Author: Lin Lishan

Compared to the fierce figures of the cryptocurrency empire, Zhao Changpeng seems more like an engineer who treats life as a game to conquer. Low-key, introverted, he always appears in a hoodie at events. He single-handedly built Binance, which by 2025 has surpassed the total annual trading volume of the New York Stock Exchange, with user numbers nearing 300 million. Three years ago, however, due to a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, he stepped down as CEO and served four months in prison, becoming the “richest inmate in U.S. prison history” according to financial media, and during his time in jail, he wrote the first draft of his memoir, "The Binance Life," on a computer that couldn’t copy and paste. He believes in the "simulation theory," thinking that life is like a game where solving a problem brings a reward, and this philosophy keeps him exceptionally calm in crises. After being granted clemency, this 49-year-old engineer is redefining his next steps in life.

Zhao Changpeng, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, types out his memoir “The Binance Life” letter by letter on a computer without internet in prison.

Image source: Provided by Binance

Through a video call, seeing Zhao Changpeng, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, it’s hard to associate him with the fierce figure dominating the crypto world or the former richest Chinese.

He wears delicate frame glasses and a Binance logo T-shirt, resembling a low-key and humble engineer— which he indeed was before founding Binance.

However, since he established Binance in July 2017, his life has moved further away from being low-key. Within months, Binance became the world’s largest exchange, and in 2021, he appeared on the cover of Forbes. By 2025, the total trading volume of Binance reached $34 trillion, surpassing the total annual trading volume of the New York Stock Exchange; the number of users reached 300 million, almost the same as Netflix members.

"My first 40 years were ordinary," he says bluntly, founding Binance was a matter of good luck, leading him to become the fastest startup in history to achieve $1 billion in profit. "Later, maybe it was my photo in a hoodie that piqued people’s interest. My life did start to change, even to an unbelievable extent, to the point where I feel movies lack imagination. My reality is much crazier."

His reality is crazier than movies, speaking Chinese with a Taiwanese accent

Zhao Changpeng's life is indeed more thrilling than many movies. Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Binance and him personally, with charges including violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA, regulations requiring financial service providers to register and prevent money laundering), operating a currency transmission business without a license, and violating economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. At that time, Binance had moved from Shanghai and Tokyo to Singapore, and then to Dubai.

"I voluntarily flew to the U.S. and admitted to violating one clause of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. Simply put, Binance served U.S. users in its early stages but wasn’t registered in the U.S. That was my whole crime," Zhao Changpeng explained, asserting that he did not commit fraud, did not launder money, did not create victims, and no users suffered losses. However, a U.S. court sentenced him to four months in prison, making him the first person ever incarcerated for violating the BSA.

Ironically, after completing his sentence and paying fines, one year post-release, U.S. President Trump, who enjoys cryptocurrencies, pardoned the convictions of both Binance and Zhao Changpeng personally, terminating the originally planned three-year supervision by the Department of Justice.

Zhao Changpeng’s life continues to accelerate while having to slow down during the long legal battles, hitting the pause button. Inspired by prison consultant Michael Santos, he began contemplating writing a book. In prison, he used a shared computer that couldn’t connect to the internet and didn’t even have a copy-paste function, typing out the draft of his memoir “The Binance Life” daily for 15 minutes, with the traditional Chinese version released in mid-July.

Zhao Changpeng accepted an exclusive interview with “Commonwealth” and we unexpectedly discovered that the big whale of the cryptocurrency world, who hails from Qingkou Town, Ganyu County, Jiangsu Province, speaks Chinese with a surprisingly warm “Taiwanese accent.” “Almost all my good friends in my teenage years were Taiwanese, and my first girlfriend was also Taiwanese,” he proudly begins, mentioning his frequent visits to Taiwan, having been there over 30 times, familiar with both the north and south.

At 12 years old, following his father, who was studying for a doctorate in Canada, Zhao Changpeng’s family moved to Vancouver. Within his Chinese community, most were affluent Taiwanese immigrant families, many dads were doctors, and moms studying with their kids in Canada, which led to his English being more fluent than his Chinese, resulting in a slight Taiwanese accent in his Mandarin. In college, he once heeded the advice of a Taiwanese friend's mother and chose biology with intentions of pursuing medicine, but ultimately abandoned it to write code.

Hardcore Binance, managing a global team with results-oriented approach

Before founding Binance, Zhao Changpeng was already a financially free engineer. He worked at renowned software companies in Tokyo; at Bloomberg in New York, leading a 60-person development team for futures trading systems; and later returned to Shanghai to establish a fintech company, doing system contract work for many large exchanges.

Because of his familiarity with large exchange systems, Zhao Changpeng established Binance, excelling over competitors at that time in system stability, trading interface, and speed, and by leveraging a BNB token, a BNB chain, and an exchange, he managed to roll out the entire massive Binance ecosystem.

He is more mature than the impassioned young entrepreneurs, which makes his style very different from that of other crypto entrepreneurs. He is neither like Ethereum founder Buterin's idealistic mathematical genius nor like the rugged entrepreneurial miners in early China’s crypto scene.

(Provided by Binance)

He considers himself an introverted person, low-key and cautious, with minimal material desires, often avoiding engaging in verbal sparring on Twitter.

The culture he created at Binance is described by employees as extremely “hardcore,” whether in work hours, decision-making speed, or work intensity. “Most nights and virtually all weekends, we’re basically immersed in work,” a longtime Binance member honestly stated.

"From day one, Binance established a set of operational logic that does not rely on physical boundaries," said Zhang Ling, head of Yzi Labs. Physical boundaries include country and time, meaning, regardless of which country or time of day problems arise, there will always be someone from Binance on Earth to help solve it.

"Headquartered on planet Earth," before cryptocurrency was regulated in various countries, the Binance team would even describe themselves, stating in this unregulated, mostly unprecedented industry, cohesion and execution power relied on shared mission, trust, and commitment to results.

Zhang Ling co-founded a venture incubator, Binance Labs, with Zhao Changpeng in 2018, generating several significant industry infrastructures and representative projects such as the public chain Polygon, Injective, and Kava. Last year, it was renamed Yzi Labs, broadening its investment scope, and it’s one of the few projects Zhao Changpeng continues to deeply engage with after stepping down as CEO of Binance.

She observed that Zhao Changpeng perceives matters with extreme sharpness and makes decisions quickly, decisively, and accurately; moreover, under high-pressure situations, he remains emotionally stable, not at all swayed by market noise or temporary panic, a steadiness that is very rare among entrepreneurs.

"Most of the time, I think about how to solve problems," Zhao Changpeng reveals, because "the opportunities in the future will always outweigh the past."

How did prison change Zhao Changpeng? Rethinking life's positioning

Professionally extremely calm, always thinking of ways to solve problems, an engineer who keeps looking forward. Yet in this autobiography, he devotes extensive sections to memories with family and moments together, suggesting that during the slow time in prison, he looked back and recalibrated his expectations for life's positioning.

He writes about his father, the first college student in their village, whose university education was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, yet never gave up learning, even in a village with only kerosene lamps. Ten years later, he re-enrolled at the University of Science and Technology of China, 500 kilometers from home, and even managed to apply to the University of British Columbia to do his doctorate and become a professor, allowing the whole family to migrate to Vancouver.

This instilled in Zhao Changpeng a deep belief in the power of education, leading him to establish a nonprofit educational platform called Giggle Academy after leaving Binance.

Each time parting and reuniting with his father, he always carried a then-rare large camera, endlessly taking photos of his children, which made Zhao Changpeng develop a love for photography as well.

Once during a Binance employee trip to Hokkaido, Japan, Zhang Ling brought her husband and her daughter, who was under three. Zhao Changpeng bumped into them at the hotel and, upon seeing the playful daughter, said to Zhang Ling, “Take more videos; these will be very precious when she grows up.”

He emphasized that videos are better than photos, as he has taken many pictures while accompanying his children, yet when the kids grew up, it turned out their favorite memories were actually those videos—because videos have sound, motion, and capture moments that photos cannot.

Below is a summary of Zhao Changpeng’s exclusive interview:

I probably first got into digital currency (i.e., cryptocurrency) in 2013, when everyone wanted to create a virtual currency exchange, but you need the ability to do it better, faster, cheaper, and provide better service than others. I was relatively lucky, having worked in this industry for over a decade already, and before that, I had managed trading systems for many years.

In 2015, I established Bijie Technology, having built a team, created my own system, and developed my products; I just needed to turn this into an exchange.

At that time, we recruited He Yi as the Chief Marketing Officer and brought in a team of customer service, which was my first encounter with consumer-facing business, realizing the importance of customer service and market operations.

When Chinese policies changed, we moved out of China, becoming a more international platform. I actually worked at several cryptocurrency companies before, all with decentralized offices, and my personal experience also involved living in many countries, so I had no requisite to be in just one specific nation.

How to manage a company without a headquarters?

Decentralized offices indeed have many advantages. First, there’s no wasted commuting time. Second, there’s time freedom; our platform is always operating, so people can work from home, aligning better with our business needs. Additionally, you can hire talent globally, and candidates don't need to relocate, turning the entire world into your talent pool.

Of course, working from home also has some downsides. For example, once when I visited Dubai and met an employee, he told me I was only the third real person he had seen in three years working at Binance. Sometimes, meeting face-to-face is still important. Secondly, in management, you must rely entirely on results since you cannot see what they do daily, only communicate online.

To overcome these challenges, management must be results-oriented, which allows for the quick development of a global company.

As for company or culture, I believe corporate culture and values are not just words; they must be shaped through every decision and every action taken, something that everyone slowly perceives over time.

For example, the culture of protecting users arises from thousands of such decisions, gradually experienced by everyone. Early on, due to a ban in China, we had to withdraw Chinese ICO users and additionally spent $6 million to subsidize users' losses, which accounted for 40% of our assets at the time. We actually didn’t need to spend this money, as it wasn’t our responsibility. But since they were our platform users, we still chose to do it.

Every time a decision is made, the team observes; over time, it becomes apparent to your team how you, the boss, might decide, slowly fostering a shared culture and decision-making system.

(Commonwealth data)

Is life fair? It depends on how you think

Before negotiating in the U.S., I didn’t anticipate going to prison in America. I thought it might be a fine or perhaps home confinement, never expecting the outcome to be this severe. But regardless, life brings unexpected surprises and also unforeseen accidents.

I think what’s important is that at that time, I wanted to solve the problem, so I wouldn’t worry anymore. I focused on minimizing the negatives for the industry and users. It was my first (and I hope it is the last) time dealing with such legal disputes with law enforcement.

The U.S. government was relatively opposed to virtual currencies at that time, so the result was a bit worse than I anticipated. But looking at it overall, I feel that I’ve been very lucky in life; there always are some moments of bad luck. This world has no absolute fairness or absolute unfairness, it’s all about how one perceives it.

My ideals are actually quite simple. Unlike many people who have a goal or a number to meet, I just want to contribute a bit to society according to my ability. If my capacity is small, then contributing a little is fine; if I have a larger capacity, I’ll try to contribute more.

My goal is to be satisfied with myself when I grow old. That is, I want to be able to say to myself, “I did my best, right?” If I can say that, I think I will be happy.

Life goal: To be satisfied with oneself when old

What I’m doing now can be roughly divided into three parts. One part is the free education Giggle Academy, which now has a team of about 60, and they are doing quite well. I meet with them a few times a week, and my involvement isn’t particularly extensive, but the entire team has been built up; there are now over 600,000 users on the platform, and this free platform achieved more users in a year and a half than the combined user base of ten universities, so I feel quite pleased.

The second part is YZi Labs, which involves some early-stage investments. We do early incubations that can help other founders grow; this has also led me to become a mentor for many founders.

The third part is advising 10 to 20 government units, helping them improve their regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrency.

These activities keep me quite busy, leaving little time for anything else. I think this world changes rapidly. Every year or two, we may find it difficult to predict what specifically we will do two years down the line, so in the future, things may change with time. I’ve seen a lot of biotech or AI projects while investing; I’m also learning about those, so it’s not out of the question that I might pursue new ventures in the future.