Dissecting the underlying logic of sudden wealth and collapse.

Written by: When Shift Happens

Translated by: Plain Blockchain

From starting with nothing to leading the world's largest cryptocurrency empire, from being entrenched in the prison disaster across the ocean to receiving a presidential pardon, Zhao Changpeng (CZ) has nearly condensed the wildness and growing pains of the entire crypto industry into his life.

Can tweets really destroy FTX? What kind of public relations philosophy lies behind the "4" gesture? What dark moments did he endure under judicial pressure? Faced with decentralized forces like Hyperliquid and the cyclical nature of a trillion-dollar bull market, the retiring CZ dissects the truth of sudden wealth, the hidden battles of business, the mental journey in prison, and the ultimate ambitions of AI education in this deep dialogue for the first time. This is a deep confrontation that strips away the halo, guiding you through the noise to understand the underlying survival laws of super winners.

1. Personal Experiences, Family Background, and the Reshaping of Wealth Awareness

Host: Let's start from the beginning. There are many definitions of you from the outside, even President Trump once called you an expert in the digital currency field. You have traveled to many countries, providing consulting advice to governments on cryptocurrency regulations. But perhaps the most curious question from the outside is: what happened in your life that led you to become one of the world's top billionaires before the age of fifty?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): I have always felt that the ranking of global billionaires is not very accurate. The data of the lists is seriously constrained by valuation methods; many undisclosed assets or complex equities cannot be accurately reflected, not to mention that many of my assets are not cash in the traditional sense. I have even heard rumors that some competitors spent money to get media to rank me very high, which would attract more regulatory scrutiny. So, I have never taken specific rankings too seriously.

Host: If you reflect on your growth process, where do you think the motivation that has pushed you to where you are today comes from? Many successful people often have adverse childhood experiences; is that the case for you?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): I have not experienced particularly dramatic suffering, but I did grow up in a relatively tight-knit family environment. When my family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, my parents' jobs barely brought in enough income to meet the local minimum wage. In Vancouver, many of my friends came from wealthy immigrant families from Taiwan or Hong Kong, who had abundant resources. Growing up in such a disparity definitely created an invisible pressure.

But I still feel very lucky. As a first-generation immigrant's child, I have witnessed the immense effort my parents put in for my sister and me to settle down. First-generation immigrants, due to language and cultural barriers, often have to start from the bottom, doing the hardest jobs. As a second-generation, being able to clearly see the struggles of the older generation transforms that memory into a deeply embedded desire to strive—hoping to go further and not let their sacrifices go to waste.

Often, this entrepreneurial and hardworking internal drive becomes hard to sustain in the third or fourth generation. My sister is also very accomplished; she started in technology, worked for a startup in Tokyo, and then joined Morgan Stanley, becoming one of the global executives in her thirties. Later, she experienced a psychological challenge after childbirth, stepped down from her investment banking executive role, and after recovering, is now committed to providing counseling and assistance to those struggling with similar depression.

Host: You mentioned that the spirit of effort tends to fade in the third generation after wealth. What do you plan to do for your own children to avoid them losing that intrinsic motivation?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): Honestly, I don’t have a perfect solution at this moment. My children are still very young, and I have even postponed this question a bit because they still have some time before facing the world on their own. I have talked to many wealthy entrepreneurs with young children and asked them how they plan to educate the next generation, and the overwhelming majority respond with "I don’t know."

The current conventional education system largely trains qualified cogs on an assembly line, encouraging egalitarianism. But the world is evolving at an extremely fast pace today, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence, where the future division of labor will greatly reward "super specialists." If you are a programmer, you have to face competition from millions of developers worldwide; if you can enter the top 0.1% globally in a specific niche, the value you create and the rewards you receive may be several times or even dozens of times more than that of the top 0.2% group.

Traditionally, schools often force students to allocate more time to weaker subjects when they excel in math but struggle with language, ultimately dulling their edges and producing a balanced yet unremarkable average student. Education certainly needs basic general knowledge standards, but it should encourage individuals to excel in their truly beloved specialties. Furthermore, the current education costs are excessively high and inefficient, with excellent teachers being severely lost due to wage ceilings.

