Binance co-CEO Yi He has condemned sexual rumors targeting women in the cryptocurrency industry and pledged legal support for female employees affected by the attacks.
Summary
- Binance’s legal department will provide protection for female employees targeted by fabricated sexual rumors.
- Yi He described attacks involving women at rival exchanges, BNB projects and industry partners.
- Her statement did not announce a lawsuit, identify defendants or specify a legal jurisdiction.
Yi He, in a Nov. 11 X post, said women working across the industry had been dragged into fabricated scandals, including employees whose photographs had circulated alongside the claims.
She described a pattern in which women representing companies in public became targets during business competition. Her criticism covered attacks on Binance staff, women working on BNB ecosystem projects, influencers who had worked with the exchange and female employees of competitors.
Binance promises legal protection for affected employees
The clearest commitment in the statement concerned the exchange’s own workforce. Yi He said Binance’s legal department would provide legal protection for the female employees involved, while inviting women to join a workplace she described as fair and transparent.
“Going forward, our legal department will provide legal protection for the female employees involved at Binance,” she wrote, according to the English translation displayed on X.
Yi He describes repeated attacks on women in public roles
Explaining what prompted her response, the Binance executive referred to online discussions over the preceding two days that had drawn women into sexualized speculation. She described earlier instances in which Chinese-language news outlets repeated claims she attributed to a competitor and published photographs of female employees.
In her account, the attacks had persisted against several staff members and spread beyond the exchange. She said she had personally faced fabricated claims after someone stole and misused her identification.
Yi He described herself as able to withstand criticism, but expressed concern about the effect on employees’ families and friends when the material appeared repeatedly in the media. She said the women involved continued handling customer problems without bringing their distress to her.
A reply from the verified Misa_OKX account thanked her for speaking up for women. In a separate follow-up shown in the thread, Yi He questioned the motives behind such attacks, saying people should examine what an action’s author stood to gain.
Workplace bias has featured in other women’s accounts
The Binance executive tied her criticism to unequal opportunities at work, arguing that women who reached leadership positions had often invested more time and effort to overcome obstacles. She said professional achievements should be judged without regard to gender and described workplace harassment as common.
Discussing hiring, she pointed to parental leave and employers’ assumptions about women’s commitment to their careers. Her post included criticism of an attitude she attributed to some women who viewed marriage as an alternative when work became unsatisfying.
She argued that such expectations contributed to managers preferring male candidates. Alongside her defense of employees facing rumors, she called for equal treatment based on professional results and addressed women’s own expectations of working life.
Other women in the industry have publicly discussed different forms of bias. In a November 2023 interview, crypto.news previously reported on Gracy Chen’s experiences of gender bias in fundraising. Chen, then Bitget’s managing director, said she encountered both subtle and overt prejudice while raising money for a technology startup.
She proposed internal diversity committees with authority over hiring and promotion, alongside mentorship and leadership training. Communications founder Mary Pedler, interviewed for the same article, said women made up 80% of her team.
Concerns about women’s participation continued this year. At EthCC in April, growth and community specialist Sarah Akwisombe linked fewer women attending to cuts in events, marketing and public relations, roles she said had a high concentration of women.
Her comments concerned job losses and conference attendance, rather than the sexual rumors described by Yi He.
A March 2025 examination of the sector’s gender and pay gaps cited Pantera Capital’s 2024 survey of 502 US respondents. Women in that sample had median salaries 14.67% higher than men’s. Pantera linked the finding partly to experience: women respondents tended to hold positions requiring at least five years of experience, while entry-level roles were more often occupied by men.
