Changpeng Zhao

Zhao was born in 1977 in Jiangsu Province, China. His parents worked in education; in 1989, at age 12, Zhao moved with his family to Vancouver, Canada. Fortune’s profile investigation records that during high school he worked at McDonald’sMcDonald’sMcDonald’s is a publicly traded restaurant company headquartered in Chicago, known for hamburgers, fries, drive-thrus and its franchise network. Its origins lie in the restaurant opened by Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1940; Ray Kroc expanded franchising from 1955. It operates across more than 100 countries, with the great majority of restaurants run by independent operators.Open the full entry for about two years and spent one summer working night shifts at a ChevronChevronChevron is an integrated energy company headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker CVX). Its history dates back to Pacific Coast Oil Co., founded in 1879, and it adopted the name Chevron Corporation after acquiring Gulf Oil in 1984.Open the full entry gas station. In a 2026 interview with the All-In Podcast, Zhao further recalled that he applied for a job at McDonald’s at about age 14, at an hourly wage of C$4.50, which was his first income; this wage figure is his own recollection many years later. Regarding his date of birth, reliable public sources generally confirm the year, but their records of the month and day are inconsistent.⁠[2][3]

After graduating from high school in 1995, Zhao went to McGill University in Montreal, initially studying biology and switching to computer science after one semester. He worked every summer while at university and in 1999 was involved in publishing a paper related to artificial intelligence. Fortune’s interviews with him and people around him indicate that in 2000 he turned a summer internship with a contractor related to the Tokyo Stock Exchange into a full-time job and did not return to school to complete his studies. That work involved developing order-matching software for the exchange. He then joined Bloomberg Tradebook, working in New York on the development of futures trading software, and gained experience in matching, market data, and low-latency trading systems in financial centers such as Tokyo and New York. Zhao has also said that reading Rich Dad Poor Dad during university led him to begin seriously considering starting a business.⁠[2]

In 2005, Zhao moved to Shanghai and founded Fusion Systems with four partners. The company provided high-frequency trading and trading-system software to financial institutions on a software-as-a-service model, with clients including large institutions such as Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and Credit Suisse. For Zhao, this experience extended his engineering skills into enterprise sales, cross-regional team management, and financial-market infrastructure.⁠[2]

In 2013, Zhao encountered Bitcoin during a card game, then studied the digital asset systematically and left Fusion Systems, shifting his career focus to cryptocurrency. He first joined Blockchain.info (now Blockchain.com) as head of technology, working on its wallet and Bitcoin infrastructure business. In memoir material published later, Zhao said that in December 2013 he traveled to Las Vegas for a Bitcoin event and there met Vitalik ButerinVitalik ButerinVitalik Buterin is the originator of Ethereum, the author of its whitepaper, and one of its eight co-founders, as well as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. The Ethereum Foundation calls him the inventor of Ethereum; he has long been involved in protocol research and public discussion, but does not control the network as a CEO.Open the full entry, who was then still working at Bitcoin Magazine, and Charlie LeeCharlie LeeCharlie Lee is a software engineer, the creator of Litecoin, and the head of the Litecoin Foundation. While working at Google, he designed and fairly launched Litecoin in 2011; he later joined Coinbase and has continued to help coordinate Litecoin protocol upgrades such as SegWit and MWEB.Open the full entry; this detail comes mainly from his own recollection many years later.⁠[2][4]

According to Fortune’s 2023 interviews with Zhao and people around him, Zhao sold a property in Shanghai in 2014 and put most of the proceeds into Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s price later fell significantly for a time, but he did not leave the industry as a result. This detail comes from Zhao’s personal retrospective many years later.⁠[2]

After about a year at Blockchain.info, Zhao was hired around 2014 as chief technology officer of the Chinese cryptocurrency trading platform OKCoin, responsible for the trading system and the technical team. Fortune’s investigative report describes his role as a hired chief technology officer, not as a co-founder of OKCoin. About eight months later, he disagreed with founder Star Xu over the company’s direction and left in 2015; after his departure, the two sides publicly disputed matters such as the platform’s trading volume, its reserves, and his personal history, and their respective accounts did not fully agree.⁠[2]

After leaving OKCoin, Zhao founded Bijie Technology in Shanghai, providing cloud-based software-as-a-service trading systems to cryptocurrency exchanges. Fortune’s investigative report states that within about two years its technology supported about 30 trading platforms in China; this trading infrastructure and team experience subsequently became an important technical and organizational foundation for the creation of Binance in 2017.⁠[2]

On June 14, 2017, Zhao began forming a plan to raise funds for Binance through a platform token; the white paper released on June 18 set out the issuance and uses of BNBBNBBNB is the native crypto asset of BNB Chain. It was launched by the Binance ecosystem through a token offering in 2017, originally ran on Ethereum, migrated to Binance Chain in 2019, and has since been used for fees, staking, and governance on BNB Smart Chain. Its supply mechanism combines the periodic Auto-Burn with the BEP-95 real-time burn.Open the full entry, the token sale took place around June 26 to July 3, and the Binance trading platform began operating on July 14. Zhao later said the offering raised about $15 million; a 2023 on-chain investigation by ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry, however, estimated that far fewer BNB may have been sold to the public than the white paper planned, and that the amount actually raised may have been less than $5 million.⁠[5]