The future of more efficient education will undoubtedly be personalized adaptive learning platforms based on artificial intelligence. AI can tailor teaching plans to each child's pace and even accompany them as they grow. While physical interactive robots are also a direction, current hardware's emotional interaction and detailed expressiveness are still very primitive, with distribution costs being too high; while a purely software-based AI teaching platform can be distributed to millions or even hundreds of millions of children at nearly zero marginal cost. The Giggle Academy, which I am currently investing a huge amount of energy in, is based on this logic and aims to provide completely free basic education for children worldwide lacking quality teaching resources.

2. From Zero to Global First: The Founding Philosophy and Execution Genes of Binance

Host: Many people are familiar with the famous image of Jack Ma holding a meeting with the eighteen arhat monks at the lakeside garden in Hangzhou in 1999. Back to the moment Binance was born in 2017, what was the scene like?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): The media often likes to dramatize startup stories, but the reality is often simple and pragmatic. Before Binance, we had a technical team of about 15 to 20 people, and the company was called Bijie Tech. Our main business at the time was acting as a B2B technology provider, building trading matching systems for traditional bulk commodities, cultural exchanges, philately, and traditional asset trading platforms, with very healthy and stable cash flow.

By May 2017, a new cycle in the cryptocurrency industry was starting. One day, I gathered all the core members of the team in a small meeting room, even smaller than an average bedroom. I told everyone: "The real window of opportunity in this industry has arrived. If we don’t create our own crypto trading platform now, we will surely regret it in the future. We already have the world’s top high-concurrency matching engine system, we have the technical backbone in place; the only thing we lack is an operation and customer service system for C-end users."

Everyone had no disagreements and unanimously agreed. We discussed a few brand options and finally settled on "BN" (a fusion of Finance and Bitcoin). We immediately started an ICO and developed the platform, stepping onto the global stage from that humble meeting room.

Host: What the outside world is most curious about is, how could Binance go from being virtually unknown to becoming the world's largest cryptocurrency trading platform by trading volume in just six months?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): The core lies in the team's extreme execution ability, agility, and focused dedication without any burdens.

Our initial team not only had a solid technical foundation but was also extremely humble, with no office politics or vanity at play. We drew a strong cohesive execution power from the fusion of Eastern and Western management cultures. In many traditional Western companies, even a minor product change often requires several rounds of debates and pulls; while our team exhibited astonishing consensus once a common vision was established. As long as the decision-making direction is correct, the team can tirelessly work around the clock to implement it to the highest standards. Fortunately, our judgments on several critical early product iterations and strategic layouts completely aligned with the market's urgent needs.

Furthermore, regarding the so-called "hard work," my understanding is that results and efficiency will always outweigh mere hours spent. Many people sit at their desks for dozens of hours but produce very little effective code or solve very few business problems; while an engineer driven by passion may solve the entire system's architectural bottlenecks in just a few hours of intense focus. Of course, in the early stages of entrepreneurship, when the sense of mission is strong, people might not even calculate the hours—they may put the kids to sleep, then back to the computer late at night to continue troubleshooting and optimizing the system until dawn. This kind of effort is not forced by external assessments but arises from an inner desire to refine a groundbreaking trading system to perfection.

Host: What do you think is the most common misconception about Binance among the public today?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): The most common misconception is still the rigid belief that we are a "Chinese company." In fact, we have operated with a global distribution architecture from day one, with team members spread across dozens of countries.

Another deeper misconception is the binary view of centralization and decentralization. Many people believe that as the largest centralized exchange (CEX) globally, Binance must inherently reject decentralization (DEX). But the reality is entirely the opposite: at this stage, centralized trading platforms provide the lowest entry barriers, convenient fiat on-ramp and off-ramp channels, and complete account recovery and customer service security systems to meet the real needs of most ordinary investors worldwide; however, in the long-term outcome, true decentralization is the foundational color of blockchain. We have invested in and incubated decentralized ecosystems for a long time precisely because we understand that centralized trading platforms are merely a bridge to a fully decentralized financial world in the future.

