Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao kicked off the Ethereal Virtual Summit today, in an interview with podcaster Laura Shin. The talk explored the wider ecosystem and Binance's roll in it before zeroing in on the class-action lawsuit the exchange is involved in as well as uncertainty over where Binance is officially and legally based.

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Bitcoin doesn’t have an office

Shin asked Zhao about Binance’s office in China which was shut down following a visit by authorities. At the time, Zhao claimed the company had no offices there—or anywhere, in fact.

When asked whether any Binance office was “visited” by authorities at that time, Zhao said, “I don’t even know.”

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Shin probed Zhao on where Binance’s offices–if not in China–he replied, “This is the beauty of blockchain, right? Where is the Bitcoin office? Bitcoin doesn’t have an office. We have people from around 50 places in the world.”

He also added that offices, entities, headquarters and bank accounts “don’t have to exist for blockchain companies.”

He also said that he was currently in lockdown in Asia, but wouldn’t specify any further for privacy reasons.

As Decrypt reported previously, class-action lawsuits were filed against 11 crypto companies in early April, including Binance. The lawsuits allege that the firms misled investors by selling unlawful securities in the form of digital tokens.

Zhao stated that Binance’s lawyers told him not to comment on the topic and that he believes in “innocent until proven guilty” principle before concluding, "having someone sue you is a normal part of the business process."

The perfect storm for Bitcoin

Speaking about the current economic crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak, Zhao stated that we’re witnessing “a perfect storm” for the crypto space, forecasting that the results of this period won't be felt until next year and beyond.

“I think that we’re seeing that there’s a strong recovery right now. I think over the next few months, maybe six months, 12 months, 18 months-ish, we’re gonna see a very, very significant impact,” said Zhao.

“I think more and more people are going to realize that there is unlimited cash flowing around. And the minute they get their cash, they’ll want to put it into something with limited supply. And the easiest thing to put that into is actually cryptocurrencies,” he added.

Zhao said that even ten years ago such options weren’t available, and, while people could buy gold, “nobody wants to buy it anymore”. People around the world are also becoming more aware of different economic impacts of governments’ actions, Zhao noted.

“And right now we’re in a situation where there’s [the Bitcoin] halving going on, so there’s a perfect storm,” he said, adding, “So the supply will be very, very limited and more and more people come in. I think in the next 12–18 months we’re gonna see a really significant increase in adoption in the crypto space.”

And now that Binance owns CoinMarketCap, it will benefit from that in more ways than one.