Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao
Born	September 10, 1977
Birthplace	Lianyungang, Jiangsu, China
Occupation	Businessman, technology executive
Known for	Co-founder and former CEO of Binance
Alma mater	McGill University (BSc)

Changpeng Zhao (born September 10, 1977), commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman who founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. As a teenager, after his family immigrated to Canada, he flipped burgers at McDonald's. He also worked overnight shifts at a gas station. He later spent a decade writing trading software for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg before moving into crypto full time. Within about seven months of Binance's 2017 launch, the exchange had already become the largest in its industry, and Zhao's paper wealth put him among the richest people in the world. In November 2022, that changed fast. Zhao's public decision to liquidate Binance's holdings of a rival exchange's token helped trigger the collapse of FTX, the firm run by his one-time rival Sam Bankman-Fried. A year later Zhao pleaded guilty to a federal charge that Binance had failed to build the anti-money-laundering controls U.S. law required. He stepped down as chief executive and served four months in federal prison. In October 2025, following a lobbying effort that drew scrutiny over Binance's business ties to the family of President Donald Trump, Zhao received a full presidential pardon.

Early Life

Zhao was born on September 10, 1977, in Jiangsu province, China. Both of his parents were educators; his father, a professor, was labeled a "pro-bourgeois intellect" and temporarily exiled shortly after Zhao was born. The family emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, in the late 1980s, when Zhao was around twelve.

As a teenager, Zhao helped cover household expenses by flipping burgers at McDonald's and working overnight shifts at a gas station. Those early jobs became a recurring detail in later media profiles, typically set against his eventual paper wealth in the tens of billions of dollars.

Education

Zhao studied computer science at McGill University in Montreal. He earned a bachelor's degree.

Career

Early Finance and Technology Work

After graduating from McGill, Zhao built a system for matching trade orders on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, then moved to Bloomberg's Tradebook unit, where he developed futures-trading software and was promoted three times in under two years managing teams in New Jersey, London, and Tokyo. In 2005 he moved to Shanghai and founded Fusion Systems, a firm known for building fast high-frequency-trading systems for brokers.

Entry Into Cryptocurrency

Zhao has said he first learned about bitcoin around 2013 from a venture capitalist he met at a poker game. He sold his house in Shanghai in 2014 and put the proceeds into bitcoin. He went on to work in cryptocurrency infrastructure, joining Blockchain.info (later Blockchain.com) as its third team member and serving eight months as head of development, then working less than a year as chief technology officer of the Chinese exchange OKCoin.

Founding Binance

Zhao founded Binance in 2017. Trading began that July. By the following February, Forbes reported that the exchange's trading capacity had attracted six million users and made it the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, with Binance's own BNB token rising from about ten cents at launch to roughly $13. Zhao ran the company without a fixed corporate headquarters, moving its nominal base from China to Japan to Malta before Binance stopped naming a headquarters at all, an approach he described as decentralization and critics called regulatory arbitrage. By 2022, Binance was processing more cryptocurrency trading volume than all of its competitors combined, and Zhao's stake in the company made him, on paper, one of the richest people in the world.

The FTX Collapse

Zhao's most consequential act as an executive came in November 2022. It targeted a rival. Binance had held a stake in FTX, the exchange run by Bankman-Fried, and had exited that position in mid-2021 in exchange for a mix of cash and FTX's own token, FTT. On November 6, 2022, Zhao announced on social media that Binance would liquidate its remaining FTT holdings, citing "recent revelations that came to light." The announcement triggered a run on FTX, as customers rushed to withdraw funds and FTT's price fell sharply within days.

Two days later, with FTX facing a liquidity crunch, Binance signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire FTX's non-U.S. business. Binance withdrew from the deal the following day, saying its due diligence had turned up findings, including reports of mishandled customer funds and a pending investigation, that were beyond its ability or willingness to help. FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11, 2022, and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO the same day.