Hong Kong High Court judgment records show that SCC Venture VI Holdco G, an entity affiliated with Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry, and Zhao’s side began investment negotiations around August 2017 and signed a term sheet on August 25: it proposed investing RMB 60 million at a pre-money valuation of RMB 500 million, giving it about 10.714% of the shares upon completion; the term sheet as a whole was not legally binding, with exceptions for certain specified clauses. On September 1, the two sides signed a $1 million bridge loan promissory note, which included an agreement to negotiate exclusively on a Series A financing before March 1, 2018. On December 14, Zhao’s side said existing shareholders considered the valuation too low; on the same day, IDG proposed a Series B plan to invest a total of $18 million in two tranches, at a significantly higher valuation. On December 19, SCC sent a lawyer’s letter demanding that Zhao stop negotiating with other investors on the relevant equity transaction by December 20 and continue with the original Series A financing. On December 27, SCC obtained an interim injunction without notifying Zhao’s side, restricting it from signing a Series A financing agreement with other parties before March 1, 2018. On April 24, 2018, the Hong Kong High Court found that SCC should not have applied for the injunction through a unilateral, without-notice procedure; had the injunction not yet expired at that time, the court would have discharged it on this procedural ground alone. The court also made clear that substantive issues, such as whether the financing exclusivity clause had been breached and damages, were matters for separate arbitration.⁠[6]

In September 2017, Chinese regulators banned initial coin offerings and pushed domestic cryptocurrency trading platforms to exit. Binance subsequently moved its core business out of China and sought operating room successively in places such as Japan and Malta, but for a long time did not describe itself as having a headquarters in any single country. The rapid relocation helped the platform continue serving customers worldwide, but also made it difficult to match legal entities, actual places of business, and regulatory responsibility, becoming an important background to later regulatory disputes in multiple countries.⁠[2]

On February 7, 2018, Forbes featured Zhao in its first special report on the richest people in cryptocurrency and put him on the cover, estimating his net worth at about $1.1 billion to $2 billion. The report stated that about seven months after launch, Binance had about 6 million users and had become the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform by trading volume. The wealth estimate depended on BNB holdings, his stake in Binance, and market prices, and was the media outlet’s estimate at the time.⁠[7]

On March 13, 2018, Binance announced the development of its own blockchain, Binance ChainBNB ChainBNB Chain is a multichain blockchain ecosystem with BNB as its native asset. Its core includes the Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible BNB Smart Chain, the opBNB layer-2 network and the decentralized storage network BNB Greenfield; its history traces to Binance Chain, launched in 2019.Open the full entry. The official description positioned it as infrastructure for the issuance, transfer, and trading of blockchain assets, and said Binance would gradually evolve from a single centralized trading platform into a community that also builds decentralized trading capabilities. The announcement was an early public starting point for the later Binance DEX and the Binance Chain ecosystem.⁠[8]

In August 2018, Zhao assessed in a public interview that general-purpose smart contract platforms such as Ethereum and EOS might struggle to support all applications in the long term because of performance and scaling limitations, and predicted that blockchains optimized for specific uses would occupy an important position. This was his technical and business assessment in 2018.⁠[9]

On December 4, 2018, Binance announced further progress on Binance Chain, saying it planned to launch the network in the coming months and to allow projects to issue and trade tokens on the chain. Zhao also said that Binance’s trading volume at the time had fallen by about 90% from its January 2018 peak, but that the company remained profitable; he regarded the bear market as an industry cycle and continued building infrastructure. This statement reflected Binance’s strategy of expanding from a trading platform into an on-chain ecosystem during the market downturn.⁠[10]

In September 2019, Binance.USBinance.USBinance.US is a cryptocurrency trading platform for U.S. users, established in 2019 and operated by BAM Trading Services separately from the global exchange Binance. After the SEC sued its operator in 2023, the platform became crypto-only; it restored U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals in February 2025, and the SEC dismissed its case that May. Stephen Gregory has been chief executive since March 2026.Open the full entry, aimed at U.S. customers, launched. Its official materials stated that the platform was operated by BAM Trading Services and used matching-engine and wallet technology licensed from Binance; it presented itself as an independent U.S. digital asset marketplace. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later alleged that Zhao and Binance still had substantial behind-the-scenes influence over the operations of Binance.US and allowed some high-value U.S. customers to continue using Binance.com; these were allegations made by the regulator in a 2023 civil lawsuit, not facts already adjudicated in 2019. In 2020–2021, as Binance’s products and user base grew, regulators in multiple countries began intensively reviewing its licensing, derivatives, customer identification, and consumer protection arrangements, and Binance subsequently strengthened identity verification and its compliance team.⁠[11][12]

