Tatler Most Influential 2025: Richard Teng took over Binance amid a scandal but is rebuilding its credibility, one rule at a time

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between US$800 billion and US$2 trillion is laundered worldwide every year. By comparison, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported in its 2025 Crypto Crime Report that US$40.9 billion in cryptocurrencies was sent to illicit addresses last year. “When you compare the figures, what we see in the crypto world is minuscule,” says Teng. This, however, does not mean that he intends to repeat the missteps of his predecessor, who remains Binance’s largest shareholder.

Under Teng’s leadership, the exchange has been focused on strengthening its compliance culture—an area, he admits, that was underinvested in during its early years. “When CZ and his co-founders [established] Binance in 2017, they were operating in a different landscape,” Teng explains. “Regulators were largely ignoring the crypto space, and institutions thought it was a passing fad. So the rules were not developed.” That, he notes, was what eventually led to the charges brought against Binance. “What’s important is that responsible financial institutions acknowledge their shortcomings and do better going forward,” he says, adding that Binance is now a “transformed company” that is investing heavily in compliance and risk management.

In recent years, Binance has also worked to rehabilitate its public image by assisting law enforcement agencies around the world in tackling crypto-enabled cybercrimes. This June, for instance, the exchange announced that it had helped authorities in Taiwan and the US dismantle Incognito Market, a multimillion-dollar darknet marketplace that facilitated illegal drug sales using cryptocurrencies.

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Teng’s approach to regulation—business-minded, empathetic, focused on finding middle ground—didn’t emerge from textbooks. It was shaped by a childhood that forced him to grow up fast.

At 14 years old, most would be worrying about exams, crushes or fitting in. Teng was learning to survive. When his parents moved to Kuala Lumpur to run their furniture business, he stayed back alone in Singapore in their three-room HDB flat. “I was fending for myself. I had to do everything myself,” he recalls.

Placing full trust in their son, his parents didn’t set any ground rules. “They knew I wasn’t the type to seek trouble,” Teng says, but admits that he didn’t attend school much without his parents’ knowledge. “I probably went 50 per cent of the time,” he says. “I’d wake up some mornings, see it was raining heavily, and decide not to go to school. If I forgot to iron my uniform? Didn’t go to school.” His parents haven’t found out yet.

His grades in Secondary 3 were terrible. By all measures, he should have been a cautionary tale.

He wasn’t—thanks to Mrs Deng, his Chinese teacher at Temasek Secondary School, who kept calling. “She’d say, ‘What happened to you? Please come back to school,’” Teng recalls. “She really put her hand around my shoulder and said, ‘You need to be in school to get a proper education, to find your footing in life.’”

It worked. By Secondary 4, he pulled himself together enough to pass his O-levels and make it to junior college. 

Looking back, Teng expresses gratitude towards her: “If not for her, I’d probably have a different life now.” He also credits that experience for shaping his leadership philosophy. “If I can help people, I’ll try to—understanding what they’re going through and being of assistance,” he says.

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Before Teng joined the crypto or regulation circles, there was the durian stall. And McDonald’s, and hamper packing and door-to-door surveys. “I started working pretty young,” Teng says. “I did a lot of things—whatever jobs were available.” To others, they might seem like meaningless ways for a teenager to earn pocket money. To Teng, they were something more valuable: life lessons.

“Every job teaches you something because of the people you interact with,” he says. “There are soft skills, life lessons. People share their own successes and failures, and you learn from them.” He became, by his own account, “a good listener”—a skill that would prove invaluable decades later when bridging the gap between crypto innovators and traditional regulators.

The lesson he carries forward and often imparts as advice to younger people with whom he crosses paths: “Don’t be afraid to do seemingly meaningless things, because every one of the things you do is a life lesson.”

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His first supervisor at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Tan Kim Kway, was unlike any traditional regulator. “He was very, very tough and very rational,” Teng recalls. 

One early submission Teng made came back covered in red pen markings—three pages crossed out completely. The note: “Please redo.” When Teng asked what was wrong, Tan was blunt: “You have not analysed it. There’s no thought process. The writing is terrible.”

“I was pretty upset as a young officer,” Teng admits. But he took it as the constructive criticism it was meant to be. He reviewed the document twice more, spent significantly more time and effort, and worked on his writing skills. “Effort is something that can be demonstrated. The thought you put into something will show up in the quality of your work,” he reflects.

