes within which we operate to make sure that our messaging is safe secure you know if we will never talk about certain products as being risk-free for example because that's misleading so was like a very much an art to you know any message we put out or any big campaign or any big activity um but secondly what we tried to do is beyond compliance Beyond legal um it's very important for us to celebrate the local users and the local community and we did a big campaign last year which was called crypto is better and the focus on that was celebrating the users all around the world like you can never to do at the scale I'd wanted to it would have taken millions of dollars but you know we we did it with 20 of our users that were representative of some of the top markets and hearing their stories hearing their use cases helping understand what other people why they entered into this space and what it was that kept them there those type of stories are what keeps people here and what is enticing you know my friends and family that a year ago were skeptical about this space okay you did mention community building so obviously community building has been a huge uh fuel a huge uh part of building crypto marketing uh would you say that the community building at binance is different to community building around the startup around the decentralized product or or you know or is it just the same you still have to engage those people because obviously you know um in in crypto or in the let's say the decentralized space you have got airdrops you have got you know all those things where you can you have got points uh so how does that compare to to binance do all of those things too I think it's more just about the scale MH of it I think the one thing I'm always jealous of in startups and in like early stage um crypto businesses is that their that their size and the fact that their proximity to the community like they're with them on a daily basis which is what we continue to try and do despite our size so you know of the 220 marketeers I mentioned about 25% of them are Community team members and on a daily basis you know through our internal channels they're updating on what's keeping the community up at night what are the issues they're encountering and that goes to our full LT group so that they're seeing firsthand so even though we're a large organization now we're constantly trying to keep on that pulse you know once a once a month um every one of our leaders um including me we spend 12 hours on CS channels um dealing directly with incoming issues around our product around different areas so that we're understanding what's you know the pulse of that but I would argue you know in terms of the playbook for Community um it's still about that combination of offline and online um you know just last night we had a 500 person Meetup here which has been something that we've run since you know for the last five years it was originated by uh yei our our co-founder and those meetups are so important because at the end of the day while we are a digital platform and we are a digital industry you know those face-to-face connections such as this event are critical in helping kind of like Get through what are you know get clearer messages through people are are missing the U human to human interaction being online all the time exactly and so you know we do those meetups on a regular basis we we've held um like six um six events uh you know this quarter so far they usually are between the 100 to um a thousand um per sorry in Poland six events we do about 2,500 events as a business on an anual basis yeah and that's a lot yeah it's a lot and that's anything from like 100 people to our binance blockchain week in Dubai which is 4,000 but this is just events organized by binance or attending other conferences as well that is just events organized by binance we have uh and the goal of that though is to ensure to your point those are the you know the offline events is that we are getting the physical opportunity you know that we're acting like what my parents would have had 20 years ago when you were able to go to your teller and ask a question and get a simple response and not feel embarrassed that's the importance of those real life connections obviously our online communities are critical to us we have 25,000 um here alone in um here in Poland and and those are critical for us to understand not just the pain points but also to be able to engage in real time not everyone has a luxury being able to travel here from various places so we have to be mindful of that um but one program that I inherited again that I'm I'm really proud of and I spent time with our polish Angels last night is the Angels program and that's one thing that's so special about the crypto Community I worked in sports and entertainment before I joined crypto that was actually my routin and I would liken the the community members almost like sports fans in terms of their passion and commitment and these angels we 500 around the world they act as ambassadors unpaid for us and they voluntarily some you know some are like CEOs some are heads of legal firms others are you know software Engineers one owned a bicycle shop that I met last night and you know they benefited from crypto early and they feel a massive obligation to give back now and help people and and that's so special about our community it's it's the key trait I hope we don't lose as the traditional industry starts entering is this this unique desire to help and bring others in okay no that's that's fantastic to hear um before we wrap up one last question uh I wanted to touch on so like how big part of your community building is education like do you do like out of those uh 2500 events yearly that you do like what's the sh of like you know education events like I know you have got the binance academy uh if you can maybe tell us a little bit more how people can engage with you guys and like learn from from binance in their web three um Career Road I don't know what do you educate people on yeah so education I would say about 30% of our total marketing efforts are on education of the entire teams I don't have is the percentage of um our uh events but just to be clear there is an educational seminar I call it edutainment to make it feel a little bit more interesting that we like entertain as well as educate at the same time it makes a little bit more palatable but that is integrated into any one of our events that we do and if I take a step back you know binance Academy that you've already referred to that has been developed over the last four years and is I would argue one of the most sophisticated platforms whether you're a newbie wants to start understanding what is blockchain and the ABC of this industry to a more sophisticated Trader and if you're trying to understand complex trading strategies and and what should be your next step you know it's really there's over 431 playbooks on the the platform and there's constant um new content being added um through bance Academy our team there we're also constantly looking at new um new Partnerships that we can do in the space to spread the message we know not everyone wants to go on our platform we've had over 43 million users of binance Academy I learned about crypto and binance Academy even though I was within competitor and I made my entire marketing team do the the binance academy as well so amazing suweet secondly it's amas both on you know on all of our social um owned