jakiro
Source: W3C DAO
Hurun Research Institute released the “2024 Hurun Global Rich List” on March 25 (the deadline for wealth calculation is January 15, 2024), and 52-year-old Elon Musk had RMB 1.67 trillion (231 billion)The wealth of US dollar is back to the throne of the richest man.
In addition, Hurun Research Institute wrote that cryptocurrencies seem to have moved forward since the FTX crash.Although Binance was fined more than $4 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for money laundering,But as interest in cryptocurrencies surged, former CEO Zhao Changpeng’s wealth grew to 130 billion yuan ($18 billion), ranking 100th on the list.
A man who sold his house and entered the currency circle
Zhao Changpeng (alias CZ) was born in Jiangsu in 1977. He immigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of 12. He began majoring in computer science at university and started his programming career.
After graduating from college, CZ joined several companies as technical consultants, mainly designing and developing matching trading orders. As a programmer, she has developed a system for matching trading orders for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and also served as a technology for Bloomberg, New York.Director, develops futures trading software for him.
I got three promotions in less than two years.But he was still uneasy about the status quo. In 2005, he chose to resign and come to Shanghai and established his first company, Fuxun Information Technology Co., Ltd., which specializes in developing the fastest high-frequency trading system for securities companies.
Li Qiyuan heard about BTC through his good friend Bobby Lee’s former BTCC and BTC China co-founder and CEO, so he began to come into contact with blockchain. bobby LEE once said this to CZ:
“If you invest 10% of your net assets in BTC, as long as it rises 10 times, your wealth will double, and you will only lose 10% of your assets if you lose money.”
It was because of this sentence that CZ became very interested in blockchain; then CZ began to involve blockchain projects and joined Blockchain.info as the third founding employee, where she worked for 8 months.During the process, he had frequent contacts with BTC preachers Roger Ver and Ben Reeves, and under the influence of some industry giants, he strengthened his confidence.
Until June 2014, he was invited by He Yi (known as the No. 1 CNC, now co-founder and CMO) to become OKcoin’s CTO.
At this time, CZ sold his house in Shanghai and invested all his funds in BTC, with no other assets except mobile phones. Therefore, he was also considered by Crypto believers to be the first to hold his assets under Crypto.99% of people.
In less than a year, Shanghai’s housing prices doubled, but BTC fell sharply. Faced with huge financial losses, he did not choose to give up. During his work at OKcoin, CZ mastered the logic of the operation of the Crypto exchange and the entire industry.
Later, due to conflicts in the differences in culture and values between the two sides, Zhao Changpeng chose to resign.He had a conflict with OKcoin’s founder Xu Mingxing, so he left OKcoin.
Founded Binance
After mastering the wealth code and leaving OK Coin, Zhao Changpeng saw the popularity of the cultural goods trading industry market and founded Bijie Technology, which was responsible for providing trading systems for collectibles such as coins, stamps, and phone cards.Although the company is doing well, he still wants to have his own exchange. Therefore, in June 2017, he chose to establish Binance and launched his own blockchain currency – Binance Coin, from then on the road to billions of wealth.
Compared with other Cryptos, Binance mainly wants to aggregate global high-quality blockchain assets to provide users with more convenient and safer services.
Binance provides ordinary people with a trading platform with extremely low investment threshold. In less than 10 days, the first issuance brought Binance $15 million in financing.In less than a year, Pancheng Capital, Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital attracted attention, and they all wanted to provide financing for it.
As BTC’s price surged from September to December 2017, with the price rising from $3,000 to $20,000, which was a surprising increase, people began to scramble to enter the Crypto exchange.
During the bull market, Crypto’s trading volume broke the original record.At its peak, the daily trading volume of all exchanges and Crypto on the world reached $60 billion, while Binance accounted for one-sixth, reaching $10 billion.
And don’t ignore it. In the currency circle, there must be something in which there is Binance. This chief customer service has always been active on the front line of work. Most of the credit for Binance’s current market share and ecological environment are needed.Thanks to this “number one in the currency circle”.
Rapid development
Time comes. In 2017, Zhao Changpeng founded Binance. At this time, He Yi’s two-year competition period at OKcoin also ended, so Zhao Changpeng took the opportunity to invite He Yi to join Binance as co-founder and chief marketing officer CMO.
He Yi, who returned to the currency circle, is not in vain to be the “person in the crypto circle who is the best in the market”. With her skillful marketing activities, Binance has made the world’s crypto asset trading volume in less than half a year.One position, the transaction volume exceeds US$3 billion.
From 2017 to the present, He Yi and Zhao Changpeng have worked closely together to conquer cities and land in the global crypto asset market and Web3 field, and have taken over the glory.
He Yi is Binance’s second largest shareholder. Including the company’s shares and profits, plus the Binance Coin BNB she holds, her assets must be more than US$1.5 billion.No wonder when asked how much she earns at Binance, she said proudly, “That’s just pocket money, I didn’t look at it too much.”
A two-year plan was planned on June 24, 2017. Binance was officially established and began to raise Binance platform currency BNB. At that time, Binance only took about a week to raise $15 million in crypto assets.
Then on July 14, 2017, Binance’s web was officially launched, and BNB was traded online. The issue price of BNB was US$0.15 at the time, and the lowest price after it was launched was US$0.23. But in fact, Binance only raised more than 10 million.The US dollar is less than 100 million yuan, so this determines that Binance itself does not hold many coins, and is affected by “94”, BNB fell, and Binance subsidized nearly 20 million yuan in clearance of these users.
