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Note: On April 24, the U.S. Department of Justice stated that Binance founder and former CEO Zhao Changpeng should serve three years (36 months) in prison. According to the reasons given, the U.S. Department of Justice lawyer believes that Zhao Changpeng helped Binance violateFederal sanctions and money laundering laws, and say they have to pay a greater price, so sentences should be increased.
Just before the trial, CZ apologized for his “wrong decision” in a letter to Judge Richard A. Jones, who was in charge of the case, and admitted that he was fully responsible for his actions.
In addition to CZ’s apology letter, there are 161 letters of support from his family, friends and others, which restore the real CZ Zhao Changpeng from different angles.CZ’s sister, former Morgan managing director Jessica Zhao, said that despite her brother’s mistake, he worked hard to help others in life, while she mentioned the FTX incident, highlighting CZ’s making sure Binance never abused any customer funds..Zhao Changpeng’s children, Ryan and Rachel, who are studying in American universities, hope that judges should not define Zhao Changpeng’s personality through this incident alone.
Among them, the most special letter comes from He Yi, the co-founder of Binance and also a mother of three children. In the letter, she wrote:
“If the cryptocurrency industry is compared to the wilderness west, then CZ is the guardian of this wilderness.”
“For CZ, whether poor or rich, he is taking charity seriously and taking social responsibility because he is kind and has a humanitarian spirit.”
Finally, He Yi said,“Today, it is the sense of responsibility that makes him choose to face the trial, but he should never be regarded as the same kind as those evil people who kill, rob, or cheat. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open the eye of God, be omniscient and omnipotent, and see more completeAfter CZ, a fair judgment was made.”
The following full text of the letter:
Dear Judge Jones:
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I am a partner at Zhao Changpeng (abbreviated as CZ), and I am also the mother of his three children.I hope this letter can help the judge understand a more real Zhao Changpeng.
In the spring of 2014, I met Zhao Changpeng at a school’s blockchain public event. Everyone called him CZ, which is different from the anonymous name used by many people. This is the acronym of his real name.CZ was immediately invited to the stage to share impromptu after arriving that day, because the organizer found out that he worked for the most popular Bitcoin wallet (blockchain.info) at the time.He enthusiastically explained blockchain technology and the principles of Bitcoin to everyone. At that time, he had just sold his house to buy Bitcoin. Due to the decline in the price of Bitcoin, his assets shrank significantly, but this did not hit him.The obsession with chain technology, his speech was full of idealism about the ability of blockchain technology to bring positive changes to the world, which greatly influenced and inspired me.Later, CZ chose to enter the crypto field and founded Binance. Of course, he hoped that the company would succeed, but he was not a person who made money as his ultimate goal. He sincerely hoped to use technology to promote the progress of the world.
In the summer of 2014, CZ’s matching and trading technology background accumulated over the years was unable to play its strengths in Blockchain. After I invited it many times, he joined the crypto trading platform OKCoin, where I worked.At that time, the currency circle had entered a downward cycle. Amid the wailing sounds of the industry, a member of the community unfortunately suffered from leukemia and was unable to afford his medical expenses, so he started to raise funds publicly.CZ also actively participated in the donation despite the huge shrinkage of personal assets, but unfortunately, this community member still died in the end.Inspired by this incident, CZ and I jointly launched the “Love BTC” charity project. He built a website and a public Bitcoin wallet address. We raised funds through social media auctions of clothing, etc., and then directly exchanged BTC for items to give them.Beneficiary.To this end, CZ also wrote a paper introducing how blockchain technology can achieve 100% transparent charity, ensure that the ultimate beneficiary receives 100% of the profits, and ensure that no donations are eroded by the middleman management fee.This paper can be found on Github with a timestamp of April 2014
(https://github.com/cpzhao/bitcoin_charity/blob/master/Bitcoin_Charity.md), and this is the predecessor of Binance Charity.
This was three years before Binance was founded, when CZ was not rich.Many people think that charity is just a way to gain fame. Some people use tax deductions, while others will say that they will do charity when they are financially free.For CZ, whether poor or rich, he is taking charity seriously and taking social responsibilities because he is kind and has a humanitarian spirit.
