Jack Robinson Signs Deal with World’s Largest Cryptocurrency Platform, Binance

Jack Robinson is a generational surfer. 8x CT winner, Olympic silver medalist, doggy door escape artist. He’s also a professional athlete living in an era when endemic sponsors are vanishing faster than two-dollar oysters at happy hour.

So yes, Jack took the Binance deal. Why wouldn’t he? The surf industry is on the bones of its ass.

In 2025, you don’t get to play coy about who pays the freight — you just pray they pay at all. As Florence exec Pat O’Connell put it in HSGP, “It’s like being given the wrong coffee order, but you have to say (in sincere), ‘Yes please.’”

If the dream is laying flat and owning homes in different area codes, and that means cashing a Binance cheque? You cash it. Then you duckdive the comments section.

But let’s not confuse necessity with legitimacy.

This week, Binance Australia announced its “first-of-its-kind” partnership with Jack Robinson. Their reasoning? Surfing and crypto are, apparently, “shared expressions of freedom.” A long bow — and a fascinating rebrand of decentralized finance — especially when you remember that Binance’s now-former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, recently pled guilty to federal money laundering charges and spent four months in prison.

Among the beneficiaries of his “freedom tech”? Hamas. Al-Qaeda. And, if you believe U.S. prosecutors, a laundry list of sanctioned regimes. You know — the kind of communities Binance was so eager to “connect with.”

Now, this same company is telling us that surfing and crypto are spiritual cousins.

“Jack’s fearless approach to surfing resonates with the ethos of Binance. Surfing is the ultimate expression of freedom, just as blockchain and crypto offer the freedom of financial self-expression,” said Binance’s director of community engagement, James Quinn-Kumar, probably after eating a fistful of golden tops.

Crypto, to be fair, is already in our bloodstream. It’s in our browsers, our tax returns, our advertising decks. The current U.S. President launched his own memecoin on day one in office, giving him the unique privilege of raising money from both Iowa corn farmers and Russian oligarchs. The old rules are gone. In their place is a new, janky alignment of vibes, volatility, and viral reach.

Didn’t you know digital derivatives have everything to do with a frontside blow-tail? Or that “doing your own research” is just another term for learning to read a wave? Crypto and surfing have been glued at the cultural hip since… well, not quite since the Duke first took his olo to Freshwater.

Jack will, of course, be fine. He’ll film some content. Treat us to a few explainers on blockchain fundamentals. Shake hands at a Binance event between heats. And then, like any good surfer, he’ll go back to the ocean and let the noise die in the dunes.

But for the rest of us — who actually live inside this cultural contradiction — the question remains: are we witnessing the evolution of surf sponsorships, or just the latest Ponzi to wrap itself in wax?

Probably both.

And in the meantime, Binance will keep doing what it does best: laundering its image in the warm, forgiving light of youth, freedom, and water.

Yeehaw Cowboys.