On May 25, 2022, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met Zhao at the presidential residence. They discussed long-term cooperation between relevant Kazakh government bodies and Binance in digital finance, joint blockchain education projects, and the idea of building Kazakhstan into a regional crypto-industry hub. Afterward, in Tokayev’s presence, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry signed a memorandum of cooperation with Binance. The meeting extended Zhao’s global expansion, previously aimed mainly at businesses and users, into cooperation at the national level on digital asset policy, talent development, and regulatory frameworks.⁠[13]

In early July 2022, Zhao visited Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. On July 5, he met Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara at the presidential palace in Abidjan, where they discussed the economic, financial, and regulatory issues involved in bringing cryptocurrency into commercial exchange; on July 6, he met President Macky Sall in Senegal and spoke with the local central bank and representatives of the Binance community. Binance subsequently stated that the purposes of the visit included discussing with policymakers the role of blockchain in financial access and partnering with Jokkolabs to fund community education workshops. The meetings showed that Zhao at the time placed trading-platform expansion, crypto education, and policy communication within a single African market strategy.⁠[14]

On August 5, 2022, Zhao met Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Zhao said they discussed education, investment, regulatory frameworks, and crypto-asset adoption; Touadéra’s public statement also listed the vision of the country’s Sango project as one of the topics. The meeting took place against the background of the Central African Republic having announced the adoption of Bitcoin that year and promoting its own digital asset project, but public records did not disclose any specific investment commitments, contracts, or regulatory texts.⁠[15]

On November 6, 2022, after reports about Alameda Research’s balance sheet raised market concerns, Zhao announced that Binance would gradually sell its holdings of FTT, the FTXFTXFTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that operated FTX.com, moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021 and was valued at $32 billion in January 2022. In November 2022 it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection amid a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges. Its reorganization plan took effect in January 2025, after which the FTX Recovery Trust began paying creditors in stages.Open the full entry platform token. On November 8, Binance and FTX signed a non-binding letter of intent for an acquisition, with Binance saying FTX was facing a severe liquidity crisis; after completing initial due diligence, Binance abandoned the deal on November 9. On November 11, FTX and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection. Zhao’s public statements and Binance’s actions accelerated the run on FTX and the decline in prices, but the misappropriation of customer assets and the financial shortfall disclosed later were the core causes of FTX’s bankruptcy.⁠[16]

On March 27, 2023, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading CommissionCommodity Futures Trading CommissionThe U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent federal agency created by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 and operating since 1975 to regulate futures, options and swaps markets; it has treated bitcoin and other virtual currencies as commodities since 2015 and has been chaired since December 22, 2025 by Michael Selig.Open the full entry (CFTC) sued Binance-related entities, Zhao, and former chief compliance officer Samuel Lim in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The CFTC alleged that Binance illegally offered digital asset derivatives to U.S. customers and used a complex entity structure and internal arrangements to evade the Commodity Exchange Act and customer identification requirements; the regulator said Zhao participated in devising and promoting the relevant strategy. At that point these were civil allegations, which were subsequently resolved through a settlement and court order in the same year.⁠[17]

On June 5, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought 13 charges against Binance, BAM Trading, BAM Management, and Zhao, including operating unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers, and clearing agencies; the unregistered offer and sale of certain crypto assets; and making misleading statements about control of Binance.US, trade surveillance, and customer asset arrangements. Zhao and the related companies denied some of the charges and mounted a defense in the litigation. The case was later dismissed with prejudice in 2025 on the parties’ joint motion, without a final judgment on all factual and legal claims.⁠[11]

On November 21, 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act: he admitted that, as Binance’s founder and chief executive officer, he caused the company to fail to establish and maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program. Zhao personally agreed to pay a $50 million criminal fine and resigned as Binance’s chief executive officer; his plea agreement restricted his participation in Binance’s day-to-day management, but he retained his ownership interest in the company. The $50 million was Zhao’s personal criminal fine and does not include the $4.3161 billion in criminal fines and forfeiture borne by Binance as a company on the same day.⁠[18]

On the same day, Binance as a company admitted to offenses including violating the Bank Secrecy Act, operating an unregistered money transmitting business, and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and agreed to forfeit $2,510,650,588 and pay a criminal fine of $1,805,475,575, for an exact total of $4,316,126,163. The Department of Justice said that from August 2017 to October 2022, U.S. users conducted trillions of dollars in transactions on Binance, bringing the company more than $1.6 billion in profit; from January 2018 to May 2022, transactions between U.S. users and users ordinarily resident in Iran exceeded $898 million. Binance did not fully require customer identity verification until August 2021, unverified users could still trade until May 2022, and during the relevant period it never filed a suspicious activity report with FinCEN. The agreement also required the company to accept three years of independent compliance monitoring and to remediate its anti-money-laundering and sanctions controls. The Department of Justice explicitly stated that about $1.8 billion could be credited against obligations to the CFTC, FinCEN, and OFAC under the coordinated resolution, showing that the $4.3161 billion overlaps with figures published by other agencies.⁠[19]

