Binance’s Helen Hai joins Justin Sun, Warren Buffett crypto power lunch

As we’re sure you’re aware, Justin Sun has a fast approaching lunch date with Warren Buffett.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Sun has been promoting the hell out of the auction prize. Last month, for instance, he announced on Twitter that he had selected San Francisco’s Quince, a “three-Michelin starred restaurant in the historic Jackson Square,” for the 25th July, $4.5 million meal.

It has now emerged that Helen Hai, Head of Binance Charity Foundation, will be there, alongside Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire and Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO, eToro. More attendees are set to be announced over the next few days.

Hai, who took on the Binance role last year, founded the Made In Africa initiative and is currently a UNIDO Goodwill Ambassador. “My end goal is to empower that bottom billion people in the world by a new creation of jobs and support through charity,” she said in an interview with Forbes last year.

“My hope is that through this new Blockchain Charity Foundation, we can take a huge step towards empowering them. This idea isn’t just typical of me; it springs from a whole generation of those brought up in the 70s and 80s in Asia. What we want is to share the same thing and together, we can reshape business.”

Hai hasn’t been without her critics, however. Some parts of her resumé paint her as not particularly charitable, according to a report by Breaker.

It noted that Hai once worked for Chinese shoe manufacturer Huajian Group, which operates a large factory in an industrial zone outside Addis Ababa and which has been criticised for the conditions it imposes on employees in both China and Ethiopia.

In 2017, Huajian Group made headlines when an activist was arrested after going undercover to look into labour abuses at a factory in China. The allegations investigated by Hua Haifeng included below minimum wage pay, verbal abuse of workers and the use of derogatory language towards female employees.

Binance did not respond to our request for comment.