Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian entrepreneur, investor, software engineer, and the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. He is one of the most influential figures in the crypto industry and has a net worth of over $15 billion as of November 2023.
Zhao was born on February 5, 1977 in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, China. His parents were both schoolteachers, but his father was persecuted and exiled to rural areas during the Cultural Revolution for being a “pro-bourgeois intellect”. When Zhao was 12 years old, his family immigrated to Canada, where he settled in Vancouver, British Columbia. He helped his family by working various part-time jobs, such as flipping burgers at McDonald’s and working at a gas station.
Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science. After graduating, he landed an internship in Tokyo, working for a subcontractor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. He then worked for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook, where he was a developer of futures trading software.
In 2005, Zhao moved to Shanghai to start his own business, Fusion Systems, which provided high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stockbrokers . He first heard of Bitcoin in 2013, when he played poker with Bobby Lee, the founder of BTCC and the brother of Litecoin creator Charlie Lee. Lee advised Zhao to invest 10% of his money in Bitcoin, but Zhao decided to go “all in” and sold his apartment in Shanghai and put all his savings into Bitcoin.
In 2013, Zhao joined Blockchain.info, a popular Bitcoin wallet and explorer service, as a member of the development team. He also became the chief technology officer of OKCoin, a major Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, but he resigned in 2015 due to disagreements with the founder.
In 2017, Zhao founded Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that offered low fees, high liquidity, and a wide range of coins and tokens. He raised $15 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) for Binance Coin (BNB), a utility token that gave users discounts on trading fees and other benefits . Binance launched on July 14, 2017, and within a year, it became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume .
Zhao led Binance to become a global and decentralized operation, with no fixed headquarters and a distributed workforce. He also expanded Binance’s offerings to include futures, options, margin, lending, staking, mining, and decentralized finance (DeFi) products. In 2022, Binance announced plans to buy a minority stake in Forbes, a leading business media company, via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) transaction.
Zhao has faced regulatory challenges and investigations from various countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and China, over concerns of facilitating money laundering, tax evasion, and illegal activities through Binance. Zhao has denied any wrongdoing and has stated that Binance complies with local laws and regulations wherever it operates.
Zhao is currently based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he holds a citizenship. He is also a citizen of Canada. He is 46 years old as of November 2023. He is ranked as the 69th-richest person in the world and the 22nd-richest person in Singapore by Forbes. He is widely regarded as a visionary and a pioneer in the crypto space, and has a loyal fan base of over 5 million followers on Twitter.