Many people have made millions from investing in crypto and working in the industry. However, the wealthiest person is Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance and he has been the richest man in the industry for three years according to Forbes. His success has made him one of the wealthiest men in the world and has completely changed the crypto industry. However, people wonder how this man became successful and what his life has entailed to get to this point.
The Early Life Of The Crypto King
Zhao was born in China and lived there until he was 12 years old when his parents migrated to Canada. Both parents had successful careers, with his father being a university instructor in China. Once they moved to Canada, Zhao had to start helping out his family by working several service jobs. One of those jobs was a fast food clerk at McDonald’s. While working in several jobs, Zhao was also very successful at school. His success at school got him into McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science.
Once Zhao graduated from university, he was offered an internship in Tokyo, working as a subcontractor to Tokyo’s Stock Exchange. His job was to develop software that matched trade orders. After that, he started his career, working for four years at Bloomberg.
The Beginning Of His Business Career
After Bloomberg, Zhao decided to elevate his career and pursue his first technology startup company. At the age of 27, he was the partner of Fusion Systems. At the time, this platform was recognised as offering some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stock brokers. This is where his success started.
Zhao didn’t hear of Bitcoin until 2013, which was four years after the official launch. Immediately, this grabbed the attention of Zhao after discussions with Bobby Lee, who insisted that he invest 10% of his money into Bitcoin. Zhao didn’t take on that suggestion. Instead, he invested all of his wealth and put all his cards on the table for Bitcoin. Later that year, he developed Blockchain.info and became the chief technology officer of OKCoin. He also launched BilieTech before Binance was founded in 2017.
The Rise of Binance
Cryptocurrency exchanges have been at the forefront of the success of cryptocurrency. Without these exchanges, it is hard to believe that cryptocurrency would be where it is today, especially without the assistance of Binance and Changpeng Zhao.
It didn’t take Binance long to become the most used cryptocurrency exchange, thanks to some fantastic business decisions from Zhao. The reason for that was because of BNB, also known as Binance Coin. Was the company successful because of the Binance coin or was it the other way round?
As soon as the company was founded, the company launched their Binance Coin. Thai saw the company raise over $15 million in funding. Within 143 days after the launch, Binance was then ranked as one of the top three crypto exchanges. In 2018, further growth continued for the crypto exchange as they went from 2 million users to over 10 million. Due to the growth, they predicted the company would make over $1 billion.
So What Caused The Success Of Binance and Changpeng Zhao?
There is no doubt that the launch of the Binance coin helped drive the success of the company itself. However, the other business decisions made also helped the growth of the company.
Something that Binance could do that its competitors couldn’t was to be able to manage 1.4 million orders per second. Additionally, it was capable of hosting 20 million users and offered multilingual support. There were no issues with the capacity and it was levels above the rest.
A year later, Binance moved to Malta so it could benefit from the regulations and laws with the blockchain technology they used. That is when speculations were raised about the company and their success.
They began accepting new cryptocurrencies at a much quicker rate than any other crypto exchange. It was also believed that these cryptocurrencies had to be around 400 BTC to be listed on Binance. It caused a reaction from the crypto kingpin, who said that they do not accept any coins, even if they offer to pay a fee.
Additionally, the fact that Binance was capable of accepting new coins at a much quicker rate attracted even more users and traders of crypto to its platform.
Where Is Changpeng Zhao Now?
Although Changpeng Zhao was a massive success and one of the core reasons for the growth of digital currency, investigations were launched against Binance and Changpeng Zhao. It caused him to resign in November 2023. Furthermore, he pleaded guilty to violating US money laundering laws and the company was ordered to pay $4.3 billion as it was found that users bypassed sanctions because of the assistance of Binance.
On the 30th of April, Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison which followed shortly after Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years. Zhao’s team decided to fight against the case, requesting that no prison time be given to him. Instead, they requested that he be put on probation. Additionally, he was given a $50 million fine which is only a small fraction of the money he is worth.
Summary
There is no doubt that Changpeng Zhao was incredible at his job and a very intelligent businessman. That is why Binance became so successful and one of the biggest crypto exchanges. However, crypto enforcement has gained momentum and new laws and regulations are being implemented to monitor platforms such as Coinbase, Crypto.com and many others. That is because of the number of crypto scams which occur in this industry.
Many people who have traded cryptocurrency have contacted their banks because they believe crypto has been taken from them and are looking for crypto recovery. At this stage, banks can’t do much. That is why governments are starting to crack down on the kingpins of the crypto world.