channels as well as binance Square which is our social network that as a a binance account holder you get exclusive access to and there's additional education um thirdly is the the meetups we you know that's a big goal and given we're now entering into this bull um I hope uh we will be doing more of those and double dining on those you know in Europe alone we'll have over 12 before the end of the year and I think that's a huge opportunity to to be able to meet more like-minded people to feel a sense of belonging to feel the trust um that many people like desire for this industry and obviously our CS training and Angels like sorry CS access it's 247 we have about 50 CS agents all around the world they work on shifts you know so it's a 7-Day shift 7-Day off like similar so that they can understand how to you know help people continue Journeys if it's a more complex issue um and I I would argue that you know everything's at your fingertips it's just about you know we try and make it as accessible as possible if you can't find it go to LinkedIn and contact one of our team you know genuinely easy well our marketing team like responds you know we're we we take those ideas and and those insights like we we that's so critical as I said earlier is like keeping that um pulse on what people need is what's going to make us better as a business and overall what's going to make the the industry better so if someone wants to um take part of the academy what do they have to do they just go like on the platform and register and that's it platform and register yes okay cool thank you very much uh we do have a couple of more minutes I think that's that's a good wrap so if uh do we have any questions from the audience hi I'm Paula um I I have two questions okay first of all um I'm a huge fan of your Instagram and I think you guys are so funny like it's hilarious it's uh it's the one thing that I just you know start scrolling and I can't get off but I'm wondering because it is so funny and it is so young um I wonder if you guys have also a different strategy to kind of reach out to a bit older audience or are you thinking about it how to bridge that how to you know because the image is so fun and exciting and it's like cool but I wonder you know if you want to onboard people and you're talking about institutions as well it's a little bit you know the the image is different and I wonder if you have an idea how you going to do that yeah so interestingly I'm so glad first of all thank you for the compliment for Instagram I I drive that team hard so I'll they'll be happy to hear it because it's never good enough but no look our our Instagram is that first I see it as the the shop window yeah it's the first entry point I'm going to surprise you with something though um so I'm an aging Millennial and what's really interesting when you look at the older audiences is that they do they still feel like they're 21 and the data shows us that actually they are still as likely to engage with a brand that um is younger or more aspirational or maybe um you know contrary to what you or I feel because they still feel that so that's why for example our brand partnership content you know with Ronaldo and with alpine and and with some of the regional and local partners that we we have does so well on the platform so Instagram you know it goes back to what I said about edutainment we use that as an entry point as a a way for people to take a moment from their day maybe learn something new we try and position the the product content as more educational rather than straight and simple so that's true to the binance brand and tone but on that subject of appealing to different audiences we know that our audiences like for before uh in the traditional World say in cpg or liquor marketing or Auto marketing it takes about 8 to 10 touch points before a user will engage with you or you know sign up to a newsletter in crypto we estimated it's about 16 touch points for a newbie so it's twice as hard so we have a very targeted strategy depending on what your demographic is depending on um what your likes and dislikes are so we're operating across you know we have over a 100 platforms that we're targeting digital marketing on at the moment um for for the older audiences you know interestingly YouTube you know I just found out yesterday we were looking at some of our data and YouTube now for the new registered users of the last six months is a much more popular platform than cryptox for so YouTube is you know where we're seeing our new users go to get information go to get education majority of these new users aren't even on X so we're using YouTube you know twitch and markets like Lam um Tik Tok is one of our we we just hit hit two two million users on Tik Tok organically which is quite a big deal because most of our competitors pay for their their fans and we hit it organically and Tik Tok now is fast growing among the younger ages and the older generation the mature generation but when you look at different audiences like Michaela I think who's in the room here um you know we have uh now what we've done is segmented our channels we have over 233 social channels so it's not just our Global channels we have a VIP platform we know our VIPs are more likely to be on LinkedIn than they're going to be on Instagram we know that the mature audience is more lik to get their information from LinkedIn so we'll Target the strategies there so it's really like constant test and learn around where they are how we meet them and what's going to get them to um convert and engage but that's why a lot of the Big Brand partners are important to us because we're showing up in different places where crypto Brands aren't showing up in so that that's a big part of our our next kind of generation strategy yeah okay thank you second question is we're up of time yeah quick one quick please um how do you have the energy and all the the vibe because you are like traveling so much and and all of stuff and you're so energetic and I'm like how do you do this how do you get so excited how do you remain I think this industry I like I'm going to sound like a fan girl now but the privilege like I turned down the role in meta you know at the beginning of its um uh journey and I I turned it down because I didn't know whether I believed in social networks I was wrong that's where I say my predictions so when the opportunity came for the space one thing I saw at the time was that it needed more help to understand like for translation and messaging because there was a big gap you know there was the core users and it wasn't resonating with other audiences and I saw a lot of leaders and finders of Brands coming to us saying we want to put our logo on the back of Formula 1 can you help us do that and I was like well that's not going to help you you know get mainstream recognition or or really be part of the cultural Zeitgeist so I think you know one thing about this industry is it's a privilege to work in because in 10 20 30 years time when I look back it's going to have been a privilege to see something that then will be a part of everyday life and it's not you know not everyone gets that opportunity um secondly I drink a lot of Starbucks coffee as my as my colleagues know we have Starbucks in Poland here um Rachel thank you very much for your time thank you for being here with us in warso it was great chatting with you uh let's give a great Round of Applause to Rachel thank you thank you so much pleasure