Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao, known universally as CZ, built the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in under a year, ran it through a cycle that minted and burned hundreds of fortunes, and then pleaded guilty to a U.S. Bank Secrecy Act violation and served a short federal prison sentence. Few founders in any industry have compressed that much history into a single decade.

Origins

Zhao was born in Jiangsu, China, and moved to Canada with his family as a child. He trained as a software engineer, working on trading systems for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg's Tradebook before moving into crypto in 2013. He joined Blockchain.info and later OKCoin as CTO, absorbing the mechanics of retail exchanges from the inside.

Binance rises

In 2017 he launched Binance via an ICO that raised roughly $15 million. The exchange's timing was extraordinary: it opened just as the 2017 bull run began, offered a far wider altcoin selection than incumbents like Coinbase and Bitfinex, and ran on a matching engine that could handle the traffic spikes that broke rivals. Within six months Binance was the highest-volume crypto exchange in the world, and its native token BNB became one of the best-performing assets of the cycle. Binance moved its corporate center of gravity across jurisdictions — from China to Japan to Malta to effectively nowhere — a strategy Zhao summarized in his frequent claim that Binance had "no headquarters."

The empire expands

By 2021, Binance's spot, futures, and options volumes dwarfed every competitor combined. Zhao used the exchange's cash flow to fund Binance Labs, the BNB Chain (originally Binance Smart Chain), a fiat on-ramp network, and Binance.US as a regulator-friendly affiliate. BNB Chain became the home of cheap, high-throughput DeFi at a time when Ethereum fees were painful, though it was criticized for validator centralization. Zhao's personal Twitter account, with its "4" catchphrase and folksy tone, became one of the most-watched signals in the market.

The fall

The 2022 collapse of FTX reshaped Zhao's position overnight. His tweet that Binance would sell its FTX token holdings helped trigger the run that ended Sam Bankman-Fried's empire. For a few months Zhao was cast as the responsible adult of crypto. Then the U.S. Justice Department and CFTC caught up. In November 2023, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties; Zhao personally pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program and stepped down as CEO. He served four months in federal prison in 2024.

Controversies and context

Critics argue Binance operated for years as a regulatory-arbitrage machine, offering U.S. residents access to derivatives and tokens they could not legally trade, and that its internal compliance was structurally incapable of catching illicit flows. Supporters point out that the company served hundreds of millions of users in jurisdictions where traditional banks would not, that it was never accused of the kind of customer-fund commingling that sank FTX, and that the settlement explicitly did not allege theft. Both readings contain truth. What is not in dispute is that Binance under Zhao became systemically important to crypto — it set prices, cleared volume, and listed assets that lived or died by its decisions.

Life after prison

Zhao emerged from prison in 2024 still majority-owner of Binance, still one of the wealthiest people in crypto, and barred under his plea agreement from operating the exchange. He pivoted to investing through his family office and to public writing about education and AI. He has been notably less active on X than during his CEO years, though his occasional posts still move markets. Richard Teng, a former Abu Dhabi regulator, runs Binance day-to-day in his place.

Where he stands in 2026

In 2026, Zhao is a founder-in-exile figure — influential, wealthy, restricted from running the company he built. Binance remains dominant but faces sharper competition from Coinbase's international arm, OKX, Bybit, and the revived derivatives franchises of traditional-finance entrants. Zhao's public persona has softened; he speaks about wanting to fund education in developing countries and has suggested he will not return to exchange operations. The unresolved questions around him are whether he will take a more visible role in Binance's governance once his restrictions lapse, how his U.S. criminal record shapes Binance's long-running attempts to regularize its relationship with American regulators, and whether his founder aura can survive years of being formally on the sidelines.