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed a $3.4 billion civil money penalty against Binance. The actual settlement structure of its consent order was: credit for $2.47 billion paid by Binance to the Department of Justice and the CFTC; $780 million paid by Binance directly to the U.S. Treasury; and a further $150 million suspended, which could become payable upon notice if the company breached its commitments under the consent order. FinCEN also imposed a five-year monitorship, requiring Binance to fully exit the U.S. market, remediate its customer identification and anti-money-laundering procedures, and retroactively file previously missed suspicious activity reports. FinCEN said the company failed to report well over 100,000 suspicious transactions involving terrorist financing, ransomware, child sexual abuse material, scams, darknet markets, and hacking. The $3.4 billion is an assessed amount and does not mean an additional $3.4 billion in cash outlays beyond the payments to other agencies.⁠[20]

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reached a $968,618,825 settlement with Binance, addressing 1,667,153 transactions from August 2017 to October 2022 that apparently violated multiple U.S. sanctions programs. OFAC determined that the conduct was egregious and was not voluntarily self-disclosed by Binance; the settlement also included a five-year independent monitorship. Because the same conduct was also addressed in the Department of Justice’s criminal case, OFAC agreed that $898,618,825 of that amount could be satisfied by an equal amount of Binance’s payments under the Department of Justice agreement, so the company paid $70 million directly to the U.S. Treasury under the OFAC agreement. This credit arrangement again shows that the headline amounts announced separately by the Department of Justice, FinCEN, OFAC, and the CFTC cannot simply be added together.⁠[21]

The court signed the final consent order on December 14, 2023, and the CFTC announced it on December 18. Zhao personally bore a $150 million civil penalty, payable in three installments of $50 million each within 30, 90, and 180 days after the order took effect. Binance as a company was separately required to disgorge $1.35 billion in trading fees found to have been improperly obtained and to pay a $1.35 billion civil penalty, for a nominal total of $2.7 billion; however, the order allowed the Department of Justice’s criminal forfeiture to offset the disgorgement dollar for dollar, and allowed $500 million of the company’s civil penalty to be offset by payments in the criminal case and to FinCEN, so this $2.7 billion likewise cannot be mechanically added to the company figures announced by other agencies. The order also required Binance to fully implement customer identity verification, offboard noncompliant accounts and sub-accounts, and establish a board of directors, a compliance committee, and an audit committee that include independent members.⁠[22]

On March 18–19, 2024, while awaiting sentencing in the criminal case, Zhao announced the education project Giggle Academy and began recruiting. The project was positioned as a free, gamified, adaptive basic-education platform for children worldwide, focused on serving areas with insufficient educational resources, with a curriculum planned to cover primary school through high school. Early concept documents discussed mechanisms such as points and badges, but Zhao explicitly said the project would not issue a cryptocurrency; its public website later described it as a free online learning platform for children.⁠[23]

On April 30, 2024, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones sentenced Zhao to four months in prison and confirmed the $50 million personal criminal fine under the plea agreement; prosecutors had sought a three-year prison sentence, and the final sentence was significantly lower than that request. The offense in the case was failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, not fraud, theft, or misappropriation of customer assets. Counting only the amounts that public rulings and agreements explicitly assign to Zhao personally, he bore $50 million in the criminal case and $150 million under the CFTC civil order, for a total of $200 million; the $4.3161 billion in criminal fines and forfeiture and the other corporate regulatory settlements borne by Binance as a company were not fines of billions of dollars imposed on Zhao personally.⁠[24]

On September 27, 2024, Zhao was released from a correctional facility in California, completing his four-month sentence. After his release, he no longer served as Binance’s chief executive officer and remained subject to the corporate management restrictions in the plea agreement; his public activities gradually shifted to education, investment, and policy advisory work. Outside reports have sometimes summarized the case as a “money laundering offense”, but the more accurate legal description is a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act through failure to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.⁠[25]

On January 23, 2025, the former Binance Labs was renamed YZi Labs and expanded its investment scope from cryptocurrency and blockchain to Web3, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. YZi Labs said that Ella Zhang, who had helped build Binance Labs, returned to lead it after founding an artificial intelligence startup; Zhao is actively involved in its investment activities, providing advice and mentorship to founders, but public information does not give him a formal title in the traditional corporate sense. The organization has been described as an independent investment vehicle or family office, not an operating unit of the Binance trading platform.⁠[26][27]

On April 22, 2025, Zhao met Malaysian Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim to discuss Malaysia’s potential to become a hub for the digital asset and blockchain industry. Anwar said afterward that he welcomed continued discussions by the Securities Commission Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia, and the Ministry of Digital on ways to promote responsible innovation, and mentioned digitalization, the tokenization of financial instruments, and other blockchain applications. Public materials did not disclose any signed agreement, investment commitment, license approval, or arrangement for Binance to resume local operations; Zhao was no longer Binance’s chief executive officer at the time.⁠[28]

