════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Freedom of Money A Memoir of Protecting Users, Resilience, and the Founding of Binance Author: Changpeng Zhao (CZ) Bitcoin Ordinals Inscription by: czbook.bnb ════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Publisher: Freedom of Money Foundation Address: 1725 I Street NW, 3rd Floor, Washington, DC 20006 Year of Publication: 2026 (First Edition) ISBN: 979-8-9950696-2-1 Copyright © 2026 by Changpeng Zhao All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Disclaimer This book is a memoir. It is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s personal recollections, perceptions, and opinions. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, some details may reflect the author’s subjective memory and interpretation of events, as well as simplified, condensed, or reconstructed, and may not reflect complete or objective facts. This book represents the personal views and opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the positions or opinions of any organization, institution, or individual with which the author is affiliated. Reference to any third party, organization, or entity, or the inclusion of any trademark, service mark, or trade name, does not imply endorsement, sponsorship, approval, or affiliation by or with the author or publisher. The publisher and the author are providing this book and its contents on an “as is” basis. The statements in this book are not intended to be statements of fact and are not intended to be relied on in any legal, regulatory, administrative, judicial, or municipal proceeding. Where the memoir discusses official court proceedings, the account is based on the author’s subjective views as well as public records and court documents. The author does not adopt or endorse the truth of all allegations or statements made in those proceedings. Nothing in this book is intended to disclose, waive, or compromise any attorney-client privilege, work- product protection, or other applicable legal privilege or duty of confidentiality. Testimonials “As a great admirer of CZ for his bold contributions to making alternative monies accessible to almost everyone in the world, I’m thrilled that he has so clearly laid out his life story. I recommend it for anyone who aspires to go from humble beginnings to a world shaper or is interested in a fascinating read of CZ building Binance into a pillar of the new monetary order.” Ray Dalio Founder of Bridgewater Associates “This book offers a personal, firsthand account of one individual’s experience building and leading during the formative years of crypto and digital assets. Being present at the early stages of a new technology gave CZ a distinctive vantage point, which he draws on to describe the ideas, decisions, and moments that shaped his path.” Larry Fink Co-founder, Chairman, CEO of BlackRock “CZ saw early what many are only now beginning to understand: that digital assets and blockchain technology can unlock real opportunity for nations willing to embrace the future. His story is one of conviction, resilience, and an unwavering belief in technology’s power to serve people. Bhutan is proud to be part of that future.” His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck King of Bhutan “Every era needs people who dare to push boundaries. CZ’s turbulent journey proves that courage and perseverance can create new possibilities, even when one must walk the path alone. Freedom of Money is not only a record of CZ’s personal experience, but also a true portrait of the founders of this era — continuing to move forward through pressure, doubt, and risk.” Yong Zhang Founder of Haidilao «CZ›s journey is a powerful lesson in resilience, vision, and purpose. Freedom of Money reflects deeply on how open systems can expand opportunity, agency, and human freedom — and on the enduring idea that freedom begins with the ability to act, to build, and to shape a better future.» Matthew Roszak Co-Founder, Hemi To the future generations: May you live in a world where freedom is the default. T Foreword: Yi He he first time I met CZ was in the spring of 2014. I had just walked away from a stable career in television to enter a crypto industry that was, at the time, in retreat. Everywhere – on television, online, in newspapers – Bitcoin was being declared dead. Prices were falling. Confidence was thin. The easy optimism of earlier days had evaporated. Bitcoin was in free fall. CZ had sold his house and gone all in, only to watch most of his net worth evaporate. To many, my decision to change careers looked reckless. His looked worse. Neither of us had certainty. But when CZ stood on stage talking about blockchain, his eyes were alive with belief, untouched by the crash around us. I thought: people smarter than me have gone all-in. What am I afraid of? Over the years, people have often asked me: What kind of person is CZ, really? I sat with it for a long time and realized there isn’t one right answer. There never was. Every reader finds their own Hamlet; ten million people see ten million different versions of CZ. What we see in someone else is often just a mirror of ourselves. There is no one else out there. So what I see in him is probably only the part that I, and only I, can see. This book begins with his story, long before he knew me. Both of CZ’s parents were teachers. He grew up in rural China and started primary school at five. That child who once stared at well water and electric light in wonder probably never imagined that decades later, he would become inseparable from a technological tide reshaping the world. At twelve, he moved to Canada with his family. He worked through a stutter, manned the fryer at McDonald’s, pulled late shifts at a gas station, and still managed to win MVP in school sports. At his core, he never really changed. He believed in kindness. In hard work. And in technology’s power to change the world. He began his career in biology, and later pivoted to coding. He went to Tokyo, to New York, to Shanghai, and eventually dove headfirst into Bitcoin’s codebase, and never came back out. In the summer of 2014, we became colleagues. The crypto market was in decline. A community member developed leukemia and started an online fundraiser. CZ’s own assets were shrinking, yet he donated without hesitation. When the community member later passed away, CZ built a website and drafted a whitepaper outlining a fully transparent, blockchain-based charity platform – one where every cent could be traced to its destination. That whitepaper 1 is still on GitHub. The timestamp is April 2014, three years before Binance was founded. When he founded Binance in 2017, the growth was explosive. He pulled countless all-nighters, losing ten kilograms in just three weeks. Within six months, Binance had become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. CZ was thrust onto a pedestal almost overnight. Every event he attended was overflowing; photo lines wrapped around halls. Someone once photoshopped his face onto Jesus and hung it in their car. Others flew across the world just to shake his hand. And yet nothing about his daily life really changed. He wore inexpensive clothes ordered from Amazon. He rode his bike to meetings. He would even laugh while telling reporters about his old Toyota minivan, the one with seats he could adjust after two spinal surgeries. When journalists turned it into a punchline, he didn’t flinch. “The person they praise and criticize are both someone they’ve imagined,” he said. “No need to take it too seriously.” Then the tide turned. Regulators came. Lawsuits came. Headlines changed tone. One day he was a “legend,” the next an “indictment.” Those who once called him a “savior” turned around and called him a “toxin in crypto.” He was lifted onto a pedestal, dragged through the mud, raised up again, then torn back down — all of it moving in lockstep with token prices. Before FTX collapsed in 2022, he said in an internal management meeting, “If we save FTX, we save the industry — and we help ourselves.” What he didn’t expect was for SBF’s team to resign one after another. Within 24 hours, there wasn’t even a complete balance sheet available — only regulators preparing to step in. In 2023, he made the decision to fly to the United States and plead guilty. On an internal call, he told us: “If I don’t go, the Biden administration will kill Binance. BNB holders will suffer severely. The industry could be pushed back ten years.” He chose to carry the burden himself. He said Binance was no longer a baby. After six years, this child could walk and run on its own. During that year in the U.S., he grew thinner, but the light in his eyes grew brighter. He always asked how the kids were doing. He never mentioned his own worries about the repeated reversals on travel restrictions imposed by the U.S. government. It was then that he launched the Giggle Academy charity project, saying he wanted every child to have access to free education. I asked him why. He said, “Because I’m a beneficiary of education. The system is outdated. I can organize all subjects and make them multilingual. If they learn, they can get jobs. And if some of them later choose to give back, the mission can sustain itself.” Even standing in the storm, he still wanted to hold an umbrella for others. Then came the “U.S. presidential pardon”, a headline that sounded like the ending of a surreal film. The day the news broke, phones were exploding. No one could reach him. During that silent hour on his Twitter account, he was in transit to a meeting with the Kyrgyz government, explaining how blockchain could change the world. He was the last person to find out he had been pardoned. He has always been himself. In moments of praise, he stayed steady. In moments of harsh criticism, he held firm. Even when pardoned, he did not call it destiny. This book is his life. It is also Binance’s coming of age. From rural China to Canada to the world. From McDonald’s to Binance. From confinement to freedom regained. Rising and falling, falling and rising. The public loves to build legends — and just as eagerly, to tear them down. Heroes are crowned, shattered, ground into dust, stepped on, and replaced by the next one. Through it all, he has only ever been himself. He was never a myth, nor a villain. Just himself — the five-year-old staring at well water and electric lights; the teenager working night shifts at a gas station while dreaming of the future; the programmer who kept giving, even as his assets shrank; the founder who put himself at risk for the survival of his company. He hasn’t changed. He has always believed technology can change the world. He has always believed that doing the right thing is the only rule that matters. The tides of the world swirl around him, and he lets them pass. There is no one else out there. What others see is often only a reflection of what they wish to see. And he, all along, has simply been himself. How fortunate I am to walk this journey alongside him. Yi He First Day of the Lunar New Year, 2026 M Prologue y life was plain and boring for the first 40 years. Then, I founded Binance. It took off, becoming the fastest startup in history to reach $1 billion USD in profits. Binance, launched in July 2017, became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange five months later and has held that position ever since. As of 2026, it serves over 300 million users. In February 2018, Forbes put me on its cover, because I wore a hoodie to the photo shoot. From that point forward, people started to think my life was interesting. My life indeed became more exciting, so much so that I found most movies unimaginative by comparison. My reality was crazier. In November 2023, six years after founding Binance, I voluntarily flew to the U.S. and pleaded guilty to a single violation of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). In plain English, Binance.com hadn’t registered as a Money Services Business (a type of financial institution) in the U.S. when we had U.S. users on the platform in our early days. The DOJ under the Biden administration alleged that our anti-money-laundering program during that early period was not effective enough to meet the requirement of a Money Services Business. Granted, ‘effective’ is subjective; there is no universal metric for compliance. That was the entire crime. There was no fraud, no money laundering, no victims, and no users were harmed. I had no criminal history. A U.S. District Judge sentenced me to four months in a federal prison. No one in U.S. history has ever been sentenced to prison for this single BSA charge, except me. I paid the fines, served my time. Then a year later, on October 21, 2025, President Trump pardoned me. I wrote the first draft of this book as a brain dump while in prison, using a basic editor that didn’t have a copy-paste function on a limited inmate terminal. Moving paragraphs required retyping them, like a typewriter. I had no internet access, so it was based solely on whatever I had in my head. This book is as true an account of my life and of Binance’s journey based on my memory. Although memory is never perfect, I have tried to be as accurate as I could. After regaining internet access, I discovered that events I recalled happening in January occurred in March, and a U.S. special agent I remembered as Patrick was actually Joseph. I tried to correct the errors I found, but I’m sure some remain. I’m not a great writer. English is my second language. Worse, I’m stubborn in how I want to tell my story. As always, I believe authenticity is more important than sounding polished. This book follows a rough chronological order of events. It jumps between topics, just as we must handle multiple things daily. Onwards. T Go Live, July 14th, 2017 en, nine, eight, seven… They were counting down. The tech guys had their eyes glued to their screens. I was one of them. Others hovered around us. Our receptionist, Fang, had her phone out, capturing a video of the special occasion with me in the center. I had the Binance.com website on my screen, on the BNB trading page. Three, two, one. We were live! Bam, the screen was filled with Sell orders, no Buy orders. “This is not good, right?” I murmured. Slowly, a few buy orders started to appear. They were at low prices. As soon as a buy order appeared near the last price range, they were taken. And the BNB price inched downwards. The room went from excited anticipation to silence. Fang, usually a cheerful girl, quietly dropped the camera and retreated to her desk. What happened? Just a few hours ago, people were still asking me for more BNB2 allocations. They all wanted to buy more. We didn’t have any more. We sold all the available allocation during the ICO3. Now, everyone wants to sell? I later learned many of those buyers wanted to sell on the day of live trading, hopefully at a profit. Didn’t most projects go 10x on their first day of trading? Yes and no. Bancor dropped below the ICO price on its first day of trading a week prior, too. I didn’t have much time for a deep analysis. Well, at least the system didn’t crash this time. That was something. Our tech team was monitoring the systems, and our finance team was conducting reconciliation checks. There was a chat box on the trading page. As it was the first day of launch, we didn’t have any filters or controls over the chats. Profanity filled the page. People were not shy to “pay respect” to my ancestors. Highest Pressure Period I didn’t care about the comments about my ancestors, but I felt a burden that I had never felt before or since. Thousands of people believed in me, and now, they were at a loss. This began the highest pressure period of my life. By any measure, our initial launch was a success. Two weeks after our ICO, we got a trading platform up and running. Our system was fast, visibly fast even by the human eye. Our interface was sleek and intuitive. Why couldn’t people see this? Well, as I had vaguely known before, but didn’t crystallize until much later: Markets sometimes go up and down for no reason. It was just mass psychology. Many times, markets drop on good news, and can rise on bad news. We were just caught in a downturn. Over the next few weeks, we worked hard to launch a slew of new features, including: API4 trading 0 fee trading for a month Increasing listing to ten coins Starting Gas distribution to NEO holders5 Listing NEO Gas for trading Launching redesign of our UI (v2) Opening ETH market6 (in addition to BTC) Launching a Mobile (HTML5) friendly version Adding 9 new languages We slept in the office most nights. But nothing helped. The price of BNB was completely unrelated to the exchange’s performance or the growing number of users using it. I live streamed every other day. The cursing kept scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I didn’t care about the cursing. I just wanted our community to know I was there, we were there, and we were still working hard. The traditional practice is for CEOs to hide behind their PR teams, and only push short, politically correct, official sound bites. I didn’t believe that was the right approach. We are in the new age of social media and instantaneous two-way communication. Your users want to know you care. Don’t hide behind a curtain. Even with all the cursing, we had supporters. People would say, “Hey, at least he is still here. Give him time.” Some understood us. The cursing lasted for three weeks, until we announced Yi He was joining us. I Early Days Qingkou was born in Qingkou, a small town eight hours north of Shanghai. My dad was an electrician, maintaining the town’s speaker systems, which were crucial for communication and entertainment since few had radios or TVs. I don’t remember Qingkou from those years; my knowledge comes from family stories and later visits. Both my parents come from small villages. Dad was a bookworm. Even at a young age, he read while other kids played in the fields. As far back as anyone can remember, he was the first person ever to attend university from his county. But as soon as he got into university, the Cultural Revolution began, and the university cancelled all classes. Administrators sent students to the countryside to learn the true ways of life. Dad was sent to a village some distance away from his home. Dad met Mom there. In 1978, when I was one year old, universities in China resumed teaching after a decade-long pause. Dad, having not attended a single day of undergrad classes, took the entrance exam for a master’s program and got accepted. He moved 500 km away to the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province. The lengthy journey meant he could only visit home twice a year during breaks, which was how often I saw him. Zhong Hu Village Around 1982, Zhonghu Village. Me (left) with my elder sister (right). Mom took care of my sister and me, both toddlers at the time. Needing more support, we moved to a village near Mom’s hometown when I was about three years old so we could live closer to her family. Mom taught math and history at the village high school. We lived in the teachers’ housing unit inside the school compound. Out of more than 30 villages in the area, ours was the only one with a high school. For the first few years, my sister and I were the only young children living in the school compound, so people referred to us as “the kids from high school.” My grandma lived with us. Since Dad was usually away, it was basically Grandma, Mom, my sister, and I living together. The four of us shared two beds in a single room, with the other room serving as a makeshift living, study, and dining area. The floor was packed earth, with no cement or flooring, just dirt. Mom made sure my sister and I each had our own study desks, which was unheard of for kids in the village. Looking back, this must have implanted some subconscious learning habits in me. Grandma was always sweet and affectionate. Her pockets were like a magician’s hat, endlessly producing peanuts and other treats, which probably explains why I love peanuts to this day. We didn’t have the luxury of running water. The nearest well was about 300 meters away. Mom would make the journey multiple times every day. She balanced two buckets of water on a bamboo stick slung across her shoulders, carrying them back and pouring the water into a large ceramic tank in our home. This tank held about eight buckets of water, which we used for drinking, cooking, and occasionally bathing. For bathing, we rationed ourselves to just one bucket of water. No showers, just careful scoops. During the winter, we didn’t bathe that much, maybe only a few times per season. A few years later, a new technology came to our village. Like our neighbors, we installed a hand pump in our yard. It required a bit of water to prime, but after a few pumps, we’d hear the magical gush of water flowing. I was always amazed that once it started, there was an endless supply of water. That pump didn’t just provide our family with water, it also sparked my fascination with technology and the wonders it could bring to our lives. We still didn’t have electricity. During my early elementary school years, I did my homework huddled over an oil lamp. A couple of years later, electricity started to become available in our area, but only for a few hours each day. Since we never knew when electricity would be available, we still relied on our oil lamps for lighting in the evenings. I remember the day the grown ups put a light bulb in our room. It felt like witnessing witchcraft. My sister told me that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. I was like, “How the hell did he come up with that?” When we moved to the village, there was no kindergarten nearby. My sister was five. Mom didn’t want her to just hang around the house, so she arranged for her to start school early. Mom persuaded the elementary school teachers to let my sister join the first grade with children who were two years older. Mom assured the teachers that if she couldn’t keep up, she would repeat the next year. She kept up, so when I turned five, Mom did the same with me, and I started school two years younger than my classmates. The teachers always put me in the front row because if I were in the second row, I wouldn’t have been tall enough to see the blackboard. From that point on, my classmates, friends and later colleagues were usually older than me, until I started Binance, where I became one of the oldest in the company. I never felt bullied or belittled as a child. I just got on with it. Elementary school passed without much excitement. I managed to keep up, but I was nowhere near the top of the class. Mom often took me to visit the elementary school teachers after dinner, just to chit chat. I guess it was a way to build relationships and keep tabs on how my sister and I were doing. I remember Mom telling me that Dad didn’t start earning good grades until high school, so I hoped the same would happen for me. As the years went by, I began to doubt it. But to my surprise, when I reached senior high school, everything clicked somehow, and I started getting decent grades, just in time to get me into college. I have many happy memories from my childhood, and almost no bad ones. I recall trying to catch fish in the little river that flowed in front of our school. Although I never succeeded in catching any, I had fun trying. One of my favorite pastimes was whipping a wooden spinner with a soft willow branch to keep it spinning. The toy, which spun on one tip until it fell sideways, entertained us. Kids called it “lazy wife,” a name that would be politically incorrect in the West, but this was China during the early 1980s. The adults found the name hilarious, though I didn’t understand why until much later. I always thought the name was “blue wife,” as the word “blue” has the same pronunciation as “lazy” in Chinese. I’ve always been a touch slow to catch on to such things. Our aunt lived in a village near ours. Since Dad was frequently away working at a far-off university, Mom often took us to visit our aunt by bicycle. Sometimes, my sister and I would trek for about an hour to get to her house by ourselves. We loved these visits. We had lots of cousins there, and they taught me how to ride domesticated water buffalos, which was both exciting and somewhat scary. The boys also enjoyed swimming naked in the river behind the village. I guess I didn’t realize at the time, but from a young age, Mom always gave me a high degree of freedom. As long as I didn’t hurt myself or others, she was fine with it. And I was a mellow boy, who rarely got into trouble. Hefei, 1987-1989 1987, University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei). From left to right: sister, mom, me, and dad. When I was ten, we moved to Hefei, where Dad’s university was located. Hefei was a different kind of city. The journey took about 24 hours with four transfers on long-distance buses and trains, making weekend visits to our cousins practically impossible. We saw them much less frequently after the move. The morning we left for Hefei, I remember my aunt waving goodbye with sadness and tears in her eyes as we boarded the bus. She didn’t say much, but I’ll always cherish the memories of her kindness to my sister and me. As I rode a train for the first time, I was amazed by the number of people in the station. They looked as if they knew exactly where they were going. Mom held one of my hands, my sister held the other, and with their free hands, each pushed a large suitcase that held all of our worldly goods. This setup was to prevent us from getting lost, a common and often tragic occurrence for children in China. Our move to Hefei was the first I can remember, but it was just one of many to come. On average, I have moved to a new city every four years. Not that I planned to, it just happened. I’ve become accustomed to moving, almost expecting a change of scenery every few years. I’ve met others who get stressed out just thinking of moving to a new city. For me, it’s normal. I simply pack a suitcase and go, adjusting quickly to the new environment. Unbeknownst to me back then, this mindset significantly influenced my business life in the future. It also shaped my preference not to collect any physical valuables, including arts, cars, watches, etc. They are a burden to move. As we arrived in Hefei, we got off the train onto the platform, walked down some stairs, through a tunnel, and climbed another set of stairs. That was when we saw our dad. Dad had a big camera and took a picture of us at the station. Back in those days, money was tight for everyone. Owning a camera was a luxury. Thinking back, Dad always had a big camera, which might explain my fascination with camera gadgets. We lived on the campus of the University of Science and Technology of China, one of China’s top universities. As a faculty member, Dad secured a spot for us in the temporary dormitories for faculty, another pattern that would repeat later when we moved to Canada. The faculty dormitory was essentially a long hallway lined with single rooms on either side, each housing a family. Our family of four was crammed into one room. We had two bunk beds, a table that also served as a desk, and a color TV, which was a novelty. The kitchen consisted of a gas stove outside of the room in the common hallway. The gas stove was another novelty for me. In the village, we cooked with wood, dried grass, and coal. Every family in the large, three-story building had the same kitchen setup in the hallway. During cooking hours, the hallways were filled with thick smoke as we pan-grilled everything, a common practice in China. I can still vividly recall the sharp, strong, almost choking aroma of stir-fry cooking and the dense smoke that lingered in the air. One of the neighbors was an opera singer. She sometimes would sing while she cooked, so we often had this beautiful, serene voice soaring above all the cooking aroma, smoke, and noise. We didn’t stay in the dormitory for long. A few months later, our family moved into a small two-room apartment. There was no living room, just two rooms. In the master bedroom / living room, we placed a sofa, creating space for six people to sit if three sat on the bed. My sister and I shared the second room, with our own bed and desk. The space was so tight that there was barely any room to move around. We didn’t have a shower in our apartment, or even in the building. Instead, we walked ten minutes to a communal shower. But we had our own small kitchen. Even without hot water, it fe lt like pure luxury. Life in Hefei was fantastic. The university campus was beautiful, with colorful water fountains, serene lakes, man-made rock formations, grand lecture halls, and even a computer lab. I remember one evening, Dad took my sister and me to his computer lab. As we stepped inside, I was mesmerized by the massive machine at the center of the room, its blinking lights and rhythmic beeping filled the space. Though it had only a small monochrome monitor, it seemed incredibly advanced at the time. To entertain us, Dad launched a simple computer game. If we pressed two keys in succession, a small white dot would “run” forward, a two- player racing game. My sister and I played a few rounds, giggling as we competed. But before long, Dad reminded us that these were high-cost machines, not meant for playing games, and ushered us away. That was my first encounter with a computer, and it left a lasting impression. Before we moved to Hefei, Dad had participated in an exchange program at the University of Toronto. Not long after we got to Hefei, he moved to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which meant that he was away most of the time again. I started middle school in Hefei, which was inside the university campus, another recurring theme in my life. My classmates were two years older than me. I continued to earn average grades, and I began to doubt whether I would be able to live up to Dad’s academic standards and excel during my high school years. It certainly didn’t feel like I had a gift for academics. One memory I cherish from Hefei is playing table tennis at the ten concrete tables. I was into the game. Before the end bell of each class, I would hold the paddle in my hand with one foot out of my desk, on my toes, ready to go. It was first-come, first-served. With only ten tables for the entire school, I wanted to get there fast. As soon as the bell rang, I rushed out to claim a table. My math teacher was kind enough to document this behavior in explicit detail on my report card for my parents, which didn’t please them. The university campus was like a small city, walled off with only two entrances. A few university students called Dad and Mom “teacher,” a polite way to address people in China. They would often come to our place to hang out, seeking advice on applying to overseas universities and what life would be like if they were accepted. I would visit their dorms too. I remember that each dorm room had four bunk beds to accommodate eight students. I learned to play chess and Go from those college students, who were only 7-9 years older than me. Another benefit of the massive university campus was its paved roads. Coming from a village with only dirt roads, this was a major upgrade. A friend of my sister’s lent us a pair of roller skates, the kind you could attach to your shoes, and I became instantly hooked. Initially lacking balance, I practiced at home on our concrete floors, where the tight space ensured I could always grab onto something for support. Later, in Vancouver, I upgraded to rollerblades and frequently explored the UBC campus. Rollerblading remained part of my college life in Montreal, where my friends and I made memorable trips roller skating from the McGill campus to the Old Port, onward to Casino Island, and finally returning to Chinatown for a bowl of Vietnamese pho. Our family wanted to move to Canada, so we started applying for passports in 1987. After navigating a multi-year approval process involving many administrative offices, we finally received our passports in early 1989. The next hurdle was applying for visas, another lengthy procedure. At the time, traveling abroad was considered a privilege reserved primarily for elite students and professors. Leaving China In the Spring of 1989, back in Hefei, the situation in China grew tense. I was only 12. Faced with the tides of fate, I believe it had some influence on me. That summer, Mom took my sister and me to Beijing to apply for Canadian visas. The Canadian embassy was crowded with people. When we arrived, we found a long line that circled the large embassy compound. People waited in line overnight to get in. We submitted our application. A few days later, the embassy approved our visas. We coordinated logistics, and on August 6, 1989, Mom, my sister and I flew from Shanghai to Vancouver. Back then, the main international flights out of China were from Shanghai. So, with the company of our cousins, we went to Shanghai a few days prior to our flight. We toured the city. It was my first time visiting the big city. I took a few photos on the Bund, one of which I posted on X 30 years later. To be honest, I didn’t like Shanghai that much at the time. It