Binance is a more impressive product that Coinbase. Binance's Changpeng Zhao Is the Wealthiest Person in Crypto with a likely wealth of $65 Billion. However if Bitcoin’s price goes up, it’s considerably more than that.
To illustrate how Web 3.0 is going into journalism, Binance even took $200m stake in Forbes.
To contrast the rise of crypto Billionaires with Silicon Valley, the Binance’s founder, accumulated as much wealth as Mark Zuckerberg in a quarter the time. This isn’t a game of monopoly, but it might as well be, Bitcoin style.
Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as "CZ", is a Chinese-Canadian business executive. Zhao is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. Why are so many crypto personalities Canadian eh?
CZ might as well be the “Elon Musk” of crypto as well, commanding a considerable loyal legion of followers on Twitter. He has 5.5 million fans there, what Bitcoin can’t buy you these days.
In a world where Bitcoin has become a cult of the FOMO, CZ stands like an enigma nearly beyond the realm of regulation. That’s very much like Elon Musk’s weird relationship with the SEC.
At least on paper, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is among the world’s richest people.
In the most recent Forbes billionaire report, the publication highlights that the CEO of Binance has an estimated net worth of $65 billion USD. The CEO, more commonly known as CZ, is a true success story, going from zero to $65 billion USD in under five years. Under five years? How’s that for “moving fast and breaking things” we should ask Mark Zuckerberg one day.
Think about it, Binance handled $34.1 trillion in trading last year, even while wrangling with regulators. That’s not just cryptic, that’s almost criminal!
CZ has a stronger hold on Binance that Zuck even has on Facebook. He’s also claimed that this incredible wealth doesn’t mean that much to him.
Binance has an estimated market valuation of $92.5 billion USD, with CZ’s stake being at least 70%. In the past, CZ has told Forbes that he owns around 30%, however sources close to the inner workings of the company have confirmed that his stake is considerably higher.
“I don’t care about wealth,” CZ says on being one of the richest men in the world.
I guess that’s the Canadian side of him speaking. Binance is about as distributed a company as they become, with an HQ that has moved many times and now is loosely in the Cayman Islands; Mahé, Seychelles. Which is just saying it’s like Switzerland for crypto. The legal no man land and grey area.
That makes “CZ,” as he is commonly known, at age 44, the 19th richest person in the world.
I don’t know about his biography. As for CZ’s life before Binance, the profile goes through his childhood “in a rural village in China’s Jiangsu province.” Through the family’s migration to Vancouver when he was 12 years old. Then, already in the professional field, we learn that “Zhao spent years working in Tokyo and New York, where he helped build Bloomberg’s trading software.”
CZ lists his location on his Linkedin profile as being based in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Singapore. Basically the main financial capitals of the world excluding New York. That he worked at Bloomberg before being struct by the crypto bug, is of course pretty amusing and seems to be true.
CZ Gave us the ‘Fear of Missing Out’ of an Entire Generation
Recently it was announced, in just five years since starting Binance, Bloomberg says Zhao's net worth has grown to $74 billion, nearly the same as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. At No. 15 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
If wealth is valued in modern America and China more than all other things, this kid made it, and made it BIG.
With a market cap of over $2 trillion, crypto has given birth to several billionaires since the first Bitcoin was mined. One Bitcoin is now worth $43,504 today, one wonders it will be in a global recession.
CZ’s stake in Binance and Binance’s control over crypto is enormous and highly monopolistic. The exact opposite of the decentralized thing crypto was supposed to be. It’s a bit like Elon Musk using his new stake in Twitter to pump up dogecoin even further. In the pages of history if Silicon Valley was a castle in the sand, what will Web 3.0 be? A rainbow in the Sea?
Meanwhile, in January, CryptoSlate reported that Bloomberg News estimates CZ’s net worth to be around $96 billion, making him the 11th richest person in the world at the time. Between Forbes or Bloomberg, the thing that counts is CZ’s epic stake in the company he founded. Whatever the fate of huge crypto empires like Binance, Coinbase, Bitmain, Ethereum and others, these are Tycoons at new dimensions of the word.
After speaking with crypto industry analysts and individuals familiar with Binance’s business, Forbes estimates Binance’s market valuation to be $92.5 billion (based on March 11 market prices) and Zhao’s ownership stake to be at least 70%.
It’s hard to fully even imagine or appreciate how actually “centralized” the crypto trading realm is. Consider this, CZ‘s success is mostly tied to the strategic acquisitions and expansionist moves of Binance, which has the largest trading volume of all crypto exchanges. It is reportedly responsible for roughly two-thirds of the trading volume of centralized exchange transactions. That makes Coinbase look small.
Coinbase today has a market cap of around $36.5 billion. Binance is at least three times bigger.
Binance generated approximately $20 billion in revenue in 2021, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. Beyond his stake in Binance, Zhao also owns a vast amount of BNB, as well as some Bitcoin. However, the exact nature of his crypto portfolio is unclear. When you own your own coin or token, there’s a lot of advantages to that for Binance.
BNB is currently the 4th biggest token or crypto on Coinmarketcap.com.
Changpeng Zhao, unlike Zuck, is almost unknown outside his industry. He could walk around NYC in a hoodie and you’d think he’s just another Chinese software engineer or network administrator. His appearance is not super recognizable. He doesn’t even look as arrogant as a Silicon Valley geek.