On May 3, 2025, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov met Zhao in Cholpon-Ata, where they discussed virtual assets, blockchain technology, cybersecurity, and the governance of digital threats. Afterward, the president presented Zhao with a certificate appointing him public adviser to the President of the Kyrgyz Republic on digital asset development. The position is a policy advisory role and is not equivalent to a government executive post.⁠[29]

On May 29, 2025, the SEC, the Binance-related entities, and Zhao jointly filed a motion with the court to dismiss with prejudice, and the court subsequently closed the civil case. “With prejudice” means the SEC cannot refile the same claims; the SEC said the decision was based on the Commission’s policy discretion in crypto-asset regulation and should not be understood as a change in its position in other cases. The dismissal also does not undo Zhao’s guilty plea or sentence in the separate criminal case, or the CFTC final order.⁠[30]

On August 27, 2025, Zhao attended CryptoFi Forum 2025, hosted by HKU Business School and MetaEra, and held a conversation with the school’s associate dean, Chen Lin. The University of Hong Kong’s event record shows that the discussion covered stablecoins, the tokenization of real-world assets, the future shape of trading platforms, and Hong Kong’s digital finance opportunities. The event was one of his more closely watched public appearances in the Chinese-speaking world after stepping down as Binance’s chief executive officer.⁠[31]

On October 2, 2025, Zhao met Kazakh President Tokayev again during the Digital Bridge 2025 international forum in Astana. The Kazakh president’s press office said Tokayev acknowledged Zhao’s personal influence on the global crypto industry and the fintech ecosystem, and recalled the memorandum of cooperation signed after the 2022 visit and the arrangements for a regional crypto hub; the official readout said Kazakhstan had since advanced more projects in blockchain and crypto technology. The meeting reaffirmed the progress of the cooperation three years on, but the official record did not publish any new binding agreement terms.⁠[32]

On October 21, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a pardon for Zhao. The U.S. Department of Justice pardon record lists his four-month sentence and $50 million fine of April 30, 2024, and summarizes the offense as failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program. A presidential pardon removes the legal consequences of a federal conviction, but it does not rewrite the facts already established in the guilty plea and court records, nor does it automatically undo Binance’s settlement obligations as a company or the CFTC civil order. The pardon sparked political controversy because of the business ties among Zhao, Binance, and the Trump family’s crypto business; the parties hold differing views on whether a conflict of interest exists.⁠[33]

On December 4, 2025, at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Zhao held a public debate on “Bitcoin versus tokenized gold” with Peter Schiff, an economist, gold advocate, and Bitcoin critic. The two compared the assets in terms of store of value, medium of payment, scarcity, divisibility, portability, and verifiability. Zhao emphasized that Bitcoin ownership and supply can be verified through the public ledger and nodes, and produced on stage a gold bar marked with its weight, purity, and serial number, asking Schiff to judge whether it was genuine; Schiff replied that he could not confirm it by appearance alone, prompting discussion in the audience. Schiff, for his part, argued that gold has physical and industrial uses and that tokenization can improve the transfer and divisibility of traditional gold. The segment was a public clash between two views of money and does not constitute an objective conclusion about the value of, or investment returns on, any asset.⁠[34]

On January 23, 2026, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zhao gave an interview to Andrew Ross Sorkin, host of the U.S. network CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry’s Squawk Box. The interview covered his four months in prison, the 2025 presidential pardon, the controversy over Binance and the Trump family’s crypto business, the FTX crisis, whether he would return to Binance, and his view of the Bitcoin market. Zhao said the pardon removed the “mental burden” of being a convicted person, that he had never spoken with Trump, and denied that Binance’s acceptance of payment in a stablecoin issued by a company linked to the Trump family amounted to a political deal; these were all his own responses to the controversy. Zhao also said he had no plans to return to Binance’s management and that he personally mainly holds Bitcoin and BNB for the long term and does not trade short term. He judged that the U.S. policy shift in support of crypto assets could lead other countries to follow, causing Bitcoin to enter a “supercycle” in 2026 and break the traditional four-year cycle of rises and falls, but he did not give a short-term price target. Asked what he would change if he started over, he replied that he would block U.S. users from using the platform from day one. The market predictions and the review of responsibility are both Zhao’s personal views.⁠[35]

