Binance picks He Yi, 36-year-old billionaire co-founder, to lead $7.5 billion VC arm

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is turning to one of its earliest leaders to help guide its venture capital effort.

On Wednesday, Binance announced that He Yi – its 36-year-old co-founder – would take over Binance Labs, the company’s venture capital arm.

Binance, in addition to being an exchange, has one of the largest investment funds in the crypto space. In a statement announcing the leadership change, the exchange claimed it had $7.5 billion under management, with a 2,100% return on investment since Binance Labs launched in 2018.

Binance has invested in over 200 companies, according to its statement, including in companies such as Sky Mavis, the developer behind the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, and Stepn, the so-called move-to-earn game that rewards runners with cryptocurrency.

He will take over Binance’s venture arm at a moment’s notice as its ambitions grow. Until recently, the exchange has only invested its own money in crypto startups. In June, it launched a $500 million fund with support from outside investors such as DST Global Partners, Breyer Capital and other institutional investors.

An ‘OG in the Blockchain Community’

He has been part of the cryptocurrency space for almost a decade, first entering the sector in 2014 as one of the founders of the cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin. “I am one of the OGs of the blockchain community,” she shared Fortune earlier this year.

She joined Binance in 2017, working with founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao. Since then, she has helped manage the exchange’s startup incubator and charitable arms and most recently served as chief marketing officer.

Zhao, in a statement to Fortune in July, calling him “one of the hardest working people I know on Earth, even today” and “integral to Binance’s success.”

Crypto noise

He takes over Binance Labs at a difficult time for the industry, as crashing cryptocurrency prices have sent several decentralized finance projects, such as cryptolender Celsius Network and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, into bankruptcy.

He told Bloomberg that that she sees the downturn as “the best time to invest more aggressively,” noting her past experience “through two bear markets.” That reflects a sentiment among other big investors who see the decline as a chance to build a stronger crypto industry.

During a previous bear market in crypto, he helped increase OKCoin’s market share in China by 60%.

Other crypto exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried have offered to bail out failing crypto businesses, such as Voyager Digital, to protect clients and stop contagion in the sector. “The mandate here was not to try to do amazing acquisitions. The mandate here was to do deals that are reasonable, maybe even a little bad, but not terrible,” Bankman-Fried said. Fortune. (Binance invested in FTX in 2019)

The new head of Binance Labs hinted that she would take a more cautious approach, saying that Binance “can’t buy something just for the sake of buying it,” to Bloomberg.

Some of Binance’s past investments have suffered from the broader crypto bust. Binance Labs was an early investor in Terraform Labs, the developer of the Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies that crashed earlier this year. The crypto exchange was a lead investor in a $32 million funding round in Terraform in 2018, investing $3 million of its own money.

After Terraform Labs’ cryptocurrencies lost almost all of their value in May, Zhao said Fortune June that “the whole situation was a disaster.”

Zhao also offered $500 billion in what he characterized as a “blank check” to help finance Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s — now stalled — purchase of Twitter.