The person behind the biggest cryptocurrency exchange: Who is Changpeng Zhao?

Binance founder Zhao, who became a billionaire in a short period of 180 days, is the CEO of Binance and owns 30% of the shares. Zhao, who was born in China's Jiangsu province in 1977 and immigrated to Canada from China with his family at the age of 12, used to cook meatballs on the grill at a hamburger restaurant and fill customers' tanks during the night shift at the gas station before reaching his current fortune.

Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as "CZ", is a Chinese-Canadian business executive. Zhao is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of July 2022. CZ was born in Jiangsu, China and moved to Canada at a young age with his family. He is currently based in Singapore.

Changpeng Zhao, with a fortune of $ 1.9 billion, entered Forbes' recently announced billionaires list as the cryptocurrency rich.

Known as 'CZ' for short, the founder said, "I don't care much for Forbes rankings. “I think at some point this ranking becomes a meaningless metric.” He also says that having a lot of money is not a big deal.

Binance has offices in many different parts of the world. “I have a habit of moving a lot, but this gives me more contact with the world,” said the CEO, and this habit underlies his vision to enter the cryptocurrency exchange business.

Zhao, who has difficulties in transacting with traditional currencies and transitioning between different currencies because he travels frequently, said, “It is very difficult to use traditional money in cross-border transactions and you make a big loss due to Exchange Rates. Every time you buy foreign currency at the airport, you lose 10 percent, so the cost is very high,” he says.

Therefore, wherever he goes, he tries to make his payments with crypto money. “Sometimes I need traditional money. Then I went to a friend and said, 'Can you give me $500? In return, I'll give you Binance Coin,' I say. Most of them are kind enough to say yes, so I can handle it," he says.

HOW DID HE MEET WITH CRYPTO?

CZ stumbles upon the Bitcoin product offering in 2013 and says that the idea of ​​cryptocurrencies appealed to him from the very first moment.

“I immediately understood the benefits. The point I wanted to verify was whether there was a community behind it,” said Zhao, who attended the Bitcoin conference held in Las Vegas in December the same year and saw that the community behind Bitcoin was mostly software developers, not “drug barons” as read on the internet.

“I thought, 'This is the future.' I realized that there was going to be something even bigger than the internet. I was not in a position to catch the trend, I was a low-level software developer. But I thought I couldn't miss it and I invested all my money in this business,” said Zhao, and left Shanghai-based Fusion Systems, of which he was one of the founders, in 2005, right after the conference. The following year, he sold his apartment and bought Bitcoin with his money.

Although the value of Bitcoin, which was $ 600 when he bought it, decreased to $ 200 in 2 years, Zhao did not give up and did not sell his Bitcoins. Stating that he only made small sales when he was in a difficult situation, Zhao also states that he still holds the first Bitcoins he bought today.

Zhao founded Binance three years later in June 2017. Binance became the largest cryptocurrency market in terms of trading volume, 180 days after its opening with a crypto money volume of 15 million dollars, and saw a value of 1 billion dollars. Binance has many sub-channels such as investment, purchasing and philanthropy. In June 2022, they launched the NFT market.

The value of Binance Coin, known by the abbreviation BNB, saw 614.15 on April 30, 2022. This means that the value of the company has reached 94 billion dollars.

5 FAILED START-UPS BEFORE BINANCE

It is obvious that Binance has achieved great success in 6 months. But before these 180 days, there are other efforts and failures. Zhao, who has launched 5 failed startups before Binance, said, “When people say that, they ignore the previous 17 years. At that time, I tried different things, gained experience, established a team and a network of relationships. I've had many failures. For me, it's not 180 days, it's 17 years plus 180 days,” he says.

Neither a house nor a car, all his wealth is in cryptocurrencies

Zhao, whose fortune is $ 1.9 billion, does not own yachts, luxury cars, private jets or billions of dollars worth of homes, unlike other billionaires. Zhao, who has invested all his money in Bitcoin and BNB, said, “I don't understand this fancy stuff. When I look around, I don't see any physical assets that will retain their value and will appreciate over time. “Nothing holds its value as much as cryptocurrencies and nothing grows as fast as cryptocurrencies,” he says.

Although he spends money on technological devices such as computers and phones from time to time, he does not hide that he regrets the loss of value in a short time. “I normally use a device for about a month. I throw it away when I move. That's why I don't invest in physical assets,” said Zhao, who is determined to remain crypto-rich.

CZ only trades once or twice a year. He describes himself more as a "hodler" (person who prefers to hold crypto) and holds large amounts of BNB and Bitcoin (BTC).

How does CZ spend a day?

Zhao, who does not have the comforts of working 4 hours a week or morning routines such as getting up at 4 and meditating for an hour, describes one day as follows:

“I sleep late and start the day late. I start work around 9 am and work until about midnight. I also take random breaks in between. I even take a nap when I'm tired. But every day, I attend 15-20 meetings and interviews on average.”

7 October 2022

$100 million worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in a late-night attack on Binance Smart Chain. Transactions on Binance's native blockchain are temporarily suspended. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that the issue is closed and investors' money is safe.

11 October 2022

Binance CEO Zhao Reiterates Investment Offer to Elon Musk

Speaking to Bloomberg, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, said that despite the long-running harsh crypto winter, they could spend more than $1 billion on acquisitions and investments this year. Zhao also reiterated that they want to support Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter.

Binance came to the fore in May with the news that it wanted to invest in Elon Musk's $ 44 billion bid to buy Twitter.