was too crowded and too big. But over the years, Shanghai has had a way of calling me back. Stepping into a Boeing 747 for the first time was also an unforgettable experience. When I closed the bathroom door, the lights became brighter automatically, which amazed me. I felt too excited to sleep during the long flight from Asia to North America. August 1989, The Bund, Shanghai. Shortly before leaving for abroad. Vancouver, 1989-1995 August 6, 1989, Vancouver International Airport. Our family’s first day in the city. As we stepped out of the airport in Vancouver, there was Dad again, with his big camera, capturing our first moments in Canada. Since Dad didn’t have a car, one of his friends drove us from the airport. Even though it was an old Chevy, the ride felt like an awesome experience. During my 12 years in China, I hadn’t known anyone who owned a private car, and I had never sat in one. We drove to our new home, a single room in the student housing section on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. The four of us lived in that room for the next few weeks. It was packed with two bunk beds and not much else. The bathrooms were located down the hall in a common area shared with other residents. There was also a communal kitchen with a large refrigerator and a big table where we all shared meals. A few days after we arrived in Vancouver, Dad took me along to meet someone he had found through classified ads, a student selling his car. From him, Dad purchased our first car in Canada: a twelve-year-old Datsun for $400 Canadian dollars. The fourth-hand vehicle looked ready to break down at any moment, and frequently did, but that didn’t dampen my excitement. It worked, most of the time. This may explain why I’ve never been impressed with fancy cars. After a few weeks, we relocated to a two-bedroom townhouse within the faculty housing area at UBC. Our address was 2750 Keremeos Court, Vancouver. Recently, I checked Google Maps out of curiosity, and while it accurately identified the spot, the row of houses where we started our life in Canada had disappeared. It seems that developers had torn them down to make way for new developments. Back in 1989, I was grateful to live there. It was the most spacious place I had ever lived in. The townhouse had a decent kitchen and living room downstairs, with two bedrooms and a tiny storage room upstairs. We even had a tiny front and back yard. Mom and Dad slept in one bedroom, while my sister slept in the other. We squeezed a single-size mattress into the storage room, which fit perfectly on three sides. I would crawl into my “bed” from the end. The storage room didn’t have any windows. I got used to it pretty quickly. I was happy to embrace my inner caveman. Maybe that’s why I don’t suffer from claustrophobia. To this day, I’m content in small spaces by myself. Being an introvert, I find solitude rejuvenating. My sister, always generous and looking out for me, offered to switch rooms with me every couple of weeks so I could get some fresh air. It was a blessing to have a big sister. We spent our teenage years in that cozy townhouse. We knew we were poor compared to many of the people around us, but the idea of complaining never crossed our minds. Life was more than good, and we appreciated all that we had. On our third day in Canada, Mom secured a job sewing clothes at a factory. Although she was a math and history teacher in China, her limited English meant that working for minimum wage was her only option. She’d leave for work before 7:00 AM, and wouldn’t get home until after 7:00 PM, just in time for dinner. She worked there for many years, dedicating much of her life to creating opportunities for her two children. Mom never complained about it. My sister, who was 14 at the time, prepared dinner for our family every evening, and I washed the dishes. Dad was still doing his Ph.D. program at the time. The university provided him with a monthly student allowance of around $1,000 Canadian dollars. Mom’s income was lower. While we weren’t going hungry, our budget was tight. Each week, Dad meticulously scanned the newspaper for grocery store coupons, clipping for the best bargains on fruits and vegetables. On Saturdays, we would hop into our rickety car and visit various stores to use the coupons and buy those specific items. This routine became our family’s weekly outing during our initial years in Canada. Dining out was a rare occasion for us. It was too expensive. My first experience in a restaurant was when Dad took us to a noodle shop in Chinatown to celebrate my sister’s 16th birthday, two years after we had moved to Canada. In Chinese culture, noodles are a symbol of longevity and prosperity, a standard for birthday celebrations. I never received an allowance and never asked for one. It was out of the question. We had to live frugally. Borrowing money to spend was just not part of our culture. Despite our low income, each month, my parents managed to save a little. Dad was meticulous in managing our finances. He kept a little book that tracked all expenses. I remember one time we were in a Safeway grocery store, and I begged and begged for a small toy airplane. Eventually, Dad relented and parted with $1.99 Canadian dollars to buy me the toy. It was the only toy I had as a teen, and I never asked for another. I understood why. To this day, I don’t buy many expensive toys. When I was 13, Dad took me to a small computer shop, where he paid $7,000 Canadian dollars to buy an x286 computer with a five-megabyte hard disk. It shows how good he was at budgeting because that was equivalent to seven months of his full salary. That was, and still is, the most expensive computer he or I ever bought. In hindsight, the investment was worth it. Without that computer, I might not be where I am today. 1990, Vancouver. My first time using an x286 computer. I didn’t speak much English when we first moved to Canada, so I attended English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. After a couple of years, I transitioned to regular classes, but they placed me in math classes two grades ahead. First Jobs My sister got a job at McDonald’s when she was 15, just a year after we arrived in Canada. I had to wait until I turned 14, the minimum working age to work at McDonald’s. It was below the normal minimum working age of 16, but McDonald’s somehow had an exception. I applied on my birthday and got hired within a week. Flipping burgers for just below minimum wage, $4.50 per hour. Since I’d never had any money of my own before, I felt grateful to earn so much. It was a lot more money than zero. It gave me a sense of independence and the feeling that I was contributing to the family. At 15, I landed a dishwasher summer job at an amusement park, PNE, located in downtown Vancouver on Hasting Street. The pay doubled what I had been earning from my job at McDonald’s: $9.00 per hour. It felt like a promotion and a huge step up. At 16, I got my driver’s license and took a summer job at the Chevron gas station on King Edwards Road in Burnaby. I worked the overnight shift, from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, earning $12.00 per hour. That summer, I also became a certified referee for the British Columbia Volleyball Association (BCVA), earning $16.00 per hour refereeing high school games. I drove to different schools and got paid for four hours per game. The hours didn’t interfere with school. Since I loved volleyball, it didn’t feel like work. This was my first taste of the saying, “If you love your job, you never work a day in your life.” Volleyball In high school, volleyball became a big part of my life. I spent about 15 hours each week, three hours a day on weekdays, for five years of high school playing volleyball. It all started in eighth grade when I was hanging out at my friend Daniel’s house. He had a volleyball, and we started playing in his backyard. We couldn’t keep the ball up for even one rally, but that didn’t stop us from trying. Over the next few weeks, we attracted more friends to join in. By ninth grade, we managed to form a volleyball team at our high school. University Hill Secondary (U-Hill) was one of the smallest schools in Vancouver, with only 200 students across five grades. With just about 20 boys per grade, we didn’t have much of a talent pool to choose from. In contrast, other schools in Vancouver often had over 3,000 students. We worked hard to pull together a team of 6 to 8 boys who committed to playing. Often, only six of us showed up for games, leaving us without any substitutes. 1993, middle school volleyball team group photo. From left to right: Mr. Glassby, Jason, Rudy, Frank, Ray, me, a teammate whose name I’ve forgotten, and Mr. Beaten. Our team wasn’t strong, yet we always put in our best effort. I took every opportunity to practice, which led to my teammates electing me as captain for all four years. This was my first experience with leadership and handling challenges. And there were plenty of challenges, as we lost often. Our PE teacher, Mr. Glassby, volunteered to coach us. He was a very nice guy, an excellent runner, but not a volleyball player. He read books on volleyball drills and tried them out on us. I found the same books at the Vancouver Public Library and would often know the drills he planned to use before he even introduced them. The summer before my tenth grade, UBC’s varsity team organized a three-day volleyball camp for high school players. A few hundred kids from various Vancouver high schools, including some of my teammates, signed up. I didn’t. The $90 sign-up fee was too much. I couldn’t afford it. However, I still went to watch from the gym’s audience bench. On the first afternoon, the coach, Conrad, noticed me, understood why I was there, and invited me to join the practice. That day, I learned a valuable lesson I could only articulate years later: “80% of success is showing up.” Conrad was the captain of the UBC varsity team and only a few years older than us. Near the end of the camp, I asked him if he would be willing to coach our U-Hill Hawks volleyball team, which is on campus for him. He turned out to be an exceptional coach, and became a great mentor to me. Near the end of my tenth grade, I could deliver an aggressive jump serve about 80% of the time. But I would miss one every now and then. Conrad insisted I always use the jump serve. In one match, we were trailing 7-14. I performed eight consecutive jump serves, which were all aces, bringing us back to 15-14. But on match point, I switched to a standing serve out of nervousness; I made the serve but we lost the match. Afterward, Conrad asked why I hadn’t stuck with the jump serve. I explained that I was afraid of making an unforced error since I was statistically due for a miss. Conrad gave me two pieces of advice: First, always jump serve. He didn’t want to see a standing serve from me ever again. Second, never break momentum. That second lesson stuck with me throughout my life. That season, our little U-Hill Hawks team made it to the city playoffs, a first in the school’s history. Though we lost most of the games, the city game officials awarded me a trophy for being the most valuable player (MVP). It was the first trophy I received in my life. That summer, I made the Vancouver City Volleyball Team. It felt great to be one of the 12 players selected from all the schools in Vancouver. However, I struggled during practice due to my overnight job at the gas station and missed some games because of work. Although I didn’t do as well as I would’ve liked, I enjoyed the intense practices. Later that summer, I tried out for the BC provincial team, but didn’t make the cut. I just couldn’t jump high enough. No matter how hard I trained, I couldn’t clear a meter on a jump, which was a basic requirement for the provincial team. My athletic dreams came to an end, as I realized the limitations of my genetics. I learned that we all have different cards to play in life, and we have to make the most out of the hand we were dealt. I continued to play volleyball during my 11th and 12th grades, but by then, the dream of becoming an athlete had lost its luster, and the sport became a hobby. By the time I began studies at McGill University, I had moved on from that chapter of my life and didn’t try out for the university volleyball team. Coaching Back in high school, between playing and refereeing volleyball, I also helped coach the girls’ volleyball team in my grade. It was fun. As a shy boy, it was pretty much the only chance I got to talk to any girls. I customized the drills I learned from my practices for them and got feedback on which ones worked best. I had a severe stuttering problem at the time, which worsened when I spoke with girls. Thankfully, unlike the boys, the girls rarely made fun of my stuttering. If I couldn’t express myself verbally, I used hand signals that they could understand during the game. The girls appreciated that I always supported them and taught them new ideas and tactics. I didn’t date any girls on the team. I became good friends with many of them. Stuttering Somewhere around ninth or tenth grade, I developed a severe stuttering problem. I would get completely stuck 99% of the time when trying to say anything important, and the more important the situation, the more likely I would get stuck. As captain of the volleyball team, it was my job to argue with the referee when we thought he had made a bad call. With everyone’s eyes on me, I would get stuck every time. It would have been funny if it weren’t so embarrassing. One day, our school counselor, Sheila, a really nice lady, took me aside and told me there were speech pathologists who could help with my stuttering. She knew I couldn’t afford a professional therapist, so she recommended a retired speech pathologist who would work with me for free. I met with the speech pathologist twice a week. He had been in a car accident that left a dent on his head near his eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He was happy to have someone to talk to and generously offered his help. Magically, after four weeks, my stuttering problem mostly vanished. No longer would I get stuck arguing with referees, and if I felt myself stuttering, I had the technique to overcome it, called easy onset. Pronouncing the beginning of each word very softly. Even today, I still stutter a lot when I speak, but at least it’s somewhat manageable. I am forever grateful to my speech pathologist and to Counselor Sheila. PE My favorite class was PE, which became an elective in 11th and 12th grades. To attract students, our teacher, Mr. Glassby, organized outings. He negotiated deals with various places where we could, in the early morning hours, enjoy activities like sailing, windsurfing, scuba diving, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, rock climbing and more, for a total of $50 Canadian dollars a year. Given that I couldn’t afford these activities on my own, I treasured every minute of it. I once overheard Mr. Glassby gave a talk to the sailing club, saying this was a great way to expose the kids to these activities. Indeed, these outings planted the seed for my love of sports later in life. I had a great relationship with Mr. Glassby and often volunteered to help him, including coaching the girls’ volleyball team. Mr. Glassby enjoyed running, and I became a decent runner too. I learned to ski during the school’s annual Ski Day trips in 8th and 9th grades. I loved being on the mountain, but the $38 CAD lift tickets were too expensive. Once, Daniel invited me to ski with his family. His mom, who didn’t ski, covered all costs. We skied all day and night at Cypress Mountain, just 30 minutes away. I skied the hell out of that day. Later in life, I continued my passion for outdoor sports, including skiing, snowboarding, scuba diving, windsurfing, and more recently, kitesurfing, all thanks to Mr. Glassby and Daniel. Teachers I had many great teachers at U-Hill. Our physics teacher, Mr. Mason, was a mellow man with a sense of humor. He often joked, “Talking to you guys is like talking to the cows, except when I talk to the cows, people think I’m crazy.” Physics was our last class on Mondays, and we’d often have to leave halfway for volleyball games that were held at other schools, causing a commotion. My girlfriend at the time, a kind Taiwanese girl, told me she felt sorry for Mr. Mason, as he looked helpless when we disrupted his class. After that, I told the other team members to leave quietly. Another time in physics, I was engrossed in the Japanese manga “Slam Dunk” which was about a high schooler playing basketball to impress a girl. I could relate. And I couldn’t stop giggling. Frustrated, Mr. Mason called on me to solve an equation he wrote on the board. Caught off guard, I squinted at the equation for a few seconds and blurted out the answer. Other students were impressed. After the class, Mr. Mason called me over. He said he knew the material might be too easy for me, but I still needed to pay attention. He said it in a friendly way, and we always had a good relationship. A few years after college, I heard that Mr. Mason had passed away from cancer. I was so sad when I heard the news. Our chemistry teacher, Jim, was also fun. He loved doing demonstrations to impress us. His classroom was set up like a lab, with treated tabletops that wouldn’t burn or react to chemicals. In the 9th grade, to teach us about safety, he lit a fire on the desk and then asked, “What do you do when there is a fire on the desk?” He waited for a few seconds for dramatic effect. The fire burned itself out. Then he explained, “If the fire is contained on the table, just let it burn out.” Cool, I thought. He certainly got my attention. In senior grades, I volunteered to help him clean beakers. I cleaned a lot of beakers. I still remember the standard practice required that I rinse them four times. The one thing I didn’t like about chemistry was trying to remember the periodic table, which I promptly forgot after the test. Ms. Barbara taught us math and biology. She had a loud voice and could be intimidating, but she was also warm-hearted. Biology was tough for us ESL students; I struggled with plants and animals but improved when we studied humans. Ms. Barbara also taught junior math up to Grade 10. I was two grades ahead and took 10th-grade math in 8th grade. Knowing my strength in math, Barbara let me sit in the back, where I completed my homework and read comics like the Slam Dunk series. Speaking of math, I participated in the Canada National Math Competitions, including the Pascal, Cayley, Fermat, and Euclid contests. My dad was strong in math, and so was my sister, so the pressure was on. I did okay in those exams, and even won a few awards. Mr. Olsen, our English teacher, was a small man with a strong presence. Strict and tough, he was feared by many, especially ESL students. However, he was a knowledgeable teacher who taught me how to improve my English and writing skills. My vocabulary was limited, so I used simple language and added a bit of wit. I was one of the few ESL students to earn As in his class. French was my worst subject. Our school required a second language, but Chinese didn’t count. Until 10th grade, Ms. Susan taught us with a structured, textbook-based approach that I could follow. In the 11th and 12th grades, our Quebecois teacher, Cecil, who taught in an unstructured way, preferred verbal chats without notes. I struggled to keep up and received Cs. Despite five years of study, I still can’t ask for directions in French. Our school principal, Tom Grant, was exceptional. He joined when I was in 9th or 10th grade and immediately improved the school. Tom knew us by name and often talked to me. He helped us arrange classes around volleyball tournaments and taught us fundraising through walkathons. He respected and genuinely cared about the students. After I graduated, he was promoted to the District School Board. People say teenage years build a person’s character. I believe that. I was fortunate that my teenage years were filled with fun memories, thanks to the help of many people. It may have subconsciously built my drive and will to pay it forward in my later years. College Application Unlike most Asians, my parents didn’t expect me to be a doctor or lawyer. They gave me the freedom to make my own decisions. On the flip side, this freedom came with the challenge of figuring out what I wanted to be. Like most 17-year-olds, I was clueless. Ted was my best friend in high school. His dad was a doctor in Taiwan, while his mom took care of him and his sister in Vancouver, driving them to and from school in a nice car. They lived in a nice house, similar to my other Taiwanese friends, whose fathers were often doctors. They came to Canada as investment immigrants, investing a couple of million dollars in a business or a house to stay in Canada. I enjoyed high school but lived differently than Ted. My dad had a student allowance, and my mom left early for work. I often forgot to prepare my own lunch. Ted’s mom, always kind, would pack two lunches, one for Ted and one for me. Despite their wealth, they were humble and respectful. I believe I learned humility from Ted’s mom, though I realize the irony of claiming humility for myself! When Ted’s mom suggested that I become a doctor, I thought I’d give it a try. So, I applied to study biology at McGill. Interestingly, as my mom had predicted when I was a child, by the time I got to the 11th and 12th grades, my grades improved. I graduated high school with a few awards, including the Graduate of the Year, the biggest award for our class, requiring good academics, sports, helping the school/teachers, and volunteering in the community. McGill accepted me and offered me a scholarship. I also got accepted by UBC, but I knew I had to leave Vancouver. I had been there for six years, and I needed to explore a new city. So, Montreal, here I come… M McGill, 1995-1999 ontreal is a beautiful city, with McGill University in the heart of downtown. Just a block from St. Catherine Street’s bars and strip clubs, the student orientation included my first-ever bar crawl. What’s not to like? Well, I hated biology almost immediately. In high school, I liked it because we studied human anatomy, but at university, we focused on animals again, dissected them, and memorized complex Greek terms, which I struggled with. That experience taught me an important life lesson: pick something that interests you. Luckily, I had chosen computer science (CS) courses as a minor, and I enjoyed programming much more than biology. Soon, I was spending all my time in the CS lab, not the biology lab. After one semester, I dropped biology entirely and switched to CS full-time. They say 90% of what you learn in school is discarded, but the 10% that did stick with me came from CS 101, particularly the data structures and algorithms courses. I loved learning about data insertion, sorting, and searching algorithms, and analysing their respective efficiencies. These concepts are crucial for coding, and even though I don’t code anymore, they help me understand engineers better. Being able to accurately gauge what is easy and what is hard to implement is crucial for any tech startup founder. My interest in physics and math also waned in college. In high school, those subjects were about solving problems. But at university, they seemed to focus more on proving “A equals B,” even though it had already been proven a million times. That didn’t excite me. I preferred applying theory to solve real-world problems. Writing computer programs, on the other hand, felt like a practical way to improve efficiency and productivity, solving real-world problems. The truth is, I struggled at McGill. The material was harder and more abstract, and cramming the night before exams became more difficult. During my first year, I used that cramming strategy and earned mostly As. But from my second year onward, I found it harder to grasp the topics by simply reading the night before an exam. And my grades started to deteriorate. I rarely interacted with my professors. Adjusting from a 400-student high school (at time of my graduation) to a 35,000-student university was challenging, especially while living on my own for the first time and juggling multiple part-time jobs. In my fourth year, I bonded with Professor Cooperstock in my AI course. He was young, new to the school, and actively pursued corporate sponsorships for his research, crafting engaging projects for us. One such project was the Robocup Competition, an AI soccer event sponsored by multinationals like Sony, featuring real robots with camera sensors and motors at the top level, and smaller robots, including Sony’s AIBO dogs, in the Sony Legged Robot Soccer competition. Then there was the simulation league competition, where different teams wrote programs that connected to a server. The software “robots” issued commands like “player one, kick, direction, force” to the server, which then broadcast the ball and player positions. There was a screen visualization for us lowly humans to see what was going on. We joined the simulation league where we trained an AI to kick a ball using back-propagation neural networks. The AI adjusted its node link weight based on whether it scored a goal, learning the correct direction and force. We used a three-layer network with nine nodes, while modern AI uses trillions of nodes. Our team didn’t win, but we wrote an AI paper based on our experience, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) published it in 20007. 26 years later, the paper is still available on their website. I realized then that I loved working in small teams. Professor Cooperstock even offered me a part-time job. It was a pity that I haven’t done much with AI in the first 25 years of my career, but as I like to say, “There are always more opportunities in the future than there were in the past.” Tuition & Expenses In Canada, it was common for parents to kick their kids out at 18. Fortunately, I come from a Chinese family. I rented an off-campus apartment my first year because it was cheaper than the dorms. This decision left me isolated from friends, spending most of my time alone. Living independently at 18 was challenging, leading to mental stress I couldn’t fully articulate then. Despite working various jobs, I couldn’t cover all my expenses during my first two years of college. In my first year, Dad gave me $6,000 Canadian dollars to help. In the second year, my sister gave me $3,000. From that point on, I became self-sufficient. Jobs I worked every summer and part-time during the school year. There wasn’t any other way. During my first two summers in Montreal, I worked for a software company called Original Sim, developing a 3D flight simulator with a government grant. In my third year at McGill, my sister introduced me to an IT company in Japan where she worked. I interviewed with a few tech guys there, and it went smoothly. Then I had an interview with the CEO of the company, Mike Alfant. I was a bit nervous, but Mike didn’t ask any tricky questions and offered me the summer intern job. It paid $2,000 per month, which was higher than anything I had earned before. Besides my wages, the company covered my accommodation expenses while I lived in Tokyo, which I soon found out was much higher than my salary. More on Tokyo soon. Girlfriends & Ultimatums After I moved to Montreal, my high school girlfriend and I tried to maintain a long-distance relationship, but frequent calls were costly due to Sprint’s high charges. We soon realized it wouldn’t work for us. She broke up with me three months later, and while I was sad, I wasn’t surprised. During my second year at McGill, I started dating a nice and sweet Taiwanese girl, Amanda. At that time, I was immature. Every time we had a minor argument, which was often, I would escalate and threaten to break up. Looking back, I was clearly the drama queen in that relationship. Being kind, she would apologize and try to accommodate, until one day, she didn’t. She just said, “Okay,” and ended our relationship. I apologized and tried to win her back, to no avail. I felt so stupid. I cried outside the computer lab, in front of my good friend Danny. The crying was partly out of sadness, but more so for my own stupidity. That incident matured me. I learned two important lessons: 1. Don’t be a jerk. Be a nice person. 2. Don’t use ultimatums in arguments or negotiations. From that point on, I never threatened to break up with any girlfriend when we argued, unless I truly meant it. I became a much easier person to get along and, less full of myself. This lesson spilled over into business negotiations as well. I don’t make ultimatums or threats in business negotiations. Later, I further learned that if anyone makes ultimatums or threats in negotiations, it’s almost always better to choose the option they put forth as a threat. I stick to that every time. W Tokyo, New York and Shanghai orking in Tokyo in my early 20s was eye-opening. Everything was densely packed yet incredibly neat and advanced. The trains ran fast and on time, down to the second. All doors opened automatically, including taxis, though I couldn’t afford them. The streets were spotless. The food was delicious. And the people, especially the girls, were kawaii (cute). Tokyo had the best food for my palate. The city offered everything in finer quality, especially northern Asian cuisine, with an emphasis on flours and noodles, which suited my taste. On my first day working, my manager, Huw, was impressed by my Unix knowledge, even though all I did was using the “bg” command to move a task to the background so we could continue typing on the terminal. Within a week, I was shipped to a Japanese client site, alone. Later, I found out that Huw was actually supposed to be at the client site himself. But probably more out of laziness than his trust in my abilities, I was sent there instead of him. I wasn’t bothered. I took advantage of the situation. I managed the client and executed the project the best I could. By summer’s end, Huw asked if I could extend for another semester to finish the project. He probably just didn’t want to go to the client site every day. Huw raised my pay to a full-time rate, exceeding what I expected even after graduation. I decided to stay for another semester. Four months later, the project remained unfinished (absolutely not because of me), so I extended my stay again. I never returned to McGill for my final year. Later, I realized that a bachelor’s degree was still needed for a work visa. I enrolled in an online distant learning program, transferred my credits, and earned my degree. I’ve only used my diploma for visa applications. While some value credentials, it was just a tool for me. I never had trouble getting interviews, and employers never cared about my school. When interviewing candidates, I don’t place too much emphasis on their alma mater. If they attended a prestigious school, I assume they’re smart and hardworking. In fact, sometimes, I have a lingering doubt in the back of my head that Ivy school graduates might be too good at structured studying; that they may lack creativity or a touch of rebelliousness, or thinking outside the box. But that’s probably just the jealousy side of me thinking. Life in Tokyo Life in Tokyo was pretty good. I rented a small studio apartment in Meguro. It had enough space for a bed, a desk, a tiny dining table, and was equipped with a small kitchen and bathroom. It was perfect. A few weeks into my internship, a colleague offered me an eighth- hand Honda racing motorcycle, passed down through generations of colleagues. I got my motorcycle license to join them on rides. Not long after, I passed the Honda to another intern and got myself a second- hand Suzuki SV 400. I loved that bike. It had a V-twin engine that gave it high torque at low revs, making it perfect for quick takeoffs when traffic lights turned green. Plus, it was lightweight, easy to maneuver around the city. 2000, Hakone, Japan. Riding the motorcycle. We loved riding across the Rainbow Bridge to Tokyo Bay for dinner. On weekends, my colleagues and I headed to the Hakone mountains, where we’d ride for hours, have lunch on the mountain roads, relax in a natural onsen, and then return to the city. It was the perfect way to unwind and enjoy Japan’s beauty. Japan offered incredible snowboarding with world-class snow. With the increase in pay, my colleagues and I took weekend trips to ski in Nagano and Hokkaido. The cold Japanese beer, rich in flavor, was my favorite way to end a snowy day. Après-ski dining was a highlight, with shabu-shabu, sushi, and warm sake. I also got my PADI scuba diving license around this time too, completing about 70 dives in places like Thailand, the Philippines, the Maldives, and Hawaii. I was fascinated by the underwater world, observing clownfish, sea turtles, and swimming with sharks. Besides sports, I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing Counter- Strike, a first-person shooter game. I often ranked in Tokyo’s top 10 players back in the day. I led a Gaijin (foreigner) clan with friends and colleagues, including my boss, Huw. Clan matches became a big part of our social lives, much to the annoyance of the women in our lives, who disliked the constant “fire in the hole” sound from the game. In hindsight, Counter-Strike may have been one reason our next company, Building2, failed. More on that in the next chapter Shortly after moving to Tokyo, my friend and I stumbled upon a cozy Chinese restaurant, where a beautiful young Chinese waitress greeted us. We struck up a conversation and learned that her family owned the establishment. Her father was the restaurant’s sole chef, singlehandedly managing the extensive menu of 485 items. Her mother helped manage the business side. The charming waitress was Winnie. We started dating, then married a few years later. Company Culture After working in Japan for less than a year, our company was acquired by IMR Global, a Nasdaq-listed corporation, for a notable $60 million. The founder, Mike Alfant, pocketed more than half of the acquisition proceeds. The remaining funds were distributed among other partners. The acquisition led to unforeseen challenges, highlighting cultural clashes between the groups after acquisitions. IMR Global’s team appeared patronizing. The partners worsened the situation by spending the company’s remaining cash reserves on a lavish trip to Thailand. I wasn’t part of these celebrations, and tales of their indulgence soon circulated within the company. This period taught me the complexities of mergers, showing how differing management styles and corporate cultures create friction. As a 23-year-old employee, I learned valuable lessons about these intricate dynamics. Most partners left after getting their “earn-outs” to enjoy their wealth. But soon, many realized a few million didn’t qualify as “FU” money, or true financial independence. They still needed to work. They launched a new venture capital firm, Building2 (B2), and Huw invited me to join. Huw set up the new office, sparing no expense. A talented designer was hired, and luxurious Italian furniture filled the opulent space for 12 people, including my own spacious Italian desk. All was good, except we didn’t have any revenue. Expenses piled up quickly, and within a year, B2 folded. By that time, all the partners, except for Mike Alfant, were out of cash. Worse, they had developed expensive habits. I learned some advanced business lessons from that experience, like: 1. Without revenue, a business will fail. 2. Previous success doesn’t guarantee future success. In fact, it may hinder it, as you may be less willing to grind as hard as you did before. 