More importantly, Tan instilled a business-minded approach rare among regulators. “He tried to look at different angles and dimensions. What is the business community trying to achieve, and can we find a middle ground that’s a win-win proposition?” 

It’s a mindset Teng carries to this day: he’s never seen himself as merely a guardian of rules, but as someone responsible for facilitating economic growth within appropriate guardrails. 

This philosophy would also prove essential when he made his most controversial career move yet.

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Unsurprisingly, Teng’s move into crypto raised eyebrows among his peers in regulation and traditional finance. He recalls: “The first question I got asked was, ‘Why?’” For him, it was more a matter of why not. His curiosity was piqued in 2017, after learning about the technology at a conference in the US while serving as CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at Abu Dhabi Global Market, an international financial centre with its own civil and commercial laws. He soon went down the rabbit hole, researching the technology and immersing himself in the fast-evolving world of digital assets. “I also started talking to crypto players, and the more I spoke with them, the more I believed crypto would change the future,” he says.

The future Teng envisions is one where today’s unbanked population finally gets access to financial services. “Since I joined the finance industry more than 30 years ago, global regulators, central banks and financial institutions have been saying we need to bring about greater financial inclusion,” he shares. “Yet, today, [an estimated] 1.4 billion [adults worldwide] remain unbanked—and the traditional financial sector can’t seem to solve this.”

One major reason so many people remain unbanked is that they cannot meet the banks’ minimum balance requirements. In essence, the financial system has yet to design products that serve this segment’s needs. While not all banks impose such requirements, those that do cite various reasons, from generating revenue through fees when balances fall short to offsetting the costs of maintaining each account.

Read more: Asia’s digital banks are disrupting what it means to democratise wealth

The appeal of cryptocurrency, where intermediaries such as banks are unnecessary because transactions occur directly on the blockchain, comes in sharp focus here. “There’s a beauty to that,” says Teng, noting that after years of resistance from the traditional financial world, he has observed a marked shift in attitudes and openness towards crypto since last year.

According to Chainalysis’s 2024 Geography of Crypto Report, global adoption of crypto has been strongest in developing or transitional economies, which accounted for nine of the top ten nations embracing the technology that year. Binance itself also reflects the page of crypto’s global adoption. In its first six and a half years, the exchange grew from zero to 170 million users—a remarkable feat for what would still be considered a start-up by traditional finance standards. And between early 2024 and mid-2025 alone, Teng notes, another 120 million users joined.

Today, Binance has surpassed US$100 trillion in cumulative trading volume and holds nearly US$200 billion in assets under custody. Teng attributes this rapid growth to two long-awaited developments: institutional adoption and greater regulatory clarity.

Read more: What does Hong Kong’s new stablecoins law mean for the future of digital money?

For Teng, these figures are more than just statistics. The promise of financial inclusion becomes real through the stories he encounters in his travels. In Taiwan, he recalls, a man once approached him not for a selfie with the CEO, but to photograph the Binance logo on his cap. The man’s brother had discovered crypto through the platform, became an influencer, and lifted their family to financial freedom.

Another encounter, this time in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, reaffirmed Teng’s belief in crypto’s power to advance financial inclusion. A woman shared how her father, who worked overseas, used to send money home through traditional channels, where fees on remittances under US$500 could take a significant cut. By switching to Binance, the family eliminated those charges entirely and began storing their excess funds in stablecoins and Bitcoin, preserving value even as their local fiat currency depreciated.

Read more: Opinion: “Passing on wealth isn’t merely a numbers game; it’s a battle against human nature”

While crypto no doubt has its benefits and can deliver positive impacts, the system and its currencies still face severe restrictions and even outright bans in some countries. These, however, have proved counterproductive; rather than curbing public interest, the prohibitions have pushed users in these areas towards unregulated channels where they are exposed to increased risk of fraud, theft, misappropriation and other malicious activities.

This illustrates the tension at the heart of Teng’s mission. Even as he speaks of working “within regulatory paradigms”, there are legal gaps and inconsistencies across jurisdictions that Binance still needs to navigate.

Whether the exchange is filling needs that traditional finance and regulators have failed to address, it is clear that under Teng’s watch, Binance continues to grow, in pursuit of its vision to support the freedom of money—even as regulatory questions remain unresolved.

Discover more industry leaders on Tatler Most Influential 2025.

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