Who is Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the Binance founder and billionaire who wants to "rebuild" the cryptocurrencies?

() — Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao is back in the global spotlight, this time as a self-proclaimed white knight of cryptocurrency, amid an industry crisis.

The Canadian billionaire has made headlines this week for offering to help entrepreneurs facing a cash crunch, in a bid to help “rebuild” the industry.

Zhao, who goes by his initials “CZ,” made his point just days after rescinding an offer to help bail out one of the industry’s biggest firms, FTX. The company went bankrupt two days later.

Zhao announced Monday that to mitigate any collateral damage from the FTX collapse, his team would establish “an industry recovery fund, with the goal of helping projects that are otherwise strong but in a liquidity crisis”.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, will welcome other industry players who wish to participate as investors with cash, said On twitter.

“Cryptocurrencies are not going away. We are still here,” Zhao added. “Let’s rebuild.”

humble beginnings

Zhao launched Binance in July 2017 in China, gradually making it the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

In September of that year, according to the company’s blog, most of its employees left the country after the Chinese government issued a memo banning cryptocurrency exchanges. Zhao said it was “before Binance could properly establish itself” or be incorporated into the country.

Four years later, in September 2021, the Chinese authorities declared all cryptocurrency-related trading activities illegal and vowed to clamp down on illicit activities involving digital currencies.

According to company blog posts, Zhao was born in China, lived in the central province of Anhui, and immigrated to Canada with his mother in 1989 at the age of 12. He himself recounted waiting for three days outside of the Canadian embassy to obtain a visa, taking turns with his family overnight to hold their place in line.

Zhao spent her teenage years in Vancouver and worked at a McDonald’s to help support her family.

After studying Computer Science at McGill University, he worked on trading software for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg.

“He found out about the existence of bitcoin in 2013 during a poker game, after which he decided to bet on cryptocurrencies devoting his life to it,” reports the Binance site. “He even sold his apartment to buy bitcoins.”

However, the road to success has not been easy.

Like other exchanges, Binance has faced significant regulatory hurdles around the world in recent years, including a ban in the UK and other restrictions in countries like Canada.

The company is also on an investor watch list in Singapore, where the central bank has warned that it is not licensed or regulated locally.

Last week, Zhao addressed speculation about the company’s status in the nation’s capital, writing on Twitter that Binance is “not banned, just not licensed yet.”

Zhao also spoke out about some of the company’s challenges, saying that as a Chinese-born business leader, he has faced undue suspicion.

“The inference is that because we have ethnic Chinese employees, and perhaps because I am ethnic Chinese, we are secretly in the pocket of the Chinese government. We are sitting ducks for special interests, for the media and even for lawmakers who hate our industry,” he wrote in a recent blog post of his.

“I am a Canadian citizen, period.”

Since September, Binance has subsidiaries in countries including Spain, Italy, France, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, Zhao added.

Zhao captured mainstream attention earlier this year when he became one of the world’s richest people.

By January, his estimated net worth had reached at least $96 billion, putting him on a level with the likes of Oracle (ORCL) founder Larry Ellison; and beating Mukesh Ambani, the Indian tycoon.

Since then, his projected fortune has fallen to $16.9 million, along with the cryptocurrency crash, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A Binance spokesperson previously told Business that “CZ intends to give away most of his wealth, even 99% of his wealth, just like other entrepreneurs and founders.”

a tumultuous week

Zhao has been under pressure to intervene amid the industry’s crisis, being one of the last remaining bastions.

The sector is currently in the midst of what they call the “crypto winter”, initially triggered by the collapse of TerraUSD, a stablecoin, which is a type of cryptocurrency that was supposed to be pegged one-to-one to the US dollar.

In May, TerraUSD lost its peg to the dollar, causing its sister token to collapse and ultimately creating a massive global liquidity crisis in the cryptocurrency industry.

Last week, Zhao offered a lifeline to Sam Bankman-Fried, his rival of 30 years who ran FTX and who was one of the biggest players in the industry.

The Binance chief said that they had asked his company for help as FTX grappled with liquidity problems. In response, he announced that they would agree to buy his smaller rival.

But in a dizzying sequence of events, Binance withdrew the offer almost immediately, saying that after reviewing FTX’s financials it had concluded that the company’s problems were “beyond our control or ability to help.” .

The deal quickly fell through, paving the way for FTX’s bankruptcy filing and Bankman-Fried’s resignation.

The news marked the stunning fall from grace of one of the industry’s most revered entrepreneurs, who had been touted as a savior of cryptocurrency after managing to keep several players afloat through a series of similar deals this year.

Since that aborted purchase, Zhao has been candid about the challenges that remain for the sector.

Speaking in Indonesia on Friday, he urged regulators to look beyond anti-money laundering rules to focus instead on operations, business models and cryptocurrency exchanges like FTX.

He said that comparing the current cryptocurrency crisis to the global financial crisis of 2008 was “probably an apt analogy.”

“It is devastating for the industry. A lot of consumer confidence is shaken,” Zhao added. “We have gone back a few years.”

In other remarks made in Indonesia on Monday, Zhao doubled down on his call for more regulation.

There is “a lot of risk,” he said. “We’ve seen in the last week that things are crazy in the industry, so we need some regulations, we need to get this right.”

‘s Matt Egan contributed to this report.