Translation: Wu Speaks Blockchain
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The memoir "Life at Binance" records many stories and photos of Zhao Changpeng (CZ) about his entrepreneurial journey and life. Below are some highlights:
1. An Extreme Obsession with Games and Strategy
CZ entered school early with his sister at the age of five. Living in the teacher's dormitory of the primary school in Jiangsu Zhonghu Village, they were the only two children in the entire school, referred to by locals as "the two kids from the middle school." CZ was amazed when his hometown installed a hand pump that drew fresh water; this was the seed of technology that sprouted in his mind.
After moving to Hefei at the age of ten, his father took him to tour the computer room at the University of Science and Technology of China. He played a simple computer game involving a small white dot racing, which left a deep impression on him about the massive computing machines.
During the 9th and 10th grades, CZ suffered from severe stuttering, and as the captain of the volleyball team, he couldn't debate with the referees. Later, with free guidance from a retired speech therapist, he basically recovered through the "gentle onset method" in four months.
Due to financial constraints, CZ's only toy during his adolescence was a toy airplane worth 1.99 Canadian dollars from Safeway supermarket. That was the only time he insisted his father make an exception to buy him a gift.
At the age of 13, his father spent 7,000 Canadian dollars (equivalent to seven months of his father's total income) to buy an x286 computer. CZ believes that without this "huge investment" from his father at that time, he wouldn't be who he is today.
CS Obsession: CZ mentioned that he was extremely addicted to "Counter-Strike" during his time in Tokyo. He later noted that this obsession somewhat affected the state of subsequent entrepreneurial projects.
While studying in Vancouver, CZ started working early. At 14, he joined McDonald's with an hourly wage of 4.5 Canadian dollars; at 15, he worked as a dishwasher at PNE amusement park on Hastings Street in Vancouver during the summer, earning 9 Canadian dollars per hour; and at 16, after getting his driver's license, he took a night shift at the Chevron gas station on King Edwards Road from 11 PM to 7 AM, with an hourly wage of 12 Canadian dollars. That same summer, he also obtained a volleyball referee certification in British Columbia, officiating high school leagues at 16 Canadian dollars per hour, with each game counted at 4 hours.
Volleyball had a profound impact on him. With only over 200 students in the five grades combined, their team often struggled to gather six players for the games, even lacking substitutes. CZ, who practiced the most, served as the captain for four years. Before the summer of 10th grade, UBC's team held a training camp with a registration fee of 90 Canadian dollars; unable to afford it, he had to watch from the stands, later being called down by UBC team captain Conrad to practice together. In a crucial match, trailing 7 to 14, he scored directly with eight consecutive jump serves, bringing the score to 15 to 14. However, worried about making mistakes at match point, he switched to a standing serve and ultimately lost. After the game, Conrad clearly told him to never break his momentum again. After the city tournament, the organizers awarded him MVP, which was his first trophy in life.
Poker Logic: CZ wrote in the book, "Life is like playing cards; we don't choose the hand we're dealt, but what's important is how we play it." He sees poker as the best way to understand risk and odds, a mindset that has permeated his entire business decision-making. Both poker and volleyball taught him a common principle—"never break your momentum." If you're on a winning streak, you should continue to "jump serve" or raise your bet, rather than becoming conservative out of fear of statistical mistakes.
During college, CZ briefly maintained a long-distance relationship with his high school girlfriend but ended it soon. He then started dating a Taiwanese girl named Amanda. In his remembrance, he was not mature enough at that time, easily making final decisions during conflicts and even using breakups as pressure tactics, which eventually ended that relationship as well. This had a significant impact on him, leading him to summarize it into two simple principles: do not be too much of a jerk, and do not easily issue ultimatums in discussions. This habit later even extended into his business negotiation style.
During his time in Tokyo, CZ met Winnie, who would later become his wife, at a Chinese restaurant. Her family operated the restaurant; her father handled the entire menu and was responsible for 485 dishes, her mother managed the front, and she helped out in the store. Later, as CZ worked long hours in Beijing and his family moved to Tokyo, they gradually entered into a state of separation, officially divorcing a few years later.
2. The "Heart-Pounding" Early Days of Entrepreneurship
CZ's first encounter with Bitcoin was not at a tech conference or in a code community, but at a friend’s poker game in Shanghai in 2013. Among the players were both investors and entrepreneurs. Cao Darong first mentioned Bitcoin, and Li Qiyuan later discussed it with him, suggesting he allocate 10% of his assets to it. However, he initially did not go all in right away. By the time he decided to heavily invest, the price of Bitcoin had already significantly risen from when he first heard about it.
On December 13, 2013, CZ flew to Las Vegas for a Bitcoin summit. There were only about 200 people in the venue, but it had a huge impact on him. At that event, he met 19-year-old Vitalik, who was still with Bitcoin Magazine at the time but had already begun discussing the concept of Ethereum; Li Qiwei was very popular there, with a crowd gathering around him.
In early 2014, he was on the verge of joining Mt. Gox China, with the condition of acquiring a 10% equity share, driven by Mr. Gong, the president of Susquehanna's China division. However, on February 7, 2014, Mt. Gox exploded, suspending withdrawals, and the 100 Bitcoins he had on the platform vanished, valued at around 50,000 US dollars at the time.
After leaving Fuxun, he dealt with the mess of his equity turning to zero while selling his long-standing home in Pudong, which had also appreciated significantly, gradually converting the proceeds into Bitcoin. Due to the buying process spanning price ranges of 800, 600, and 400 dollars, his final average cost landed around 600 dollars.
At noon on July 14, 2017, when the platform officially launched, everyone in the office was focused on the screen counting down; but once trading began, the BNB page was instantly flooded with sell orders, with hardly any buy orders. Just a few hours earlier, people had been pressing him for quotas, but once it officially launched, they started dump selling. The chat box was filled with complaints.
Heina's husband smashed the computer: The husband of Heina, an early core member of Binance, smashed her laptop in a fit of anger over her working long hours. CZ mentioned in the book that the computer involved Binance's hot wallet. Fortunately, they later disassembled the computer to retrieve the hard drive and ultimately managed to recover the associated funds. CZ also noted that the office was in complete disarray, with the hard drive having fallen off the rack.
He Yi's "Fire Line Entry": The Rewrite and Naming: He Yi was the only advisor who seriously modified the white paper sentence by sentence, while most others only cared about the quota. She changed the originally dull name to Binance. In August 2017, when BNB fell below the issue price, the project faced tremendous pressure. CZ recalled that once He Yi announced her joining Binance, BNB immediately halted the decline and began a sequence of surges.
3. "Flight 93": The Deadly Shutdown
On September 3, 2017, the night before the Chinese ban, the Shanghai office was still operating at full capacity. It was a Sunday, and the team worked until around 11 PM that night. On his way home, CZ heard rumors of a "major rectification" the next day; He Yi also received similar news through various channels. At 12:30 AM, the core team immediately held a conference call and decided that CZ, He Yi, and Heina would leave China first while the others stayed in Shanghai temporarily.
The evacuation process was quite rushed. He Yi had only moved to Shanghai with her mother less than a month earlier, and just days before, her mother had injured her tailbone and was unable to walk; yet she woke her mother in the middle of the night to explain that she needed to fly to Tokyo immediately. Heina had it even harder as she did not have a Japanese visa and had to fly to Thailand first; her two-year-old son was still asleep, so she woke her husband at 2 AM to drive her to the airport. CZ then received a reminder around 2:30 AM that he should take the hard drive out of the office desktop, so he returned to the office at 3 AM to retrieve it.
Removing the SIM card: On September 3, 2017, just before the Chinese ban, CZ flew to Tokyo. He Yi suggested he remove the SIM card and turn off his phone.
Returning to Shanghai: However, he soon returned to Shanghai. After landing in Tokyo on September 4, Binance received a call from Shanghai’s government department, requesting an in-person meeting the next day. That evening, CZ flew back to Shanghai from Tokyo and met with Shanghai government officials on the morning of September 5. The book mentions that it was one of the longest twenty-four hours of his life.
4. Legal Disputes and the "Avengers"
The Consequences of Rejecting Sequoia: Due to valuation differences, Binance rejected Sequoia Capital's investment. Subsequently, CZ mentioned that one morning, four large boxes of legal documents were delivered directly to his office desk, marking his first direct confrontation with a cross-border legal dispute. Later, he realized that this lawsuit was mainly led by Sequoia's legal team in the US, well-coordinated and mature; the filing had not even reached him when the media had already broken the news.
This lawsuit lasted two years. By 2019, the court rejected all of Sequoia's claims, and Binance won. Later, Binance filed a counterclaim, and it ended with only a symbolic amount of compensation. In preparing for the second phase of the YZi Labs fund in 2022, Sequoia even participated as an LP; in 2023, he met with Shen Nanpeng in Abu Dhabi, marking a formal reconciliation.
Zhou Wei (James Hofbauer): After the original CFO Zhou Wei left, he formed a group called "Binance Avengers," gathering many former Binance members who had left for various reasons to discuss and vent about Binance.
A Hate List: CZ unabashedly expressed his disgust towards SBF (referring to him as "a refined egotist") and Xu Mingxing in the book.
