Zero-to-crypto founder. Built infrastructure, not hype. Binance didn’t sell belief — it sold execution.
Born in 1977 in Jiangsu, China, Changpeng Zhao moved to Canada as a teenager. His parents were teachers, not business owners.
He worked night shifts and at McDonald’s to support the family. His edge wasn’t money. It was math and discipline.
Zhao studied computer science at McGill University.
Early career:
He learned how markets break, how speed creates advantage, and why infrastructure beats prediction.
Zhao founded Fusion Systems in Shanghai, building ultra–low-latency trading systems for brokers.
Profitable, but boring.
It gave him capital, confidence, and deep knowledge of market plumbing.
In 2013, Zhao discovered Bitcoin.
He sold his apartment to buy BTC. No hedge. Full conviction.
He joined Blockchain.info, then OKCoin as CTO.
In 2017, Zhao founded Binance.
He ran an ICO and raised roughly $15 million.
The exchange was:
No fancy branding. Just execution.
Binance became default crypto infrastructure.
Regulatory pressure followed.
In 2023, Zhao stepped down as CEO, admitted compliance failures in the US, paid fines, and served a short jail sentence.
Binance remains massive. Zhao remains one of the richest self-made tech founders.
CZ didn’t inherit an empire. He built plumbing the market couldn’t ignore.