3. The Storm of Public Opinion, Market Panic, and the Symbolic Origins of the "4" Gesture

Host: In both the Chinese and global cryptocurrency communities, your photo showing four fingers has almost become the most recognizable meme. How did this number "4" evolve into today's community phenomenon?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): Its origin is very pure. On New Year’s Day 2023, I tweeted listing my core work focuses for the new year: the first is education, the second is compliance and regulation, the third is product experience and security. And for the fourth point, I wrote "Ignore FUD, fake news, rumors, and malicious attacks."

At that time, I joked on Twitter with the community that if another malicious rumor or panic statement appeared online, I would not write long texts to refute it word-for-word; I would simply reply with the number "4," representing "Please focus on the first three core developments and ignore those background noises."

Sure enough, within 24 hours, an entirely false short-selling statement appeared online. I followed through and just replied with a "4" on Twitter. The community was immediately ignited, and everyone found this witty and highly recognizable approach amusing. Subsequently, key members of the community began to post photos showing the four-finger gesture, and I also casually took a selfie during a business trip. After two years of community-driven reinterpretation, "4" has completely transcended its original meaning and evolved into a collective symbol in crypto culture representing "facing the storm, focusing on building, and resisting panic."

Host: FTX founder SBF publicly accused you, claiming that one of your tweets directly destroyed FTX. Do you really believe a tweet can have such destructive power?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): This attribution is completely illogical. If a company valued at billions can be easily toppled by a competitor’s tweet, then that company never truly had a foundation for existence in the first place. It would be like today if a CEO of a chip giant tweeted that they were liquidating shares of a startup chip company; as long as the latter's finances are sound, chip performance is excellent, and customer loyalty is strong, its stock may undergo short-term technical fluctuations, but it cannot collapse completely in just a few days.

No healthy and sound business entity could ever go bankrupt simply due to a competitor's statement. The fundamental reason for FTX's collapse was solely that they misappropriated hundreds of billions or even thousands of billions of customer funds for high-risk proprietary trading and to fill the huge loss pit of the affiliated hedge fund Alameda.

Before CoinDesk's famous balance sheet investigation report was disclosed, the market was already brewing with undercurrents. At that time, we were indeed holding several hundred million FTT tokens as an early equity exit party. Upon learning of the significant doubts about its financial underpinnings, out of responsibility for Binance’s own balance sheet, we decided to gradually clear these tokens at market price. I chose to transparently express this on Twitter and clearly emphasized that we would gradually clear them in the coming months to avoid causing immediate panic in the secondary market.

What truly accelerated the run on deposits and allowed the entire industry to see their underlying problems were the subsequent public responses from their executives—who directly stated they were willing to purchase everything at $22 on the over-the-counter market. This essentially exposed their fatal bottom line directly to global short-selling institutions and panic-stricken customers. It was only after users initiated withdrawals that the truth of their substantial insolvency, which had begun months earlier, was fully revealed. Blaming liquidity exhaustion caused by the unlawful misappropriation of customer assets on a competitor’s transparent risk alert is not only absurd but also an insult to public logic.

Host: In significant black swan events in the cryptocurrency industry, we can always see the market's urgent need for scapegoats. For example, during the so-called "1010 crash" in 2025, when an entire network of tokens nearly went to zero within a short period, many voices again tried to point fingers at Binance. What is the truth behind this?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): Every time a macro-financial crash occurs, the public psyche needs a concrete scapegoat. In the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, people blamed investment banks; during extreme fluctuations in the crypto market, the largest infrastructure often becomes the target.

The actual timeline of that crash is quite clear: macro-wise, it began with the sudden announcement of tax policies from the United States, causing a waterfall decline in global risk assets, U.S. stocks, and Bitcoin. In the most extreme moment of cascading deleveraging, a relatively obscure stablecoin (originating from certain derivative protocols, with a market cap of only a few hundred million, not a major asset like USDT or USDC) on Binance experienced a partial decoupling and order matching delays.