The collapse of FTX rattled the broader crypto market, and Binance's own token, BNB, fell alongside it through that November as contagion fears spread across the industry, before stabilizing at a lower level in the following weeks. Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges connected to FTX's collapse and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, a considerably harsher outcome than the one Zhao would receive a year later for his own conduct at Binance.

Federal Investigation and Guilty Plea

Binance had been under U.S. regulatory scrutiny well before FTX's collapse. Federal investigators, including the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, found that Binance had actively solicited American customers while telling regulators it served only non-U.S. users, and that its anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer programs were inadequate to the scale of the exchange. Investigators said the gaps had allowed the exchange to be used for transactions tied to sanctioned jurisdictions, ransomware operators, and groups including Hamas.

Zhao pleaded guilty on November 21, 2023. The venue was federal court in Seattle. He admitted a single count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. As part of the agreement, he stepped down as CEO, agreed to pay a personal fine of $50 million, and agreed to remain in the United States pending sentencing. Binance separately pleaded guilty to related charges and agreed to pay roughly $4.3 billion in penalties, one of the largest corporate resolutions the Justice Department has obtained. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said Zhao had "willfully violated federal law that guards against money laundering and terrorist financing," and then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the company's "willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform." Zhao wrote on social media the same day: "Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility." Richard Teng succeeded him as CEO.

Sentencing and Imprisonment

Zhao was sentenced on April 30, 2024, by U.S. District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle. Prosecutors had asked for three years. The defense had asked for probation. Jones imposed four months. He told Zhao: "You had the wherewithal, the finance capabilities, and the people power to make sure that every single regulation had to be complied with, and so you failed at that opportunity." Zhao told the court, "I'm sorry."

Zhao reported to a low-security federal prison in Lompoc, California, in the spring of 2024. The Bureau of Prisons designates that facility FCI Lompoc II. Fortune reported that Zhao, with a net worth then estimated near $43 billion, entered custody as the wealthiest federal inmate in American history. He was released from custody on September 27, 2024. He had served his full four-month term. TechCrunch reported at the time that Zhao still held an estimated 90 percent stake in Binance and, per Forbes, a net worth of roughly $61 billion, ranking him around the 25th-richest person in the world.

Presidential Pardon

After his release, reporting by the Wall Street Journal and others described a lobbying effort, including lawyers and lobbyists with ties to President Trump and his family, aimed at securing Zhao a pardon, running alongside separate reporting on business dealings between Binance and the Trump family's crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. That relationship deepened in May 2025, when Binance accepted a $2 billion investment from an Abu Dhabi state-controlled fund, MGX, settled using World Liberty Financial's stablecoin, USD1, a transaction The New Yorker reported sent a large sum of capital to the Trump family's venture. On October 23, 2025, Trump issued Zhao a full pardon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao "was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency" and that prosecutors had sought a sentence "so outside sentencing guidelines that even the judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career." Asked directly whether the pardon was connected to Binance's ties to his family's business, Trump said he did not know Zhao personally but that Zhao "had a lot of support" from people who argued the prosecution "wasn't a crime."

The pardon drew criticism. Senator Elizabeth Warren called it corruption. Commentators also noted it followed a pattern of clemency for other crypto figures, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and several BitMEX founders, none of whom had Zhao's direct financial ties to the Trump family.

Current Work

Zhao remains barred from serving as an executive at Binance. That is a term of his plea agreement. He has continued to hold a large ownership stake in the company. He has focused publicly on Giggle Academy, a free education platform he founded, and has continued to comment on cryptocurrency policy and industry developments.

Personal Life

Zhao holds citizenship in both Canada and the United Arab Emirates. He lives in Abu Dhabi. He is active on social media, particularly the platform X, where he continues to comment on cryptocurrency markets and policy.

Recognition

Zhao's path from working minimum-wage jobs as a teenager to building the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange has made him a recurring subject of business-press profiles. Forbes profiled him seven months after Binance's founding, when his crypto holdings were already valued at $1.1 billion to $2 billion. By the time of his 2024 sentencing, Fortune and other outlets described him as the wealthiest person ever to enter U.S. federal custody.

External links

• Changpeng Zhao on Prisonpedia