He Yi, co-founder and co-CEO of Binance, stated that her first BNB was not allocated or gifted by the company, but was purchased with her own funds; she summarized her subsequent involvement in the development of Binance and the BNB ecosystem with the phrase "later on, everyone knows."

Public information shows that He Yi co-founded the digital asset exchange OKCoin in 2014 and worked with Zhao Changpeng on that platform; after Zhao left in 2015, He Yi served as Vice President at Yixia Technology, responsible for branding and marketing. She joined Zhao's newly founded Binance in August 2017, overseeing growth, marketing, community, and user-side operations.

BNB was launched with Binance in 2017, initially issued as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, primarily used for paying trading fees on the platform and obtaining fee discounts; it migrated to Binance Chain in 2019 and became the native asset of BNB Chain after 2022, used for on-chain transaction fees, staking, and governance.

He Yi's statement juxtaposes her early personal purchase with subsequent platform development, but she did not disclose the purchase date, price, quantity, whether she continues to hold it, current wallet address, or position size of her first BNB. Therefore, it is not possible to infer her personal BNB position, cost basis, or unrealized gains from this statement.

Binance is currently co-led by He Yi and Richard Teng as co-CEOs. Public reports indicate that He Yi is responsible for user-side operations such as product, branding, marketing, customer service, and company culture; Teng handles compliance, international expansion, and external regulatory communication. Their division of responsibilities reflects Binance's restructuring of its management framework between growth and compliance.

In market mechanisms, such personal narratives from founders do not directly alter BNB's supply, burn rules, on-chain fees, or staking rewards, but they reinforce the market's perception of the "founding team being long-term bound to BNB." Buyers typically view this as a confidence signal from the ecosystem, while sellers are short-term funds that cash out through emotion-driven price fluctuations. Ultimately, the long-term capital flow of BNB is still determined by Binance's trading volume, BNB Chain activity, fee demand, token burn execution, and regulatory risks in various regions.

Source: Public Information