Overview

Changpeng Zhao (Chinese: 赵长鹏; pinyin: Zhào Chángpéng; born 1977), commonly known as CZ, is a Canadian businessman who is known for co-founding the cryptocurrency company Binance. He has also served as CTO of OKCoin and CEO of Binance. According to Forbes, Zhao is the richest Canadian and the 17th-richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at $111.1 billion as of April 2026.^([update])

He resigned as the CEO of Binance in November 2023 after the U.S Department of Justice alleged he violated the Bank Secrecy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024. Zhao completed his sentence by September of the same year. In October 2025, Zhao was given a presidential pardon by President Donald Trump.

Early life and education

Changpeng Zhao was born in Ganyu in China's Jiangsu province. His parents were both schoolteachers in China. His father Zhao Shengkai worked as a university instructor before he was branded a "pro-bourgeois intellect" and exiled to rural areas shortly after Zhao's birth. In late 1989, when he was 12 years old, he acquired a Canadian visa in 1989 and emigrated with his family to Canada after the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. They settled down in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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.

Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science.

Career

After 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. He later went to work full-time for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook, where he was a developer of futures trading software.

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. Lee advised Zhao to put 10% of his money into bitcoin. 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.

Zhao then began joining cryptocurrency-based projects, becoming the third member of the team that developed Blockchain.info, working as the company's head of development for eight months, and he also served as chief technology officer of OKCoin for less than a year.

In 2022, Zhao invested $500 million through Binance to finance the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.

Binance

After 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 less than eight months, Zhao grew Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume (as of April 2018). Zhao also launched Binance Coin in 2017, a utility token that gives its owners various benefits, such as discounts on trading fees. In April 2019, Binance launched Binance Smart Chain, which has smart contract functionality and is an Ethereum competitor.

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 2019, Zhao launched Binance's U.S. affiliate, Binance.US. Binance withdrew its application to run a Singapore-based crypto exchange in 2021.

Civil lawsuits

On March 27, 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. 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.

In June 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Zhao and Binance on 13 charges for alleged violations of US securities rules.

In November 2024, FTX filed a lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd., Zhao, and other Binance executives, seeking to recover nearly $1.8 billion that FTX alleges was fraudulently transferred. The case centers on a July 2021 stock repurchase transaction in which Binance sold its stakes—approximately 20% of FTX's international unit and 18.4% of its U.S.-based entity—to FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried.