Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao (; 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 $111.1billion

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. Zhao completed his sentence by September of the same year. In October 2025, Zhao was given a presidential pardon by President Donald Trump. 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.

Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science. which was known for "some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stockbrokers."

On April 7, 2024, he was appointed by the Pakistan Ministry of Finance as a strategic advisor to the Pakistan Crypto Council.

On May 3, 2025, he was appointed as an advisor to the president of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, on the development of digital assets.

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). 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.

Legal troubles 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 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.

Criminal allegations and sanctions In November 2023, Zhao agreed to resign from Binance and pay a $50 million fine as part of a guilty plea to U.S. federal charges. Binance also agreed to plead guilty, and to pay $4.3 billion in fines. Zhao was replaced as CEO by Richard Teng.

Zhao pled guilty to violating the American Bank Secrecy Act by prioritizing Binance's growth over compliance with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's anti-money laundering requirements. Although Zhao only personally pled guilty to a single criminal charge, as part of plea bargain negotiations, Zhao agreed for Binance to also admit to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In April 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange at a federal court in Seattle. He served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc I. According to records with the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Zhao was released from custody on September 27, 2024.

Pardon by President Donald Trump

In March 2025, The Wall Street Journal uncovered that Binance was in talks with the family of Donald Trump about business dealings. In August 2025, The Wall Street Journal found that Binance was quietly administering a trading platform for the Trump family's World Liberty Financial. That same month, the New York Times reported that Zhao was campaigning to receive a pardon from President Trump. Binance had spent $800,000 on lobbying for clemency and other U.S. policy issues. In October 2025, a lobbyist hired by Zhao, Ches McDowell, met with Trump to talk about a pardon for Zhao after being introduced by Donald Trump Jr. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt gave the following explanation for the pardon: Mr. Zhao ... was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency .... In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims. The Biden administration sought to imprison Mr. Zhao for three years, a sentence so outside sentencing guidelines that even the judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career. These actions by the Biden Administration severely damaged the United States' reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation. Zhao thanked Trump, saying "Deeply grateful for today's pardon and to President Trump for upholding America's commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice. 🙏🙏🙏🙏." Binance also thanked Trump, describing the pardon as "incredible news." Then he added, "I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt".

The pardon was criticized by Democrats, as well as some Republicans, who characterized it as brazen corruption.

Views on cryptocurrency In an interview with The New York Times, Zhao said people are getting into crypto as they see it grow, "trade it and make money off it as opposed to using it," but that the market will always self-correct. On April 6, 2021, Zhao told Bloomberg Markets that nearly 100% of his liquid net worth was in the form of cryptocurrency.

Personal life In 2005, he moved back to China, In 2015, he sold his Shanghai apartment and used the funds to purchase bitcoin. Zhao stayed in China until the Chinese government banned crypto exchanges in late 2017. He lives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. They have two children. They divorced when their eldest daughter was two years old, around 2005. Zhao has been in a "life partner" relationship with his business partner and fellow Binance co-founder, Yi He, since they met in 2014.

Citizenship Zhao is a citizen of Canada and the UAE. In 2022, Zhao said that he had acquired Canadian citizenship some 30 years before, around 1992 shortly after immigrating to the country with his family.

Political views With regards to his political beliefs, Zhao stated in 2021 in Singapore, "I am not a complete libertarian, I'm not an anarchist... I don't believe human civilization is advanced enough to live in a world with no rules."

In addition to recounting his business career, Zhao discusses the personal and professional consequences of the case, including his prison sentence and the period of reflection that led to the writing of the memoir. The book was self-published in both English and Chinese formats and was made available globally in print and digital editions. Zhao also publicly stated that 100% of his author royalties would be donated to Giggle Academy, his educational non-profit initiative focused on expanding access to free learning opportunities for children worldwide.

Philanthropy Zhao has said he plans to donate up to 99% of his wealth, following the philanthropic examples of other global business magnates and investors such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. "I intend to donate most of my wealth, as many other entrepreneurs or founders have done, from Peabody to today. I intend to donate 90%, 95%, or 99% of my wealth."

Published works