Leaked ‘Tai Chi’ Document Reveals Binance’s Elaborate Scheme To Evade Bitcoin

With additional reporting from Jason Brett.

Binance Holdings Limited, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange conceived of an elaborate corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive regulators and surreptitiously profit from crypto investors in the United States, according to a document thought to be created by its senior executives and obtained by Forbes. Cayman Islands-based Binance is currently responsible for about $10 billion in total crypto trades per day and its founder and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is one of the few known cryptocurrency billionaires.

The 2018 document details plans for a yet-unnamed U.S. company dubbed the “Tai Chi entity,” in an allusion to the Chinese martial art whose approach is built around the principle of “yield and overcome,” or using an opponent’s own weight against him. While Binance appears to have gone out of its way to submit to U.S. regulations by establishing a compliant subsidary, Binance.US, an ulterior motive is now apparent. Unlike its creator Binance, Binance.US, which is open to American investors, does not allow highly leveraged crypto-derivatives trading, which is regulated in the U.S.

The leaked Tai Chi document, a slideshow believed to have been seen by senior Binance executives, is a strategic plan to execute a bait and switch. While the then-unnamed entity set up operations in the United States to distract regulators with feigned interest in compliance, measures would be put in place to move revenue in the form of licensing fees and more to the parent company, Binance. All the while, potential customers would be taught how to evade geographic restrictions while technological work-arounds were put in place.

Forbes reached out to founder CZ as well as its chief compliance officer Samuel Lim about the leaked document, but got no response. Binance.US CEO Catherine Coley also didn’t comment.  

The source of the document, whose identity we’ve agreed not to reveal, says it was first presented to CZ in Q4 2018 by Binance mergers and acquisitions manager Jared Gross, an attorney who Forbes believes is actually the exchange’s general counsel. The source says the document was created by former Binance employee Harry Zhou, a serial entrepreneur, who is the co-founder of Koi Trading, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange partially owned by Binance.  The file is named “Presentation 2” so there may have been other strategies being considered. Still, an analysis of the document reveals that many of the specifics outlined within it, are already in place.

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