Paris Blockchain Week Summit started with a bang on Wednesday. The flagship European blockchain conference is, as such, being hosted at Palais Brongniart in Paris. Right from Coinbase’s Brett Tejpaul and BlockFi’s David Olsson to Blockchain.com’s Nicolas Cary, a host of prominent names from the crypto and blockchain ecosystem presented their respective perspectives on various topics.
Amongst all, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s speech was one of the most awaited ones. The exec begun his speech by tossing a basic question – “How many of you have heard about Bitcoin? How many of you have crypto?”
After briefly talking about Binance’s journey thus far, the exec went on to highlight that Binance is currently available in over 70 out of the top 100 countries. The investment arm of the exchange—Binance Labs—has invested more than $100 million in about 100 crypto projects whose combined liquid market cap is $7 billion. The same has notably seen a 66x increase in three years.
The exchange, at this stage, is piloting a phone line of customer support, starting with support in Turkish. The company, which currently relies on chat-based support, hopes to eventually roll out phone-based support in all markets.
The exec then quickly shifted gears and went on to explain the evolution of regulations and regulators. Elaborating on the same, he said,
“We have seen a great shift of attitude toward crypto over the past year until last year, regulators were talking in a negative way while many regulators today approach us with a positive note.”
Binance expands its Europe footprint
The most crucial part of the exec’s keynote was the announcement of a 100 million euro ($108 million) investment in France and a partnership with Paris-based startup incubator Station F.
Elucidating on the same, the CZ said, “France is uniquely positioned to be the leader of this industry in Europe,” and added that the company already has a team of about 50 people in the country.
As part of the deal, startups will benefit from support from the BNB Chain, NFT Labs, and Binance Labs teams to develop their ideas and potential collaborations with Binance partners.
In the official press release, Roxanne Varza, director of Station F noted,
“For all the people willing to better understand blockchain and crypto, we hope this place will help them to enter the web3 world.”
This opening is part of the ‘Objective Moon’ program announced last November by Changpeng Zhao. The exec further noted,
“We love France. And this opening is a proof of engagement. We are committed to build and support a strong ecosystem around blockchain, Web.3 and metaverse. Starting in France as a launchpad for Europe, we aim at using this space as our creative and innovative base.”