Zhao gave an interview of about 1 hour 57 minutes to Chamath PalihapitiyaChamath PalihapitiyaChamath Palihapitiya is an investor and business operator who founded and leads Social Capital, and is also co-founder and CEO of the AI software company 8090 and a co-host of the All-In podcast. He previously ran user growth at Facebook and took part in taking several companies public through the Social Capital Hedosophia series of special purpose acquisition companies; he is also an early investor in and director of Beast Industries.Open the full entry on the All-In Podcast, reviewing in chronological order his move from China to Canada, his work in financial software, his entrepreneurship in Shanghai, his encounter with Bitcoin in 2013, the creation of Binance, his relationship with Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research. After FTX collapsed in November 2022, he was charged in the United States with misappropriating customer funds; in November 2023 a jury found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in March 2024 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit about $11 billion, and in 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected his appeal.Open the full entry and FTX, the U.S. criminal case, his experience in federal prison, and his education and investment activities after leaving Binance. He also said the first draft of his memoir began while he was in prison, when he sent text to an assistant via a prison terminal. The content concerning FTX, the U.S. criminal case, and his treatment in prison reflects his own perspective.⁠[36]

On April 8, 2026, Zhao published his English-language memoir, Freedom of Money: A Memoir of Protecting Users, Resilience, and the Founding of Binance. The book covers his childhood in China, his move to Canada, his work on trading systems, the founding of Binance in 2017, the FTX crisis, the U.S. enforcement cases, and his time in prison, and explains his philosophy of “financial freedom” in the first person; the official release said a considerable part of the manuscript was completed while he was serving his sentence in 2024. Binance co-founder Yi HeYi HeYi He is a Chinese entrepreneur and the co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Binance. She helped found OKCoin and served as vice president of Yixia Technology, joined Binance in 2017 to take charge of business, brand, and operations, and has also led Binance Labs.Open the full entry wrote the foreword; Zhao publicly thanked BlackRockBlackRockBlackRock is a publicly traded investment management company headquartered in New York, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink and seven others and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker BLK); its businesses include the iShares family of exchange-traded funds and the Aladdin investment and risk management platform. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management totaled $15.3 trillion.Open the full entry chairman and chief executive officer Larry FinkLarry FinkLarry Fink (Laurence D. Fink) is an American financier and the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of the asset manager BlackRock. Early in his career he pioneered mortgage-backed securities trading at First Boston; in 1988 he founded BlackRock with seven partners, and he led deals including the acquisitions of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Barclays Global Investors (including iShares). As of September 30, 2026, BlackRock managed about $15.5 trillion in assets. His annual open letters to chief executives and investors have long drawn market attention.Open the full entry, Bridgewater founder Ray DalioRay DalioRay Dalio is a global macro investor, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, and the author of the Principles series. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1971 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1973, founded Bridgewater in 1975, completed the handover of control of the company in 2022, and sold his remaining stake in 2025. His public activities also span education, ocean exploration, philanthropy, and economic research.Open the full entry, the King of Bhutan, Haidilao founder Zhang Yong, and early Bitcoin investor and Bloq co-founder Matt Roszak for providing endorsements for the book. Dalio’s endorsement emphasized Zhao’s journey from an ordinary background to global fintech influence. The book is the subject’s own account; Zhao said all author royalties would be donated to charitable projects.⁠[37]

On July 6, 2026, speaking about his memoir, his guilty plea, and life after the pardon, Zhao summarized blockchain as “freedom of money” and artificial intelligence as “freedom of intelligence”. He said a presidential pardon can restore one’s good name in terms of legal status, but public reputation still has to be rebuilt through time and sustained action; having experienced the loss of personal and informational freedom, he places health, family, and meaningful human connections above wealth. These statements are Zhao’s own interpretation of his personal experience and the value of technology.⁠[38]

On August 9, 2026, Zhao disclosed in a public interview that he had invested in a company researching artificial womb technology, and said the company had completed a mid-gestation experiment in mice. He estimated that the technology might still be 5 to 10 years away from human application, and said his interest in biotechnology is greater than his interest in artificial intelligence and robotics. The reports did not disclose the name of the company invested in, the investment amount, or peer-reviewed data on the experiment.⁠[39]

On August 26, 2026, Zhao attended the Season 4 Demo Day of YZi Labs’ EASY Residency in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. The event was hosted by YZi Labs and livestreamed from Thimphu; the agenda included a welcome address by YZi Labs managing partner Ella Zhang, a fireside chat between her and Zhao, sharing by founders from previous cohorts, and project presentations by Season 4 teams. The first five weeks of this incubation cohort were conducted online and the last five weeks in residence in Bhutan, with team focuses spanning payments, artificial intelligence, and next-generation infrastructure. Zhao’s role at the event was as founder of Binance and YZi Labs and as a conversation guest; the public agenda did not show that he received a Bhutanese government post or signed any national-level agreement at the event.⁠[40]

On August 27, 2026, Zhao took the Nakamoto Stage at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong for a conversation titled “The Bitcoin Century”. The conference’s official schedule placed the session from 15:00 to 15:30, moderated by Kevin Follonier; topics included the next phase of Bitcoin’s growth and adoption, and how artificial intelligence will change the crypto industry. The event confirmed that Zhao, after stepping down as Binance’s chief executive officer, has continued to take part as a speaker in public discussion within Asia’s crypto industry.⁠[41]

