Changpeng Zhao, known everywhere as CZ, is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. He built it from an ICO in July 2017 into a company with over 200 million users, pleaded guilty to US money laundering violations in 2023, served four months in a federal prison in 2024, and received a full presidential pardon from Donald Trump in October 2025. On top of that, he is also, by most estimates, the richest person in crypto.
He is the last profile in our OG KOL series, and the right one to close on. Nobody in this industry has had more influence over which coins retail can buy, and nobody has fallen further and recovered faster. This post covers his path from a McDonald’s shift in Vancouver to a Forbes cover, the collapse and the comeback, why one tweet from him still moves BNB, and what I make of him after nine years of covering Binance.
From Jiangsu to Vancouver to Tokyo
Zhao was born in 1977 in Jiangsu, China, to two schoolteachers. His father was labeled a “pro-bourgeois intellect” during the political purges and exiled to the countryside shortly after CZ’s birth. The family emigrated to Vancouver when he was 12. He flipped burgers at McDonald’s and worked overnight shifts at a gas station to help pay the bills, a detail he still brings up whenever someone calls him a billionaire.
He studied computer science at McGill, then built trading systems. First at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, then at Bloomberg Tradebook in New York, then at his own firm, Fusion Systems, in Shanghai. By 2013 he was a high-frequency trading engineer with a good salary and no idea what Bitcoin was.
A poker game changed that. A friend pitched him on Bitcoin in 2013, and CZ went all in with a speed that became his trademark. In 2014 he sold his Shanghai apartment to buy Bitcoin at around $600. He then joined Blockchain.info and became CTO of OKCoin, which is where he learned how an exchange runs and how badly most of them ran.
Building Binance in 180 days
Binance launched in July 2017 after a $15 million ICO for its BNB token. The timing was perfect. The ICO boom was peaking, Chinese exchanges were being shut down by regulators, and every trader on earth needed a place to buy new altcoins fast. Within six months Binance was the largest exchange in the world by volume. CZ was on the cover of Forbes in February 2018.
The growth model was simple. List everything, list it first, charge low fees, and let BNB holders pay less. Chinese regulators forced the company out of Shanghai, so CZ moved to Japan, then Malta, then nowhere in particular. “Binance has no headquarters” became a punchline and a legal strategy.
For anyone in the airdrop business, this period mattered more than any other. Binance Launchpad, Launchpool and later the HODLer airdrops turned a listing into a token distribution event. Our Binance review covers how those programs work today, and they remain the largest source of free tokens in crypto.
FTX, the DOJ and the prison sentence
In November 2022 CZ posted that Binance would sell its holdings of FTT, the token of rival exchange FTX. The tweet triggered a bank run. Within a week FTX was bankrupt and Sam Bankman-Fried was on his way to a 25-year sentence. CZ briefly looked like the man who cleaned up crypto.
A year later the DOJ came for him. In November 2023 Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion, one of the largest corporate penalties in US history, and CZ pleaded guilty to one count of failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program. He stepped down as CEO, handed the company to Richard Teng, and paid a $50 million personal fine.
In April 2024 a Seattle judge gave him four months. He served them at a minimum security facility in Lompoc, California, the wealthiest person ever to enter a US prison. He walked out in late September 2024, and I wrote about the moment in CZ’s release from prison. Through all of it his followers kept posting a single character, “4,” from a 2022 list of his where item four was “ignore FUD.” It became the most efficient meme in crypto.
The pardon and the comeback
CZ applied for a pardon in early 2025 after reports surfaced that Binance and Trump-linked ventures were doing business. A $2 billion investment into Binance by Abu Dhabi’s MGX was settled in USD1, the stablecoin from World Liberty Financial, the Trump family project. CZ denied any deal for clemency. Trump granted a full pardon on October 23, 2025, calling the prosecution a “Biden witch hunt.” I covered the fallout in CZ pardon: Trump’s crypto power move. Democrats called it a payoff. BNB hit an all-time high above $1,370 that same month.
Since then he has moved fast. He founded Giggle Academy, a free education platform for kids. Binance Labs became YZi Labs, his family office, which he says is deploying billions into crypto, AI and biotech. He advises the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan on crypto strategy. And in January 2026 at Davos he told CNBC that 2026 would be a Bitcoin supercycle. Two weeks later, with Bitcoin bleeding toward $69,000, he walked it back in a weekend AMA. I broke down that reversal in CZ cancelled the supercycle.
The bigger problem hit Binance itself. On July 1, 2026 the exchange lost legal access to the European Union after failing to secure a MiCA license. Our Binance alternatives list exists because of that day.
Why CZ still moves markets
CZ holds no operating role at Binance and cannot legally manage it. He still moves markets more than the people who do.
The first reason is BNB. He holds a large share of the supply, and his family office is the biggest investor in the BNB ecosystem. When he mentions a project on BNB Chain, it pumps. When he says “capital is returning to crypto,” as he did in September 2026, traders position for it.
The second is listings. Binance is still the largest exchange outside Europe, and the market assumes CZ’s influence over what gets listed never fully went away. His public praise of Aster, a perp DEX built by former Binance staff, was followed by his disclosure that he bought two million ASTER tokens. That is a signal traders act on.