In August 2017, it was my first month of joining Binance. A young user found me and said he had transferred thousands of dollars to Binance’s wallet address, but Binance did not support this token, so BinanceThe token was not available; this was a very common mistake in the early days of the industry.
According to the industry practice at that time, I had to bear the mistakes I made.However, for this child in his early 20s, those thousands of dollars may be the annual income of his family, and his annual college tuition, which is his hope for the future.After a brief discussion with CZ, he mobilized our originally stretched development resources and quickly helped users recover this asset. This is the first case in the industry to help users recover the assets that were misplaced.With the first time, there were countless subsequent times. Under the guidance of CZ, Binance has helped more than 180,000 users recover assets with a total assets of more than US$441 million.This is a project that consumes a lot of resources and is not worth doing in terms of ROI, but we can ignite hope for our users in despair.To this day, they still do not support this service on publicly listed trading platforms such as Coinbase.In this emerging Wild West, countless practitioners play more of the role of predators, and CZ has always insisted that we should do the right thing: protect users.
In early 2018, the price of Bitcoin rose by more than 20,000 US dollars, and the enthusiasm of investors also breeds a lot of fraud. One day, a group of Chinese users came to me and pointed out that they were lured to invest in a project by an account on social media. After making money, this personIt was later missing, but according to public on-chain tracking, the money was just transferred to Binance.According to the law enforcement process of most platforms today, users need to find the police to call the police first, and the police provide a letter of investigation before they can freeze. At that time, China banned cryptocurrency transactions, and Chinese police did not accept such cases.CZ said to us: “Do the right thing”, we temporarily freeze the stolen money, and then organized multiple calls from the victim and the scam person, and the scam person finally returned the money to the user, and the scam person was also closed.account.This is just one of the countless examples of CZ insisting on cracking down on evildoers. In the past 2023, Binance cooperated with law enforcement agencies in various countries to investigate more than 58,000 cases, including many cases where Binance actively promoted law enforcement agencies to start an investigation.That’s why despite mainstream media trying to portray CZ as an evil bad guy, millions of community users and ordinary people regard him as a hero in the industry, because CZ has always had its own insistence on justice, if the cryptocurrency industry is comparedIn the Wild West, CZ is the guardian of this wasteland.
Starting from 2019, the company’s personnel began to grow rapidly, and the team composition was very global and full of diversity. During this period, there were Wall Street elites who graduated from Ivy League universities, dropouts from Europe, and NGO female fighters who were active on the front line in Africa.There are also young men in the Southeast Asian countryside who do not want to be fishing seafarers. It can be said that CZ has really treated everyone equally regardless of race, belief, gender, education, or family background; whether it is the house of a junior employee in Southeast Asia destroyed by a fire, orCovid swept the world and caused employees to lack epidemic prevention materials. Even the war between Russia and Ukraine brought danger to employees, CZ helped employees at any cost; for a company’s boss, spending millions of dollars to help those scarce in difficultiesIt is not uncommon for talents to lead their families out of an unstable living environment and continue to pay allowances. When CZ decides these, it does not consider their background and rank. This also covers a large number of junior employees who are just starting out. These employees are generally veryIt is easy to find alternatives, but CZ’s decisions have only one reason: they need support.
CZ’s leadership style may not meet the traditional expectations of a good CEO.His commitment to transparency and equity at Binance often clashes with the power expectations of a small group of employees accustomed to the elite-level corporate environment.This led some employees to leave the company with resentment and make false accusations to the media.While these reports sometimes frustrate me, CZ has always shouldered this burden and continues to support justice and equality because he understands that true fairness sometimes is unfair to the privileged minority.
