從ALL IN比特幣的工程師到華人首富

Binance became the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Now, Binance is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in US history.

In order to reconcile with the US, he eventually lost his job Although he was fined by the US, CZ should be the most influential figure of Chinese entrepreneurs in recent years Personally, I admire CZ very much At least his contribution to the currency circle is well-read Today's video is about CZ How did he become a cryptocurrency entrepreneur who broke US$100 billion in a short period of time from an ordinary software engineer?

Zhao Changpeng, nicknamed CZ, was born in Jiangsu Province in 1977. He is 46 years old. His parents immigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1989, when CZ was 11 years old. CZ is not a rich man. His father is a college teacher. His family is ordinary. So he played in McDonald's and the gas station when he was in high school.

Just like the second generation immigrants of ordinary Chinese Will go to work in high school and college CZ University is a computer science university of McGill McGill is the top university in Canada There are definitely top 5 without top 3 I also got a lot of offers from prestigious schools when I was in high school in Canada But there was no McGill offer

After CZ graduated, he took a more standard life path and became a software engineer. His first job was to develop a system for matching orders in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. CZ's technical foundation should be quite strong. It was the peak of the internet development in the 1990s. It should be quite capable of developing such a low-delay, high-flow order system in the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

According to his LinkedIn, CZ was once the head of the department of stock trading software development at Bloomberg. Then he went back to Shanghai to start a business, which is also related to high-end trading systems. So CZ's background is actually a very strong engineer in the trading system. In 2013, when he was playing Dezhou poker with friends, he heard the word Bitcoin. Based on his years of experience in the financial industry, CZ immediately realized the infinite possibilities of encrypted currencies in the future.

After returning home, he immediately printed out a white paper of Bitcoin and read it again. Since then, he entered the coin world. In that era, most people, including myself, had heard of Bitcoin at that time. But it was just a story, and I didn't really study it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be filming YouTube here today.

In 2013, a Bitcoin was priced at $100. At that time, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase, was established in 2012. Many people think that CZ created BN as soon as it entered the currency circle. In fact, it is not. It was first in blockchain.com and then became the technology director of OKCoin. OKCoin is actually the predecessor of OKEx. Then after a year, CZ sold Shanghai's real estate. Holding about $1 million in hand, directly OIN Bitcoin.

Bitcoin fell from $1,000 to $200 in 2015. The value of Bitcoin in the O-Ink at that time also fell from $1 million to $200,000 in a few months. At that time, everyone thought it was a mystery.

CZ's mom even called him stupid. At that time, no one knew why he did that. But it was because of this conviction, this strong belief, that today's security was established. In 2017, CZ resigned from OKCoin and established the current security exchange. At that time, he and his friend Deming Zhu invested RM1 million in the start-up fund. Later, Deming Zhu said this was the best investment he had ever made.

In July 2017, BNB invested $15 million for the first time. CZ and his team said that their goal was to become the top 10 crypto exchanges in the world in three years. In just six months, BNB became the world's largest crypto exchange. 2017 was a crazy year.

At that time, the price of Bitcoin rose from $8,900 to $19,000. This also made the "Fubishi" magazine name CZ as the first currency to be encrypted in 2018. By May 2018, CZ's value would have exceeded $1.4 billion.

He is also one of the billionaires who have publicly shown his face in the currency circle in the early days of the year. When Bi An first set up his company, his headquarters were in Shanghai, China. But in September 2017, China announced that it would completely ban cryptocurrency activities and began to attack all the cryptocurrency exchanges in China. Bi An immediately sent the headquarters of Shanghai to Japan. After all, CZ had worked in Japan before.

He is also familiar with the financial supervision of the country But not long after, the headquarters of BN still moved to Japan Because at that time, Japan also imitated China to strengthen the supervision and contractuality of encrypted currency I personally think that the decision of the Japanese government at that time was quite stupid Japan had a chance to become the leader in the entire Asia-Pacific region of encrypted currency and technological innovation Japan used to be a very industrial country But because of the aging population, the economic stagnation, plus the innovation in software and online network is relatively backward

So, Bihon brought Web3 to Japan to give Japan a chance to recover. If I were the Japanese government, I would protect Bihon well. And they would pay the protection fee. It's a heavy tax. It was a pity. After that, Bihon moved the headquarters to Malta, a Mediterranean island in South Europe. Bihon has been the leader of the CZ, and has been the world's largest encrypted currency exchange.

Up to today, the daily cash flow is $6 billion. The total assets of BN are $6.8 billion. Even if all assets of the top 10 exchanges are added up, it is not as much as BN.

Of course, with the rise of the security version, every state's financial institution wants to try to suppress or get some benefits from it. So in 2019, CZ said that there is no office now, no bank account. They want to take the security out of the framework of the company. All employees are working from home and there is no headquarters. Because setting up a headquarters is not very meaningful for a company like Web3.

