CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao(CZ) is a Chinese-origin Canadian businessman, investor and a software engineer with a net worth estimated at $10 billion(as of June 6) according to Forbes report.
Born in China's Jiangsu province, Zhao immigrated to Canada when he was 12-years-old. Both his parents worked as school teachers in China.
During his teenage years, Zhao used to support his family by holding down menial service jobs, such as working as a fast-food clerk at McDonald's.
Later, he went to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science. After graduating, he worked for a subcontractor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange before working four years full-time at Bloomberg Tradebook as a developer of futures trading software.
He then moved to Shanghai in 2005 to establish Fusion Systems, a technology startup known for its fast automated high-frequency trading platforms. He became a member of the Blockchain.info team and Chief Technology Officer of OKCoin in 2013.
It was in the year 2017 that Zhao founded Binance and was able to raise $15 million in an initial coin offering.
In less than a year, Zhao's Binance became the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume.
In the same year, he launched the Binance coin following which he bagged the third spot in Forbes' 'The Richest People In Cryptocurrency,' in 2018.
In 2019, Zhao founded Binance.US, a US affiliate of Binance.
After years of success, Zhao and Binance have found themselves neck-deep in several controversies.
Things began to trample in November 2022 when FTX, a rival to Binance collpased into insolvency. FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down as chief executive on November 11, after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal. Thereafter, Binanace too had to go through some regualrity scrutiny over money laundering acroos US, Europe and Asia.
In March 2023, a top US markets regulator charged Binance and Changpeng Zhao for multiple violations, in another move by Washington against the once high-flying sector.
The charge sheet accused Binance of failing to uphold standards that are required of a company operating as a derivatives market.
Sigma Chain, a trading firm owned and controlled by Changpeng Zhao had also engaged in wash trading between September 2019 and June 2022.
In a recent development, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao on June 5 for operating a web of deception. He was alleged of secretly controlling Binance.US to evade US laws, among other charges.
In his defense, Zhao said that Binance will soon issue a response once it has reviewed the SEC's complaint and that their team has been striving to ensure that all systems are stable.