At the peak of his popularity, Changpeng Zhao's team devised a most efficient system to please his numerous fans and spread his fame. A Binance intern organized a line and asked each person in the line for their cell phone. Then, a company photographer would take the cameras, frame the fan next to Zhao, and shoot again and again, as if on an assembly line. “You can take 300 photos in 15 or 20 minutes,” he explained, on the social network X, Zhao, known as CZ, the initials of his name. The voracity of the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency buying and selling platform in the world, spread his image to the four corners of the planet, with effects that were not always desired. “Do not believe anyone who shows you a photo and says that he is close to CZ or Binance,” CZ himself warned against opportunists who sought to take advantage of his fame.
The scene, together with his almost nine million followers on X, gives us an idea of the extent to which CZ became a mass idol thanks to his dominance in the sector. With a paradox: his face is as well known in the bubble of those who invest in cryptocurrencies and devour everything that is published about them, as it is anonymous for those who have not entered that universe.
Born in Jiangsu (China) 46 years ago, Zhao has Canadian nationality. The son of two professors, he lived on the campus of the Hefei University of Science and Technology until August 1989, when at the age of 12, two months after the massacre of pro-democracy opponents in Tiananmen Square, they chose to escape the repressive wave unleashed by the Chinese authorities. “The line in front of the Canadian Embassy lasted three days,” Zhao said in a Binance blog article where he reviews his life.
Once in Vancouver, he worked at a McDonald's and at a service station to help out at home. But a poker game was about to change her destiny. A computer engineer from McGill University in Montreal, Zhao learns of the existence of a new form of electronic money. After four years working in New York for Bloomberg, in 2005 he moved to Shanghai to create a trading firm. There, his path crosses that of Bobby Lee, then CEO of BTC China—a bitcoin buying and selling platform in the Asian giant—and investor Ron Cao. They both tell him in the middle of a game of cards what cryptocurrencies are.
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The shock is instantaneous. Almost a religious revelation. This is the only way to explain why Zhao, possessed by blind confidence in something he was just starting, made a decision as drastic as selling his house in Shanghai to buy bitcoins. To anyone it would have seemed crazy. But he turned out fine. The rise in his share price would soon earn him a significant sum. Seeing that enormous potential stretch, he sets up Binance.
Its growth was exponential. In six months it became the favorite platform. “They worked with all possible currencies; “They met the demand of many users who were looking to speculate or invest, and they did not take regulatory requirements into account,” explains Javier Pastor, from the Spanish Bit2Me exchange. But once again, the Chinese government is standing in the way of their race by banning cryptocurrencies and blocking the platform. Binance workers, led by Zhao, leave the country. “The irony that I was once again forced to leave China (some 30 years after my parents fled with my sister and I),” he writes.
They go to Tokyo, then to Malta, and finally avoid talking about where they are based, limiting themselves to saying that their employees work remotely, but register in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands. Bloomberg includes CZ in the list of 50 most influential personalities. And at the beginning of 2022 he is already the richest man in Canada, with a fortune of $65 billion, with which he is close to Mark Zuckerberg and surpasses Amancio Ortega.
But the days of wine and roses for the sector are nearing their end. Or at least the music stops for a while at the party. In May 2022, Luna collapsed, and months later the FTX platform went bankrupt after a rescue attempt by Binance, which CZ finally refused so as not to end up dragged down by the company's chaotic management. Millions of investors lose their savings, and the heads of both firms, the South Korean Do Kwon and the American Sam Bankman-Fried, end up in prison. Distrust spreads, there is talk of crypto winter, a black period of money flight.
For a few months it seemed that CZ could emerge as a survivor and even emerge stronger. But an investigation in the United States has ended his career. In an agreement with the Department of Justice, he pleaded guilty to violating money laundering laws, accepted a fine of 45 million euros and left his position as CEO of Binance, sanctioned with almost 4 billion dollars.
It was the fall of the last great crypto prophet. While CZ has been forced to abandon his life's project, telling his loyal Twitter followers that he won't be appearing for a while, his finale could have been much worse. He maintains his shares in Binance, Forbes continues to assign him a fortune of 15 billion and he will not have to wait for patio time to stretch his legs from a prison.
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