Chanpeng Zhao
Chanpeng Zhao, known in the cryptocurrency community as “CZ”, is one of the most recognizable faces of the blockchain industry. He set an example of a lightning ascent to fame and recognition in the heyday of digital currencies and everything connected with them. Zhao is currently the CEO of Binance , one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
Changphen Zhao's capital is estimated at $ 2 billion, which makes it the richest representative of the sphere of virtual currencies. Just over a year ago Binance did not exist yet, and the identity of its founder was not known to anyone.
Early years npeng Chanpeng Zhao
Changpen Zhao was born in the Chinese province of Jiangsu in 1977 into a family of teachers. His father had pro-bourgeois views, for which in those years he was persecuted by the Chinese authorities. In the late 1980s, the Zhao family moved to Canada, where they settled in the city of Vancouver. This happened because the father of the family was an active participant in the famous protests on Tiananmen Square, which ended in bloodshed.
To help the family, Zhao worked at McDonald's and at gas stations. At school, he was a budding volleyball player. After graduation, he entered the University of Montreal at the Faculty of Computer Science, in parallel with his studies was engaged in stock trading. This passion determined the entire career of a future cryptomillionaire.
After graduating from university, he traveled a lot, spending time in Tokyo and New York, where he later began working as a stock exchange software expert at Bloomberg.
Career start at Bloomberg
In 2001, Zhao began developing a system for placing trade orders on the New York Stock Exchange, and later went to work at Bloomberg, where he became a member of the team that created a service for traders called Tradebook. He specialized in futures trading solutions. Over the 4 years he has been promoted three times, by the end of his career in the company he was responsible for the interaction between the teams located in Tokyo, New Jersey and London. In 2005, Zhao left the company.
Creation of the company Fusion Systems
Zhao has achieved great success in Bloomberg, over time he realized that he lacked new challenges. Because of this, he decided to leave and start his own company, which he called Fusion Systems. In it, the future genius of the cryptocurrency industry was doing the same thing as in Bloomberg: developing software for exchanges and traders. He worked in his own company for 8 years, in parallel with the creation and development of other start-ups. He left Fusion Systems in 2013, becoming interested in the field of cryptocurrency.
Transition to blockchain business
Zhao began working with blockchain technologies in 2013. He had a friend and partner in the game of poker Ron Cao (Ron Cao), who worked as managing director of the venture capital fund Lightspeed Venture Partners. When entering into an investment deal with BTC China (BTCC), he introduced Zco to Bitcoin. He immediately became interested and began to devote all his free time to studying the technology on which the main cryptocurrency was built. He carefully studied the whitepaper, which Satoshi Nakamoto left, began to regularly attend conferences and constantly participated in discussions on many cryptocurrency forums.
Zhao befriended the BTCC's CEO, Bobby Lee, who advised him to invest 10% of the capital in Bitcoin, which in those years grew steadily in price. He soon became acquainted with Roger Ver (Rojer Ver), who took Zhao to the team of the service Blockchain.info.
Getting Started in Blockchain.info
CZ joined the blockchain.info service in 2013 and began working as a team with Roger Vere and Ben Reeves. At this place, he served as head of development for 1 year. Zhao speaks warmly about this period and about the kind of friendly team he worked with. He still has a good relationship with the Blockchain team. After starting work, he headed the team that created the cryptocurrency wallet.
Zhao made a significant contribution to the transformation of Blockchain from a little-known startup into a recognizable service and improved its position in the Asian region. He also participated in the acquisition of ZeroBlock, an information service provider.
OKCoin Exchange
In 2014, Zhao began working for the OKCoin team, which at that time was the largest in China. The platform specialized in the exchange of cryptocurrency for real money. Less than a year later, he left the company, creating a stock exchange, which then had about $ 10 thousand in his account. He told about the reasons for leaving a long post on Reddit, accusing the unfriendly team of everything. Zhao also complained about the impossibility of agreeing on issues important for the development of the stock exchange and the ongoing disputes with Roger Wer.
Binance Foundation
After becoming acquainted with the decentralized technologies, CZ was excited about the idea of creating his own blockchain company. He decided to open a stock exchange that will focus exclusively on cryptocurrency exchange and will not work with fiat money. Zhao was in no hurry, waiting for the right moment, which came with the start of the ICO boom in 2017.
In July 2017, he launched ICO Binance, during which 200 million BNB tokens were sold , and the startup managed to attract $ 15 million in investments. To create the platform, Zhao used all his experience in financial technologies in order to create a high-quality exchange service. The exchange began its work 11 days after the end of the collection of investments.
The main goal was growth and after 6 months Binance became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, the number of customers grew at such a rate that the company had to hire a few people just to buy new servers from Amazon all day long. The volume of operations at peak times reached $ 11 billion per day.
The exchange was established in China. Once in this country, the exchange of cryptocurrency and the holding of ICO became illegal, the company had to move to Japan. Now it is possible to trade 120 currencies on the exchange, which are combined into 240 trading pairs. Most of the Binance clients are located in Japan and the USA.
Binance Relocation to Malta
Zhao's reputation in the cryptocurrency community was so good that he was attracted to the development of laws in the field of cryptocurrency regulation in Malta . The Prime Minister of Malta, who has the image of a “technology-friendly” politician, said that Binance will transfer its central office to the territory of this island nation.
Zhao said in an interview that Binance will soon start working with fiat money in Malta. This will be possible through collaboration with local financial institutions.
The move hit the stock exchange positions in the Asian region: the Japanese government warned of a possible ban for the exchange to work with Japanese residents. Korean regulators threatened non-issuance of a license to operate in the country.
Simple guy zhao
The head of Binance is known for its modest behavior compared to other cryptomillionaires who have become known in the wake of the growth of the industry. He is older than many colleagues and is not seen in the passion for luxury or life in a big way.
Zhao does not use the services of expensive air carriers, does not own real estate and does not have a car. Usually he wears T-shirts and sweatshirts with the logo of his stock exchange and, according to his own statement, hardly uses the accumulated money. He has almost no interests outside the scope of cryptocurrency.
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