In his Bitcoin Asia 2026 talk, Zhao said Bitcoin might not need 25 years to reach $1 million, but that large-scale payment use and inclusion in retirement pension reserves matter more than a mere price target. He suggested that sovereign crypto reserves could, after excluding stablecoins, allocate to the top five crypto assets by market capitalization, with Bitcoin accounting for more than half, and could include assets such as Ethereum and BNB; he also described the combination of artificial intelligence and crypto as likely to begin with stablecoins and automated trading before expanding to assets such as Bitcoin and BNB. The above price prediction, asset allocation ratios, and technology path are Zhao’s personal judgments at the conference, not official policy of Binance, BNB Chain, or any government.⁠[42]

On August 27, 2026, at a book event in Hong Kong, Zhao said that real-world assets (RWA) were moving on-chain faster than he had previously expected, and regarded tokenized stocks as one way to reduce the constraints of cross-border account opening and traditional trading hours. He considers stablecoins part of RWA, while viewing bringing real estate on-chain as more challenging because of factors such as valuation, liquidity, and price volatility. The above is his assessment of the direction of tokenized securities and stablecoins; it does not mean the relevant products have obtained cross-border sales licenses, nor does it remove the requirements of securities law, custody, redemption, and investor suitability.⁠[43]

During Bitcoin Asia 2026, Zhao said that if Hong Kong wants to maintain its status as an Asian financial center, it should establish a workable middle ground between risk control and room for innovation and continue experimenting with digital assets, stablecoins, and the tokenization of real-world assets. He described Hong Kong as a potential “sandbox” for China’s exploration of digital finance innovation, and said the combination of AI agents and crypto assets might begin with programmable, cross-border stablecoin payments that operate around the clock. The statement is his personal policy suggestion; he did not put forward specific licensing provisions, issuance rules, or investor access arrangements at the event.⁠[44]

Speaking to students at a Hong Kong book-club event about hiring and remote collaboration, Zhao said that remote work environments rely more on employees driving things forward on their own: once a task has been handed over, the person carrying it out should arrange meetings, set timelines, and report progress themselves, rather than waiting for a manager to check. He also regarded “showing up” as an important prerequisite for getting opportunities, and emphasized that deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. These are his personal management views from a public conversation, not a new hiring policy or layoff announcement issued by Binance.⁠[45]

In a personal post, Zhao said that marketing can be aggressive but need not escalate into personal attacks or damage the other party’s future career; he said that, rather than making unnecessary private details public, it is more appropriate to handle disputes directly through litigation, and he hoped the matter would be resolved with mutual respect. The post did not name its target and did not provide a case number.⁠[46]

On August 28, at a Hong Kong reader AMA for the book Binance Life, Zhao said that some capital and founders seeking short-term returns have shifted to artificial intelligence, making teams that remain in the crypto industry and are willing to build for the long term easier to identify. He believes that during bull markets and periods of capital inflows, it is harder to tell whether a team is prepared to keep operating or is merely chasing short-term opportunities; people who stay in the crypto industry tend to have a stronger sense of mission and more staying power. This is his personal judgment about screening founding teams and industry cycles, not a statistic on capital flows, and it does not prove that the projects that remain will necessarily succeed.⁠[47]

In a podcast recorded in Bhutan, Zhao reflected on his management style: he said he replies to a large number of messages every day and is not good at continuously tracking every project; apart from a few matters he must handle personally, he delegates tasks to others and asks them to proactively provide updates, arrange meetings, and push the next steps. He said that if he has to ask about a project’s progress himself, it often means execution has already gone wrong. Figures such as “more than 500 messages” and “keeping only three to five things in mind” are his own descriptions of his workload and allocation of attention, not audited data from Binance’s ticketing system or personnel database.⁠[48]

In podcast content from Bhutan published on August 30, 2026, Zhao was asked what he would choose if he went back to 2017 to build a global crypto trading platform again. He replied that his first principle would be not to serve U.S. users from day one and to block products by region; the reason is that once a centralized financial platform has U.S. customers, it may trigger U.S. licensing and regulatory obligations. He also said he would develop products such as derivatives contracts earlier, but would have to increase communication with regulators and bear higher costs in staff, time, and management. The answer is his personal reflection after his guilty plea, resignation, and imprisonment; it does not constitute a re-determination of historical responsibility, nor does it mean that geoblocking by itself is sufficient to satisfy U.S. law.⁠[49]

In a Bhutan interview from the same period, Zhao said the crypto market had performed poorly that year, but that individuals or companies cannot be judged only on short-term results; he also recalled two changes in his understanding: several years earlier he had not fully recognized the long-term uses of stablecoins, and about a year and a half earlier he still doubted whether bringing real-world assets on-chain could reach scale, but by the time of the interview he believed both had developed beyond his early expectations. He also noted that Bitcoin’s slow pace of upgrades both limits functional change and yields greater stability. This passage is the subject’s retrospective judgment and does not provide any new market share, valuation, or performance figures that can be independently verified.⁠[50]