3. Stick to fundamentals. No shiny objects. As the company began to fall apart, we started to look for new jobs. New York In early 2001, Huw got a job at Bloomberg, and he referred me shortly afterwards. In the summer of 2001, I began phone interviews with Bloomberg. The interview process was technical and focused on geeky topics like bitwise operators, AND, OR, NOT, NAND, XOR, and so on. It turned out Bloomberg’s systems were built in the 1980s, and they still relied heavily on these low level operators in their infrastructure. I completed my interviews just days before the tragic events of 9/11. Like many people, I watched in horror as the events unfolded on TV. Unsure if the job was still there, I reached out. Bloomberg was unsure if I was still interested. Luckily, we both decided to follow through. Moving to New York was easy. Bloomberg hired a fancy moving company that took care of everything. They packed up my whole tiny Tokyo apartment, even my trash can, and shipped it to New York. I didn’t have to lift a finger, which was different from my past moves. When I got to New York, Bloomberg put me up in a nice serviced apartment on 59th Street in Manhattan. It was big, by my standards, with a separate bedroom and living room, the nicest place I’d ever lived thus far. I stayed there for two months while waiting for my stuff to arrive, getting used to my new life without any trouble. I arrived in New York City on Sunday, November 4, 2001, less than two months after the 9/11 attacks. The city was still quiet, a somber reminder of the recent events. The next day, I began my new job at Bloomberg. I didn’t work under Huw at Bloomberg. I started as a senior software developer and joined the new Tradebook Futures team. Our job was to take over an existing system for futures trading. Soon after, we had to do a big upgrade for LSE Liffe, a futures exchange in London. None of us knew what to do, but I figured out how to set up a test environment first. This made me the go-to guy on the project, even though I was one of the youngest and newest developers on the job. Three months later, we finished the upgrade early, and it worked smoothly, which almost never happens in software. A week later, my manager, Paul Reidy and his manager, Glen Jacoby, promoted me to be the team leader. Six months after that, I got promoted again, to lead a team of 60 developers. I was 25. This was a big turning point. I went from being a developer responsible for my own code to a team leader responsible for other people’s code. Terrifying. At first, I tried to check every line of code my team wrote, but I quickly realized that was impossible. I needed to trust my team, which meant I needed a good team. So, figuring out who was good and who wasn’t became super important. I started to learn how to read and lead people. Hire Slow, Fire Fast I read a bunch of management books, and one big lesson was “hire slow and fire fast.” It sounded simple in theory, but was actually really hard in practice and made me feel bad sometimes. When hiring, you are always in a rush. You always needed more developers ASAP. There was always more work. Resisting hiring the first guy you see is hard. But I learned it was important to be patient and only hire the best, the top 1%. Firing was even harder. I had an employee from China who worked hard but was not a great coder. Her code caused problems even after I had warned her several times. Her job was important for her visa, so I felt bad, but after the third warning, HR fired her. It was a tough decision. I talked to my boss, who said we didn’t have a choice. Looking back, I wish I’d given her more time to find another job. Luckily, she found one and was able to stay in the country. It taught me that managing people has more than one component. We must respect business rules, but also help people develop. Office Politics Not long after my third promotion, office politics started to take precedence over technical work. My only job seemed to be fighting for my team’s priority and resources. I maintained a fast moving and aggressive team. They worked quickly. Problems often arose between my team and other teams on prioritizing projects and resource allocation. If the developers couldn’t agree, they would escalate the matter to their team leaders. And if they still couldn’t agree, then it is passed to me. Being young and abrasive, I was always picking fights with one group or another. I got good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it much. All that back-and- forth meant I spent very little time on technical designs. Still, I stayed for two more years. I felt like I owed it to my managers who promoted me. Distractions During this time, I was blessed with two babies who brought and continue to bring me joy. It was a nice distraction from the boredom at work. I changed endless diapers, took countless photos, and also decided to quit playing Counter-Strike, recognizing the need to be a mature father. In 2003, while living in New Jersey, I attempted kiteboarding with a friend by learning from a DVD. On my first try, the kite lifted me into the air, and I face-planted on the beach. That experience deterred me from kiteboarding for the next 20 years. Baby photos became my new hobby. Phone cameras were slow, so like my dad, I bought a Canon SLR for better shots. I learned Photoshop to edit and share my photos. Disliking Facebook and Flickr, I sought software to host my own gallery, as easy tools like Google or Apple Photos didn’t exist then. Web 1.0 I discovered Mambo, an open-source website package with a photo gallery, and set up my own server to customize it. This led me to become a contributor to the Mambo project. Mambo had a community of developers, but lacked a hub for sharing custom add-ons. So, I created a website called MamboZip that collected all the add-ons with descriptions. It quickly became the go-to site for downloading Mambo and its add-ons. Then, the company behind Mambo decided to make it a private, paid program, which made many devoted members of the community angry. So, the community forked the code and renamed the project Joomla. To keep up, I renamed my site from MamboZip to Joomlaya. Joomlaya got really popular. A hosting company (cloud wasn’t a term back then) offered me free hosting just for putting an ad on the site. In three months, Joomlaya gained 100,000 users. Despite its rapid growth, it remained a hobby with no profit or expansion plans. While managing a team of 80 at Bloomberg, this side project gave me my first taste of the early internet and open-source world. It was fun while it lasted. In 2005, I discussed with friends, including Mike Alfant and Huw, the expanding business opportunities in Asia. Seeing the region’s rapid growth, we decided to launch a fintech startup in Shanghai. On November 6, 2005, after getting my bonus, and exactly four years after I started, I quit Bloomberg. That year, I got paid a $140,000 bonus, which brought my total comp to $390,000, not bad for a 28-year-old back in 2005. This ended up being the highest annual income I would earn for the next 13 years. I only broke that at age of 41, after Binance took off! Shanghai 2005 On November 20, 2005, six of us, a mix of two Americans, two British, one Japanese, and myself, a Chinese Canadian, gathered in Shanghai to launch an IT consulting company. At 28, I was the youngest partner of the founding team, with the next youngest partner being seven years older and two others 14 years my senior. None of my partners spoke Chinese. I spoke Mandarin, though a bit rusty, especially in writing. In China, people like me are called “Sea Turtles,” or “overseas returnees.” We looked Chinese but grew up abroad, seen as more sea than land. Shanghai felt both familiar and unfamiliar. I’d transited through it often but never lived or worked there, leaving me inexperienced with its business culture. We all have to start somewhere. When I arrived in Shanghai, the more senior partners had already set up an office in Plaza 66, one of the city’s most expensive buildings. I was like, “Not again, please.” A week after I arrived, we held an office opening ceremony with a PR firm to promote it. Journalists, media representatives, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, and some industry friends attended. We held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, followed by a press conference and a reception. As the only Chinese speaker, I was to deliver the keynote speech, in Mandarin, to the journalists. I had never given a keynote to the press before. The night before the event, alone in my empty, newly rented apartment, I paced and practiced my speech for hours. The next day, I delivered it as best I could. My partners said I did well, likely out of sympathy. I felt stiff, humorless, and spoke too quickly. I made a mental note to improve my public speaking skills and bought several books, but reading didn’t help much. Luckily, I didn’t need to speak publicly for another eight years. By then, I’d forgotten everything I read. As the sole Chinese speaker on our team, I handled sales, business development, and government relations despite having no experience or mentorship in any of these areas. I learned how to do business in China through trial and error. And there were plenty of errors. As a junior partner, I was lucky to be involved in all aspects of the business with support from experienced entrepreneurs, gaining exposure to every facet of starting a business, including potential pitfalls. When we launched the company, our goal was to create trading systems for the Chinese financial market and sell them to local brokers. It seemed like a solid plan, but I soon realized that reality often differs from expectations in the startup world. We quickly learned that local Chinese brokers refused to work with us because we were a WFOE, or Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise. Foreign- owned companies were deemed unsuitable for building trading systems or handling financial data in China. The Shanghai Stock Exchange flat out refused to grant us access to test environments. Even Bloomberg struggled with the same issue in China. How did we NOT know this before entering the market? Beats me. That experience taught me the dangers of making assumptions about foreign markets. Every market has its own rules and culture. It was essential to assess each new market as it is, not as how we imagine it to be. No sweat! We will pivot. Our CEO, Mike Alfant, believed that we could do anything IT-related, from high-frequency trading systems to fixing printers. And we could be experts in everything instantly. I was too young to see any counter arguments and went along with it. Only much later, I learned from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a world-class expert at something. Mastery requires time and commitment. So, we became a general IT Consulting shop competing with low cost local Chinese firms. Automotives A friend informed me that Shanghai General Motors (SGM) needed a better inventory control system. They issued a Request for Proposal (RFP), and we chose to submit a working demo. I wrote a simple Perl script to analyze SGM’s inventory data. It provided preliminary numbers on how many parts to stock based on historical usage, breakage, and other factors. Though I wasn’t sure of its accuracy, I presented it as a prototype needing refinement. SGM was impressed that we had a functional program, unlike others who only had elaborate PowerPoints. We won the contract. After securing SGM as a client, we quickly acquired business with Shanghai Volkswagen (SVW) and Shanghai First Automotive. SVW and SGM became two of our largest clients in China, with numerous ongoing projects. We stationed our engineers at both companies and rented nearby apartments for them. I visited each client weekly, and the commute across the city outskirts familiarized me with Shanghai’s geography. Healthcare Through another friend, I found out that a local hospital needed a management system, so we decided to bid, despite having no healthcare experience. The hospital principal enjoyed spicy food and baijiu, a potent Chinese liquor. My partner and I joined him for dinner, where he presented a bottle of Maotai, China’s national liquor with 53% alcohol content and a rich history. Though unfamiliar with baijiu, we understood its importance in building business rapport. In China, toasting with “gan bei” means “dry glass,” where everyone finishes their drink in one go to show strength and reliability. As we aimed to win business, showing weakness wasn’t an option, so we drank. After two hours of drinking, our business discussion was forgotten. I paid the bill, and we stumbled out to catch a taxi. On the highway, nausea hit. My partner and I leaned out the windows, vomiting on both sides of the car as we sped along Shanghai’s Inner Ring. We definitely left our mark on Shanghai that night. Despite our best efforts, or perhaps because of them, we didn’t win the hospital contract. In retrospect, the other vendor was better suited for the project, or maybe more skilled in the art of drinking. Doing Business In China Reflecting on my time in China, all significant business deals were done in meeting rooms, not over dinner, drinks or golf. Contrary to the stereotype, China’s business culture had shifted away from wining and dining. During our first two years at Fusion Systems Shanghai, none of the partners took a salary. We invested our time and money into sustaining the company. I lived off my Bloomberg savings, fortunate to maintain a modest lifestyle with two kids, avoiding luxury as always. After a few years, Fusion Systems Shanghai began to stabilize, and partners started receiving salaries. Given our tight cash flow, I had to ensure clients paid promptly so we could cover payroll, which was always hard in China. We never sought outside investment, so if the company was short on cash, the partners would rely upon personal funds to cover personnel salaries. I invested about $200,000 of my savings into the business, which was a significant portion of my net worth, showing my commitment. This ingrained the lesson in me: cash flow is everything. As our business grew more stable, we expanded our client base and opened satellite offices in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and San Francisco. Outside of China, we got back into our core business of building a low-latency trading system for brokers. We got all the big names as clients, including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Citi, etc. I had to spend quite a bit of my time managing implementations at client sites, requiring me to fly in and out of Shanghai. Poker, Golf and Karaoke With my new role in business development, I picked up a few new hobbies. I started playing Texas Hold’em with a 1 RMB ($0.15) big blind, which grew to 50 RMB ($7.50) over a few years. Although it was just a social game with friends, the stakes rose to where one could win or lose $5,000 a night, far too much for me. I played seriously and made money, but wasted a lot of time, playing 2 to3 times a week. It wasn’t a good ROI. I started playing golf 1 to 2 times a week, which took up most of the day. In the evenings, when not playing poker, I joined friends for karaoke, a popular pastime in China. All these activities consumed a lot of my productive time. But life was good, in a superficial sense. The Apartment In 2007, I used my remaining savings for a down payment on a three- bedroom, 120-square-meter apartment in Pudong, Shanghai. I borrowed from relatives and got a mortgage to finalize the purchase. The apartment, located in a gated community in Shanghai, was in a developing area when we moved in. Over time, it became a bustling neighborhood with shops and amenities, proving the adage: if you build it, they will come. We had many wonderful memories there, from teaching the kids, to rollerblading and swimming, to hosting birthday parties. Financially, it was a wise investment, doubling in value within five years. By then, I found a faster horse, and decided to sell the apartment so I could buy bitcoins. I Getting into Bitcoin, 2013 n July 2013, I was at a poker game with Ron Cao, Bobby Lee, and a mix of struggling entrepreneurs and wealthy venture capitalists. Ron said, “CZ, there’s this new thing called bitcoin that you should check out.” Ron, a managing director at Lightspeed Ventures China, had been my friend for over six years by then. I had also known Bobby for a couple of years. Ron was about to invest in BTC China, a bitcoin exchange, where Bobby was to become CEO. Bobby Lee, Charlie Lee’s elder brother, learned about bitcoin from Charlie and shared it with Ron, who eventually told me. Charlie Lee was the founder of Litecoin. The next day, I had lunch with Bobby, who was leaving his expat job at Walmart China to become CEO of BTC China, the largest bitcoin exchange in China at the time. Ron, the initial investor, committed $5 million USD to the company. Bobby advised me, “Consider converting 10% of your net worth into bitcoin. There is a small chance it may go to zero. If that happened, you’d lose 10%, but I think there’s a much higher chance it could go 10x. If that happens, you will double your net worth.” I decided to learn about bitcoin. It was trading at $70 USD. In the following months, I downloaded bitcoind, the official bitcoin wallet. I studied the bitcoin whitepaper, read bitcointalk.org discussions, and talked to as many people as I could find. My tech and finance background, including having my own PGP keys since 1998, the same asymmetric encryption method used in bitcoin, helped me understand bitcoin. Having lived in multiple countries, I was familiar with the costs of transferring money across borders. Money Up until that point, I hadn’t thought deeply about what money is. While learning about bitcoin, I learned about fiat money and gold. It was a rabbit hole that once you go in, you can’t get out of. The money we commonly refer to is debt. It is a liability of the government or central bank. Good money should have the following properties: Scarce (not easily created) Durable Divisible Portable Fungible (each unit interchangeable) Verifiable The fiat money we use today has many deficiencies in these areas. A simple comparison table demonstrates the clear differences. Feature Bitcoi n Fiat Money Gold Scarcity High Low Mediu m Durability High Medium High Divisibility High Medium Low Portability High Medium (Low cross borders) Low Fungibility High Medium (FX rates) Mediu m Verifiabilit y High Medium Low Some additional feature comparisons on the three forms of money. Feature Bitcoin Fiat Money Gold Issuer None (decentralized) Government / Central bank Nature (mined) Supply Fixed (21M max) Elastic (policy- driven) Grows ~1–2% per year Form Digital Digital + paper Physical metal Track record ~15 years 50–100+ years (modern fiat) ~5,000 years Volatility High Low–moderate Low–moderate Custody Self-custody possible Bank/cash Vault/storage Censorship resistance High Low–moderate High (physical) Inflation hedge High Weak High While learning these concepts opened up my mind, the real conversion happened when I used bitcoin for the first time. Freedom of Money After the first bitcoin transaction, I was amazed. It was the same feeling as when I first used a water pump, when I first saw a light bulb, and when I first sent and received an email. I knew right there and then: The blockchain is the new technology for money. I saw how the internet revolutionized the way we share information and interact with each other, across the world. The blockchain will revolutionize how we transact and do business, globally. The blockchain can offer far better financial access and inclusion. Further, bitcoin has a limited supply, protecting us from constant and infinite inflation. Bitcoin is easy to verify, transport and store, protecting us from expensive bank fees and unilateral freezes. The internet increased our freedom of information. The blockchain will increase our freedom of money. When the internet boom happened, I was still struggling in college. I was too young and inexperienced to do anything significant during the internet era. I thought to myself, “Now, I am 36. I am not going to let this opportunity pass by.” Community But for bitcoin to succeed, a community was essential, and I needed to ensure one existed before fully committing. On December 13, 2013, I attended the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas. There were about 200 people. It was there that I met with many of the OGs in the crypto world. Vitalik Buterin, at age 19, was talking about Ethereum. Charlie Lee had a presence. Matt Roszak treated everyone to a lavish dinner. James Thomas (name could be wrong) explained XRP8 to me, a complex process involving trusted gateways. He demonstrated by sending some XRP, and afterward, I found $500 in my wallet. I offered to return it. “No need,” Thomas replied. “Keep it and use it to teach the next person.” I haven’t seen Thomas since. Although $500 wasn’t huge, it was meaningful. Thomas’s gesture, along with similar actions from many others, revealed a passionate community of geeks eager to push technology forward. They weren’t driven by money. It was the complete opposite of the traditional media’s portrayal of bitcoin as a network for criminals who operated dark markets, especially after October, 2013, when authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road darkweb market. After that trip, I decided to go all-in on bitcoin, financially and professionally. Leaving Fusion Just around this time in late 2013, a developer in Fusion suggested we create a bitcoin payment processor like BitPay, which had just raised $4 million. Many were inspired by Satoshi’s vision of bitcoin as an “electronic cash payment system.” I proposed the new product idea, but my partners unanimously rejected it. They weren’t interested in building a new product that would take a long time. At that point, Fusion wasn’t rapidly growing, but it supported 100 employees globally and provided the partners with comfortable lives, including sending their children to costly international schools. Fusion had become a “lifestyle business.” In hindsight, Fusion wasn’t suited for such a product. With many partners, we spent too much time deliberating, hindering our progress when swift action was needed. Failing to convince my partners, I informed them of my intention to leave the company to “work on bitcoin.” Our largest shareholder and CEO, Mike Alfant, who had become a well-known businessman in Tokyo and served as the Chairman of the Tokyo American Chamber of Commerce, informed me that upon my departure, I would lose all my equity in Fusion and receive nothing. Despite eight years of dedication, and investing my own savings into the company, leaving meant walking away with nothing from my investment. The other partners remained silent. Their lack of support confirmed that leaving was the right choice for me. I didn’t want to be part of a company that treated its partners this way. My only regret was staying as long as I did. I was upset with the other partners, especially Huw, for not standing up for me. I refused to speak with them for some time. Later, I heard that a few of them, including Huw, also experienced difficult departures. I didn’t pursue legal action against Fusion or Mike. Instead, I focused my energy on the future. It goes back to my saying, there are always more opportunities in the future than there were in the past. Selling the Apartment In December 2013, alongside my departure from Fusion, I began the process of selling my apartment. Bitcoin’s price had soared to $1,000, over 10 times what it was when Bobby and I had lunch. The problem? I hadn’t started buying yet. Rather than investing the 10% Bobby recommended, I’d only bought a small amount to test. I couldn’t make significant purchases until after January 2014, when I received proceeds from the sale of the apartment. From that experience, I learned the importance of liquidity. Apartments were great to live in, but it takes a long time to convert the asset into cash. In early 2014, I started receiving payments in installments from the sale. I used them to add to my initial Bitcoin position. As bitcoin’s value declined, I purchased at $800, then $600, and finally $400, unintentionally averaging my purchase price to about $600. Less than a month after that, Mt.Gox went down in Feb 2014, Bitcoin’s value plummeted to $200 and remained at that level for 18 months. I had lost two-thirds of the value of the apartment. My mom wanted to slap the back of my head: “Why couldn’t you be more like your sister? Work at a nice job, which you had, and stop doing stupid things like startups and bitcoin?” It wasn’t easy, and at times, I questioned whether I was wrong or if everyone else was wrong, but I held onto my bitcoins, believing blockchain is the future technology for money. It was clear to me. Risk Management Some might point out that selling your only apartment to buy bitcoin, while simultaneously quitting your job to pursue opportunities in the crypto industry, was a risky move. And for those who voice this opinion, they are probably right, for themselves. What many people overlook is this: Risk is personal and varies for each individual. I understood that it was risky to invest in bitcoin. But at the same time, I understood that it was also risky not to invest in bitcoin. I would be missing out on the biggest growth opportunity in my adult life. Many people assess risk based solely on the action. A better assessment, however, should include consideration of personal circumstances, because true risk lies there, not in the action itself. For example, trying BASE jumping would be super risky for me due to my lack of skydiving experience, but it’s different for skilled jumpers. Despite having a family with young children, if my bitcoin investment failed, I knew that I could always go back to a Wall Street banking job. I earned six figures in my twenties and my experience and capabilities had only expanded since. Confidence in my job prospects was my safety net. When people remark, “That’s risky,” they often mean, “That’s risky for me.” We humans tend to project our worldview onto everyone else. Job Search After leaving Fusion in December 2013, I started to explore opportunities in the bitcoin industry. That was how we referred to the industry back then. Some friends in Taiwan, who worked at TSMC, were interested in bitcoin. They believed they could create a better mining chip than KNC Miner’s 28-nanometer rigs from 2013. We considered starting a company but it didn’t materialize. In the process though, I ordered a KNC Miner, which arrived two months later than they promised. By the time it finally arrived, bitcoin’s mining hashrate had increased, making the machine unprofitable due to electricity costs. I turned it on anyway; it sounded like a space rocket in my apartment. That was my only venture into bitcoin mining. I soon realized mining required expertise in logistics and physical operations, which I didn’t have, so I decided to steer clear of it. I ventured into the bitcoin ATM market and sold a few ATMs. Unfortunately, that endeavor didn’t turn out well either, mainly because I encountered some scammers. That’s a story for another time. Mt. Gox I almost became the CEO of Mt. Gox China, a role I’m now glad to have avoided, though I didn’t completely escape the negative consequences. In early 2014, Mt. Gox was the leading platform for buying bitcoins. The company was based in Shibuya, Tokyo, near my former home. Through a friend, I was recommended to Mr. Gong, the head of Susquehanna Investment Group China (SIG), a well-known Wall Street hedge fund. SIG was in discussions with Mark Karpeles of Mt. Gox to start a joint venture in China. SIG had recommended me for the role of CEO at Mt. Gox China. Given my tech background, Wall Street experience, entrepreneurial track record in China and my interest in crypto, I was uniquely suited for the role. Despite our age difference, Mr. Gong and I had mutual friends who vouched for my credibility. The plan for Mt. Gox China was simple: Susquehanna would provide funding, Mt. Gox would supply technology, and I would manage the venture, securing a 10% equity stake for myself. I traveled to Tokyo to meet Mark Karpeles, a friendly, slightly heavy-set young man of French and Japanese heritage. His unconventional business methods included playing video games during meetings, a behavior later adopted by Sam Bankman-Fried. When we were finalizing the legal documents, Mt. Gox experienced their fatal issues and halted client withdrawals. I decided not to join their team. Mt. Gox withdrawals never resumed. I had about 100 bitcoins on the exchange, which was worth about $50,000 back then. It was a large amount for me at the time. I didn’t waste energy trying to recover my assets. Instead, I waited to see what would happen, and focused on new opportunities I could create. That experience prompted me to prioritize user protection when I launched Binance. BTC China By then, Ron and Bobby heard about my job search, and proposed I join BTC China as CTO. We nearly reached an agreement, but then an unexpected opportunity arose. This scenario repeated twice more with BTC China over the following year. Each time, we almost finalized a deal, but I never ended up working there. Blockchain Info After the Las Vegas conference, I met Roger Ver at my first Tokyo Bitcoin Meetup in Tokyo. He was an angel investor in Blockchain Info, an unregistered “company” that was the leading bitcoin explorer and wallet, with around 2 million wallets in 2013. The website was created by 22-year-old Ben Reeves from England, an introvert who communicated only through a 150-page thread on bitcointalk.org, an online forum for early crypto adopters. This was his entire marketing effort for running the most popular crypto website at the time. Roger Ver hired Nicolas Cary as CEO, and I became the third team member. With the CTO title reserved for Ben, I took on the role of VP of Engineering to build a tech team around Ben. Simulation Theory Crypto enthusiasts are early adopters of advanced concepts. I learned from my Blockchain colleagues about simulation theory, that we live in a simulation. I quickly converted. Today, I believe it 100%. Why do I believe it? Here is the logic. Thirty years ago, as a child in a small village, we lacked running water and electricity. Now, we have cell phones, the internet, and blockchain. With technology’s exponential growth, in 20 years, we should be able to plug a rod into our heads like in “The Matrix” for complete simulations. If not in 20 years, then perhaps 50 or 100. It’s not a