One weekend in November 2022, FTX was facing a crisis, and Sam (SBF)’s last call for help was called to CZ.Before getting any valid reports and documents provided by SBF, CZ convened a management meeting to decide whether to rescue FTX. He said: “We don’t need FTX, the company. We rescue FTX to save this industry. We should save FTX.”.Although he was finally helpless to give up the transaction, the subsequent information released by the incident showed that multiple companies associated with FTX were misappropriating user assets, which made CZ dumbfounded.CZ believes that transparency is a better solution, so he disclosed Binance’s trading platform wallet address. Going online allows users to check their own account funds and online wallet addresses to show Binance’s transparency, which furtherPromote industry self-discipline.
So far, CZ and I have experienced ten years of ups and downs in this industry. These ten years have been a decade of drastic changes in the industry. In the past ten years, Bitcoin has risen from hundreds of dollars at a low of more than 40,000 dollars to now. We have seen countless times.The famous celebrities have lost their reputations, and they have also seen countless well-known institutions collapse instantly. Most of the time, these people claim to be smart and talented, but regard the law as nothing, think that they can deceive the public, or escape the sanctions of the law by chance.CZ is not: He is upright, kind, sincere, smart and very hardworking; CZ has undergone two spinal surgeries in 2020 alone due to work reasons, and even after 18 months of repeated lying on the hospital bed, he has not stopped working for a day.As CEO and largest shareholder in the past six years, he has received salary lower than the company’s subsequent introduction of multiple executives, and has not paid dividends or cashed in one dividend.This time, in order to enable Binance to continue operating, he chose to fly to the United States to plead guilty; between his personal interests and public interests, CZ always chooses to sacrifice himself and achieve Binance, and when between Binance and users, he will choose users..
As a partner of CZ, I know clearly how CZ wins respect from the community; it may be that when the Chinese government bans Bitcoin trading platforms, other projects take the opportunity to make a fuss, CZ chooses to clear users at a higher price: it may also be possibleIt was theft incident in Binance. CZ disclosed the information at the first time and took full responsibility. It is more likely that when countless project parties issued coins just to sell coins, CZ is helping users to track down industry scammers and hackers, some casesIt has nothing to do with Binance, just because of his sense of mission and responsibility for this industry.
As CZ’s life partner, I have known CZ for nearly ten years, so I know more about his unknown side. He knows nothing about jewelry, luxury goods, luxury cars, and art auctions that the rich are passionate about. He lives a simple lifeIn life, he bought affordable clothes on Amazon, he rode a balance bike to a meeting, and he enthusiastically showed reporters his Toyota 6-seat van, and was later publicly ridiculed by reporters. He bought things out of efficiency and interest, and he was concerned about money., reputation, enjoyment without fanatical desires, he hopes to live a meaningful life.
At the same time, he always takes care of his friends as much as possible, regardless of their career and social status: he also tries to take time out of his busy work to maintain high-quality interactions with 3 young children, children andHe is very close, and now they are always asking: Why is Dad not at home? When can Dad come back?
Of course I am not saying that CZ has not made any mistakes, but his biggest mistake is ignorance.As a startup company without a gorgeous background, the founding team members have no legal background, and even early management team members have not even been able to read English except CZ, such as myself.In the absence of experience and legal knowledge, CZ has won users with fairness, integrity and a sense of responsibility to the industry, and has also made mistakes.Anyway, the error has been minted, and both Binance and CZ have paid a huge price.
CZ said before:“No one wants to be a hero, because no one is born to want to rush to the front, and heroes just have to protect their family, community, ethnic group, and territory to do the right thing in that position, and have to become heroes in the process.”
I humbly hope that Justice Jones can comprehensively consider how this industry is regulated and how it defines the United States in such an early and chaotic state. As a founder who has never managed a company of this size, he will definitely encounter it.Blind spot. If CZ knew the severity of the matter, he would definitely guard against it from the first day and block any American user.He doesn’t want to be a hero, and of course he doesn’t want to be a criminal. All his behavioral logic follows universal humanitarian norms and does his best to do his best.
Today, it is the sense of responsibility that makes him choose to face the trial, but he should never be regarded as the same as those evil people who kill, rob, or cheat. He sincerely hopes that Judge Jones can open the eye of God, be omniscient and omnipotent, and see a more completeCZAfterwards, a fair judgment was made.If you need it, you can contact me at any time for more details.