If all employees can work from home, and all company's expenses can be paid with encrypted currency or stable currency, in fact, BN can be completely transported to the world's largest digital financial company. If they don't need to cooperate with local banking systems, they can also be under the supervision of any government. Of course, the ideal is always beautiful, the reality is always cruel. In 2019, more than 20% of BN's users came from the United States.

So in order to meet the requirements of the US regulators, BNAN established a new independent company called Binance US in 2019. The purpose is to allow local users to use the technology behind BNAN under the complete compliance with US law. Then Binance US's operations will be completely separated from BNAN and CZ. They also invited several white people to be the CEO of BNAN America.

But if you think about it, I am an American user today I will use Binance US to deposit money and transfer the encrypted currency to the international version of BN Because the international version of BN is the best The fee is also the lowest You can get it with just a VPN And everything I do on the BN international version is no longer under the control of the US government So BN began to become a target for many regulatory institutions in the United States For example, in September 2018 The New York Department of Justice issued a report that said BN violated the New York virtual currency regulation

In 2021, the British Financial Activity Supervisory Board also banned BNN from doing business related to financial activities in the UK. But these challenges of two-in-three can't stop BNN from expanding. BNN's number of users and transaction volume continue to grow rapidly. By the beginning of 2022, according to Bloomberg's estimate, CZ's personal assets came to nearly $1 billion. What is the concept of $1 billion in assets? Buffett's personal assets are now $1.2 billion.

Bill Gates is $13 billion. So the CZ at that time should be the most successful entrepreneur in the Chinese circle in recent years. No one. Currently, on the world's super rich ranking, no Chinese has a personal asset of more than $1 billion.

CZ should be the only Chinese who is the closest to the US since then. Of course, the more popular the more trouble there will be. On June 5th this year, the US Securities Exchange, SEC, officially filed 13 charges against BN and CZ. Many videos on YouTube have already helped you sort out these charges.

But in general, they are not satisfied with the way of trading BN. Then they said BN did not follow their game rules. Because there are still a lot of American users using the BN international version. Although BN has transferred all American users to Binance US. Then on November 21 this year, which is a few days ago, CZ officially resigned as the CEO of BN. Then he also confessed to the United States. Admit that BN violated the U.S. Anti-Waste Act Decided not to continue to pay BN will also hand over $430 million

to solve these accusations. This is also the biggest lawsuit in the history of the US Treasury Department. CZ himself will also pay a fine of $50 million. In fact, these accusations that are inevitably sued can be viewed from two aspects. On the one hand, they have violated the law of many financial transactions in the United States, such as making users and users of countries sanctioned by the United States transactions, and violating the anti-waste

like the so-called terrorist organization trading in the US, such as not reporting Hamas, Syria, and Israel. On the other hand, if security is really to exercise the so-called financial freedom, like Bitcoin, everyone can participate, regardless of nationality, nationality, and political orientation. Anyone should be able to use security. So for the US, security is indeed illegal. But for other countries, whether it is illegal depends on their political stance. My own opinion is that I think CZ made the right choice. If you want to play a centralized trading platform,

You have to abide by the laws of each country If you want to go further and more stable after BN This fine is nothing at all Besides, it's such a big market in the United States It's also worth paying some admission fees And CZ is a hard-working entrepreneur After he quit BN's job You can completely let him continue his entrepreneurship He said in the tweet on X After he quit, he would take a break for a while In the past six and a half years He hasn't really rested for a day Then he will start to invest in blockchain Web3, DeFi and AI These areas of the project

Then he said he might not want to be a CEO of a new company He would rather be a mentor He said he had been in the company for six years He didn't really rest for a day This sentence sounds a bit exaggerated But I can totally imagine how he has been in the past six years

There are hundreds of millions of transactions in BN for 24 hours, and they are being conducted by the world's leading exchanges. Every day, we have to fight against the attacks of the 21st century and hackers, and we have to find ways to deal with the laws and restrictions of each country, and then deal with the false news on the Internet, and at the same time, we have to ensure the safety of customer assets. Of course, it also includes the innovation and technological updates of the platform itself, which need to follow the pace of constant changes in the currency. These pressures and burdens are hard to imagine.

Finally, the quote from the Spider-Man movie: "With great power comes great responsibility." B&M is still young, and so is the coin circle. What will happen in the future depends on the right leadership of these companies to push the industry to the mainstream. I myself look forward to the development of the coin circle in the future. The story of CZ tells us that although strong faith is important, even if it is a matter of time and place,

and have a strong sense of responsibility to have the security that we have today. If you like today's story, remember to give me a thumbs up. And welcome to leave a comment below your thoughts on the U.S. sanctions. See you next time.