However, some competitors and self-media quickly seized on this minor technical anomaly and began to dramatically insinuate across major global communities that "Binance pulled the plug, causing an avalanche." Even some well-known investors, when interviewed, without verification, echoed this rumor in line with public sentiment, which was then paid for by competitors to promote widely. Later, that investor openly admitted during a deep discussion on my podcast that they had not investigated the facts in depth at the time and did not agree with the narrative that "Binance was the main cause of the crash."

The truth is best illustrated not by public opinion narratives but by the actual flow of capital on the blockchain. During that global storm, despite Binance having no legal fault or rigid obligation for repayment, we still took the initiative from our own funds to provide about $80 million to subsidize retail users negatively impacted by extreme market volatility. The data following the crash speaks volumes: amidst the uproar, Binance's overall funds did not undergo net outflows; instead, there was a record of billions in net inflows. Users voted with their wallets; they understood much better than keyboard warriors which platform's depth, liquidation mechanisms, and risk resistance capacity were truly trustworthy.

4. Judicial Journey, Presidential Pardon, and Thoughts on the Future of Decentralization

Host: You went through a long and arduous judicial battle in the U.S., ultimately serving four months in prison. What does that experience mean to you?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): That was undoubtedly a long and exhausting period. For two whole years, you face an enormous and powerful national machine every day.

Before entering the proceedings, my greatest concern was uncertainty. You worry whether the other side would continuously pull out second, third, or even infinitely prolonged baseless charges after you plead guilty to one. In the entire history of judicial precedents in U.S. banking and anti-money laundering regulation, no financial institution executive has ever been sentenced to real imprisonment solely for a single violation of the Bank Secrecy Act (failure to establish sufficient KYC and anti-money laundering interception procedures). Most CEOs of traditional multinational banks facing such charges eventually settle with the company paying a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) and fines, coming out unscathed; peers in the crypto derivatives sector like Arthur Hayes have also only faced house arrest.

Thus, when I ultimately accepted the four-month sentence with composure and served it out, despite the immense pressure on my body and mind, I also felt a sense of relief. I accepted the legal consequences that come with the management lapses during Binance’s exceedingly early and frenetic stages.

Host: The pardon signed by President Trump in 2025 caused a sensation online. What was the real process from the initial application to the final signing by the White House?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): There are many dramatized fabrications about the pardon in the outside world, with some speculating whether I had any private dealings with the president.

The truth is that throughout the entire process, I never had a single phone call, email, or text message with President Trump. The last time I saw him in person was merely at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was a speaker on stage, and I was just one of the hundreds of audience members below with no private interactions or handshake.

The entire pardon was strictly and professionally driven according to constitutional procedures by a legal team. From late 2024 to early 2025, Trump repeatedly stated at campaign rallies and in public venues that he believed that innovators in the cryptocurrency industry had faced excessive and harsh political witch hunts by the previous judicial department in recent years. He explicitly announced he would pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and in March 2025, he officially signed pardons for Arthur Hayes and others.

Due to the nature of my charges being highly similar to the above cases, and even less severe than cases directly involving dark web trading, my legal representative team (which had previously deeply participated in industry legal petitions) formally submitted a detailed pardon petition to the White House's pardon office in April 2025. Following that was a lengthy and compliant legal review process; lawyers updated me on the progress about every two weeks, until it was ultimately signed by the president.

This is by no means a form of so-called political rent-seeking but rather a rectification of the historical bias of "overregulated suppression of early technology innovation" on a judicial level. When Binance was expanding into international markets in its early days, our business expanded globally at a pace far outpacing the compliance infrastructure; however, we never misappropriated a single cent of customer funds, nor did we directly participate in the malicious laundering of any criminal assets.

Host: Speaking of early models and compliance, today decentralized perpetual contract platforms like Hyperliquid are rising rapidly, even continuously encroaching on the territory of traditional exchanges in terms of market value and liquidity. Some say Hyperliquid is Binance's true competitor, suggesting that Binance is suppressing the listing of its native tokens. What do you think of the emergence of this new type of decentralized platform?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): That view is very narrow. I genuinely welcome and appreciate the rapid growth of innovative forces like Hyperliquid.