In a live Q&A in Hong Kong, Zhao distinguished between “an error of judgment” and “not knowing in advance that the other party has certain flaws”. He said ordinary shortcomings do not necessarily prevent cooperation, but if they are moral flaws that would destroy trust, cooperation should not continue; he also opposed maintaining a relationship lacking trust merely because someone might be useful in the future. This is his personal principle for judging people and cooperation; it does not mean that Binance, YZi Labs, or any other organization has issued a new formal personnel policy, nor can it replace an evidentiary review of specific disputes.⁠[51]

In an interview transcript published on September 1, 2026, Zhao said most of the first draft of his memoir was completed while he was in prison in the United States, where each time he could use, only for a short period, a computer that did not allow copy and paste. He said the four months of imprisonment strengthened the importance he places on financial freedom and also made him realize the fragility of freedom in the real world. His claim that he received three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers while in prison still lacks independent confirmation from ICEICEICE (Intercontinental Exchange) is a US financial-market infrastructure company founded in 2000. It operates exchanges and clearing services, fixed-income and data businesses, and mortgage technology. Its businesses include the New York Stock Exchange; founder Jeffrey Sprecher is chair and CEO.Open the full entry or court documents.⁠[52]

On September 1, 2026, at a public event in Hong Kong, Zhao said that most of his personal assets remain allocated to crypto assets and that he holds for the long term rather than trading short term; he summarized his personal finance preferences as not investing in stocks, not speculating in property, not short-term trading of crypto assets, and not holding excessive cash. He also said he mainly invests in early-stage projects through YZi Labs and will continue to invest during market downturns. Reports relayed his figure of “investing in nearly 200 projects over the past six months, about 80% of them concentrated in Web3”, but noted that the full project list and proportions have not been independently audited.⁠[53]

On September 4, 2026, Zhao met Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development Zhaslan Madiyev at the Alem.ai International Artificial Intelligence Center in Kazakhstan. According to a Kazakh government press release, they discussed the digital economy, advanced technologies, and computing infrastructure; the delegation was briefed on AlatauCity’s CryptoCity concept and the Data Center Valley project. The press release also records that the visit included a showcase of the cooperation between Binance Pay and Alatau City Bank, and the signing of two memorandums, with the country’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and with the Astana International Financial Centre respectively. The former concerns digital assets, computing power, and payment infrastructure, with listed areas of cooperation including issuing stablecoins locally and improving digital asset payments and related tax and judicial arrangements; the latter concerns an investment tax residency program. The press release also records that Zhao visited the TUMO Astana and Tomorrow School education programs at Astana Hub. The areas of cooperation in the memorandums are matters proposed for further development.⁠[54][55]

On the same day, Zhao shared on X a post by Binur Zhalenov, an official of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, about signing a memorandum with Binance. In addition to the two memorandums above with the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and the Astana International Financial Centre, a third memorandum officially disclosed by Binance concerns the National Bank’s payment and digital financial infrastructure. Zhalenov said Binance plans to apply for a newly created local Category 1 non-bank payment service provider (PSP) license; he described this category as able to provide comprehensive payment services and connect digital assets with traditional currencies, but not to take deposits or make loans. According to his disclosure, Binance plans to use Kazakhstan as a base to expand crypto payment and exchange services into regional markets such as the CIS. These are plans for cooperation and a license application, and do not mean that the relevant license has been approved or that the regional business has launched.⁠[56][57][58][59]

On September 4, 2026, quoting a report on the Hong Kong book-club event on X, Zhao said he believes a batch of investments YZi Labs made over the past several months will become one of its better-performing batches in the future, because these investments were made at a low point in the crypto market. The post extended his judgment about long-term founding teams to the investment portfolio, but did not disclose the actual returns, exits, or audit data of these investments.⁠[60][61]

On September 5, 2026, Zhao said on X that he personally attended the third meeting of the National Council for the Development of Virtual Assets and Blockchain Technologies, chaired by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov. A press release from the National Agency for Virtual Assets and Blockchain Technologies (NAVA) confirmed that the meeting was held that day in Cholpon-Ata, Issyk-Kul Region. The topics Zhao listed included a regulatory framework for crypto assets, compliance, anti-money laundering and anti-fraud, stablecoins, and tokenization including a specific pilot; he also said that crypto exchanges there already have banking channels and that the KGST stablecoin is in circulation, but did not specify the name or implementation details of the tokenization pilot in the post. The NAVA press release further records that the meeting discussed KGST, which is pegged to the national currency, the licensing and regulation of digital platforms, and risks related to taxation and international sanctions, and required the National Bank to complete the digital som base platform and pilot testing by the end of 2026 and to begin real-environment testing from 2027. The KGST stablecoin and the digital som pilot are separate matters; the above policy tasks are decisions of the meeting.⁠[62][63]