Nobody Can Regulate Crypto
The privately-held Binance does not share information on its financials or ownership structure. Officially registered in the Cayman Islands, Binance operates in over 180 countries through a network of affiliated subsidiaries, an approach that has led to regulatory challenges.
Binance has managed to avoid harsh penalties and regulation, for the most part.
BZ could be a Chinese mafia figure of crypto positioned in that place on purpose, for all we know. Compare his stake in Binance with that of the CEO of Coinbase, 19% stake in publicly traded Coinbase. 19% is still a lot, but it isn’t tycoon-crazy like CZ. So what does Binance have in common with Shein, Sea, ByteDance and other brands from China? They are designed to go global, they are scripted and pumped to do it.
Bitcoin could even be manipulated to take down the U.S. currency and dollar as the default reserve currency. Americans really don’t understand the intricacies of national security even today in 2022. There’s a distinct possibility Changpeng Zhao is an agent of the Chinese State. It’s not even likely, it’s probable. Just as Binance’s rise to power is likely not purely accidental or some genius event of some master-mind behind the scenes.
Unfortunately the Bitcoin scene isn’t too bright. Crypto is like dogma to them. Wealth the ultimate status. They don’t really care about decentralization or the ideals of Web 3.0, they’ve been easily led, by simple arithmetic of greed. That’s China’s game bro.
Authorities in Japan, the U.K. and Hong Kong have all issued warnings in the past year against the company for operating without regulators’ permission. In May 2021, Bloomberg published a report alleging that Binance was facing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service over money laundering and tax evasion. So why did none of that stick? Don’t you find that a bit weird?
Zhao was raised in a rural village in China’s Jiangsu province after his father was banished from a bigger city for his “bourgeois leanings.” In his youth he experienced food rationing, he told Fortune. I guess that’s what a lot of folk today in the Shanghai pandemic lockdowns are experiencing, I wonder if CZ cares.
Of course you can also make the argument that CZ is a crypto hero. Zero to hero all by Bitcoin’s power alone. Later, a move to Canada following the Tiananmen Square student uprising and subsequent government crackdown gave 12-year-old Zhao a different perspective. He started earning money by working at McDonald’s flipping burgers and refereeing volleyball games. He later went on to study software development and spent years working in Tokyo and New York before starting Binance. A likely story? Well, not really.
If it’s a real story, it’s a 1 in a Billion story, and having that much control over a company is nearly impossible in the modern era of corporate ownership.
CZ taking a stake in Forbes sound familiar to us. That is because Elon Musk has done the same recently with Twitter. In a statement announcing the investment, Binance founder Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao said he saw media as "an essential element to build widespread consumer understanding and education" of the crypto market and emerging blockchain technologies. Free speech much on Forbes? Pretty good SEO, at least. China actually does understand how to hack you.
China now uses the SCMP as a propaganda machine, it once had credible journalism before Jack Ma went overboard.
The Chinese Canadian billionaire, whose net worth is estimated to be nearly $100bn, later took to Twitter to clarify his comments, saying his focus was on helping Forbes build out its technology and calling Forbes' editorial independence "sacrosanct". I don’t care much about wealth either Changpeng!
The bottom line is Binance is generating tens of billions of dollars a year, and CZ owns a significant portion of the exchange, making him one of the richest men in the world. Bitcoin is likely monopolies by a bunch of Billionaires, or worse, Chinese wealth and its Government. Not exactly what people are brainwashed into believing about crypto.
Bad propaganda, is still well, propaganda. You can always find a suck, when there’s a dollar involved. And they will troll you on Reddit for the CCP for free. Because their illusion of retirement is there, tied into crypto. Feeding people, well people like that mild-mannered Changpeng.
Now, seemingly overnight, he is a billionaire—the leader of a cryptocurrency exchange that last year facilitated $34.1 trillion in transactions. This is a movement that could one day swallow banks. DeFi, a world where the Web 3.0 changes lives. But who will own the pyramid schemes? Will it really be some half Canadian, or will it be China? There are problematic facts with all stories. Seeing as China is ahead in most technological innovations, especially those around national security, cybersecurity and cryptography, wouldn’t they be a good candidate for being the inventors of the blockchain and Bitcoin?
It’s weird, I never even ever read once a single hypothesis that points in this direction. Creating shadow-money like Bitcoin, is like a CCP fantasy come true. It’s too good to true for China. China who have invented TikTok, where one billion young people go to watch videos with algorithms ByteDance designed. That China invented crypto is not so far fetched as it sounds if you understand their master-plans. But sure, CZ is just a kid from Vancouver, not really a member of the CCP or PLA, no that could not be.
Yet the 44-year-old founder and CEO of Binance is worth about as much as the chief Meta-mate. There are no good endings in games of power. Power does corrupt completely as we have seen with Putin and will see with many others in the 21st century. It is said the Chinese have spies everywhere, in nearly every top University, in most top corporations.
He says that he doesn’t care about wealth, though, and that he doesn’t even know how much money he’s worth. The truth is people know exactly how much they are worth and China is counting on his empire to grow. This isn’t even a stretch of the imagination. The clues are there if you connect the dots.