The world’s biggest crypto fortune started with a friendly game of poker

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Zhao, a Canadian citizen, was born in the Chinese province of Jiangsu. Her father, a university professor, was exiled to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution and, when CZ was 12, moved the family to Vancouver.

Exposed to technology at a young age, Zhao went on to study computer science and eventually landed finance jobs in Tokyo and New York, including a four-year stint at Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

His path to crypto wealth began in Shanghai in 2013 during a friendly game of poker with Bobby Lee, then CEO of BTC China, and investor Ron Cao, both of whom encouraged him to invest 10% of his net worth in Bitcoin.

After spending time studying it, he took the plunge and ended up selling his apartment for Bitcoin. In 2017, he founded Binance (a binary and finance coat rack) and it quickly turned into a crypto powerhouse. Zhao even had the company logo tattooed on his arm.

Binance has become the premier destination for trading alternative coins – less liquid cryptocurrencies than more established tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and has become one of the more speculative corners of the market. The company offers to trade more than 350 coins on its international exchange, more than double what is offered by Coinbase, according to Coingecko.

Binance has been successful in creating user loyalty, in part by allowing customers to use Binance Coin to lower trading fees, said Tim Swanson, head of market intelligence at Clearmatics, a London-based blockchain company. .

They don’t even have to be the first to list a coin anymore for liquidity to build up on it, Swanson said of Binance.

Zhaos Company is also the largest supplier of derivative transactions by volume, allowing users to speculate in crypto with even greater risk and potential rewards.

Initially, Binance allowed customers to open accounts with nothing more than an email address. He focused on crypto-to-crypto transactions, limiting his interactions with traditional banks and their regulators. In August, the company announced that all new users must verify their identity, and existing users who haven’t done so will be limited to withdrawals.

He never had an official seat. Binance was founded in China, banned in Japan, and went into self-exile in Malta, which the financial regulator later denied overseeing the exchange. While the company has a large presence in Singapore, it suffered a setback last month when its local unit withdrew an application to operate a stock exchange in the city-state.

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