question of if but when. To be safe, let’s say in 500 years, we will definitely have the technology to simulate any experience. When we can, we will. Consider Nintendo games. Because we have it, millions play them. It is also a type of simulation. When Super Mario runs forward, his world is simulated around him. Similarly, when I look at a wall, I can’t see what’s behind it until I move and the hidden world is revealed. Now, imagine being 200 years old, nearing death, with money to spare. You’re offered to relive your 200 years in a simulation lasting one real-time hour. Would you pay for it? Absolutely. Billions of people will. There will be billions of simulations. What’s the probability we’re not in a simulation? Or what are the chances that this 500 years is the first round of simulation in our universe? If our universe is 13.8 billion years old, 500 years is negligible, mathematically rounding to 0 if we use 5 significant digits. Thus, there is a 0% chance we’re not in a simulation. So, we are. Does this mean life is meaningless? No, life is still very meaningful. We don’t know what type of simulation we are in. We could be in a simulation where we are stimulating ourselves. And if we die and we just wake up. That would be the best case. Or we could be in a simulation, simulated by a higher dimension being, just like how we simulate Super Mario. When he dies, he doesn’t get to interact with us. The next re-spawn may or may not be him. He dies; he vanishes. In this scenario, we won’t have much ability to interact with our simulators unless they want to. This also explains ghosts, God, supernatural beings, and much other unexplainable stuff. It may just be our simulators selectively interacting with some of us. The fact that we don’t know what kind of simulation we are in makes it interesting. We can’t just die. We still need to make the best out of this simulation. We should play our roles well, and do our jobs well. Because we know we are in a simulation, many of life’s pressures go away. I believe, like any good game, a good simulation should have about a third of the challenges pre-programmed. These are the obstacles you can’t avoid; Another third of the challenges depend on random chances. You may or may not encounter these. Every play of the same simulation is a little different this way. And another third of the play depends on your actions, skills and hard work. In life (our simulation), we don’t know which one is which. We just have to make the best out of what we have. Yes, we must still take life seriously, but remembering this takes all the pressure away. Whenever you face a new challenge, know that it’s just part of the simulation. All you need to do is to make the best out of it. My team knows this. So whenever we face a challenge, my team always tells me: “hey, it’s just a game.” It takes the pressure away. I started to think like this around this time, and the conviction only grew over time. Take work seriously. Take life seriously. But don’t take yourself too seriously. Make the best out of your simulation. Public Speaking A week after joining Blockchain Info, I attended my first Shanghai Bitcoin Meetup. About 30 people gathered in a warehouse-style office. The organizer recognized me and said, “Oh, you’re from Blockchain Info! Please come up and share your valuable insights.” I stepped on stage and mentioned I’d been with the company for just a week. Without a prepared speech, I proposed a Q&A session. When asked about the company’s size, I said there were three of us, and I was the third. Someone commented, “Great, now it’s 1/3 Chinese-owned.” I clarified that I didn’t own any shares, but they were still pleased. I asked how many attendees used Blockchain Info. Every hand shot up. Answering questions felt much more natural than the prepared presentation I gave eight years previously. After that experience, I ditched the effort of writing scripts for my speeches. I prefer natural conversations like fireside chats. Sending Coins to a Wrong Address After Mt. Gox collapsed, I explored other platforms for buying bitcoin. BTC-e, a Russian-based exchange, was popular then. Later, it was alleged to be run by the same hackers who stole from Mt. Gox. At the time, however, no one knew. While depositing BTC, I mistakenly selected an address for a different coin, thinking it was for bitcoin. I must have accidentally hit the spacebar or scrolled, which shifted the screen, hiding the coin’s name. I copied and pasted the address into my Bitcoin wallet, unintentionally sending 46 BTC to it. I quickly realized my mistake, but the transaction was already on the blockchain. The 46 BTC, worth $30,000 then, were stuck on an address on a different coin’s blockchain, irretrievable. It wasn’t life-ruining, but it was not a small amount either. It was frustrating. A few months later, I suddenly realized: the address format matched bitcoin, so the private key should work with the bitcoin blockchain, too. I emailed BTC-e’s support, explaining the issue and attaching screenshots, asking them to recover my funds by importing the private key. They never bothered sending me a response, but two weeks later, 46 BTC showed up in my account. Ironically, I recovered 46 BTC lost because of my own mistake from an exchange run by the alleged Mt. Gox hackers. Yet, after 12 years, I still am not able to reclaim my Mt. Gox funds. This experience taught me to: 1. Always verify the address three times. 2. Design Binance’s deposit page to keep the coin name and address always visible in a fixed pop-up without scrolling. 3. Help users recover their coins. 4. Communicate with users. Waiting two weeks for a no-reply was not fun. Years later, when Yi He asked if we could help a college student retrieve a few hundred dollars sent by mistake, I immediately agreed. Binance routinely helps users, even though it’s not profitable and most other exchanges still don’t do it. Yi He Hiring Me In March 2014, Okcoin, a new Chinese crypto exchange, held a conference in Hangzhou University, about two hours away from Shanghai. Many people I knew from Shanghai were attending, so I joined them. Soon after arriving, again, the organizers asked me to give an impromptu talk on stage. Yi He, Okcoin’s new Chief Marketing Officer, sat in the front row. That was the first time we met in real life. I knew her virtually from WeChat groups since she joined Okcoin a few months back. After my talk, we spoke to each other briefly. With so many other people asking questions, there was no time to chat. Since we were already indirectly connected on WeChat, there was no need to exchange contacts. She and I didn’t speak again until two months later. In May 2014, I attended another crypto conference in Beijing, representing Blockchain Info. While there, I ran into Yi again. We negotiated an ad deal for Okcoin to put a banner on Blockchain Info, which was the highest traffic website in crypto at the time. Right after that, Yi tried to recruit me, saying, “With your exchange background, why work for a wallet company? Why not join an exchange?” At that time, Blockchain Info had grown to 18 members. The culture changed due to some senior hires. Some developers left. I left. Soon after, the founder Ben Reeves sold his shares and left the company as well. During my time with Blockchain Info in 2014, we worked remotely without an office or bank account, receiving salaries in bitcoin. This experience taught me that remote work was feasible, a lesson I applied later in Binance. As soon as Yi knew I was jobless, she made a serious offer, including a 5% equity stake, which was substantial, considering that Yi herself only had 1% stake. Ron and Bobby from BTC China reached out again too, offering 10% equity in BTCC if I would join. BTCC was a much larger exchange at the time, too. Within just three hours, Okcoin matched BTCC’s offer and proposed a 10% equity share as well. One of their major investors agreed to give me 5% of his equity to secure my employment. For a brief moment, I felt like a big deal. Tough choices. Ultimately, I thought the Beijing culture presented more potential for a crypto startup. I once again had to decline Bobby’s generous offer, expressing gratitude while also appreciating his role in improving the deal for me. Beijing Wudaokou in Beijing, known as China’s Silicon Valley, is home to many tech startups. Office lights shine all night as coders work hard. Star Xu exemplified this work ethic. With a bed in his office, he was always there to oversee his team. He asked me to do the same. I didn’t mind at all. By then, my family had moved to Tokyo. I would fly to see them every few weeks or so. It was around this time that I separated from my ex-wife, which led to a divorce a few years later. I had far fewer friends in Beijing. Wudaokou was on the city’s southwest side, far from the restaurant and bar scene on the east side. It was all work, no poker or golf. Not long after I started my role at Okcoin, certain aspects started to bother me. I won’t go into the details here. Plenty has been written before. Let’s just say there were cultural and value differences. Then, in January 2015, Star Xu tried to renegotiate my 10% equity. I told him I quit. Despite the issues I encountered at Okcoin, I gained significant insight from my time in Beijing, including the hard-working culture and the startup approach to driving business growth. These lessons proved invaluable later on. Ver vs Xu A few months after leaving Beijing, a public dispute erupted between Roger Ver and Star Xu over payment issues involving the use of the bitcoin.com domain. Then out of the blue, Star said that I had somehow forged a contract when working there. As I had already left the company, I couldn’t see the contract he was referring to. Their publicly-posted chat logs showed that they could have settled on fees ranging from one to six months, a difference of a few thousand dollars, negligible for both sides. But cultural and language differences caused them to not catch the zone of overlap and they continued to argue publicly. I didn’t like the fact that they were dragging me into the dispute. In May 2015, I got annoyed and made a public post on Reddit, obviously denying forging any contracts, explaining that I didn’t have any incentive to do so. While I was at it, I detailed a few problems I saw at Okcoin. I probably didn’t have to do that, but I was annoyed. Star was not happy. He retaliated with personal attacks. He pressured Yi to attack me publicly. Yi refused and resigned. The community saw her resignation as a show of support for me. Star took it personally and has been attacking us both since then. After this, I focused on building my new startup in Tokyo, while Yi joined a bigger fast-rising startup in Beijing that focused on user- generated short videos. Bitcoin Exchange in Japan, 2015 In early 2015, shortly after I left Beijing, two former colleagues from Fusion coincidentally reached out to me looking for work. We decided to launch a bitcoin exchange in Japan. It was a year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, which left a significant market opportunity. Hiring James James was a chatty chap who worked under me at Fusion. He was hard working and reliable. Regardless of what it took, he always got the job done. We got along well. He had gotten into bitcoin early and was interested in the space. He left Fusion shortly after I did and worked at a Silicon Valley company, but he wasn’t happy there. He became the second employee after me. He still leads a “hardcore” engineering team in the company, to this day. Around the same time, Bobby Lee from BTC China and Jesse Powell from Kraken both invited me to join their respective teams, but I declined those offers. I wanted to focus on building my own venture. I became the CEO and major shareholder of the new venture, handling fundraising and business development, while others on our team began coding. I paid their salary out of my savings, while not taking a salary myself. I reached out to VCs in Tokyo to explore potential investments for our new exchange. We used an open-source exchange software to set up an initial demo while we built our own tech stack. We tweaked the user interface to give it a more modern look. Additionally, we wrote a script to pull live market data from another exchange and placed orders on our demo exchange in a similar manner, essentially mimicking their order book depth and liquidity. Our demo was active, with orders executing, order books updating, and market data streaming. After speaking with several Tokyo VCs, many of whom had invested in other exchanges, the feedback was, “Your technology is impressive, but operating a bitcoin exchange in Japan would be impossible since you don’t speak Japanese.” They had a point. They then added, “Why not offer your technology to other exchanges? We could introduce you to some.” I met with a few exchanges in Tokyo. Within weeks, we landed a deal where one exchange would pay us $360,000 USD to build their exchange system. Just like that, we pivoted from an aspiring bitcoin exchange to a provider of exchange systems. We began developing our system from the ground up, writing the code from scratch. Best of all, I no longer had to cover salaries out of my own funds. I BijieTech n April 2015, Linke, a BTC China cofounder, contacted me from Shanghai about starting a new exchange for trading postage stamps, physical coins, and cards online. It was a new trend. The largest existing exchanges handled over $200 million daily, and he wanted to partner with me. I told him I couldn’t commit to another business, but offered an exchange system. We agreed to explore further. A few days later, I joined Linke to meet Mr. Pang, a well-connected businessman with a stamp exchange license in Shanghai. Mr. Pang asked detailed tech questions during our three-hour discussion. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Mr. Pang was having lots of tech issues. After 15 years in the industry, I was a good tech salesman, showing in-depth knowledge and describing leading-edge designs of our exchange system. Pang was impressed. A few days later, Pang proposed that he not only wanted to use our system, he also wanted equity in our tech company in exchange for closing deals for us. We agreed on a new joint venture, BijieTech. Mutiny Mr. Pang had a team of 13 developers working on a clunky system at the time. When tasked with integrating them into my team, their leader resisted. A few days later, during a crucial upgrade of their system, they refused to work, thinking they had leverage. Once I received news of their insubordination, at 10 PM, I removed the uncooperative leader and nine developers on the spot, leaving only the three who were willing to work. The four of us worked overnight. Despite gaps in knowledge, we completed the upgrade by 7 AM, ready for the next day’s event. I informed Mr. Pang I would terminate the 10 dissenters, and he agreed. The three who stayed became part of the Binance founding team, achieving immense wealth. As of this writing, two remained with Binance while one has retired. All three of them are rich beyond their wildest dreams. Hiring Allan One of the three was our founding Product Manager Allan. He didn’t have a fancy background or impressive resume, but he was extremely hardworking and a fast learner. He didn’t care about politics. He just worked on product design. Two years later, Allan and his team designed the first versions of the Binance trading screens and UI, which instantly became an industry standard and are still widely used by all crypto exchanges today. Hiring Heina With the team growing, I needed someone to manage back-office affairs. Basically, anything that didn’t have to do with users. I typically divide a company into three logical teams. One team brings in business, acquiring users or clients. This is usually the marketing or sales team. Another team services the users or clients. These are the product, tech, client-solutions, and customer service teams. I usually call these the “execution” teams, although that is an overly broad term. These two teams are what I call front-office teams, facing users and clients. The third team, the back-office team, is everything else, including HR (human resources), finance, legal, admin, office managements, etc. The back-office team should be less than 5-10% of a company. The ratio should be lower for large companies due to economies of scale. But as companies get larger, back-office teams have a way of ballooning if you are not careful. I usually focused 99% of my energy on front-office teams, talking with users, and working on products. I dreaded back-office work. I met Heina 20 years prior in 2005 in Shanghai. At the time, she worked as a salesperson for a wine cellar owned by a friend of mine. She came from a rural village in Sichuan, put herself through school while working, first getting a bachelor’s degree, then worked for a large bank in Shanghai, shifting her career more into finance. In 2011, another friend of mine, Gin, and I invested in a Pinterest copycat startup in China. That startup hired Heina as its office manager, handling finances and everything else. That startup wasn’t successful. Gin and I lost some money. I recommended Heina to another startup where Sean and I were angel investors. That startup, moretickets.com, was run by Jeff. Sean and Jeff’s names will come up later. They were early buyers of BNB tokens. In 2015, I asked Heina to bail on Jeff to join my startup. She agreed. Jeff also agreed, albeit reluctantly. At the time, moretickets.com was doing well and had about 200 employees. I had a team of five. Heina became the back-office “team” for BijieTech. She handled all of our HR, finance, and legal up until when we reached 30 people, by herself. She processed our company registrations, dealt with government officials, handled all the administrative paperwork, filed our taxes and more. Everything that I avoided. She was also our receptionist, including making tea for our guests. She eventually had to hire one helper, Ms. Fang, who also doubled as our receptionist. Both of them sat at the reception desk, making our tiny company look bigger. Hiring Roger, CTO With new clients signing up, I needed to expand our tech team as well. Roger Wang came highly recommended for the tech lead role by my friend Sean. He was working at Nomura securities at the time, and Morgan Stanley before that. After a 30-minute coffee meeting, he agreed to join. There’s a saying that the hardest CTO job is working for a CEO who used to be a CTO. That was the case for Roger. But we got along well. His ability to exceed my expectations, consistently completing tasks in days that I estimated would take weeks, made things easier. I soon found less need for my own coding skills, which, as a result, deteriorated. On the flip side, I had more time to develop leadership skills. Two years later, Roger would go on to become the founding CTO of Binance. Eureka Moment, Quitting Poker In mid-2015, as I returned to Shanghai, friends welcomed me back into the poker games, golf, and other social gatherings. Poker was my biggest distraction. We would often start at 8 PM, saying we would finish at midnight, but almost always extend to 3 or 4 AM, leaving me exhausted the next day. By midday, the poker group chat buzzed with debates about the previous day’s game, how someone misplayed a hand. By 4 PM, plans for another session would be underway. It was always top of chats, top of mind and a huge distraction. Mediocre success was deceptive. I was doing better than average, but certainly not putting in my best. My eureka moment came one evening while having a drink with my friend Eric. He said, “CZ, if you stop playing poker for two years, afterward you can play all the poker you want. With your IQ and EQ, you can achieve great things. You’re wasting your life now.” In the days that followed, Eric’s words lingered in my head. Eric was about ten years my senior. He had built a startup and sold it to Motorola a few years back. He was a mellow and polite guy. In the reserved Chinese culture of “hinting and reading between the lines,” it must have taken a lot for him to say that to me. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of a degen I must have become for a friend to feel compelled to say that to me. I decided to quit poker. At first, I told the poker group I would cut my playing down to once a month. Despite my best intentions, it didn’t work. I was still in the group chat, constantly reminded by a stream of messages. The red notification badge would pop up, bringing the group back to the top of my chat list, and my mind. Every other night, there was a game, and there was always some excuse to tempt me back into playing. I found myself at the poker table far more often than once a month. Finally, I decided to walk away completely. I left the group chats. The guys kept adding me back. I would leave as soon as they added me. This went on for a few weeks, but eventually, the frequency dropped. Leaving the group chat made all the difference. As the saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind.” Over time, my interactions with other players dwindled. I no longer had to listen to them analyzing their hands. There were a few weeks of withdrawal symptoms, as I missed the adrenaline. To compensate, I spent more time with friends who didn’t play poker. After a few weeks, poker wasn’t on my mind anymore. After leaving poker, I found myself with more time. My family was in Tokyo, and I was in Shanghai, so I stayed at the office longer, even if just surfing the net. Soon, I realized I was more productive, and my clients were happier. I stayed on top of every client request, responding at any time, even if the call came in at 11 PM or 1 AM, I would answer. This midnight responsiveness eased clients’ concerns, making them more polite and lenient the next day, recognizing my hard work. About a year later, I joined a poker game for a friend’s birthday. The game felt slow and uninteresting, with the same boring conversations about card play. After 30 minutes, I wished my friend a happy birthday and left. From the day Eric advised me, my life took a turn for the better. I remain grateful to Eric for his honest advice, which served as a big wake- up call. They Do What You Do, Not What You Say As I worked late, my team followed suit without being asked. Our productivity soared. Soon, we weren’t just responding to client issues at 11 PM, we were solving their problems by midnight. Realizing the value of the extra time, I replaced 6 hours of golf with 30-minute body-weight exercises. Without poker and golf, my productivity sky-rocketed. Our little dingy office began to have a buzz of energy. It was hard to describe, but clients who visited often commented on it. Deals became easier to close. Don’t Waste Time I became intolerant of time-wasters. I began to optimize time in all areas of my life. It was around this time, the book Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari, came out. I learned from the book that 80% of human communication is just gossip. I started to optimize time in my communications too. I cut out long meetings, intro meetings, discovery meetings, useless conversations, and all juicy gossip. I also cut out all TV, news, sports, and music. I started doing five-minute meetings as the default. I asked for a written bullet point agenda before every meeting. Every meeting must have a clear ask or goal. I rejected long docs and fancy powerpoints. They take too long to create and even more time to read. I ask for bullet points and bar charts. I became far more direct in my communications. I stopped beating around the bush. No small talk. No chit chat. Straight to the point. It got to a point where I would become impatient when people would say “I will make this meeting quick.” I would tell them that was one extra sentence they didn’t need to say, they could just make it quick. I might even send them a link to my principles article. I also changed the way I do business. I stopped chasing fancy “partnerships,” instead focussing on low-hanging-fruit deals. I adopted a more passive approach for business development. When people come to me, it is usually faster to close the deal. I started to say no early too. It saves time for both sides. I socialized less. My circle of friends became smaller. Saving time became one of my top principles. I took this to the extreme, to a point where some people may think I am impolite. I am fine with it. Being polite isn’t the goal. Being efficient is. Small changes led to geometric differences over time. Growth Mr. Pang, with his government connections, referred many exchange clients to us, and we closed those deals. I adapted to Chinese business practices and the nuances of negotiation. I learned that while the Chinese clients negotiated very hard at first, once they developed a trusting relationship, they continued to give you more and more business. After being in China for 10 years, I was finally providing exchange systems to Chinese clients. Hiring Sunny With more clients, I needed someone to manage and prioritize all the different workstreams, as well as managing the clients. Sunny was a young consultant from Accenture recently hired by Mr. Pang. I interviewed Sunny for Mr. Pang during his recruiting process. As our business got busy, I asked Mr. Pang if I could “borrow” Sunny for BijieTech. Sunny was initially reluctant, but my sales pitch worked. He came over to help, and never left. Sunny has one of the most logical minds I know. He could keep track in his head of all the dependencies of hundreds of interrelated tasks. He would know exactly who needed to work on what, and in which order. So, he naturally became the Project Manager on the team. Sunny, Allan and Roger worked extremely well together. The three of them formed the execution team, handling all tech and product delivery. I became the sales guy. Luck, or Someone Watching Over Us Software is never bug-free. Rare boundary cases would always occur. Our team at Bijie Tech experienced our share of problems, but there were other times when we were very lucky. One incident was when our first client was set to go live at 9:30 AM, on April 11, 2016. Their team had invited the city mayor for a grand ceremony, with coverage from the local TV station. We sent our Project Manager, Sunny, on site. And our entire 20-person team remained on standby in the office. At 9:22 AM, James found a system misconfiguration that required a 20-minute fix and a reboot, which would surely disrupt their grand ceremony. I called Sunny, explained the situation in 10 seconds, then asked, “Should we delay the launch?” He replied, “No need. Just do what you need to do.” Me, “What?” Then it hit me, he couldn’t speak freely because of others around him. So I asked, “Should we proceed with the reboot, which will take 20 minutes?” He said, “Yes.” Clear. I instructed the team to reboot the entire system. Thirty minutes later, the system was back online. Three minutes after that, we saw a live order going through. And no complaints from the client. As it turned out, our client also had a bank issue, causing deposits to fail and leaving users without balances at 9:30 AM. To avoid embarrassment before the mayor and guests, they displayed the test environment on the large screen. The system reboot completed just three minutes before the bank resolved their account problem. To this day, I doubt the client knew the system was not ready at 9:30 AM. Our CTO Roger said we were so lucky that someone (with higher powers) must be watching over us. Neck on the Line Despite our luck, my neck was often on the line. A month later, during another client’s soft launch, our system failed. Chaos ensued. This client, Zhong Shen, had strong funding and had acquired over 100,000 users from the start. The sheer user numbers caused major trading performance issues. With no banking problems to mask the complications we were facing, the client was furious. At noon that day, 20 senior executives from the client, including their chairman, Mr. Hong, stormed into our small office, demanding answers. Mr. Hong had a loud voice, and especially so that day. I entered the meeting alone, while my team outside worried for my safety. Their CEO and executives interrogated me for 30 minutes. Finally, probably because they got tired, the Chairman asked, “CZ, can I rely on you for the full launch in two days, or should we call it off?” I replied, “Yes.” It was a rhetorical question. What else could I say? As an entrepreneur, sometimes you just have to put your neck on the line and hope for the best. After a minute’s pause, Mr. Hong said, “We go.” I thanked him for his trust, and they exited just as quickly as they had entered. As I stepped out of the conference room, all eyes from our team were fixed on me. I simply said, “We go,” and they returned to their tasks, of which there were plenty. After pulling two all-nighters, we launched, fortunately without too many complications. We enjoyed a brief sense of relief before the next crisis. Problems were constant. An exchange was a complex system with numerous components. It required a great deal of fine-tuning to resolve all the bugs. During those months, our team hardly slept. Eventually, our efficient design began to show its strength. Our system became fast and “stable.” When One Door Shuts Between 2015 and 2017, we grew to over 30 exchange clients, each paying monthly recurring fees. Our business thrived. Then in March 2017, the Chinese government ordered all stamp exchanges to shut down. That March, we onboarded six new clients. But by April, we gained none. By May, most clients stopped paying, rendering our business unsustainable. Three team members, concerned about our future, decided to launch a Chinese version of Poloniex. I offered to invest, and they agreed. At the time, Poloniex was the leading crypto exchange with $300 million in daily trades. However, a few days later, they shifted focus to an on-chain chat- based OTC trading venture, and the investment didn’t happen. This prompted me to think, why not start our own crypto-to-crypto exchange? By this time, we were in a much stronger position than two years prior. We had assembled a strong team, and we had our own exchange system. I suggested the idea to the team. No one objected. As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. T Binance wo years after aspiring to launch a bitcoin exchange, having detoured to become an exchange systems provider, now we came full circle to start a crypto exchange ourselves. At first, I wanted to explore fundraising using traditional venture capital (VC) money. I had a number of VC friends in Shanghai. I thought they all liked me. But all of them said “no.” “There are thousands of crypto exchanges already.” “There isn’t room for another exchange.” “It’s a saturated space.” “You won’t be able to differentiate yourself.” “You won’t succeed.” I got lots of feedback along those lines. This is a lesson that you can’t let a few no’s throw you off, even from people you (used to) consider as friends. The more radical your idea, the more no’s you will hear. Well, our idea was not radical. Everyone in crypto had thought of doing a crypto exchange at some point. What’s an ICO? On June 1, 2017, Linke, the former co-founder of BTC China, taught me something new once again. He told me about an ICO he was launching. It was the first time I’d heard of the term, which stood for an initial coin offering. Just nine days later, by June 10, 2017, Linke had successfully raised the equivalent of $15 million USD in bitcoins. It was the largest ICO in China up to that point. Curious, I dug further. He had only a 10-page white paper and a website, no product or user base. I discovered that several other western projects had conducted successful ICOs earlier in 2017. I pondered, if Linke could raise $15 million USD in nine days, perhaps I could do the same. Linke had a decent reputation in the Chinese crypto community. I believed that I also had a decent reputation in both the Chinese and international crypto circles. Beyond reputation, I was confident we had a proven exchange system as well as a strong team that could deliver. Four days later, on June 14, 2017, I travelled to Chongqing to meet a client. It just happened that a crypto conference was taking place in the city. I had stayed away from crypto conferences for two years. Since we were preparing to launch our own exchange, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the scene. At the event, I saw many of the familiar faces I’d come to know over the years. Chandler Guo organized a spicy hotpot dinner, a local Chongqing specialty. He rented out an entire large restaurant for the evening, paying two bitcoins for the event. The free food attracted a crowd of 500 people, including me. Everyone there was either discussing ICOs or getting ready to launch one. Linke showed up, receiving congratulations for his successful ICO, looking cheerful and content. Throughout the night, people kept telling me, “CZ, you should launch an ICO.” I heard that advice at least 500 times that night. After that dinner, I returned to my hotel room and called my team, “Look up the term ICO and learn