How Chinese crypto king Changpeng Zhao lost US$77.5 billion: the Binance CEO went from boom to bust amid the bitcoin and NFT crash, but luckily doesn’t ‘really care much about money’
- With a US$96 billion net worth at the height of his crypto exchange’s success, he was one of the world’s richest men alongside Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page
- After attempting to settle in China – which he fled due to the government’s anti-crypto laws – then tax-friendly Cayman Islands, he’s set to move to Dubai in the UAE
So what else do we know about Zhao and how exactly did he make his fortune?
He doesn’t really care much about money
Zhao may be one of the richest figures in the crypto world – and outside it for that matter – but he said he’s not too concerned with numbers.
He made the comment in an interview with Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek, published on Thursday, June 23, while discussing his company’s recent plummet in value amid a marketwide rout for cryptocurrencies that’s seen bitcoin, still the flagship digital token, fall some 70 per cent since November.
“So there’s a couple of things about me,” Zhao said in the interview, which was conducted in May. “I don’t really care much about money.”
He is the wealthiest figure in the crypto world
Binance’s US arm also benefited from a pandemic growth spurt, most recently valued at US$4.5 billion in April.
That massive growth helped Zhao’s net worth similarly skyrocket. He’s now worth an estimated US$18.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, making him the 80th richest person in the world and the wealthiest person in the industry.