Changpeng Zhao (known as “CZ”)

Changpeng Zhao is a Chinese-Canadian businessman, born on September 10, 1977, in Jiangsu Province, China. He immigrated with his family to Vancouver in the late 1980s after his father was politically exiled. He studied computer science at McGill University and supported his family by taking humble jobs such as working at McDonald's and a gas station.

He began his career in financial technology by developing trading systems at the Tokyo Stock Exchange and then at Bloomberg Tradebook, before founding Fusion Systems in 2005, a company specializing in high-frequency trading systems.

In 2013, he became involved in the cryptocurrency sector by working at Blockchain.info and then as a technical director at OKCoin. In July 2017, he founded the Binance platform after raising $15 million in funding, which quickly became the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world within months.

In November 2023, he pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws and resigned from his position as CEO. He was personally fined $50 million, the company was fined $4.3 billion, a three-year compliance oversight was imposed, he was sentenced to four months in prison, and was released at the end of September 2024.

As for his wealth, according to estimates from May 2025 by Forbes, it amounts to approximately $64.8 billion, making him the 24th richest person in the world. Other estimates are close to this figure, such as $62.1 billion according to CCN and $62.9 billion #Notcoin #BinanceAlphaAlert