everything about it, because we’re going to do one. I need everyone to start working on writing a whitepaper. Our goal is to complete the whitepaper in both Chinese and English within three days, and to finish the ICO and raise $15 million in two weeks. Let’s get started now.” No one on our team had ever heard of the term ICO. I had only learned about it just two weeks before. But we got to work. BNB For the ICO to work, we designed a new token, BNB. People who participated in the ICO would pay in bitcoin (BTC) or ethereum (ETH) in exchange for the new BNB tokens. In the ICO whitepaper, we clearly explained that the BNB token did not represent equity. As a use case, BNB holders would enjoy a discount on Binance trading fees, though BNB would have many more use cases beyond the Binance exchange. For example, it would have its own blockchain and DeFi ecosystem, opening many more development opportunities. From the beginning, we designed the BNB token ecosystem to be bigger than the Binance Exchange. We planned to sell 10% of the BNB tokens to strategic advisors, and 50% during the ICO. The team would keep 40% to fund the project. We also committed to burn 50% of all BNB tokens over time. Later, we were able to earn BNB back quickly so that we didn’t need to spend a single BNB from the 40% team allocation. We decided to commit them to the burn. This made BNB a fair-launch token. In other words, neither the team nor anyone else got any free tokens. All tokens in circulation were earned or bought. Advisors Three days later, by June 17th, we had completed drafts of our white paper in both English and Chinese. I shared them with a few people for their feedback. I also asked each person if they would be interested in becoming an advisor for our project, with the offer that their name and photo would be included in our white paper. Every one of them accepted, and I gained some more friends. Many of the advisors requested token allocations that they could purchase in preparation for the ICO. Initially, I was unfamiliar with this concept, but after a few discussions, I caught on. The advisors clearly understood more about ICOs than I did. Chandler Guo offered to be my special advisor. I didn’t know what that meant, but I said yes. He asked for some token allocations, which I agreed to. Chandler later donated all of those tokens to Binance Charity, a very generous gesture. Only one of the advisors, Yi, provided input on the whitepaper, a lot of input. She fully believed in the project, and wanting to see it succeed for all users, didn’t request any token allocations. Yi, after departing from Okcoin, was serving as CMO for Yixia Technologies, a well-known short-video social media company. They had just raised $500 million USD in their series-E funding round and were gearing up for an IPO. She was in the major leagues. Yi made so many revisions to our whitepaper that I think I spent more time clicking “Accept Change” than I did writing the initial document. On June 17th, 2017, she happened to be in Shanghai for a seminar, so I invited her to our office to assist with the whitepaper. It was a Saturday. She came over after her seminar. Choosing a Name The first thing Yi said was that our Chinese name at the time sounded like a supermarket. I casually asked if she had a better choice. She thought for a second, and said, “How about bi an?” (pronounced bee, anne) The literal translation would mean “coin safe.” I looked at our Product Manager, Allan, and we both said, “Yup, sounds good.” Yi asked, “Are you sure? Don’t you have to think about it? Or run it by more people? Maybe a Feng Shui master? Naming is a big decision.” Allan and I were like, “We are good with that name. No need to check with anyone else. Let’s move on to the next edit.” That was the Chinese name for Binance, 币安. Unbeknownst to her, we struggled to choose a Chinese name after picking the English one a week earlier, until Yi finally named it. From the very beginning, Binance showed a strong execution culture. Decisions were made confidently without cumbersome meetings, allowing us to move forward quickly. Friends On the night of June 17, 2017, I visited two karaokes, not to sing, but to offer friends a chance to join our ICO. I wanted to ensure they couldn’t say I hadn’t given them the opportunity if our venture succeeded. It’s a Chinese thing. Karaoke is a national pastime in China, enjoyed by everyone from young children to seasoned businessmen. I first went to a group of mostly VC friends at an expensive karaoke, trying to explain ICOs and pitching them on investing. I offered them three options, A, B, and C, with varying investment sizes, and told them the opportunity closes in 24 hours. None of them had heard of the term ICO before. I sounded like a snake oil salesman, and none took the bait. Thirty minutes later, I was with another group of friends who were less savvy investors, in a less expensive karaoke. They also didn’t know what an ICO was, but after my pitch, my friend Sean decided to invest in option A, the big chunk. He encouraged others to join, leading two other friends, Max and Jeff, to choose B and C. The whole exchange lasted 30 minutes, and none of them knew what they had invested in. It sounds crazy, but there was some logic to it. By then, Sean and I had known each other for about ten years. We had tried to do three side projects together in the past, but all had failed miserably. We both lost money, but did not blame each other and remained good friends. Soon after each failure, we would try again with a different project. We had a battle-tested friendship. I knew when I asked, he had to put some money in. If the project failed later, he would not blame me. If I didn’t ask, he might blame me for leaving him out. So I had to ask, and he had to come in. It was a bro thing. Sean and I were both angel investors in Jeff’s company, an online ticketing startup. Jeff’s company was an idea the three of us conceptualized over dinner. Jeff was to run it as CEO. Sean and I put in the very first batch of seed capital. Whenever Jeff’s startup was on the verge of running out of money, which was all the time, Sean and I would try to get other investors in, so that we didn’t have to keep putting in more money ourselves, which we had done multiple times already. Max was a new investor we dragged into Jeff’s company in the last round. It was all one big family. The group of VCs in the first karaoke that night were also my friends, but we didn’t have such previous investment relationships. So naturally they didn’t come onboard. But out of courtesy, I had to do the snake-oil- salesman pitch and give them the opportunity to participate, or to say no. This way, if/when things were to go well in the future, they could only blame themselves, which they have done plenty of times since. I left the karaoke as soon as the second group confirmed their commitment. It was only 10 pm. I went back to the office. Most of our team was still there. I told them I had just closed about $300,000 USD in commitments. Our finance person wrote it down, and started to coordinate with my friends/investors on payment logistics. By the next morning, the money was in. Obviously, all three of them made a killing from the investment. They took the risks and they deserve it. Vitalik Buterin - To Infinity and Back Around this time, I also sent our whitepaper to Vitalik for feedback. I first met 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas in December 2013. He was working for Bitcoin Magazine and already discussing Ethereum. We met again in Beijing in May 2014, and two months later in Chicago at another Bitcoin conference, where we took a photo with Shawn Wilkinson, Storj’s founder. May 10, 2014 , Beijing Summit , Liu Wei, Vitalik, and me. In May 2015, Vitalik visited Tokyo and crashed over at my place, sharing a bunk bed with my eight-year-old son, teaching him about infinite numbers. At the time, I tried to argue with Vitalik that building a Turing- complete language into the blockchain, as Ethereum intended, was an enormous undertaking. I told him it might be too big of a bite to chew. Vitalik assured me it was achievable. Now we know he was right, and I was wrong. Despite knowing him since 2013 and tracking his progress, I never invested in Ethereum. Talk about a missed opportunity! But then again, had I invested in ETH and multiplied my investments a few 100 times, Binance might not exist today. The simulation has plans for each of us. When Vitalik visited Shanghai again in 2016, he stopped by our BijieTech office. I told our team Vitalik was a genius. We had lunch with a few team members, none of whom were in crypto. Vitalik spent the afternoon working from our meeting room, the one I often had to “put my neck on the line” in. In July 2017, I asked Vitalik for feedback on the Binance whitepaper. He didn’t like centralized exchanges and pointed out a potential flaw in our logic: if holding BNB gave users a 50% discount on trading fees, wouldn’t everyone want to hold BNB, driving its price to infinity? I argued that only active traders would be willing to tolerate price volatility and hold BNB. This would prevent an infinite price, as we would always have a finite number of users. On this point, I was right and he was wrong. Fast forward a few years, in 2020, during COVID, Vitalik and I were both in Singapore. I invited him over for dinner, and he thanked me for handling regulatory pressure, saying Binance acted as a shield for the industry. A month later, he messaged me asking if he could come over for dinner again because he was leaving Singapore. I said sure. In November 2022, when FTX collapsed and Binance was implementing Proof-of-Reserves, Vitalik suggested using Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Our team adopted his idea. In 2025, Vitalik asked me to contribute to his research on an open- source pandemic prevention system. I readily donated $10 million in BNB to him. I regard Vitalik as one of the nicest and smartest people I know. He’s eccentric but a true genius, focused on advancing society through technical progress. He always seems to have a mathematical equation in mind. For society’s progress, we need to protect people like him. Roadshow Back to 2017, an ICO had the advantage of global reach. We planned a roadshow across several cities to drum up interest but quickly realized we needed to stay focused on managing system issues. Things were moving rapidly. We ended up doing zero roadshows. On June 22nd 2017, Antshares had a PR event in Beijing to rebrand as NEO. I borrowed their stage to announce our project, Binance, highlighting its superior exchange capabilities. Rather than asking questions, attendees were keen to purchase our BNB tokens. That was the only public speaking I did for the Binance ICO. After that announcement, so eager to invest in our token was one persistent man that he followed us to our hotel. Upon seeing our modest three-star accommodations, he offered to upgrade us to a five-star hotel. We declined. After a brief overnight rest, we flew back to Shanghai the next morning, ready for our first ICO session that day. We divided our ICO into five sessions over two weeks to maximize interest and to ensure quick sellouts for each session. ICO On June 23, 2017, at 7:00 pm, our first ICO flash sale began. And our servers promptly crashed. A flash sale involves selling a limited quantity of high-demand items on a first-come, first-served basis, causing a rush. Flash sales often lead to system crashes. Optimizing systems to handle this type of peak volume took time and required more servers than we could have afforded at the time. When a financial system crashes, complaints pour in, with people demanding compensation. While they have a point, it’s hard to determine who truly would have succeeded had the system not crashed. We compromised by giving a little bit of extra tokens to participants, which didn’t make everyone happy but was generally appreciated. System crashes also lead to reputational crashes. “If you can’t handle an ICO, can you really build a high-performance crypto exchange as you claim?” It was a fair concern. However, this ICO system was a temporary setup slapped together overnight. As time would show, our exchange engine is well-engineered. Our second ICO offering went smoother than the first. We outsourced the third and fourth sessions to other ICO-specific platforms, spreading awareness and gaining users through different channels, though we paid a substantial fee for it. For the fifth session, we allocated to users based on their deposits on our platform, attracting users to deposit funds before launching our exchange. During the fifth session, Okcoin and Huobi, two of the largest crypto exchanges in China at the time, suspended withdrawals, attempting to hinder users from depositing funds to Binance. Their strategy backfired, damaging user trust in their integrity as a fair player. Crypto exchanges should not block user withdrawals unless there was a very strong reason. An upcoming competitor doing an ICO was not a valid reason. More importantly, their decision to suspend withdrawals generated far more publicity for us than we could on our own, as users quickly figured out the real reason behind their block. Everyone began chatting in various social media groups about Binance. “Who is this new Binance exchange that’s making the two large exchanges so scared?” Major crypto news outlets covered the story. As a brand new platform, we got so much more exposure. Our sale sold out in seconds across all five sessions, despite some users from the two large platforms missing out on the action. Attacks From the outset, rivals attacked us. They sponsored articles intended to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). Some articles even targeted me directly, claiming things like “CZ was an inept CTO at Okcoin. He can’t code, can’t solve problems...” This was their tactic to undermine my credibility. However, their smear campaigns had the opposite effect. Our competitors’ investment in media ultimately brought more attention to Binance. Ironically, this contributed to the growth of our user base. You can’t spread negative attacks about someone without mentioning their name. The more they mentioned our name, the more exposure Binance received. What startups should dread most isn’t negative publicity, it’s a lack of publicity. All PR is good PR. Therefore, I established a policy at Binance to refrain from speaking negatively about our peers. We concentrate on ourselves. $15 Million Dollar Lunch We wrapped up the final ICO session just before noon on July 2, 2017, a Sunday. Everyone was at the office, and we had just raised the equivalent of $15 million USD. So Fang, our admin, suggested we celebrate with lunch. She ordered a slightly fancier version of takeout food. But still takeout. Our dining space consisted of two small tables pushed together, which made it a bit tight for four people to sit around simultaneously. For our $15 million lunch celebration, the 20 of us took turns filling our plates and eating at our desks. It was the first meal we shared together timing wise since starting Binance ICO 3 weeks earlier. July 2, 2017, Binance Shanghai office. Team lunch. Despite the tight space, everyone finally relaxed a bit and the food tasted somewhat better. We were all running on fumes of sleep, fueled by pure adrenaline and excitement for the past three weeks. To show appreciation for everyone’s hard work, I announced that we would give each employee an extra month’s salary in BNB, at the ICO price of $0.10 per BNB. This would have some interesting consequences later. $24 Million Bonus That I Didn’t Know About A few years later, our finance team informed me that I had an unused account on Binance containing 50,000 BNB tokens. It turns out that on July 2, 2017, when I announced the bonus of one month’s pay in BNB for everyone, the finance team included me as well. At the time, my monthly salary was $5,000 USD. So, they set up a temporary account for me and deposited 50,000 BNB into it. I was unaware of this until they mentioned it to me. By that time, BNB was valued at $480, which meant I had a $24 million bonus without even realizing it. I still haven’t touched it. As of this writing (Oct 2025), BNB is trading at $1,100, which makes that allotment worth $55 million. Any employee who held onto that initial BNB bonus would now be in an enviable financial position, with the ability to fund their own passions and/or to pass on their wealth to the next generation. Blog Back to July 2, 2017, after lunch and the excitement over the surprise bonus, we told the team to go home. I stayed to write a blog about our ICO experience. Two team members volunteered to stay and help translate it. I never asked anyone at Binance to work overtime. I found that leading by example is the best way to encourage people to work hard. My article went viral, as it was rare for founders to blog about ICO experiences. It boosted Binance’s exposure. Realizing the power of blogging, I decided to make it a habit. That evening, I took time to relax alone, in anticipation of the intensity of the launch of our world-class crypto exchange in two weeks’ time. Hiring Ted My best pal from high school, Ted, reached out when he saw my ICO blog post. We hadn’t spoken for a few years. He was GM for a tech firm in Europe at the time and was looking for action. Ted: “Hey man, congrats on raising $15 million! Can I come and work for you?” Me: “What role do you want?” Ted: “Anything.” Ted handed in his resignation the next day and joined us as Head of International Markets and Business Development. He oversaw Binance listings in our early years, too. Product Even though we had launched 30+ exchanges for clients already, there was still a mountain of work to do. The previous stamp exchanges didn’t interface much with the blockchain. Now that we were handling crypto directly, we had to deal with deposits and withdrawals and any system bug in this area could result in significant financial loss. We had to integrate with four different blockchains in the next two weeks. For BNB, it was an ERC 20 token on Ethereum. We had to create the smart contract, audit it, issue the token and distribute it. The previous stamp exchanges all had a closing time. They opened at 9:30 AM, and closed at 3:30 PM, much like traditional stock exchanges. It was much easier with this schedule to do system upgrades and reconciliations. As a crypto exchange, we run 24x7, even on holidays. All reconciliations and most system upgrades had to be done “in-flight.” The product team, led by Allan, decided to do a completely new and better UI (user interface). They often discussed screen mockups into the wee hours of the morning and their energy was infectious. We saw many sun rises together. Their work was remarkable. The Binance UI was copied by every other crypto exchange and sets the standard for the industry. The tech team had to make sure the system was, as we advertised, fast under heavy load. Server Move 1 As if our tech team was not busy enough, a few days before the go- live, I asked our tech team to consider moving servers from AWS to AliCloud because we had more Chinese users than the rest of the world combined. Initially, we used the international cloud service for a broader user base, but most of our ICO users were Chinese, making AliCloud more practical. Switching servers post-launch could disrupt trading, so we planned and executed the move the night before the go-live. In comparison, I had done a server move project at Bloomberg 13 years prior. Even though it involved far fewer servers, the project took six months to plan and execute. Needless to say, our team didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t know that we would be moving the servers out of China merely six weeks later. It was impossible to make the right decisions all the time. You can only make the best decision based on the available information at the time. More important, is the ability to adjust quickly as the situation changes. Hiring Yi, July 2017 After the ICO success, I needed to hire a marketing lead. While we had strong leaders for tech, product, and ops, we didn’t have a marketing team. I knew the ideal candidate, but hiring her wouldn’t be easy. Yi was the CMO at Yixia Technologies, a short video and social app company. They had recently raised $500 million in their series-E round and planned to IPO on NASDAQ the following year. This was before US- China relations worsened and Chinese companies were still seeking US market IPOs. Back then, Yi was ranked among the top 10 internet CMOs in China, which was quite an achievement considering the country’s numerous powerful internet companies and the fiercely competitive ecosystem. If we included any one additional criteria, such as being female or under 30, she would easily hold the number one spot. If Yixia’s intended IPO succeeded, Yi’s stock options would have been worth millions of dollars. In contrast, Binance was a startup. Although we had just recently raised $15 million in capital, we didn’t yet have any revenue or a foreseeable exit strategy. So my pitch to Yi was: 1. It was not guaranteed that Yixia’s IPO would happen. A lot of things could go wrong. As it turned out, that IPO didn’t happen, but not for the reasons I enthusiastically predicted at the time. And we couldn’t have known back then. 2. You only have a small bit of stock options in Yixia, as you joined midway. At Binance, you would be a founding member, with significant equity and influence. The growth potential would be infinitely higher. 3. Social media was so-last-decade. Blockchain is the future. She agreed with me on the powerful prospects of blockchain technology. Luckily, TikTok wasn’t a thing back then. Her concerns, of course, were valid. Binance posed much higher risks. Even though we had some capital to build, we were still a small shaky startup. I told her we would be less risky if she joined. Both of us knew the pros and cons, and all the arguments. I knew she was interested. She was a true believer in the blockchain revolution. Yixia was a big company and she had mentioned she didn’t like the office politics there. She always seemed to be more interested in early startups. I made sure to keep her involved as much as possible. She edited large chunks of our whitepaper. She even coined our Chinese name. That must have created some attachment. The best way to hire senior talent was to directly involve them in the business. Still, we negotiated hard on the numbers. She, like me, didn’t care about salary. So, we didn’t pay much there. We went back and forth on equity. Finally, on July 13, 2017, the night before the go-live, I called her again and said, “We are about to go live tomorrow. BNB will start trading. If, like many of the projects before us, the price goes up 5x or 10x, the value of the platform will increase significantly too. Then I wouldn’t be able to offer you the same deal as I am offering you now.” I might have even added, “You need to get on the rocket before it lifts off” for dramatic effect. She agreed. We reached a deal. She said she would hand in her resignation the next day. It was just a phone call. No contracts, not even written messages. Well, if you read the first chapter of this book, you know what happened the next day. BNB price didn’t go up 5x. Instead, its value dropped by 40%. Yi saw this from her office in Beijing and still proceeded to hand in her resignation. I imagined her boss laughing at her and saying, “Are you crazy? Look at this stupid project, their token price has already dropped by 40%, and you are going to leave a pre-IPO company to join that?” Yi didn’t call me. She didn’t renegotiate. She sent me a text in the evening saying she had handed in her resignation already. And according to her mom’s reading of the lunar calendar, August 8th (8/8) would be the best date for her to move to Shanghai and officially start with us. She had a one-month notice period with Yixia, which she negotiated to three weeks. The BNB price struggled at around 50-60% of its ICO price for the next three weeks. With that background, Yi packed up her things in Beijing and moved to Shanghai with her mom. Not only that, she also brought her own marketing team, as expected. O Go Live n July 14, 2017, Binance went live, as I wrote in the first pages of this book. I would call our launch a success from a technical perspective. But the price of the BNB token sank. Users complained, putting us under a lot of pressure. Rather than lose focus, we kept building. Binance Angels There are angels among us. During our ICO, we used WeChat groups to organize our communities. WeChat had a limitation of 500 members per group. We had many groups. Questions often went unnoticed by our busy team. But some advanced users, not Binance employees, often volunteered answers. They even knew details I didn’t, like the location of a button buried deep on a page. I chatted with a few of them, wanting to understand why they stayed so active. They said they were traders and monitored our groups all day long for updates anyway. When they saw a question, if they were not busy trading, they would just answer. They wanted Binance to succeed. They were all super nice people. All of them thanked me for chatting with them, while I should have been the one thanking them for helping our users. Some people were born wanting to help others. A light bulb went on in my head. We could empower them to be our ambassadors in the community. Having volunteers in the community helping other users would be a powerful endorsement for our platform. In many respects, it is more powerful than having employees. We paid employees, but the Angels were motivated by love and passion for what we were building. Their commitment felt different. Further, to ensure fairness for traders, we restricted employees from trading, which had the adverse effect of preventing them from knowing the product as well as traders. I thought about ways to incentivize our ambassadors. We could give them privileges, status, more access to our employees, including lunches with CZ, special swags, etc. I thought they would love it. And they did. We announced the first “Calling for Binance Angels” on July 1, 2017. At 11 PM no less. That was the Saturday night before the final ICO session. The Binance Angels program has been a key part of Binance’s success since inception. It multiplied Binance’s growth rate and enabled Binance to expand into far corners of the earth where we didn’t have any employees or local presence. One or two volunteers could open an entire region for us. Many other exchanges tried to copy this model, but with little success. For this model to work, there is one special ingredient required. It is not a secret, but somehow it has been hard for others to copy. You have to treat your users well. We called it protect users. And you have to truly do it. Just saying you will protect users won’t work. For people to volunteer their time and energy to promote your platform and assist your users, they have to feel proud of their involvement. They have to believe that they are contributing to something positive. If they sense that your platform is mistreating users in any way, they will quickly stop being ambassadors. Their reputation is on the line too. Bad service can turn ambassadors into adversaries. Spelling it out like this should make it blindingly obvious. But for whatever reason, other platforms were not able to retain their volunteers for very long. They usually ended up paying their “volunteers,” which changed the relationship. On the other side of this, when you have volunteers willing to promote your platform, it sends a strong message to other users that you are a trustworthy platform. Binance has had the privilege of enjoying this reputation from inception to the present. As of this writing, we’re proud to have more than 400 Binance Angels all around the world. Thank you! Protect Users Here’s an early example of how we protect users. Not long after we opened for user deposit on July 2, our finance team noticed that we had more GAS tokens than expected. It turned out that holding the NEO in a wallet generated GAS tokens. At the time, no exchange passed the generated tokens on to their users, even though the NEO coins were owned by users. We decided to distribute these GAS tokens back to our users, recognizing such tokens as being the owner’s rightful asset. We announced this in an “Open Letter to the NEO Community” on July 11, 2017, just before our exchange launched. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with NEO and broader crypto communities praising our user-focused approach. Many NEO users moved their funds to Binance, usually bringing other assets with them. Even those without NEO appreciated how we protected our users and joined us. Although we could have gained some extra income from these GAS tokens, instead we focused on long-term growth and gained more users in return. Customer Support In 2017, all existing crypto exchanges had terrible customer support (CS). If you filed a support ticket, you would be lucky to get a response in two months, if you received a response at all. Your bitcoin withdrawals might be stuck as prices fluctuate. Back in my earlier days, I experienced this frustration firsthand. When Binance started, I made a policy to respond to all CS requests within 24 hours. No exceptions. Initially, I thought hiring more CS agents would solve the issue. However, the devil was in the details. During our ICO, we didn’t have any CS agents, only a four-person marketing team handling inquiries through community chat groups. The volume soon overwhelmed them. I underestimated our explosive growth. Every member on our team pitched in to help with CS, but it wasn’t enough. As we solved one customer issue, ten more inquiries arrived. We couldn’t keep up. I called an old client, whose stamp exchange was winding down. Wanting to help, he agreed to lend us his CS team. The next morning, ten experienced agents arrived in our little office. We put them in the only space left, the meeting room. They set up ZenDesk and we managed to get things under control, just barely, and just for a short while. We also set up daily meetings between the CS and the product teams. First, we would go over the most common issues in order to fix problems at the root, at the product level, so that users wouldn’t need to contact us. Second, the product team would provide training for new features or changes in the product. We were releasing tons of new features daily, or hourly. Forks I dislike forks. In a decentralized world, when people disagree on a project’s direction, they fork the code, meaning the protocol splits into different directions. Bitcoin, being open-source, could be forked by anyone. In July 2017, the “block size war” came to a head. The bitcoin network was overloaded, handling only seven transactions per second, leading to high fees. Debates arose over increasing or maintaining the block size. This led to a fork on August 1st, splitting bitcoin into bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH). The details of increasing block size are covered in The Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier. I was preoccupied with Binance and only followed the developments at a high level as they affected us. Theoretically, holding bitcoins before the fork meant you’d have the same amount afterward, plus the new bitcoin cash. In practice, to seize the new bitcoin cash, a user would need to install the right bitcoin cash wallet and import bitcoin private keys. It was a complex task even for techies like myself. Back then, most exchanges didn’t support the BCH fork, so users had to withdraw bitcoins to their own wallet, handle the fork themselves to get BCH. This situation was similar to the NEO/GAS scenario. At Binance, I proposed handling the fork for users, so they wouldn’t need to withdraw their bitcoins. I thought it would likely attract more deposits. And it did. On July 18th, 2017, just 4 days after launching, we announced our “Hard Fork Contingency Plan” to protect users. However, I disliked forks due to the extra work and risks of integrating new blockchains and wallets that were prone to bugs. Once we supported the BCH fork, more forks emerged, such as Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond, many of which were useless. We supported a few but eventually had to set limits. Visitors In July and August, our Shanghai office was bustling with visitors. Some folks seemed to believe that a physical office made our online crypto exchange more believable. We had so many visitors that I thought charging an entrance fee might be more profitable than trading fees. Given the high interest, I asked Fang to film an impromptu office tour9. Despite its low-budget quality, the unedited video was surprisingly well- received for its authenticity. After the video, more visitors came. One evening, a guy named Mario showed up at our office at 7 PM, expressing his desire to work for us. He mentioned he spoke Spanish and could assist with our Spanish-speaking users. We hired him. Although he had a one-month notice period with his existing employer, he came to our office at 6 PM daily and worked with us until midnight. I am always puzzled when people say they can’t find jobs. Opportunities are everywhere if you look for them and have the right attitude. Other visitors included Justin Sun. He was about to launch the Tron project when he came to our office, saying he was there to “拜山头,” which roughly means “paying respects.” I learned that term from him that day. On August 7th, 2017, Chandler Guo and a few crypto OGs visited our office. After a brief tour, I took them to dinner downstairs. During dinner, the topic of BNB’s poor price performance came up. One person suggested, “CZ, you should hire Yi. Her joining would solve everything.” I couldn’t say much, so I just nodded and said, “I know.” To Da Moon The following day, on August 8, 2017, we announced that Yi was joining Binance. She penned a blog about it, which went viral. Remarkably, BNB’s price started to bounce. To be fair, our team had put in a tremendous amount of effort in the preceding weeks, which seemed to have no effect. Yi’s joining was extremely positive, but it was a catalyst rather than the singular reason for the price hike. As with any free market, multiple factors converge, making it impossible to determine absolute causation. Whatever the reason, by the next morning, August 9th, BNB’s value had rebounded from 40% below its ICO price to slightly above it. I felt the weight lift off my shoulders. And it didn’t stop there. For the following three weeks, it felt like every time: I finished a meeting, BNB’s price went up. I returned from lunch, BNB’s price went up. I woke up, BNB’s price went up. I took a bathroom break, BNB’s price went up. I sipped some water, and BNB’s price went up. By around August 24, 2017, BNB’s price had peaked at $2.90 USD, which was 29 times its ICO price. Those three weeks were surreal. People often ask me what made BNB’s price soar so much. I don’t know. Technically speaking, no one can know for sure. Correlation does not imply causation, a simple concept many analysts tend to overlook. In my view, it was the cumulative effect of community growth, increased utility for BNB, and the market cycle. Good times don’t last indefinitely. Near the end of August, rumors began circulating about China potentially “banning bitcoin.” More on that soon. Sequoia On August 8, 2017, when Yi announced she was joining Binance, Neil Shen from Sequoia Capital China messaged her, hinting he would like to invest in the new venture she would join. Neil, known for his sharp eye for talent, was influential enough to be dubbed as owning “half of the internet” in China. Although we didn’t need more money, an investment from Sequoia would enhance our brand. We decided to explore this opportunity. A few days later, we had a video call with Sequoia’s team. Then a late-night in person meeting with Neil at the Shangri-la Jing’an Hotel in Shanghai. Neil worked hard. Within two weeks, we signed a non-binding term sheet. This all happened in August, during a period of strong growth for us. However, by September, discussions paused as the rumors of a “China ban” loomed over us. Vertex In mid-August, we were visited by other potential investors as well. CC, the head of Vertex China, stopped by our office on a Friday night at 8 PM. Vertex China was a fully owned subsidiary of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. We had a two-hour discussion. When CC stepped out of the meeting room at 10 PM, our office was still buzzing with energy, reminiscent of a flea market. An ICO was launching on our platform that night, and people were yelling over each other to make sure our system was ready. August 2017, Binance Shanghai office on a Friday night. This left a strong impression on CC. He remarked that he had never witnessed that level of energy before. Although many companies work late on Friday nights, CC was impressed by the intensity. Following his observation, CC courted us, keen to invest in Binance. I was aiming to finalize the deal with Sequoia either before or simultaneously with Vertex. Sequoia’s deal got delayed, so we were not able to close with them. Recovering Coins Soon after Yi joined, she read a post on social media about a young man who accidentally sent unsupported coins to his Binance address. The coins, worth a few hundred dollars, were his tuition money for college. Yi asked if we could help him recover his coins. It was technically possible, but the recovery process would be complex and labor-intensive, requiring: Extracting the private key from our secure environment. Setting up a wallet for the unsupported coin. Importing the key and syncing the blockchain, which could take days. Returning the coins to the user. Only our wallet team could do this. And they were busy. The labor cost exceeded the coin’s value. It didn’t generate revenue for Binance. But it would help a user. I readily agreed given my own experience sending coins to a wrong address three years earlier. We recovered his tuition money, setting a precedent for aiding others in similar predicaments. Even today, many exchanges don’t offer such support. Binance does. Protecting users is a core value at Binance. The Expensive Laptop Speaking of wallets, we had an incident where we almost lost our hot wallet about a month into our operations. And it was not due to hacking. During the first month of Binance’s existence, we processed all withdrawals manually. Even when we had scripts that automated and batched most of the processes, we had a person, Heina, to manually review and approve the withdrawals at the last step. This was to ensure that we wouldn’t have a bug in our withdrawal system that could lead to funds flowing out incorrectly. During the day and well into the night, Heina would approve withdrawals every 15-30 minutes or so, until 1AM, then she would set the alarm for 4AM to approve one more batch, and then the day would begin again at 7AM. About a month into our fledgling exchange, one morning Heina brought in a physically broken laptop, and asked if it could be fixed. The laptop was smashed into pieces. The screen and keyboard were broken, both hanging off the rest of the bent frame. Apparently, the previous night, Heina’s husband got so upset over Heina’s long and late work hours that he got up in the middle of the night, yanked the laptop out of her hand and smashed it into pieces. He stomped on it a few times for good measure. He didn’t know, probably to this day when he reads this book, that in his rage, he had smashed our hot wallet laptop. We restored most of the wallets from our backup, but noticed a newly added coin’s hot wallet that wasn’t in the backup set. The amount in that wallet was about $500,000 dollars. It wasn’t going to bankrupt us, but it was still a big sum. Luckily, we took apart the rest of the laptop, which was pretty easy given the state it was in, took out the SSD hard drive, and plugged it into another laptop. Amazingly, the SSD still worked. We recovered the funds. After this incident, we revamped our backup procedures, moving away from manual withdrawal processing, and gave Heina a military grade laptop. A few days later, Heina’s husband joined us for a late team dinner. In front of our team, he asked me, “CZ, how do you make your employees work so hard for you without overtime pay and without complaining?” I gave him the “building a cathedral” story. A traveler comes across three stonemasons, each working on the same wall. He asks them what they’re doing. The first says, “I’m laying bricks.” The second says, “I’m building a wall.” The third says, “I’m building a cathedral.” I told him, “We are not just making an exchange, we are helping to increase the freedom of money for everyone in the world.” Yi chimed in, “We are not just making a company, we are making history.” Over the years, Heina and the rest of Binance team, along with their families, have shouldered tremendous stress, and made extraordinary personal sacrifices for the growth and success of Binance. For this I express sincere gratitude and deepest appreciation. Without their dedication and hard work, there would be no Binance story to tell. Community Coin Vote Shortly after Binance launched, users began requesting that we add their preferred coins. There were so many requests that it was impossible to even look at every coin. One user proposed a monthly community vote to select a popular coin for listing. The idea seemed logical. It allowed us to listen to our users and generate excitement for Binance too. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, as it turned out. When projects had to compete against each other to get listed, every vote was accompanied by allegations of cheating. It was expected for project teams to urge their supporters to vote, which would likely benefit Binance by attracting more users. However, as project teams became more “innovative,” they began offering financial rewards for votes, and soon, users developed bots to mass-register their votes on Binance. Even worse, these issues frequently escalated into public disputes between project founders on social media. At a time when crypto adoption was still in its early stages, our goal was to foster a decentralized yet united community, not one torn apart by conflicts. And to promote a fair listing process, the community votes were short-lived. Live and learn. Hunches - Server Move 2 In late August 2017, the rumors of a crypto ban were real enough for me to have another discussion with our tech team about moving the servers to outside of China. Policies were deliberately ambiguous, leaving vast leeway for enforcement discretion. Our infrastructure had grown significantly compared to six weeks earlier, now totaling around 200 servers. We also had a substantial increase in trading data. Moving the servers would be a time-consuming process. Aliyun and AWS also had many technical differences. After transferring a small portion of data to test the speed, we estimated that the entire operation would take about an hour. We issued an announcement that a network upgrade was scheduled to begin on September 1. At midnight, we halted trading and began the migration process. Six hours later, we were still busy migrating. Some non-Asia users were getting anxious as it was their daytime. I sat in the office not doing much, other than waiting, just like them. Our CTO was coordinating the move. He didn’t need my backseat driving. I just monitored the community groups, social media, and played with a fidget-spinner someone had given me that day. I chatted with the anxious users. I posted a photo of a fidget-spinner, with my business card in the background and my cellphone number fully visible. That seemed to calm them down. They were like, “Ok, the CEO is still at his desk and I now have his phone number.” It is amazing how simple, open communication can calm people down. Such gestures show that we care about our users. Yes, a good CEO sometimes plays with a fidget spinner while the team is working hard. To our users and teams, it made sense. Though at times not doing much, I was there all day, all night, and at 6 AM. After eight hours, our tech stack no longer depended on any cloud services in China. Three days later, on September 4, 2017, China announced a ban on crypto exchanges. We considered ourselves lucky to have moved our services out already. Our team asked me how I knew. The truth was: I didn’t. It was just a hunch. Sometimes, you have to read the tea leaves and act on hunches. September 1, 2017. On the night of our server migration. A fidget spinner and my Binance name card. O China Ban and Tokyo n Sunday, September 3rd, 2017, as usual we worked all day in the office and left around 11 PM. On my way home, I heard rumors of a “major crackdown” scheduled for the next day. Yi, who had also just left the office, called me at midnight confirming the crackdown rumors. Our sources didn’t overlap. We gathered our senior team members for a call at midnight. After discussing the “intel,” we decided that Yi, Heina and myself, would wait- and-see “in another country,” while the others would remain in Shanghai for the moment. Yi and her mom had just recently moved to Shanghai. Her mom had broken her leg a few days prior and was unable to walk. In the middle of that night, Yi woke her mom and announced, “I’m going to Tokyo now. I’m not sure when I’ll return. Please take care of yourself.” I can’t begin to imagine what that conversation must have been like. Yi and I booked the next available flight to Tokyo at 6 AM. Heina had it worse. She didn’t have a Japanese visa, so she decided to go to Thailand for a few days. Her son was two years old. At 2 AM, she woke her husband and told him, “I am leaving for Thailand at 6 AM. And I need you to drive me to the airport.” Her husband, “For how long?” Heina, “I am not sure.” It was a miracle there wasn’t a second broken laptop. Around half past two in the morning, someone suggested that I had better take the hard disk out of the desktop computer I used at the office. It didn’t have any private keys, but it had my chat logs, and a few office files. So, I returned to the office at 3 AM, unscrewing the hard drive out of the computer. Yi showed up at 4 AM and we left for the airport together. On the way, Yi suggested that we remove the SIM cards from our phones and shut them off so we couldn’t be tracked. So, we did. It felt like a spy movie, in full amateur mode. Only much later, Yi told me she indeed got this idea from a spy movie she had watched as a kid. Out of habit, I had booked economy tickets. It just hadn’t occurred to me that I should book anything other than economy class. At the airport, Yi suggested we might want to consider upgrading to business class so that we could lay flat and sleep for a few hours. It was the first time I flew business. Landing in Tokyo, we stayed glued to our phones, trying to understand what was happening. Then, not to disappoint, the Chinese government released its September 4th announcement, often referred to as the “9/4 memo.” 9/4 Memo On September 4th, 2017, seven Chinese Government Ministries collectively released a memo that prohibited crypto exchanges, crypto mining, and ICOs. The memo also recommended that previous ICO issuers fully refund investors, although it lacked specific implementation guidelines. This announcement triggered widespread panic in the market, leading to a crash in prices for many cryptocurrencies. The BNB price fell from $2.20 before the memo to $0.60 afterward. Fortunately, that was still six times the ICO price of $0.10, so ICO investors were not inclined to return six dollars to reclaim their original one-dollar investment. However, there were four other ICO projects on Binance whose token values fell below their ICO prices. The teams behind those projects lacked the funds to fully reimburse their users. $6 Million to Protect Users Our team ran some calculations. The gap for users on our platform who had invested in those four projects was about $6 million USD. Our team asked if we should use our own funds to make those users whole, even though those were neither our projects, nor our obligation. We had raised $15 million just six weeks prior, and we’d already spent a considerable amount of that money buying servers and hiring people. We were not yet profitable. Giving $6 million to users would deplete our corporate treasury by more than 40%. I joined the call on a moving train in Tokyo. I asked if anyone had any objections. No one objected. I said, “Let’s do it.” Percentage wise, that was the single largest transaction in our corporate history. That announcement immediately ignited overwhelming responses from the crypto community, in China and around the world. No other company had protected its users to such an extent, even to this day. The market rewarded us. Our Chinese users stayed with us, and as the news spread, users from around the world joined us. They saw that Binance protected users with not just words, but with action and funds. When we made the decision to make users whole, we had about 35,000 users. A month later, we had 120,000 users. We became profitable, and have been ever since. Protect Users Learning from this case, I formed a principle that: In dealing with users, always do the right thing, not the easiest thing. Protect your users, and you will be successful (and rich) beyond your wildest dreams. Back to China Still on September 4th, having just landed in Tokyo, a representative from the Shanghai government called. He inquired about Binance and wanted to have a meeting with us the next day. Yi volunteered to fly back to Shanghai to deal with the government, saying my Chinese was not that great and I was not experienced in dealing with the Chinese government. I felt it would be better for me to deal with them. Given that I am a Canadian citizen, the worst-case scenario for me was likely deportation; but for Yi, the stakes were much higher. So, in the evening of September 4th, less than 10 hours after I landed in Tokyo, I boarded a flight back to Shanghai. Being a fast learner, I booked a business class ticket. The morning meeting on Tuesday, September 5th, was surprisingly cordial. I met with four government representatives who didn’t know much about cryptocurrencies. They wanted to learn about crypto and how our business operated. While the meeting was friendly, it showed the government knew exactly who we were. We were just a small, six- week-old start up at the time. Leaving China Again After that meeting, I told the entire team that we must respect the 9/4 memo and we could no longer operate in China. And we must move ourselves out of China, not just our servers. One of our young female product managers cried, because she would have to leave her boyfriend in China. But she still chose to move with the team. Talk about dedication to work. We moved to Tokyo. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard moving 30 people. Most of our team members were single, without kids. We just packed up and left. As of this writing, the young woman who cried is still with her boyfriend, who is now her husband. Tokyo Earlier in April 2017, Japan became one of the first countries to officially recognize bitcoin as a legal tender. By September, they announced plans to license crypto exchanges as early as October. Japan was crypto friendly, so we thought moving there was the natural choice. We secured a “large” office space in Meguro, Tokyo, enough to fit 60 people. Again, visitors flocked to our office, from Japan, China, and the rest of the world. It took a while to furnish the office, so we often had our guests just sit on the floor and chat. Some of the meetings were both strange and amusing. September 2017, Tokyo. The team working around the clock as our space evolved from folding tables and chairs into an actual office. Living Under a Rock On the first day when we had chairs, a friend asked me to take a meeting with a guy. I said sure. When the guy showed up, he said one of his investors had suggested he meet with me while he was visiting Tokyo. He asked me what I wanted to talk about. We stared at each other for a few minutes. Then we thought it might be a good idea to introduce ourselves. He started with “you know about Orchid Protocol, right?” I said, “No.” His face said: “Are you living under a rock?” So, I asked him “You know about Binance, right?” He said, “No.” I thought of throwing him out of the office, but I just smiled. Eventually, I figured out Steven was a big shot VC investor turned entrepreneur. His investor had encouraged him to explore potential “partnership with” (list his coin on) Binance. He was also trying to raise money for his decentralized VPN Protocol, at a handsome $1 billion valuation. Orchid didn’t have a product or users at the time. But it was a bull market. After that experience, I made a mental note to never do “intro or discovery meetings” again. I asked my assistant to always get a clear agenda before my meetings. Every meeting must have a clear “ask.” Growth & Bottlenecks By mid-September, it became clear that we had exited China and would continue our operations. Thanks to our strong user protection, people from around the globe flocked to us. Trading volumes kept climbing during the crypto bull run in late 2017. Our systems were feeling the pressure. We were buying servers as quickly as we could. We hit the limits of AWS, which only allowed clients to purchase 200 new servers per day. I made a comment about the limitation in a public interview, and AWS swiftly lifted that limit for us. But there was a limit to how much we could scale with just hardware. We needed to tweak our software as well. A large software system is akin to a factory, always experiencing bottlenecks somewhere. Fixing one bottleneck would cause another to appear elsewhere. When our capacity increased by 1,000%, various new bottlenecks emerged. With the influx of users, we encountered more bottlenecks. It became a constant battle of putting out fires. Our CTO, Roger, and his tech team were perpetually occupied. Everyone on our team monitored the communities. Our Product Manager Allan often stayed up late. If he saw any urgent issues, which were frequent, he would call Roger late into the night at 1 or 2 AM. Our Project Manager Sunny, who got up at 3 or 4 AM, would also check the chats and often called Roger whenever necessary. Consequently, Roger was sleep-deprived. He suffered an eye infection from that period which still bothers him to this day. He uses eye drops constantly. Listings With the influx of users, Binance became a top 10 exchange by the end of September 2017. We generated quite a buzz. We were the new, trendy international exchange for altcoins, boasting more coin listings than most other exchanges at the time. Many existing platforms were still primarily focused on Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency projects approached us in droves, requesting tokens listings. Many were just in crypto for a quick money grab, hurting users. One project offered me a $20 million bribe to list on Binance. I turned them down and added them to our blacklist. I decided then that we needed a more structured approach to listings. I drafted “The Binance Listing Tips” article. We mandated that all listing requests come through our web form, ensuring that the listing team would not have direct contact with external parties. Projects had to be evaluated based on their own merits. Unlike other exchanges, our listing team members avoided outside contact. I was always amazed to see other exchange listing reps handing out business cards at conferences. Even today, one of the most frequent inquiries we receive is listing on Binance. Burn In crypto, there’s a concept of “burning money,” reducing a coin’s total supply to increase its scarcity. BNB conducts a burn every quarter. I did the inaugural burn, which occurred in mid-October 2017. We burned about $7 million worth of BNB. Considering we had only raised $15 million just three months prior, that was a substantial figure, and it made me quite anxious. When the moment arrived, I used a secure laptop solely dedicated to this task. I meticulously checked the address and amount three times. Then, I pressed the button. In an instant, $7 million was burned. The simplicity of the process felt unreal. Our team verified that everything was executed correctly. Afterward, I composed a blog post clarifying the burn, and the reasons for doing it. Concurrently, social media was abuzz with conversations about the burn. People observed it on the blockchain. In subsequent burns when larger sums, in billions, were burned, my anxiety diminished. It was just a number. Eventually, we entrusted this ongoing task to others, and I no longer participated directly. The BNB burns reached $1.6 billion USD per quarter in the quarter before this book went to press (in October 2025). Over the years, many people proposed to me that we stop doing the burns, and spend them on marketing. I have always declined. Marketing spend has an ROI conversion rate slippage. Each burn contributes direct value to BNB holders. Don’t Chase Money Too many people chase money hard, but they just “don’t get it.” Pun intended. Instead of chasing money, provide value. If you can deliver a value of ten, only take eight and do that consistently, you will become rich beyond your dreams. In fact, if you only take five and you can scale, you will become richer faster. You don’t build wealth by maximizing returns in one deal or trade. You build it by leaving value on the table for the customer to keep. They will keep coming back to you and you will make more money in the long term. VC Investors Scared Speaking of money, after the Chinese government announced the “China ban bitcoin” in September 2017, a few of the potential VC (venture capitalists) investors dragged their heels. I felt somewhat disappointed that the VCs went quiet during our most challenging period in September. However, I understood that VCs had to prioritize their financial interests and they needed to consider the policy changes around crypto. There is a saying in Chinese, VCs won’t give you firewood when you are freezing in the snow; they will only offer icing on the cake after you have a cake. There is nothing wrong with that. VCs are not obligated to give you money. On the flip side of that, startups are not obligated to sell their equity to VCs at a discount. Despite this, we not only continued operating but also experienced significant growth in September and October. By late October, Sequoia expressed interest in resuming their investment. I informed them that we needed to adjust the valuations. By that time, we had become a profitable, top-10 exchange, and our user base had expanded from about 20,000 in August to approximately 120,000 by the end of October. Since we couldn’t agree on the new valuation, the discussions stalled. Bicycle In Tokyo, I purchased a family style bicycle with a front basket from Amazon for my eight-minute ride to the office. It was perfect for carrying my bag with a laptop in it, which was the reason I picked it. Although it wasn’t the most fashionable, it was practical. My colleagues often joked that it was hard to picture the CEO of Binance on such a bicycle. I just laughed it off. I’ve never felt the need to conform to the stereotype of a CEO. I chose things that were practical and comfortable. October 2017, Tokyo. My daily commute bike. Some might find it odd, but I’ve never seen myself as someone driven by ambition. I never aimed to be “the best” at anything; I just aimed to do “my best” in what I believed mattered. Considering the short distance, cycling to work suited me perfectly. Gaining Weight As most of the team had recently uprooted themselves from China and were newcomers to Tokyo, I took them out for dinner almost every evening. Always working late hours, it became an office game to see who would mention dinner first. We explored many of Tokyo’s cozy restaurants together. Our research team leader, once a tall and fit basketball player, gained 30 pounds after a few months in Tokyo. We often joked about it, though I wasn’t spared either, having gained 15 pounds myself. Biking 16 minutes a day didn’t seem to help. Late 2017, Tokyo. A team dinner after work. Exchange Registrations In October 2017, Japan opened up crypto exchange registrations. However, the framework was restrictive, permitting only about 20 coins for trading, which didn’t suit our altcoin exchange with hundreds listed already. We hired Japanese lawyers and consultants to work with regulators to relax these restrictions. Meanwhile, I learned that local crypto exchanges were lobbying heavily against our proposed changes. They viewed those changes as benefiting Binance. They were more concerned with the threat of competition than with the development of a regulatory regime that would grow the entire industry, which would benefit every exchange in the long run. They were so myopic. Perhaps as a result of such short-sightedness, while in October 2017, of the world’s top 10 crypto exchanges tracked by CoinMarketCap, five of them were Japanese, a year later, none made the top 50 rankings. The restrictive regulations the local exchanges wanted resulted in killed themselves. B Number One y early December 2017, Binance had steadily climbed the ranks among crypto exchanges, reaching the top five, and then top four globally. At the same time, Bitcoin’s price had surged from $1,100 at the start of the year to $12,000 by early December. People were flocking to cryptocurrency in droves, and our systems were constantly under volume pressure. Then, around noon on Sunday, December 17, 2017, I suddenly got a few congratulatory messages. It took me a few minutes to figure out why. Binance had just become the world’s number-one crypto exchange! My first reaction? I quickly sent a message to our tech team: “Make sure we have enough servers!” A few hours later, bitcoin hit an all-time high (ATH) of $20,000 per coin. Appreciations from Users While many people congratulated me on being NO. 1, something else more subtle was giving me more satisfaction. I was getting random messages from users all around the world thanking me for providing them with financial access or even financial freedom. One user said he was able to provide his mother a required medical procedure because he could finally afford it. He had bought BNB. Another user, from Africa, said it used to take him three days to pay a single bill, but now with crypto, it takes him three minutes. I didn’t know the specifics of his setup, but I was glad that crypto solved a problem for him. I would get a few of these messages almost on a daily basis. This was when I realized that we are helping to increase the freedom of money for people all around the world. I made that our mission statement. And the title of this book. But sometimes, it was hard to make everyone happy. Sequoia Lawsuit On December 17, the Sequoia team called again. They were willing to agree to the valuation we had discussed back in October. But we’d grown over tenfold in the last two months again. So I had to explain that the previous offer had expired and we would need to update the valuations. Unable to reach an agreement, they said they may have to involve their lawyers. A week later, I received four full-size cardboard boxes filled with legal documents from Sequoia’s attorneys, my first encounter with a lawsuit. As a startup, you want to avoid litigation from any VC, especially one as influential as Sequoia. It usually means certain death for the startup. To me, it was a David versus Goliath scenario. But I decided to fight the lawsuit. I had to protect the interests of our existing shareholders and not agree to a low valuation deal. I knew the decision would mean we won’t be able to raise money from any other VC for the next few years. Looking back, we got lucky that we were able to harness the power of blockchain and reach profitability quickly. I spent the next two years running a startup with this legal battle hanging over my head. Two years later, in 2019, the court completely rejected Sequoia’s claims, ruling in our favor. Three years later, in early 2022, when launching the YZi Labs II fund, a mutual contact asked if we had any issues if Sequoia participated as an LP. I thought it would be good to convert enmity to friendship. We invited them and they accepted. In 2023, I met Neil Shen of Sequoia China (by then, it was separated from Sequoia US and with the new name of HSG) in Abu Dhabi. We exchanged kind words and shook hands. US Homeland Security On December 31st, 2017, 11:17 PM (Tokyo Time), I received an email from Joseph, an agent from the US Homeland Security. I guess we were not the only ones working on New Year’s Eve. I was impressed by the work ethic of the US government employees. Joseph was trying to track down some funds from the Ether Delta hack. Ether Delta was the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) back then, and was all the rage. The head of customer support of Bitfinex had kindly referred me to Joseph. I dragged in Ted and our new head of customer support, who had only been on the job for a month, to deal with the situation. The three of us scratched our heads. None of us had any prior experience dealing with law enforcement. This was a beginning. We wanted to help law enforcement track down bad players who gave the industry a bad reputation. From this incident forward, we have always cooperated with legitimate law enforcement requests. A couple of weeks later, agent Joseph was satisfied with our help. I asked him if he could refer someone to us we could hire to interface with law enforcement going forward. He recommended someone. But our HR team told me that we did not have a US entity that could hire staff there. So, we had to put that idea on ice. If we had proper regulations early in the industry, it would have helped industry players to work with law enforcement. This was just one example. Pausing Registrations Speaking of “putting on ice,” over Christmas and New Year’s Day 2018, Bitcoin was nearing its all-time high. People were rushing into crypto, and we were getting 300,000 new user registrations per day. Our system and third-party vendors couldn’t handle the volume, so we had to pause user registrations for