Blockchain Success Stories

Chapter 8. Binance Charity Foundation: Doing Good with Blockchain

I believe my purpose is to empower the bottom billion people in this world.¹

—Helen Hai, head of Binance Charity Foundation

On her seventh birthday, Helen Hai’s father took her on a trip to Beijing. It was the mid-1980s, the beginning of China’s industrial revolution, and change was in the air. The streets were buzzing with bicycles; the sky was crisscrossed with cables and power lines; the ancient gates and walls seemed to sing with new life. For a young girl, the experience was dizzying and wonderful.

As a treat, Helen’s father took her to one of the city’s first five-star hotels. She slowly entered the lobby, mesmerized by its grandeur.

“How much for a room?” her father asked the hotel concierge.

“$100 a night,” came the response.

“It’s too expensive,” her father said, whisking Helen away.²

That moment changed Helen Hai. She remembered thinking, This will never belong to me. She wondered how many other young girls shared the feeling that this hotel represented a world they would never enter, a world they would be denied because of lack of opportunity.

Over the course of her life, Helen seized those opportunities, or created opportunities where they didn’t exist. After receiving her education from Cass Business School in London and the graduate business school INSEAD, Helen became the youngest female partner in the history of insurance brokerage Jardine Lloyd Thompson, before joining Zurich Financial Services ...