Binance also agreed to plead guilty, and to pay $4.3 billion in fines. In November 2023, Zhao agreed to resign from Binance and pay a $50 million fine as part of a guilty plea to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Zhao and Binance on 13 charges for alleged violations of US securities rules. The agency accused Binance of breaking rules intended to thwart money laundering operations, pointing to internal communications describing transactions by Palestinian militant organization Hamas, and suspected criminals. On 27 March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Zhao in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming willful evasion of US law and allegedly breaching derivatives rules. Binance withdrew its application to run a Singapore-based crypto exchange in 2021. In February 2018, Forbes placed him third on their list of 'The Richest People In Cryptocurrency,' with an estimated net worth of $1.1-2 billion. In April 2019, Binance launched Binance Smart Chain, which has smart contract functionality and is an Ethereum competitor. Zhao also launched Binance Coin in 2017 this is a utility token that gives its owners various benefits, such as discounts on trading fees. In less than eight months, Zhao grew Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume (as of April 2018). Binance Īfter its launch in July 2017, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was able to raise $15 million in an initial coin offering, and trading began on the exchange eleven days later.

In 2022, Zhao invested $500 million through Binance to finance the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. In 2013, Zhao was a member of the team that developed and he also served as Chief Technology Officer of OKCoin. Zhao instead 'went all in' and sold his apartment in Shanghai and invested all of his wealth in Bitcoin, much to his family's dismay. Lee advised Zhao to put 10% of his money into bitcoin. In 2005, Zhao moved to Shanghai to launch his business career, where he established his first technology startup company called Fusion Systems, which was known for 'some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stockbrokers.' Zhao first heard of Bitcoin in 2013 when playing poker with Bobby Lee (brother of Charlie Lee) who would later go on to found BTCC. He later went to work full-time for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook where he was a developer of futures trading software. Early career Īfter graduating from McGill, Zhao was selected for an internship in Tokyo working for a subcontractor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science. During his teenage years in Canada, Zhao helped to support his family by holding down a number of service jobs, including working as a fast-food clerk at a McDonald's restaurant and a gas station. His father worked as a university instructor before he was branded a 'pro- bourgeois intellect' and exiled to rural areas shortly after Zhao's birth. His parents were both schoolteachers in China. In the late 1980s, when he was 12 years old, he immigrated with his family to Canada, settling down in Vancouver, British Columbia. Zhao was born in Lianyungang in China's Jiangsu province. Īccording to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zhao was ranked the 69th-richest person in the world, and richest Canadian overall, with a net worth estimated at $23 billion as of November 2023. He resigned as the CEO in November 2023 after pleading guilty to a money laundering charge in the United States. Zhao is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of November 2023. Changpeng Zhao ( Chinese: 赵长鹏 pinyin: Zhào Chángpéng), commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman.

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