Author: Zhao Changpeng, ChainCatcher

On April 8, Zhao Changpeng's personal memoir "Freedom of Money" (Chinese title: "The Life of Binance") was officially released on the Amazon platform, weaving his journey from grassroots rise, establishing the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, to ultimately confessing and going to prison in a first-person narrative. Since entering prison in 2024, Zhao Changpeng began planning to write this book, finalizing it by the end of 2025. The entire book contains 364 pages.

In Zhao Changpeng's view, the narrative about himself has long been dominated by media reports, court files, and public commentary, and he hopes to provide a more complete context to the outside world through this book. Meanwhile, the human aspects behind Binance's rapid rise are often overlooked in fragmented media reports, and Zhao Changpeng also attempts to fill in those simplified gaps through this book.

As one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry today, Zhao Changpeng has personally experienced the difficult development journey of Binance and the industry in its early years, which has brought many little-known insider stories and details to this book, adding to the gossip during this long and dull bear market.

Difficult Early Life

In this book, Zhao Changpeng spends a significant portion describing his growth experiences from adolescence to the time of starting his business, especially the humble living conditions and the difficult poverty during his teenage years.

In the 1980s, Zhao Changpeng's family of four lived in a shabby school dormitory: two rooms, one for sleeping (with two beds occupying most of the space), and one serving as a living room, study, and dining room. The floor was dirt, with no cement laid down. There was no running water; the nearest well was three hundred meters away, and his mother had to carry water back and forth every day. Each person could only bathe with one bucket of water, and in winter, it was rare to wash even once. The village long lacked electricity; CZ did his homework under a kerosene lamp, and later, when electricity was available, it was only for a few hours a day at irregular times.

A few years later, a hand-operated water pump was installed in the yard, which Zhao Changpeng said was the moment when he "planted the seed of longing for technology" in his heart.

Zhao Changpeng's father subsequently studied physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, and the family moved to Hefei. They first lived in a checkered building for faculty and staff, in a small room where four people shared two bunk beds, and the kitchen was a public gas stove in the corridor, which smelled of cooking oil during meal times. They didn’t live there long before moving into a small two-bedroom apartment: no living room, the master bedroom served as the living room, and CZ and his sister shared the second bedroom, “the space was so narrow that turning around was difficult,” with no place to take a shower in the entire building, they had to walk ten minutes to a public bathhouse.

In the 1990s, after the whole family immigrated to Canada, they initially lived in a single room in a student dormitory on the UBC campus, crammed together on two bunk beds, while Zhao Changpeng also took multiple jobs: at McDonald's, as a dishwasher at PNE, on night shifts at Chevron gas station, and as a volleyball referee.

After graduating from university in 2002, Zhao Changpeng joined Bloomberg, which became one of the important turning points in his life. At the age of 25 (in 2005), he led a team of 60 developers with an annual salary and bonuses totaling $390,000.

Through these early experiences, Zhao Changpeng hopes to inspire more entrepreneurs with courage and practical insights.

“I came from a rural area in China and later established one of the world's leading cryptocurrency technology companies. There is certainly an element of luck in this, as well as a tremendous amount of effort, but ultimately, I am just an ordinary person. When I was 14, I worked at McDonald’s flipping burgers, earning only 4.5 Canadian dollars an hour. Therefore, I have always felt that anyone can walk the path I have walked and achieve what I have achieved.” Zhao Changpeng said in an interview earlier this year.

Disclosing Numerous Industry Secrets and Decision-Making Considerations

In this book, Zhao Changpeng also dedicates considerable ink to unveiling details behind many of Binance's decisions and lesser-known industry secrets.

On September 4, 2017, seven Chinese ministries jointly announced a ban on cryptocurrency exchange operations, cryptocurrency mining, and ICOs. The night before, CZ recalled in his memoir that he had received a message on his phone saying there would be a "major cleanup" the next day. At 12:30 AM that day, CZ held an urgent conference call with senior executives including He Yi, and they ultimately decided that he and He Yi, along with Heina, would first go to Tokyo, while others would remain in Shanghai for the time being.

Binance was an early investor in Terra, and when the project collapsed in 2021, Binance faced over $1.6 billion in losses. Zhao Changpeng chose not to sell.