a few days. It was a good problem to have, but still a very costly one that we needed to fix as soon as possible. You might think registration is just saving an email and password, but it’s more complex for a platform like Binance. Our process involved KYC (know your customer) verifications using third-party vendors matching passport, IDs and selfies from 180 countries. These vendors, limited in processing capacity, struggled with the influx of users from Binance. This often left users stuck in the middle of the KYC process, leading to frustration. Generating crypto deposit addresses for new users was also challenging. Many blockchain’s official wallets couldn’t produce addresses quickly enough. In addition to technical challenges, we had to support millions of existing users. That demand overwhelmed our CS team. Scaling CS was tough due to the reliance on human agents. Hiring and training new staff took time. More on this later. We paused registrations for a day, then opened them for an hour the next day. In that one hour, 240,000 new users registered. We had to pause again for another day. It quickly became a privilege to have a Binance account. TV Interview With the surge in demand for crypto, and with Binance now the number-one crypto exchange in the world, Bloomberg invited me to speak in a live TV interview. On January 3, 2018, I went to Bloomberg’s Tokyo office for the interview. Walking into the Bloomberg office, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. The glimmering fish tanks, the shelves of free food and drinks that would put any convenience store to shame. I had been accustomed to all of that, 17 years ago, when I worked for the company. Nowadays, my entrepreneurial office had none of these perks. Their reception area was bigger than our entire office. Our “reception” consisted of one unmanned telephone in the elevator hallway. Our “kitchen” was a mini fridge. What was mind-boggling was that our website already had more traffic than Bloomberg’s, and the volume of trades we handled was higher too. Bloomberg was as efficient as I remembered. As soon as I had the chance to grab a bottle of water, a photographer introduced himself and said he would take some photos of me before and during the interview. I signed a consent form, and he took me to the studio area. As a technician helped me put on the in-ear mic, the photographer snapped away. Some of those photos turned out pretty well and were widely used later. The studio setup felt awkward. I sat on a high chair with no one around. The only person nearby was the photographer, shooting from a distance with a long lens. In front of me was a large TV camera mounted on a tripod, operated remotely, with no one behind it. I was asked to look and talk directly at that camera. There was no TV screen for me to see the anchor who was talking to me. I just had an earpiece with a delayed voice. Before I had time to process it all, I was live on air. I got through it, answered a few questions, and it was over in seven minutes. The final headline on TV read: “Zhao: Warren Buffett is wrong on cryptocurrency.” I suppose this is how traditional media sell headlines. A copy of the video can still be viewed online. That was my first TV appearance. Afterward, I grabbed a taxi back to our dingy office. On the way, people messaged me saying, “Nice hoodie on TV.” Yes, I wore the Binance hoodie with the logo on my chest. Always advertising. Korea Two weeks later, on January 18, 2018, I flew to Seoul, Korea, to deliver a keynote10 about Binance and our vision. This was the first big conference I attended after starting Binance. After my speech, I was swarmed by journalists and fans. It was my first experience with so many people wanting to take selfies with me. The whole time, I was thinking, “Why would anyone want to take selfies with this old wrinkly man?” January 18, 2018, Seoul’s Blockchain Summit, Taking group photos after my talk. At the same conference, the Okcoin founder Star Xu, was supposed to speak, but he didn’t show up. Rumor was he was blocked at the Chinese border when trying to leave the country. This signaled that the Chinese government had begun scrutinizing the crypto industry more heavily. After my speech, I flew back to Tokyo at noon and headed straight to our dingy little office. Our colleagues asked, weren’t you doing a speech on stage in Seoul just two hours ago, and now you are back before we even finished lunch? JFSA Also on January 18, 2018, the day I was at the Seoul conference, the Japan Financial Services Authority (JFSA) sent me an email inquiring about our operating location and if we needed to register in Japan. I didn’t see the email until a few days later when Ted brought it to my attention. We asked our legal team to engage with the JFSA to explore possible outcomes. Deep down, I had a feeling we might need to move again soon. A few days later, a few team members noticed someone following them after lunch. The tail was wearing a blue jacket at first. Our team members turned a corner and peeked back. Their spy sped up to a run, trying not to lose them. He also flipped the jacket inside out to a bright yellow. Our team split up, changed to a few different means of transport and lost him. A day after that, one team member found an online video of some JFSA announcement with a guy in the background resembling their tail from the previous day. Others concurred. I wasn’t with them at lunch so I couldn’t verify the surveillance beyond that description. Another day later, another team member found an unmanned surveillance camera on the ground at the front door of his residence building. To this day, I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not. I paused any further renovations of the dingy office and began traveling to meet with other governments that might adopt more suitable regulatory frameworks for our business. Forbes Photoshoot Yi and I traveled to Hong Kong on January 21st, 2018 to attend a conference and meet with a few industry players and regulators. While we were there, Yi informed me that Forbes had reached out and wanted to do a photoshoot of me. The magazine was doing a feature on crypto’s nouveau riche. I was surprised Forbes even thought of me. Last I checked, my wallet still held only the same bitcoins I bought in 2014. They went up in value, but not enough to be Forbes worthy. While I had equity in Binance, we hadn’t had a cash-out or valuation event. But Forbes went by estimates, or pure opinions. They estimated I was worth something. Initially, I didn’t want to bother with it. But Yi said that Forbes would be good exposure for us, especially since our brand was only six months old. So, we decided to go for it. Forbes told me to bring a few jackets, but I checked my wardrobe, i.e., my two suitcases, I didn’t have any. So again, I wore my Binance hoodie. The photoshoot was in a warehouse district on the far end of Hong Kong island. After getting out of the taxi, we had to walk another mile to reach the warehouse. Being out of shape, I was already sweating by the time I got there. Pamela, the Forbes writer, was there and took me to a makeup artist. It was the first time I had makeup on my face. While the makeup artist worked hard to conceal my budding wrinkles, Pamela asked a few questions for an article. The photographer then came over and showed me a sample photo of what they were aiming for. It was Vitalik in a nice hand waving gesture. Then he directed me to do this pose, that pose, turn this way, that way, face forward, backward, up, down, and sideways. He said, “Just relax, be yourself.” So, I relaxed and thought, “Well, that’s easy; it’s technically impossible to not be yourself.” Then he said, “No, not that self.” January 2018, Hong Kong. Shooting my Forbes portrait. After 30 painful minutes of trying to be “myself,” I walked out with makeup still on my face, feeling pretty, and pretty self-conscious. I thought, “I hope no one takes a photo of me like this, it would ruin my manly image.” Little did I know that photo would end up on the cover of Forbes in two weeks. February 7, 2018. Cover photo from the Forbes feature “From Zero to Crypto Billionaire in Under a Year: Meet the Founder of Binance.” Vertex After wiping the makeup off my face with a wet tissue, I went to meet with CC from Vertex again. If you remember from earlier, CC was the venture capitalist who was in our office on a Friday night at 10 PM. Vertex is a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek, Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. This time, instead of our dingy little office, we met at the restaurant on the 118th floor of the ICC building in Kowloon, with a stunning view of Hong Kong island. I told CC that in addition to an investment from Vertex, I would be interested if they could help facilitate discussions with Singaporean government authorities in terms of crypto regulatory clarity. At the time, Singapore hadn’t yet started issuing crypto exchange licenses. CC was confident he could assist us. He wanted Singapore to become the blockchain hub of Asia. Singapore, a tiny peninsula off the tip of Malaysia, had declared its independence 50 years earlier. Thanks to its legendary founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, who always championed an open business approach, Singapore has grown to be one of the most developed economies in Asia. To ensure that our interests were aligned, I proposed that we establish Binance Singapore and have Vertex invest in it. CC was receptive to the idea and said he would help arrange a few discussions with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). CS_Bob As our user base grew rapidly, scaling Customer Service became a major challenge. We couldn’t hire and train agents quickly enough, causing us to miss our one-hour response goal, with backlogs extending over two weeks. I knew we had to automate. We relied on ZenDesk’s batch reply function, which used basic keyword matching and often led to inaccurate responses. In between Bloomberg interviews and Forbes photoshoots, I installed Python and explored ZenDesk APIs. I extracted CS ticket data and created a bot to match new inquiries with similar past questions, suggesting previous successful responses. I named it Bob, short for Binance Bot, and tested it in production. If you received a response from cs_bob in January 2018, it was my bot. It wasn’t real AI. It was just a database search script with some fuzzy matching logic. This was before ChatGPT, but post-AlphaGo, AI was advancing. Before I could fully automate cs_bob, the team took over and replaced it with a more advanced AI bot, built from scratch by a team member coincidentally named Bob. At this time in my career, coding wasn’t my forte, but cs_bob helped kickstart the development of a proper AI bot for Binance Customer Support. Hardcore By the end of January 2018, the crypto market cooled a bit, giving us some breathing room. Initially too busy for a Christmas ski trip, we now planned a getaway for our 60-member team to Niigata Japan for Chinese New Year. Many of our Chinese team members were skiing for the first time. Despite tumbling down the mountains, they eagerly went back up, skiing until the night session ended at 9 PM. Their resilience was astounding. James said, “I know a word to describe our team, hardcore.” That became one of our core values, guiding future hires. Chinese New Year 2018, Niigata, Japan. Skiing right into the night session. By the third day, everyone had improved significantly, and we enjoyed ourselves on the slopes. We made the ski trip an annual tradition, succeeding for two more years until COVID in 2021 halted the trips, and our team grew too large. Taiwan After the ski trip, on February 3, 2018, I flew to Taiwan to explore the regulatory landscape there. I love Taiwan for its food, like Din Tai Fung’s xiao long bao, and its night markets. I also have many Taiwanese friends from my high school and college days in Canada. Due to Taiwan’s proximity to China and the shared language, our service was easily adopted by Taiwanese users, allowing us to capture a large market share. As with most of my trips, my first meeting in Taiwan was with the local Binance Angels, three enthusiastic university students who educated me on the local crypto scene. Their insights were invaluable, and I enjoyed learning from them. I then met with Congressman Hsu, the “crypto congressman,” who supported favorable crypto regulations. He subsequently facilitated some high-level meetings on my behalf. On February 6, 2018, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit Hualien, Taiwan, causing significant damage and resulting in 17 deaths and hundreds of injuries. I felt the tremors from my hotel room in Taipei 150 km away. The next day, while grabbing a quick dinner with Ted, he got a message. Forbes had featured me on the February 2018 cover with the “Crypto Overlord” caption. I joked with Ted, “Does this mean I’m rich?” He replied, “Well, yes in theory.” But I didn’t feel rich. Nothing had changed. Without a cash-out event, it seemed unreal, like “Forbes thinks I’m rich, so I am?” I was annoyed that they photoshopped out the Binance logo from my hoodie. I tweeted about it, and the Twitter community swiftly added it back in memes. The following day, Congressman Hsu printed a copy of the Forbes article for a meeting I had with the Taiwanese officials. No one asked me to introduce myself. From then on, I have rarely had to introduce myself in meetings. I didn’t know rich people didn’t have to introduce themselves. Being Rich Doesn’t Make You Smart A day after the Forbes article, while people were still congratulating me, I received a call at 6 AM from our tech team. They wouldn’t be calling me at 6 AM with good news. This time, there was data corruption in our system. The engineers asked for a 30-minute window to try to fix the issue to prevent further spreading of data corruption. I gave the go-ahead. Data corruption in a financial system is problematic to say the least. It can lead to incorrect trade prices or account balances. The fix was unsuccessful, so we announced a trading halt and the engineers started fixing the data. The engineers said it would take up to ten hours and we gave our millions of users live updates on the progress. With a large amount of data, recovery was slow. Soon the engineers realized that the recovery could take 60 to 72 hours, which was not acceptable. They devised two more recovery methods to speed it up and ran all three simultaneously, as the process involved unpredictable, multi- step tasks. We had to make another announcement. Some users were patient; others complained. To address this, I updated our community on Twitter every two hours, a practice that became standard in Binance, and later copied by many in the industry. Some users took the occasion to deploy their sense of humor, with one user posting on Twitter, “Proof being rich doesn’t make you smart.” I re- tweeted it with a crying smiley face. I believe humor helps to calm the community. If the CEO is online and still laughing at jokes mocking him, the problem seems less daunting. During this episode, John McAfee, the controversial cybersecurity pioneer and founder of McAfee Antivirus, posted a photoshopped screenshot claiming Binance was hacked, which I immediately debunked. His false accusation unintentionally rallied user support behind us, at a time when we desperately needed it. To his credit, John quickly apologized publicly. After 32 hours, the engineers finally finished the data fixes and began bringing the system back up in a careful sequence. We reactivated the matching engine first, did a reconciliation, then test trading, and user trading, with multiple reconciliations before enabling withdrawals. Real- time reconciliation continued afterwards. It was a total downtime of 32 hours, our longest trading halt. The engineers worked tirelessly while I took a few naps here and there, but I stayed online most of the time. System outages cause panic, but fixing issues in a transparent way also builds trust. Open communication is vital, so I tweet directly, bypassing our PR team, which manages the main @Binance account. This approach set us apart from traditional financial institutions where executives hide behind the PR team. London I spent much of February flying between Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and other parts of Asia. Then, a friend Omar invited me to join a dinner with Lord Redesdale in London. On March 9, 2018, I flew to London to attend the dinner, which was at the House of Parliament, arranged by the good Lord Redesdale. He gave us a tour of the 1,000-year-old building, and we discussed the emerging blockchain technology and its potential impact on the economy. It was an interesting blend of the old and the new. Between the fine wine and British humor, I learned that the UK, home to one of the world’s most established financial centers, tended to move cautiously when it came to new frontiers. They didn’t want to disrupt the existing financial players too quickly. Lord Redesdale was genuinely interested in this new technology and asked many insightful questions. But I knew the UK wouldn’t be an early adopter of blockchain. Manchester vs Liverpool Omar, who had set up the meeting, was a football fan. The next day, during a Manchester vs Liverpool game, he organized a table for us in the Manchester United Directors Box, where the coaches and players came by to shake hands and take pictures with us. There were some serious football legends at the game, like Bobby Charlton. Bobby didn’t know who we were. He knew we were some successful businessmen, but nothing beyond that. And I didn’t know who he was until that moment either. We were respectful to each other and took a few photos together. March 10, 2018. After the Premier League. Yi He, me, Bobby Charlton, and friends. I’m sure many football fans would have relished the opportunity to meet such football legends, but in my case, it felt a bit like my high school physics teacher Mr. Mason used to say, “It was like playing piano for a cow.” A Malta fter I posted the picture with Bobby Charlton, a real football fan, Alex Dreyfus from Malta, reached out to me. Alex was working on a sports fan token project. I had never met or heard of Alex before. Somehow, he knew I was looking for countries favorable to crypto, so he invited me to explore Malta. I was like, “Where is Malta?” I quickly learned that Malta is a beautiful tiny island country. Looking at the map, you would quickly recognize its strategic importance in past wars. Located right in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, most of its buildings were made of yellowish limestone. The design of the buildings were obviously for defense. March 12, 2018, Malta, an island nation at the heart of the Mediterranean. Alex explained that Malta wanted to be crypto-friendly and was actively working on establishing new crypto regulatory frameworks. He wanted to set up high-level meetings for me. As part of the EU, positive crypto regulations in Malta could have significant influence throughout the EU. After some reference checks, I flew to Malta two days later, on March 12, 2018. I met with the Minister of Digital Economy, Silvio Schembri, who assured me that the country would adopt favorable regulations for the blockchain industry. He invited us to set up in Malta, to bring in other crypto companies, and to help organize blockchain conferences. It was one of the most positive meetings I had with a senior government official up to that point. I agreed that we would explore setting up a presence in Malta. Alex quickly provided a few potential candidates for hiring, including an HR specialist who could help us set up an office and recruit more people. She proved to be very effective. After the meeting, I flew back to Tokyo. JFSA Warning Nine days later, on Wednesday, March 21st, 2018, Nikkei Shinbun, a large business newspaper in Japan, published an article claiming that Binance had received a warning from the JFSA (Japan Financial Services Agency). Our team and I searched all our inboxes, both digital and physical, but we couldn’t find any such warning. I tweeted online, calling it FUD (fake news): “Nikkei showed irresponsible journalism. We are in constructive dialogue with the JFSA, and have not received any mandates. It does not make sense for JFSA to tell a newspaper before telling us, while we have an active dialog going on with them11.” Then, two days later, on Friday morning, March 23rd, at 8 AM Tokyo time, we finally received an email from the JFSA with the warning. The journalists had known about it two full days before we did. The warning stated that Binance did not have the necessary licenses to operate in Japan, and it listed my name and the address as simply “Hong Kong.” Yet we didn’t have an address in Hong Kong. Bloomberg requested an interview with me at noon. I mentioned that we were exploring other countries such as Malta. By 2 PM, Bloomberg published an article quoting me about Malta. Then, at 4 PM Tokyo time, 8 AM in Malta, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, tweeted: “Welcome to Malta @binance. We aim to be the global trailblazers in the regulation of blockchain-based businesses and the jurisdiction of quality and choice for world-class fintech companies. -JM”12 Prime Minister Muscat woke up, saw the Bloomberg article, and posted the tweet. He and I had never met or spoken to each other before this. We didn’t communicate that day. It all just happened organically. Thanks to Prime Minister Muscat’s tweet, the crypto market not only avoided a drop, it actually went up. To this day, I am thankful for PM Joseph Muscat! Work From Home By this point, while we had set up an outsourced customer support office in Malta, I decided that Binance would not have any fixed offices in the future. Everyone could work from home or from anywhere in the world. We could use temporary offices as needed for meetings or projects. It was fortuitous timing that WeWork was offering flexible office space at low cost. This decision came two years before COVID, but given my previous experience with Blockchain Info, I was confident that we could operate efficiently without any permanent offices. Singapore While Malta was promising, their regulatory framework was still being discussed. I wanted to promote a crypto-positive stance in as many countries as possible. On March 31st, 2018, I flew to Singapore. CC from Vertex had arranged a meeting with MAS, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Three representatives from MAS, three from Vertex, and my colleagues and I congregated at the Vertex office in Raffles City Towers. During the meeting, MAS informed us that crypto was not currently regulated in Singapore. MAS also mentioned that they did not prohibit banks from working with crypto exchanges. It was up to the banks themselves. In reality, none of the banks would work with crypto exchanges without explicit approval from MAS. However, even without direct banking support, the prospect of living and working in Singapore was appealing. The meeting was cordial. Now, we at least had two places, one that welcomed us, and one more that at least didn’t reject us. As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. After that meeting, I made a mental note to spend more time in Singapore. I asked my assistant to rent an apartment for me. Growing the Industry At this point, Binance was pulling far ahead of other crypto exchanges. We had become the largest by a considerable margin. While other exchanges saw Binance as competition and aimed to take market share from us, we saw them as peers. For Binance to achieve further growth, taking market share from smaller exchanges wouldn’t have made a difference. We needed to grow the entire industry to grow ourselves. Not to sound too grandiose, but I began to see it as my duty to help grow the industry. As the largest exchange, whenever the industry grows, we grow with it. I continued to travel to more countries, meeting with governments and regulators, raising awareness and advocating for crypto. I became a crypto salesman. Binance Labs (AKA YZi Labs) Since joining Binance, Yi had the idea that we should have an independent startup incubator using the Binance brand name, to help new start up projects in the crypto ecosystem. She first proposed her idea to me in September 2017, when the China ban was still looming. I said it might be premature, as we still needed to get the exchange running smoothly. In March of 2018, Yi brought up her incubator idea again. Crypto markets had calmed down a bit. We were in a better position to launch an incubator to foster the development and mass adoption of blockchain projects. And most importantly, she had a good candidate to lead this initiative, Ella Zhang. At the time, Ella had just co-founded a fund with two other partners, who were also famous investors from Hong Kong. Before that, she was a partner at KPCB China, a leading venture capital firm. She has led a remarkable career, especially considering the fact that she was much younger than most in traditional finance. I spoke with Ella, and I could immediately feel her energy and strength. Ella moved fast. By the end of April, she had assembled her team of five. We announced Binance Labs, an independent investment company, on May 31, 2018.13 It was renamed to YZi Labs later. Investment Philosophy My investment philosophy consists of three simple principles: 1. Stick to Fundamentals Ignore fancy business models. Instead, focus on the essentials: product, user growth, revenues/profits, and the strength of the team. 2. Invest in Mission-Driven Founders Money-focused founders often falter after a medium level of success. Invest in founders and teams with a vision beyond money. Those committed to a greater cause create sustainable impactful businesses. 3. Bet Long-Term, Get in Early, and Hold Early adopters often get disproportionate rewards. There will be many failures along the way, but the few successes will more than make up for the failures. This philosophy has helped guide YZi Labs investments and decision- making, particularly in the ever-evolving crypto space. From there, Ella and her high energy team organized seasonal incubation programs, BUIDLers’ programs, and handled almost every aspect of our investments. My involvement was typically at the final IC (Investment Committee) meetings, where I would be briefed about the projects. I simply asked a few questions and participated in a vote. My questions are more designed to make sure the team has done their job and knows the project well. Overall, YZi Labs performed well beyond my expectations. I had thought we would lose money in BNB terms. We invest in projects using BNB. I thought it would be hard for the averaged returns of all projects combined to out-perform BNB. But we have to invest in the ecosystem for the industry to grow, which also helps the growth of BNB. That’s why we invest. Binance Academy To help the industry grow and reach mass adoption, educating public sentiment on the value of blockchain technology is important too. While YouTube and other online platforms offered a lot of information, it was scattered rather than systematic educational content. Many KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) use click-bait titles to attract traffic. Some self- proclaimed experts were damaging the industry’s reputation by flooding gullible users with spammy and sometimes fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes that didn’t work. I believed we could create a comprehensive educational portal covering everything from basic concepts, like wallets and addresses, to advanced topics, like Merkle Tree proof-of-reserves, and offer it for free to the public. One evening, over dinner with Ted, I shared this idea. A week later, he and his team presented a proposal to me. They suggested forming a four-person team to build Binance Academy, with the goal of producing high-quality, comprehensive, and balanced educational content about crypto. I beamed. A month later, on August 14, 2018, we launched Binance Academy. Initially, the team started with simple articles, but over time they expanded to include video content and then full courses. Binance Academy also partnered with universities and educational organizations, further enhancing its reach and influence. Binance Academy became the go-to resource for anyone looking to learn about crypto. Over the years, I’ve received many notes from people worldwide, thanking Binance Academy for helping them learn about crypto and improving their financial situation, even achieving financial freedom. Binance Academy was also the precursor to Giggle Academy, which I started seven years later after I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Giggle Academy now focuses on providing free education to underprivileged children who lack access to traditional schooling. Africa With only 11% of Africans having bank accounts, and the continent’s low GDP and poverty, I saw blockchain as a way to improve global financial accessibility. My goal wasn’t revenue, as revenue from Africa was low. Low banking adoption in Africa was an opportunity. People could use crypto with just an app, skipping banks altogether. Helen Hai Helen Hai was the wife of a VC friend of mine. I had met her once 10 years earlier, and then we met again in early 2018. My friend said Helen could introduce me to some African country leaders, which she did. Early in her career, Helen was a senior executive at a large Chinese exporter and she spearheaded the company’s expansion into Ethiopia and oversaw its African operations. Her success earned her the role of UNIDO Goodwill Ambassador in 2015. She had many contacts in Africa from her previous work with the United Nations. Helen offered to set up high-level meetings. I figured, why not? Togo On April 18, 2018, we flew to Lome, Togo. The airport was in the middle of nowhere. Miles and miles of desert, without a fence or anything. After landing in Togo, a Jeep drove us to our hotel, the only hotel in town, and the only building with more than two stories. I had just taken my yellow fever vaccine, which required ten days to take full effect. I’ve always been a magnet for mosquitoes, which carry the disease. To protect myself, I covered up from head to toe and, for extra assurance, sprayed myself with the strongest mosquito repellent I could find. My colleagues laughed at me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. The next morning, we first met with the president in his grand palace. I found him to be reserved, quiet, and welcoming. The meeting went well. He said he wanted to push blockchain innovation in Togo. We then went to a government building to meet with about 20 skeptical ministers and their delegates. Some of them asked questions, but most had expressions that seemed to say, “What is this magic internet money stuff? Get out of here.” April 19, 2018. Meeting with ministers from Togo. After the meeting, we socialized over a buffet lunch. I spent the time chatting with people and didn’t eat much. As lunch concluded and the guests began to leave, the waiters swooped in on the remaining food, eating like hungry wolves. The large palace compound reserved for the president was quite luxurious, with gold-plated furniture inside. Yet, as we drove away, I noticed that all the homes along the way were small and dilapidated, likely without running water or electricity. The stark contrast left an impression on me. Inequality is large in countries where people don’t have financial access. The next day, we visited Togo’s central bank. The five-story building looked like a bunker, with walls at least two feet thick, likely fortified to protect the physical reserves stored inside. I marveled at the 18th- century design. Other than the central bank building, none of the other buildings nearby had more than a single story. The governor of the central bank was a kind older lady, except for the fact that she literally laughed us out of the meeting. She didn’t know anything about bitcoin and couldn’t see any reason to learn. After all, how could a currency work if it wasn’t managed and “protected” by a central bank, right? She then admitted that her central bank didn’t control the currency anyway. As a former French colony, the EU Central Bank managed their currency. I knew we were a long way from any blockchain regulatory frameworks in Togo. We headed straight to the airport after that meeting. On the way, we received a letter from the president’s office thanking us for our time and effort. At least the president’s office appreciated our visit. Uganda On April 21st, 2018, I landed in Kampala, Uganda. Right away, I noticed that Uganda was much more developed than Togo. While still a developing country, people had better houses, and the streets were clean and orderly. The president’s son, Kwame, came to the airport to welcome us. Western educated, tall, and charming, Kwame spoke English with a British accent. He was a crypto holder, and with him coordinating our visit, the meetings in Uganda were productive and less “educational.” Kwame had arranged three armored SUVs to transport us, plus a police escort to clear the