On the eve of FTX's demise in 2022, CZ expressed in an internal meeting, "If we save FTX, we will save the industry, and we are helping ourselves." However, it later became clear that SBF's team was extremely chaotic. CZ recalled that at the time, SBF's team could not even produce a complete balance sheet within 24 hours, with core members leaving one after another, which made him realize that FTX's problems were far more severe than he had imagined.
In September 2018, under the introduction of Zhang Ling, who was in charge of investments, CZ had a video call with Gary Gensler, the then chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; on March 29, 2019, the two discussed crypto, Binance, and the U.S. market over sushi at the "Yamari" restaurant at the Grand Hotel in Tokyo. CZ even tentatively invited Gary to be an advisor for Binance, but the latter politely declined; Gary even semi-publicly hinted that if the Democratic Party returned to power, his goal was to be the SEC chair. The meeting went very well, and they took a group photo together.
In May 2019, Gary forwarded to him a feasibility and valuation analysis on BNB written by students; on July 15, he sent CZ his written testimony prepared for the House Financial Services Committee hearing in advance; two days later, he invited him to participate in an interview, which would serve as material for the MIT crypto course. On July 24, both parties completed the video recording. The real turning point came after Gary rose to power. CZ directly wrote in the book, "19 months later, Gary made a 180-degree turn." On June 6, 2022, Bloomberg reported that the SEC was investigating Binance, focusing on whether the issuance of BNB violated securities laws.
5. Family Regrets and a Terrifying Prison Experience in the U.S.
The Passing of His Father: CZ's father was a university professor. After being diagnosed with leukemia in 2020, he did not elaborate on what stage he was in but casually mentioned he was undergoing treatment and frequently needed blood transfusions. When CZ asked if he needed financial or other help, his father outright refused, stating that he was receiving the best treatment. By the spring of 2021, his father further informed him that his condition had worsened, and the doctors estimated he might have only 12 to 18 months left.
At that time, CZ’s father was in Toronto while CZ was in Singapore. CZ's father had not yet met his two youngest children, so CZ immediately proposed to bring him to Singapore. The family understood that this would essentially be a one-way trip. However, it was during the pandemic lockdown period when Singapore had closed its borders to non-citizens, so CZ could only rely on friends to apply for a humanitarian special permit while also contacting top leukemia specialists in Singapore to arrange remote consultations, hospital admissions, and quarantine plans. All preparations were in place by July, but CZ's father expressed a desire to stay in Toronto for another two weeks; one week later, CZ received a message from his father’s partner saying that he had passed away.
In November 2023, he voluntarily flew to the U.S. from the UAE to plead guilty, rather than being taken in. Upon arriving in court, he was first photographed like a suspect for a profile photo and filled out forms; absurdly, the forms did not even have an option for "violating the Bank Secrecy Act," so the staff casually checked "financial fraud" for him without listening to his explanations.
In the first few weeks of imprisonment, he couldn't even buy a toothbrush. 200 prisoners shared 6 phones and 4 computers, with long queues to make phone calls or use computers; each person only had 15 minutes when their turn came, after which the line would automatically disconnect. The computers were not real computers but locked terminals that could only send and receive messages, each message costing 5 cents and needing to be reviewed, resulting in a two-hour delay for delivery, without the ability to include pictures, attachments, or links, and most critically, no copying and pasting were allowed. CZ began writing the first draft of this book under such conditions: every time he got to use the 15 minutes, he quickly typed out his thoughts and sent them to his assistant for safekeeping.
In the later stages of his sentence, he was transferred to a halfway house, where conditions were significantly relaxed: the doors were unlocked, and during the day, he could apply to go out for volunteer work, take classes, or go to the gym; communication with family and friends became much easier, and he could order takeout and receive items sent from family. The staff there acted more like service personnel than controlling prison guards. CZ quickly applied for volunteer and gym privileges there and got involved in programs like "Prison Professor" run by Michael Santos that helped prisoners reintegrate into society.
Detention Again for the Reason of "Expired Visa": On November 21, 2023, he entered the U.S. with a Canadian passport, expected to stay for 6 months, assuming he could return to the UAE a few days after pleading guilty. However, the prosecution appealed, sentencing was postponed, and ICE denied his extension application after only three months, leading to him being forcefully defined as "illegally staying during his sentence." For this reason, with only 14 days left of his sentence, he was handcuffed and taken away. After being transferred to the Santa Ana police station detention center, although ICE headquarters revoked the detention order three days later, he was still held there, and conditions were even worse compared to before, with no playground, no gym equipment, and no access to computers.
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