First, regarding the token listing mechanism. I have long since stepped down as CEO of Binance and no longer participate in any daily management or token listing decision-making committees. As far as I know, for a long time, that token has not been widely circulated on public nodes, but is highly concentrated within its self-customized application chain ecosystem. Centralized trading platforms must strictly review cross-chain counterparty risk and the degree of decentralization of token custody to ensure that the underlying contracts cannot be unilaterally modified or maliciously shut down, which is purely a technical risk control standard and does not involve any malicious suppression.

Moreover, viewed from a broader perspective, the entire cryptocurrency finance currently accounts for less than 1% of wealth allocation for humanity; we are in an extremely early "0.01% era." At this stage, trying to fight over so-called existing territory in the wilderness is meaningless. Just as Google was not the first search engine, Facebook was not the first social platform, Binance is also not the first cryptocurrency trading platform. The new generation of decentralized infrastructures will enhance industry efficiency with lower slippage and higher on-chain settlement transparency, ultimately expanding the entire crypto asset pie by several times. When the overall market capitalization grows from $3 trillion to $30 trillion, as the largest infrastructure participant in the industry, the ecosystem we build will inevitably share greatly in this era's massive dividends.

5. Future Layout: Web3 Investment, AI Education, and Ultimate Life Goals

Host: If tomorrow centralized trading platforms completely cease to exist, what do you hope your true legacy in the world will be?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): My current life has fully turned towards the post-centralized trading platform era. My daily work schedule is extremely fulfilling, but can roughly be divided into two core dimensions:

In the short to medium term, I spend a lot of time talking to policymakers and central banks of emerging sovereign nations, helping them build an inclusive, innovative, and well-protected legal framework for cryptocurrencies, aiding more underdeveloped regions of the world to integrate into an open financial network. At the same time, through my family office and incubation institution (EasyLabs), I am heavily investing globally in the next generation of decentralized Web3 startups and artificial intelligence technology, accompanying young founders with a strong technical passion in refining foundational products.

On a long-term life scale, my greatest effort has been completely devoted to Giggle Academy.

Human genes endow us with a foundational instinct in evolution: when you purely help others, especially changing the lives of the younger generation, the happiness and fulfillment you gain is irreplaceable by any wealth. The vision of Giggle Academy is to completely break the educational barriers caused by geography and wealth. We utilize generative AI technologies to reconstruct high-quality teaching outlines from kindergarten through elementary school into gamified, highly interactive adaptive learning software that is completely free and perpetual.

In less than a year of testing, the number of our students has explosively grown from tens of thousands to over 1.3 million children. Many of these kids grow up in regions where infrastructure is extremely scarce globally; they may never walk into a physical school with qualified teachers, but as long as they have an inexpensive smartphone connected to the internet, AI can be their top personal tutor companion 24/7.

Host: Last question, you have always appeared in the community as a strong long-term bull. Many investors are curious whether your optimism about bull and bear cycles comes from blind faith or rational calculation?

Zhao Changpeng (CZ): I will always hold an optimistic attitude toward technology-driven social progress; this is my philosophical foundation. But that does not mean I have the ability to predict short-term daily fluctuations.

Since its inception, the cryptocurrency industry’s underlying cycles, halving patterns, and macro liquidity have been evolving along a clear medium-to-long-term trajectory. In the short term, a geopolitical news piece or a macro interest rate cut decision can trigger severe market fluctuations of 20% or even 30%; but on a macro scale of five to ten years, those focused on decentralization and providing asset autonomy and efficiency leaps for the real world have never stopped their upward momentum.

I once read a saying, which roughly means, "If you want your future self to thank today's you, you must take actions today that have long-term compound value." This saying completely applies to this industry. No matter whether in valleys or celebrations, strip away the restless noise, stay away from deadly high-leverage speculation, and build irreplaceable core value in the field you are best at. History will eventually prove that once the wheels of technological evolution start turning, no force can stop their pace in reshaping the world.