The third is politics. His pardon tied him to the Trump crypto agenda, and his government advisory roles put him in rooms where national crypto policy is written. Few founders have that reach.
We track all of it on the CZ tag page.
CZ’s companies and holdings
- Binance, co-founded 2017, where he holds a major ownership stake but no operating role
- BNB, the exchange token, where he is one of the largest holders
- YZi Labs, formerly Binance Labs, his family office and venture arm
- Giggle Academy, his free education project for children
- Advisory roles with the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan
- Personal Bitcoin from 2014 and disclosed positions like ASTER
Track record: the hits and the misses
The hits are unmatched. He built the largest exchange in history in under a year and kept it on top through three bear markets, a $4.3 billion penalty and a prison sentence. BNB went from an ICO at $0.10 to over $1,300. The FTT tweet ended the biggest fraud in crypto. And his 2014 apartment-for-Bitcoin trade is one of the great personal bets in the industry.
The misses are also unmatched. Binance ran for years without the compliance controls a company that size needed, and the DOJ charged it with letting terrorist financing and sanctions evasion flow through. He lost the EU in 2026. The supercycle call lasted two weeks. And the pardon, whatever its legal basis, permanently linked his name to a political favor. History will judge that one for a long time.
The criticism
Regulators and their supporters see the whole Binance story as a company that grew by ignoring rules until it was too big to stop. The $4.3 billion settlement is their exhibit A.
Competitors point at BNB Chain, where CZ’s influence over listings and ecosystem funding creates a conflict that no other founder in this series has. He owns the exchange, the token, the chain and the venture arm.
Political critics call the pardon corruption, full stop. Senator Elizabeth Warren said CZ “boosted” a Trump venture and lobbied for a pardon. CZ said she could not get her facts right. Both statements are on the record.
And the FUD crowd never left. Every bear market brings a new wave of “Binance insolvent” rumors, and 2026 was no exception.
Should beginners follow CZ?
Follow him for the ecosystem, not the philosophy. When CZ talks up a chain, a launchpad or a token, money follows for a few days. That is tradeable, as long as you know you are trading a reaction and not a fundamental.
Watch Binance listings and airdrop programs more than his tweets. That is where his real influence lives, and it is where retail actually gets free tokens.
Ignore the macro calls. A man who predicted a supercycle in January and cancelled it in February is not your guide to the cycle.
My Take
I have covered Binance since its first month. AirdropAlert launched in June 2017 and Binance launched in July, and for nine years the two have run in parallel. Most of the big airdrops we have ever listed ended with a Binance listing or started with a Binance Launchpool. Whatever you think of CZ, he built the machine that turned airdrops from a marketing gimmick into a real distribution channel.
I have never met him and I do not need to. His story is fully public, and it is the most complete arc in crypto. Immigrant kid, exchange builder, richest man in the industry, federal inmate, presidential pardon, all in nine years. Nobody else in this series has that range.
The part I respect is the speed. He moved from apartment to Bitcoin in one decision, from Shanghai to Japan to Malta in one year, from prison to pardon in 13 months. The part I distrust is the same speed. Binance grew faster than its compliance, and the supercycle call shows he still talks before he checks.
He is the mirror of the last profile. The Winklevoss twins spent 13 years asking permission and have a stock down 80%. CZ spent seven years not asking, paid $4.3 billion, went to prison, and still runs the biggest exchange on earth. Crypto has not decided which of those is the right lesson.
Keep This Content Free
This series took two full days of digging through court filings, ICO whitepapers and nine years of headlines, and CZ alone was half of it. If these profiles were useful, support us by trading on OKX or Bybit through our links. Nothing extra for you, and it keeps the site independent.
Final Words
CZ is the founder who proved crypto could go mainstream without permission, and then proved what that costs. He remains the most influential person in the business of listing and distributing tokens, and the most politically connected founder in the industry. That combination will keep him relevant long after the pardon debate fades.
This post closes our OG crypto KOL series. Here are the profiles that stood out most:
- Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder who never sold, never spoke and never came back
- Vitalik Buterin, the builder who could have cashed out a hundred times and did not
- Justin Sun, the showman who turned attention into the most-used stablecoin chain
- Michael Saylor, the man who bet a whole company on one asset and made it an asset class
- Cobie, the poker player who never sold a price target and ended up running product at Coinbase
FAQ
Who is CZ?
CZ is Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. He founded it in 2017 and stepped down in 2023 as part of a US settlement.
Why did CZ go to prison?
He pleaded guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program at Binance. He served four months in a US federal prison in 2024.
Did Trump pardon CZ?
Yes. Donald Trump granted CZ a full presidential pardon on October 23, 2025, erasing the conviction.
What is CZ’s net worth?
Forbes and Bloomberg estimates put him above $60 billion, mostly in Binance equity and BNB, making him the wealthiest person in crypto.
Is CZ still running Binance?
No. Richard Teng has been CEO since November 2023, and CZ holds no operating role, though he remains a major shareholder and influential voice.
What does “4” mean with CZ?
It refers to item four on a list CZ posted in 2022: “ignore FUD.” His followers reply “4” to any negative news about Binance.
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