For Binance at that time, this was quite a lot of money.This also includes the clearance of BNB users in China. At that time, many situations were cleared at the issuance price, but Binance cleared at the market price of around 4 yuan.I had a feeling at that time:“Binance only raised this amount of money in total, and used most of its value to subsidize users.”
However, after that, Binance user registrations experienced explosive growth, from December 2017 to February 2018, it increased from 1 million registered users to 7 million in three months, making Binance the largest in the worldAs Binance develops very quickly, CZ also ranked third in the rich ranking list with a net worth of US$2 billion.
Looking back on the past
CZ mentioned in his Binance 6th Anniversary letter:
Today, Binance is already a platform that provides financial services to more than 140 million users around the world, and may usher in billions of new users in the future.And all of this was just a dream at first.
Six years ago, with your support, Binance raised crypto assets worth $15 million and began to build a coin coin platform.Two weeks later (that is, today six years ago), Binance was born, and a total of 5 tokens were listed and 2 service languages were provided.At that time, our customer service team borrowed it from my friend’s company, and we didn’t have our own marketing team.
Today, Binance has launched more than 600 tokens, providing more than 40 service languages, and a customer service team of thousands of people.Now, BNB Chain provides support from decentralized trading platforms to various storage applications.
Two months after Binance was established, we were faced with severe tests.On September 4, 2017, mainland China issued a ban on crypto asset trading platforms and 1C0.China’s 1C0 project has to return funds to investors.
As soon as the ban was released, the prices of many tokens plummeted.Several projects listed on Binance even fell below the issue price, and the project team did not have enough funds to repay investors.
After calculation, our team called me and asked me if I would use Binance’s own funds to compensate these investors.The total amount was $6 million, which was definitely not a small amount at the time, but we agreed to do so.The call lasted only 5 minutes and I was still on a moving train at the time.A few minutes later, we made an announcement.
At that time, US$6 million accounted for more than 40% of our total funds, which was the largest expenditure in Binance’s history, based on the proportion.At that time, we were only a startup that had been established for two months, and had not yet achieved profitability, and were still spending money on recruiting, purchasing servers, etc.
But my only thought at that time was: protect users.
Sure enough, as long as you do the right thing, the world will give you positive feedback.Our decision has received strong positive feedback from the global crypto asset community, and many new users have come to us.One month later, our number of users reached 120,000 and began to make profits.
And we have been keeping profitable ever since.
At the same time, we are constantly building and the number of users is also growing.On December 18, 2017, I received many congratulatory messages from my friends.It took me a few minutes to understand: on that day, Binance became the world’s largest trading platform for crypto asset trading, and we have maintained this position to this day.
However, Binance’s growth has not been smooth sailing.Just a few days later, a potential venture capital firm (Sequoia) filed a lawsuit against us.The lawsuit lasted for several years and we ended up winning a full-scale victory.
Many Internet startups with relatively large capital flows may not be able to survive such long-term lawsuits, but fortunately, we have established a sustainable business model due to the crypto assets.A few years after the lawsuit ended, at our invitation, the potential investment institution also became a limited partner of Binance Labs Phase 2 Fund.I can be happy to say that we still maintain a good relationship with them so far, and most of the problems can be solved.
But this lawsuit also brought side effects to Binance, making it impossible for Binance to accept investments from VCs.As a startup, our risk has increased, but it may help us in the long run.We are able to maintain a flexible and independent operation.”
Today’s CZ
Recently, Zhao Changpeng, who is still in the United States due to litigation, has not stopped moving forward.After founding the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, it officially announced its next startup project, “Giggle Academy”.
According to the official website, Zhao Changpeng has regarded this project as a new chapter in his life, aiming to build a high-quality education platform that is completely free and open to everyone.
Looking around the world, there are many excellent educational programs around adult education, primary schools to universities, and even early childhood education. These Internet education plays an important role in universal basic education for humans, eliminating the geographical location and ethnicity of various regions around the world.The negative impacts caused by factors such as religion, belief, economy, and culture are within reach of the ocean of knowledge as long as a mobile phone can connect to the Internet.
At present, the quality of some primary school education is actually uneven, and children in many regions still face problems such as lack of educational resources and low teaching quality.Some children can get excellent resources at birth, while some children are already far behind in the starting line.This is exactly where Giggle Academy is working to solve.
Written at the end
In the vast ocean of cryptocurrencies,From selling houses to leading Binance to the peak, Zhao Changpeng (CZ) has also taken off his wealth, reaching a remarkable RMB 130 billion.
In this article, we tell the legendary story of CZ from a teenager in Jiangsu to a giant in the cryptocurrency world. His journey is full of wisdom and courage, from a programming workbench in Tokyo to a technology field in Bloomberg, New York, and then to a startup in ShanghaiEvery step of the road reflects his exploration of the unknown and his desire for the future.
It can be said that Binance’s rise is like an epic, showing the wisdom and resilience of CZ and He Yi, and they jointly wrote a new chapter in the history of cryptocurrency.
In the future, as digital currencies continue to evolve, we have reason to believe that these digital pioneers will continue to lead us into a completely new financial era in the wave of change.
