The cryptocurrency exchange business made this man even richer, even now he is among the richest people in the world. He is the founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao.
In the latest calculations published by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zhao's assets are estimated to have penetrated USD 96 billion .
Zhao's wealth now rivals that of Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, and surpasses several big names such as Indian conglomerate Mukesh Ambani.
Those who are in the crypto business are indeed getting richer as the value continues to soar. Call it Ethereum creator Vitaloik Buterin and Coinbaes founder Brian Armstrong, both of whom have become billionaires in United States dollars.
In response to his soaring wealth, Zhao tried to remain humble. "Don't worry about rankings. Focus on how many people you can help," he wrote on Twitter.
Then he chirped again. "Unpopular opinion, rather than ranking who is the richest, there should also be a ranking for charitable and philanthropic efforts," wrote Changpeng Zhao.
A Binance spokesperson said that CZ did want to donate most of its wealth to humanitarian causes. In fact, he intends to give up to 99% of his total wealth.
The man who lives in Singapore was born in China but later has Canadian citizenship. What is his inspiring story of building and growing Binance?
Quoted from the Vulcan Post, Thursday (13/1/2022) Zhao grew up in Jiangsu, both of his parents were teachers. As a teenager, Zhao worked at McDonald's cooking burgers and other tasks. At night, he also works at the gas station.
In the late 1980s, Zhao and his family moved to Canada. His father who was a professor was exiled because of problems with his country. Changpeng Zhao then attended MacGill University in the City of Montreal majoring in Computer Science.
He then worked on developing a trading system on the Tokyo stock exchange where his career quickly took off. But in 2005, Zhao decided to leave, moved to Shanghai, and founded a financial company called Fusion Systems.
Not satisfied with that, Zhao smelled a big business opportunity in the crypto world and founded Binance in 2017. The Binance platform can be used to trade cryptocurrencies or to store them.
Binance also has its own cryptocurrency called BNB, the third largest in the world with a market cap of USD 54 billion. In 2017, Binance raised USD 15 million in funding and they are growing fast. In the following year, its users reached 6 million users.
Zhao and Binance are getting more and more popular. In 2020, Binance earned USD 800 million in revenue and total trading volume crossed USD 2 trillion.
Zhao has a Binance tattoo on his arm. So fanatical about the crypto business, he claims to invest all his money in crypto currency.
"The physical things I have are probably nothing compared to my wealth. I don't use crypto currency to buy cars, buy houses. I just want to keep them. I don't plan on converting them into money in the future," he claims.
Yes, he admits to living an ordinary life. In an interview with Forbes in 2018, Zhang stated that he did not own a vehicle, luxury watch or yacht. But sometimes he buys laptops, sometimes six at a time because he often breaks them.