“There are three reasons: First, as a long-term investor, selling at such a critical moment would terrify the market. Our position was large, and selling would put significant downward pressure, harming the project. As a major player in the market, Binance should support various projects and not just focus on profits. Second, cashing out such a huge position typically occurs gradually over several months. And when LUNA was on the brink of collapse, it was clearly not the right time. Third, I didn’t want everyone to think Binance was ‘running ahead of retail investors’ to sell.” Within days, the value of LUNA, worth $1.6 billion, fell to just a few thousand dollars.

In Zhao Changpeng's account, many industry figures, including SBF and Xu Mingxing, have become “villains” trying to hinder himself, Binance, and the development of the industry.

In 2015, after leaving OKCoin, Xu Mingxing publicly accused Zhao Changpeng of “forging contracts” in a transaction, leading to a heated debate between the two on Reddit, with He Yi siding with Zhao Changpeng and resigning immediately. “Xu Mingxing viewed this as a personal betrayal and began a sustained attack against CZ and He Yi.”

Additionally, Zhao Changpeng also accused Xu Mingxing of reporting Li Lin to the police, leading to Li Lin's arrest. “At a dinner in 2025, I saw Li Lin again for the first time in 11 years. Li Lin told me he had seen a screenshot showing that Xu Mingxing personally reported him to Chinese police, and it was this report that led to his arrest.”

In 2019, after Binance invested in FTX, SBF immediately changed his attitude, recruiting Binance's VIP account managers with five times the pay and taking away all VIP customer data, leading to customers receiving targeted discounts from FTX. SBF, who appeared to be highly emotionally intelligent and promoted “effective altruism,” soon after began badmouthing Binance in Washington to market his FTX.

In 2022, former Binance CFO Zhou Wei wrote a letter to the local blockchain association, seeking to prevent Binance from joining the Philippine Cryptocurrency Association, stating, “I have always hated those who rely on lobbying the government or other underhanded tactics to compete.”

Zhao Changpeng also revealed that he heard Fcoin founder Zhang Jian bought a top floor luxury apartment in Singapore after the company's collapse in mid-2020.

At the end of the book, Zhao Changpeng includes his 72 principles for work and life, which include avoiding PPTs, always having termination clauses, refusing exclusivity, eliminating bottom performers, and regularly rotating teams.

Controversy

In response to some of Zhao Changpeng's statements, Xu Mingxing quickly rebutted sharply on the X platform, saying, “A person who has been in prison for four months still talks nonsense to the world. I can only say that a habitual liar's nature can never change. These lies include the history of his employment and departure from OKCoin, the Roger Ver contract dispute, whether he personally manipulated the market, whether he acted as a whistleblower against Justin Sun during the investigation, and his marital status, among others.”

This is not the first time Xu Mingxing has publicly clashed with Zhao Changpeng online. Previously, in January, when Binance faced significant criticism for its role in the 1011 incident, Xu Mingxing publicly stated that the incident was caused by irresponsible marketing activities from certain companies, resulting in hundreds of billions being liquidated.

Subsequently, in another topic, Xu Mingxing criticized Zhao Changpeng for confusing DEX with CEX and argued that this was not being open but rather an attempt to evade responsibility. This fundamental distinction reflects the long-standing difference in values between OKX and Binance.

Xu Mingxing's fierce criticism, on one hand, reflects the irreconcilable intense conflicts between these two industry leaders, and on the other hand, also indicates that many of Zhao Changpeng's statements may contain embellishments and controversies.

In fact, Zhao Changpeng has also faced increasing criticism from the industry over the past year, mainly focusing on Binance's growing lack of industry responsibility under Zhao Changpeng's leadership. Despite being an industry giant, Binance did not take specific “market rescue” actions during the industry decline, and only after widespread criticism did it announce plans to gradually purchase Bitcoin to stabilize the market. Additionally, Zhao Changpeng's deliberate amplification of and catering to meme community speculation culture has also been a point of dissatisfaction within the community.

From a 14-year-old flipping burgers to the swordsman of a cryptocurrency empire, Zhao Changpeng indeed writes an unparalleled "Life of Binance." The narrative power of the cryptocurrency market has always been full of tension, and a book cannot define the entire truth, but it can still serve as an important historical material, providing precious experiences and references for all participants and future generations.

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