road. His first question was, “Are you comfortable riding in armored vehicles?” I said sure, but a scene from Black Hawk Down flashed through my mind. But other than in my imagination, there were no militias shooting at us from both sides of the streets as we drove by. In fact, Uganda felt very safe. We stayed at the Ritz, a nice hotel complex in Kampala. A little side story. A few weeks earlier, my friend of mine from Shanghai visited me in Taipei and gave me seven pure gold coins with the Binance logo embossed on each coin. He minted them to celebrate his successful investment in BNB. His family business was gold and jewelry. I tweeted pictures of the coins, and gave away four to others, and kept the remaining three which I intended to give away later. Once I settled into my room at the Kampala hotel, I discovered that the boxes holding the coins in my luggage were broken. Someone had opened my luggage cases and taken the coins. This was yet another reminder of why I prefer crypto to physical assets. February 2018. A gold Binance commemorative coin, custom-made and gifted by a friend. In Kampala, Kwame had a busy schedule for us, including meetings with ministers, visits to a start-up incubator, and meeting with his father, the president. The local television stations sent reporters to cover the news of our meeting. Six months later in November 2018, the Binance Uganda exchange launched. Unfortunately, the business didn’t gain traction and wasn’t able to achieve profitability. We wound it down a year later. Bermuda Continuing my crypto salesman’s journey, I flew from Uganda to Bermuda on April 24, 2018. Gabriel Abed had invited me to explore Bermuda, telling me that the country had a young, progressive, and popular premier, David Burt, who was about to pass a favorable blockchain regulatory framework. I had never met Gabriel before, but we shared a few mutual crypto friends, all of whom vouched for him. And he didn’t disappoint. April 2018. Yi He, team members, Bermuda Premier David Burt, and me, wearing Binance hoodies. Bermuda was a surprisingly small island, just 21 square miles and a 90-minute flight from New York. Its only fresh water source is rain, collected on white limestone rooftops and stored underground beneath each house. Upon arrival, a chauffeur from the Premier’s Protocol, dressed in Bermuda shorts, picked us up. I found this official attire intriguing. I soon learned Bermudas (shorts) were official formal wear in Bermuda. I’ve always disliked long pants, preferring the comfort of shorts. I confirmed with the Premier’s aide that Bermudas were acceptable for my visit. I bought some locally, marking my first in-store shopping in years. The premier was pleased with my sartorial choice14, and we proceeded to discuss innovative ways to attract more blockchain businesses to the island. Bermuda, with a robust financial sector housing a third of the world’s insurance companies headquarters, aimed for similar success in blockchain under Premier Burt. He successfully passed a pioneering blockchain bill through Congress during our visit, establishing the world’s first crypto legislation. We were excited to witness this historic moment. Additionally, we negotiated an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) for Binance to have a license and banking infrastructure in Bermuda, where we planned to open a local office. A local TV station covered the MOU signing press conference. April 19, 2018, Bermuda. Wearing shorts at the signing ceremony, caught on the news. A TV screenshot of me in shorts at the press conference15 went viral, first in China, then globally. A co-founder of Weibo (China’s X) found it funny and posted it. I guess many people don’t know that Bermuda shorts are formal attire in Bermuda. I welcomed any media attention that brought more coverage of Binance. I didn’t mind that people joked about my attire. As the saying goes, take your business seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. I retweeted the post. I especially liked the photo of Premier Burt in a Binance hoodie, the first head of state to don our logo publicly. However, despite the positive meetings with the premier and the passing of the crypto legislation, the local banks wouldn’t work with us, thereby preventing us from launching a local exchange. Nonetheless, I quite enjoyed the trip, and I felt grateful for the lifelong friendships I made there. Hiring Stephen Stoneberg and Wei Zhou Just before my trip to Bermuda, Stephen Stoneberg reached out expressing interest in joining Binance. He was based in New York. I was going to be in Bermuda by April, so I asked him to join the trip so that we could meet face to face. We met at the airport, and he witnessed the red carpet reception we received from the Bermuda government. Stephen loved attention. Even though he wasn’t a Binance employee yet, because he had come “with me,” people just assumed he was from Binance. Whenever there was a photo opportunity, he stepped in, never shying away. As I took pictures with the premier and Gabriel in Bermudas (shorts), he was by our side. Later, when the photo went viral on social media, his employer, Goldman Sachs, saw it and fired him. He then joined Binance. Based in New York, Stephen wanted to lead the Binance US effort. At around the same time, Wei Zhou, CFO at Grindr, the gay dating app, also wanted to join us. A short and bulky guy, Wei was born in China, moved to the US as a teenager, and had recently returned to China. We met briefly in Beijing in 2014. Wei was excited to join, comparing Binance to the new Google. He didn’t negotiate much, only requesting a C-level title to signify seniority. He understood that with startups, roles aren’t fixed. His dealmaking style was broad strokes first details later. While this style closed deals fast, it often led to problems down the road. Wei joined in May 2018, shortly after Stephen Stoneberg. With a CFO background, Wei took on the title of CFO but concentrated on M&A and investments. Wei also oversaw our Legal and Compliance teams, with Jared Grossman, Binance’s inaugural legal team, and Samuel Lim, Binance’s first Chief Compliance Officer, all reporting to him. In the summer of 2018, Wei went to Malta to discuss a partnership with the Malta Stock Exchange to launch a security tokens trading platform. An MOU was quickly announced, but unfortunately, the platform was never launched. Wei and Stephen went to Jersey (of the Channel Islands) next and proceeded to sign another MOU. A few months later, on Jan 16, 2019, we launched Binance Jersey, supporting EUR and GBP trading. The exchange failed to achieve profitability. We shut it down a year later. As a US-educated American Chinese with experience overseeing US growth, Wei naturally gravitated towards managing the US market. He passed over Stephen Stoneberg for the Binance US CEO position and instead hired Catherine Coley. Stephen Stoneberg was unhappy and left Binance. Stephen later went back to Bermuda, helping his new employer Bittrex to get a license in Bermuda. I was told that he apparently complained about not getting the red carpet treatment that time around. Some time in 2019, Wei proposed doing proprietary trading ourselves. We had all the data, and it should be easy for us to trade. I quickly said, “no”. Exchanges trading for profit themselves creates conflict of interest. He tried a second time, saying we wouldn’t use any user private data and would limit ourselves to only public data. I knew that was a slippery slope, and shut down the idea for a second time. In April 2021, I was notified that Wei had changed an Investment Committee (IC) Memo on March 28, 2021, at 8:23 PM, an hour before the IC meeting where it was presented to me. Wei removed references to the largest investor in the project, Benjamin Rameau, an ex-employee with whom we had many issues in the past. Wei knew I would reject the investment if I saw Benjamin Rameau’s name. He removed it just before it was presented to me. And I approved the investment, based on the inaccurate information. This incident crossed an ethical line for me. I could have fired Wei for cause, but decided to let him resign to save face. We even paid him double digit millions to buy his ESOP back. Interestingly, shortly after Wei “resigned,” he organized a chat group called Binance Avenger’s, with many ex-employees Binance fired for cause. I heard that the group’s favorite topic was to complain about Binance. As part of their “avenging,” most people in the group moved their crypto assets to FTX for safe keeping, and we know how that went. Three years later, in 2024, I learned that both Wei Zhou and Stephen Stoneberg acted as witnesses against me in the US DOJ case. Stephen Stoneberg was unhappy and revengeful to begin with, so no surprise there. As for Wei, the DOJ under the Biden administration dropped tax evasion charges to turn him as a witness against me. To the best of my knowledge, the DOJ never charged Wei for failing to pay taxes on his $40 million USD of income. In the summer of 2025, after I got out of jail, Wei approached me again asking for an investment in his new venture, an exchange in the Philippines. He also proposed to establish a publicly listed BNB Treasury company with my support. He has thick skin. Trust Wallet In May 2018, I saw a friend’s post on social media saying that he believed Trust Wallet was the best wallet out there. Trust Wallet was a newcomer to the wallet scene. With a sleek UI and support for a wide range of ERC20 tokens (like Binance), it was growing fast. I was intrigued and asked the Labs team to take a look. They liked what they saw. A few days later, I had a quick call with Viktor, the founder of Trust Wallet. I liked him immediately. He was geeky and smart, but also humble and grounded. He was focused on users, not money. Trust Wallet lacked a revenue model, as charging fees would deter users. Viktor was contemplating fundraising through VCs. I suggested working with us to avoid financial worries and traditional VCs. We’d be a long-term investor, offering capital and user pool, so he could focus on his product. He agreed. We met in June and signed a deal within two weeks. June 2018. With Trust Wallet founder Viktor. Viktor and his team maintained their brand and independence, showing strong growth. Viktor stayed with the project for four more years, during which time the team expanded and the wallet grew exponentially. Trust Wallet became one of our most successful investments. Transaction Mining In June 2018, Fcoin rocketed to the top by trading volume for exchanges, sparking discussions in the crypto world. Its model, Transaction Mining, paid users to trade without limits. The more a person traded, the more a person would earn. Founded by former Huobi employee Zhang Jian, Fcoin introduced a token distributed based on trading volume. Users paid trading fees in BTC and received 200% back in this new token. To encourage the holding of these tokens, Fcoin shared 100% of its BTC earnings with token holders, keeping nothing for itself. This means for $1 dollar of revenue, the platform must pay out $3. Instead of blocking wash trading, they encouraged it. Bots were quickly created to exploit the program. Some people even sold these bots as a business. Within a week, Fcoin’s trading volume exceeded all other exchanges combined. The plan was to attract users first, then retain users even after reducing rewards, but in reality, a few bot traders generated all the volume. Exchanges in China began copying this model as it was all the rage. Influencers were paid to promote Fcoin, and even my friend Chandler Guo encouraged me to adopt transaction mining on Binance. After some research, I decided against it. Transaction mining may be a way to bootstrap liquidity, but it cannot be used in the long term. And we were already an established exchange. We were committed to long-term building over short-term gimmicks that could harm the industry. I typically refrain from criticizing other exchanges publicly, but I made an exception with Fcoin. On June 21, 2018, I posted on Weibo in Chinese, highlighting Fcoin’s issues: 1. Transaction mining was a disguised high-priced ICO. 2. The new token’s valuation was unjustified. 3. The platform lacked a sustainable business model. 4. There were no barriers to entry, making the model easy to copy. 5. It borderlined on a ponzi scheme. As expected, there was a wave of immediate backlash for my post, with some accusing me of jealousy and Chandler Guo claiming my logic was flawed. I stood my ground. I didn’t mention all the red flags I noticed publicly. Zhang Jian, on multiple occasions both privately and publicly, claimed his model was “a better invention than bitcoin.” He seemed arrogant, so I didn’t worry much about him. Not long after, as new Fcoin tokens were released to the market at neck breaking speed, Fcoin’s token prices fell. Zhang frequently changed rules, and user dissatisfaction grew. Their volumes dropped, as well as their web traffic. I didn’t track them further. Fcoin eventually declared bankruptcy in February 2020. It turned out, in a blog post by Zhang Jian himself, that Fcoin was never solvent due to concealed hacks from the very beginning, causing the platform to lose $130 million worth of user funds. Zhang Jian allegedly vanished with over $100 million in crypto. Rumor was that he bought a penthouse in Singapore on Shenton Way in 2020. This debacle strengthened my belief in focusing on fundamentals and not getting distracted by the fluffy stuff. SYS Incident On July 2, 2018, I returned to Taiwan for a conference. Since it was a hot day in Taipei, I wore flip flops. I didn’t get the opportunity to change before it was time to speak, so I ended up walking on stage in those flip flops. That image16 quickly went viral, with influencers calling the new style “billionaire mode.” July 2018, Taipei. Speaking on stage in shorts and flip-flops. I had worn flip flops on stage a few times before and the crypto crowd hardly noticed, but that was before the Forbes fame. I had a few drinks that night with some KOLs and was feeling a buzz. Then at midnight, our operations team called to notify me of a strange hacking incident. Trying to sober up, I drank two large glasses of ice water as the team was reporting the situation. Not easy being a CEO of a crypto exchange, can’t relax even for one second. The situation was, a group of accounts had bought a lot of SYS, a small market-cap coin. This pushed the price of the token up, and a small number of accounts were selling at these high prices and trying to withdraw. That’s when our ops team noticed the irregularities and paused the withdrawals. We learned that the hackers stole a large number of API keys through third-party platforms. Since they couldn’t withdraw funds directly with the API keys, they manipulated a small market-cap coin’s price. After artificially boosting it, they sold the coins from other accounts that had withdrawal permissions. It was our first exposure to this type of hack. To secure user accounts, we reset all existing API keys and requested that users generate new keys without sharing them on third-party platforms. We rolled back trades on accounts that we suspected belonged to hackers. We offered a zero-fee period to SYS traders affected by the disruption. We also enhanced our risk-surveillance tools to specifically catch these types of attacks, and started to work on support for API keys with asymmetric cryptography. Zug On July 7th, 2018, I landed in Zug, Switzerland for a conference. There was a reception with 50 or so speakers at a lakeside restaurant. Justin Sun asked for a photo, and shared it online. Some fake news media later misrepresented it as a private meeting picture. The next day, Vitalik said on stage, “I wish all centralized exchanges burn in hell.” People asked for my reaction. I saw it as just an odd way of expressing his preference for decentralization. He didn’t mean harm. Despite his quirks, Vitalik is one of the nicest people I know. While fighting a sore throat in my hotel in Switzerland, I saw news reports about severe flooding developing in Tokyo and surrounding areas. West Japan Disaster Relief Donation The heavy rainfalls in Japan caused severe damage, with up to 80 lives lost by that point. For a developed and disaster-ready country like Japan, this was serious. I gathered our team and proposed a $1 million donation from Binance for disaster relief. Everyone agreed. For context, we were in the middle of a crypto winter. Bitcoin had plummeted from $20,000 to $6,600. “Bitcoin is dead” articles were everywhere. Moreover, we had received a warning from the JFSA and left Japan just three months prior. However, having lived in Japan for many years, I cherished the experience and the people. This was about the people, not governments. I always believed that if we could help others, we should. We donated the funds.17 We received overwhelming positive responses from both the Japanese and international communities. We felt proud to be one of the first crypto companies to make a sizable donation in support of a good cause. One of our co-founders has a Japanese wife. He told me, “CZ, I am so proud to be working for this company.” I google-translated some of the online comments from Japanese people. One of them said, “they are no longer in Japan, and they still helped us. I wait for their return.” I knew we did the right thing. As fate would have it, return we did, four years later. Binance Charity Three years before founding Binance, on April 15, 2014, I wrote a paper about using crypto for charities, highlighting blockchain’s transparency in tracking fund usage. I read that 80% of donations often ended up in middlemen’s “administrative costs.” The paper is still available on GitHub18. Receiving a crypto donation could give people a positive first impression, countering the false narrative that only drug lords use crypto. We needed to combat the deceptive messaging from traditional media. On a personal level, back in 2014, Yi and I organized donations to support a community member diagnosed with leukemia, raising nine BTC to help cover the costs of his treatment. Back then, we didn’t have the financial resources or influence that we have today, but still both Yi and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. After the Japan donation, I started to think about how to organize charitable donations more systematically and more efficiently. This led to the Binance Charity Foundation. I wanted to hire someone to run the Charity. And I knew the perfect candidate. I spoke with Helen Hai and she quickly agreed to join, recognizing the transformative potential of Binance and blockchain technology in servicing charitable causes. Her “big picture” mindset saw the impact Binance could achieve. I emphasized that I wanted a fully transparent charity organization, using blockchain technology to track every donation to the end beneficiary. Helen hit the ground running. By the end of July, we officially launched the Binance Charity Foundation (BCF), an independent charity organization from the Binance exchange, while still using the brand name. BCF’s mission is to leverage blockchain technology to support social and humanitarian efforts, like poverty eradication, mass education, health research and disease prevention, especially in underdeveloped and developing regions of the world. There isn’t enough space here to detail the more than 50 initiatives to which Binance Charity has contributed. I will just pick a few off the top of my head. We kicked off with a Binance Lunch for Children Program, providing daily lunches to school children in developing countries. When you give kids lunch in school, they stay in school. Otherwise, they drop out. This program kicked off in Uganda, feeding over 200 students in the first phase, then expanded to tens of thousands of students all over Africa. All donations and spending were tracked via blockchain to ensure transparency. We then expanded the program to Binance for Children Initiative, supporting education for children in underdeveloped areas. We built more than 100 schools throughout Africa. Moreover, Binance Charity has provided scholarships, school supplies, and contributed to infrastructure improvements in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya. In partnership with several NGOs, Binance Charity, using blockchain technology, developed the Pink Care Token (PCAT), which helped girls in Africa access sanitary products and other healthcare essentials. This project aimed to empower women by improving their access to hygiene products while also promoting gender equality in education and society. The Empower Bududa project, provided disaster relief and recovery efforts for the Bududa region in Uganda, which suffered from severe landslides in 2018. Binance Charity helped rebuild the area, providing essential resources like food and shelter. Over the years, Binance Charity Foundation continued to provide disaster relief from COVID-19 to Turkey earthquakes. I won’t go into all the details here. Helen and her team did a remarkable job in building Binance Charity. Some people were surprised when I launched Giggle Academy six years later. But if you follow the Binance Charity Foundation developments, you will see that education for the less privileged has always been close to my heart. In just a year since launch, Giggle Academy has grown to more than 150,000 registered kids learning for free as of this writing (early 2026). Testing for AIDS No, not me. Helen hired three hard working ladies to join her team, and they spent significant time in Africa. After a three-month stretch in Africa, one lady, Iris, developed a skin rash and returned to Shanghai for a checkup. Uncertain of the rash’s cause, she chose to self-quarantine from her husband upon returning home the first night. The next morning, she visited the hospital. Upon mentioning her recent return from Africa, the nurse suggested an HIV test. Minutes later, the nurse loudly called, “the lady testing for HIV, please come to the counter,” causing everyone in the crowded waiting room to inch away from her. Luckily, Iris did not have HIV. It was just a skin rash. But that was the kind of mental stress our teams had to go through to carry out charitable work around the world. Iris is still with us today, leading a portfolio project. COVID Fast forward two years. As soon as COVID hit, I knew we would be busy. We first donated supplies to Wuhan, and then to different countries around the world. In May 2021, while in Singapore, my friend Calvin Cheng told me he was in touch with Indian government officials amid the local COVID crisis. India urgently needed oxygen tanks but couldn’t pay upfront. The supplier couldn’t afford to donate the tanks. Although India promised to pay later, the company couldn’t risk it, needing funds for salaries and expenses. I said, “Maybe Binance Charity could help.” A day later, Binance Charity paid $900,000 for two large oxygen tanks. Each one would help save about 6,000 lives. Two days later, the two oxygen tanks were shipped from Singapore to India.19 In the spring of 2022, Shanghai went into a strict COVID lockdown, confining everyone to their apartments for nearly three months. Government food supplies were limited, leaving individuals searching for food delivery channels on their own. Binance teams had many family members in China. Through the concerted efforts of many of our friends, Binance secured food and supplies for over 800 families during the lockdown. I received a message from an employee, Qikai. She said, “In a time when her aging parents needed food and help, she couldn’t do anything, her siblings and friends couldn’t do anything, the government couldn’t do anything, it was Binance to the rescue.” She felt indebted to the company. I received many similar appreciation messages from our employees. If you want your employees to take care of your users, you must take care of your employees. O First Anniversary n July 13, 2018, our whole team of about 80 people and a dozen Binance Angels flew to Phuket, Thailand to celebrate Binance’s first anniversary. While it seemed everyone else had an opportunity to explore Phuket a little bit in between the scheduled events, I spent the entire time at the hotel in back-to-back meetings. At one of the dinners, some of the good singers among us went on stage to sing. I obviously would never make that list. Then some good dancers started to dance. I obviously wouldn’t make that list either. A month earlier, someone had started an abs six-pack challenge. Then someone suggested that the challengers stand on stage, and have a few blind folded judges touch their abs to determine the winner, who will win a sizable amount of BNB. One girl took a photo and sent it to her mom. Her mom’s response was, “Wow, your company hired male models for a company party?” Needless to say, with my donut belly, I was not in that list either. In the end, a female colleague won not because of her abs, but because she announced that if she won, she’d donate all the BNB to Binance Charity. She got the majority vote. From day one, social responsibility was already part of the team’s DNA. Liechtenstein On August 15, the Liechtenstein national day, I flew there to meet with a potential local partner and some government officials. The deal didn’t pan out. The local person turned out to be a borderline scammer. The trip itself was pleasant, we took a hike into the beautiful alps at the intersection of Liechtenstein, Austria, and Switzerland. The cows had bells tied on their necks which made sharp clinking sounds as they meandered. It reminded me of the old classic movie The Sound of Music. August 2018, Liechtenstein and the surrounding Alps. Hackathons On September 13, 2018, I returned to Singapore for a busy week filled with the Cumberland Conference, Consensus Conference, and a Binance Hackathon. We were also finalizing an investment deal with Vertex for Binance Singapore. At the Binance Hackathon, I served as a judge for a few sessions. Never having been an incubator judge before, it was fortunate that Jeff Garzik was beside me, so I just went along with him. For me, I find “elevator pitches” useless. I need days to analyze and understand a project. I can’t do it from a pitch. Speaking at the UN On October 23, I went to Geneva, Switzerland, to give a speech at the United Nations (UN). That marked the first time a crypto company gave a talk at the UN. I admired the beautiful circular room, with its modernist architecture and sophisticated acoustics, inspiring a sense of inclusion. While the talk generated quite a buzz in the crypto community, I don’t think anything ever came of it. October 23, 2018, UN Headquarters, Geneva. The circular conference hall. Tattoo On December 1st, 2018, I had a casual dinner with Luke Wagman and another friend in Singapore. Luke was a co-founder of CoinMarketCap. He had always been supportive of Binance. We saw a Bitcoin logo tattooed on Luke’s arm, and the conversation shifted there. He said he planned to add CoinMarketCap and Binance logos, turning it into a full “crypto-arm” soon. Thoughts raced through my mind. The idea of getting a Binance logo tattoo had occurred to me before. I wasn’t the tattoo type, but here was a cool supporter of Binance, and someone who had contributed so much to the crypto space, about to get a Binance tattoo. Was I just going to sit and watch? No, I need to take action. So I said, “I might be up for it.” And at that moment, I knew there was no going back. Our other friend, Gareth Lai, ever resourceful, made some quick calls and found a place. By night’s end, the three of us all had tattooed the Binance logo on our arms, the first three in the world. Yes, even Gareth got one. I blogged about the night. If you’re interested, search for the post: “Are You Committed Enough to Tattoo20?” For me, even if Binance changed its logo the next day, that tattoo would still hold deep meaning for me for the rest of my life. I knew I wouldn’t regret it. To this day, it remains the only tattoo I have. And I am proud of it. December 2018. From left to right: Luke Wagman, me, Gareth Lai. Binance Logo Now might be a good time to explain the meaning behind the Binance logo. When we were designing the logo, we wanted to represent the bids and asks on the exchange with two squares, while also echoing the “binary” word in our name (Binance = Binary Finance). So, we had two squares on top of each other (see figure below). It looked too much like a digital 8, and while the number is lucky in Chinese, it just didn’t feel right. Our designer, Tang, made a few variations, and I noticed the two diagonal squares on top of each other, with a slight overlap. Now this made sense; if there is an overlap between the bids and asks, it would result in a trade. I liked it. But the design still didn’t feel like a logo. Another idea came up: we would add a bigger square, like a board, which the first two squares sit on. The board would be the “playground” or place where things happened, which is what an exchange platform is. The logo still looked weak. So the brilliant designers made the lines thicker (our current logo). Suddenly everything clicked into place. I knew we had our logo. The thickened lines made the logo look good, but more importantly, they created three smaller blocks in the middle, which formed a chain. A blockchain. And the middle block also represents trades, like a DEX perhaps. Furthermore, we thought about the different orientations. We could lay down the square, so it would sits on one side. But not only would that look weird, it would also make it less symmetrical. We felt that, as an exchange, it’s important for us to keep an accurate balance on things. For this reason, the Binance logo is perfectly balanced on its tip, and is symmetrical both horizontally and vertically. Perfectly balanced and fair. And that’s the story of the Binance logo. 2019 Crypto Winter January 2019 marked the bottom of the crypto winter. Bitcoin had plummeted to a low of $3,100, down from its previous high of $20,000. Many who had rushed into crypto at the start of 2018 had left the market, and we continued to see headlines “Bitcoin is dead” everywhere. As with so much of the reporting on crypto, they were wrong. As the saying goes, when the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming without pants. On January 12, 2019, we took our 300 employees to Hokkaido Japan again for our annual ski trip. I told our team to “keep our heads down and build.” I’ve said this many times before and since, and it has always worked. Binance Launchpad On January 17, 2019, during the depths of the crypto winter, we launched Binance Launchpad for initial token sales. The concept was similar to ICOs but with a few differences. While ICOs allowed anyone to issue tokens, the downside was that many were launched by scammers, and many turned out to be rug pulls, hurting users. Binance Launchpad aimed to reduce risks by conducting due diligence on projects. Although it couldn’t ensure success, it minimized scams and rug pulls. Projects featured on Binance Launchpad gained credibility, funding, and access to Binance’s extensive user base. We advised project teams on their tokenomics, helping them reduce issues, like a rapid unlock schedule or imbalanced token distribution. We often requested longer vesting schedules, which some teams disliked, but it helped us distinguish between short-term money grabs versus the genuine long-term builders, thus protecting our users. Binance leveraged its power to negotiate lower initial token sale prices, as most projects prioritized user base and credibility over money for the initial sale. People called this IEOs, for Initial Exchange Offering. Binance Launchpad became an instant success, coinciding with a recovery in crypto prices. While not solely responsible for the market’s rebound, it certainly contributed. Soon, other exchanges noticed our success and attempted to copy our model, but they couldn’t achieve the same level of success. None were able to match the returns Binance Launchpad generated for our users. Many other exchanges ended up making deals with project teams at the expense of their users. Over the years, many industry analysts compared the ROI (return on investment) of projects on Binance Launchpad versus projects on other exchanges, and we were always miles ahead. Binance Blockchain Week Singapore Declining crypto prices lead to a noticeable decline in the number of crypto conferences. In response to this downturn, I encouraged our team to organize a conference ourselves. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. To ensure accessibility, we set the ticket price at $50, in contrast to the $2,000 charged by many other conferences. On January 20, 2019, we launched the inaugural Binance Blockchain Week in the vibrant city of Singapore, drawing approximately 1,500 attendees. We were both proud and humbled to have had the influence and appeal to assemble such a crowd amidst the challenging market conditions. This inaugural gathering laid the foundation for what would evolve into a bi-annual tradition for Binance Blockchain Week. Today, Binance Blockchain Week has blossomed into a major industry event, attracting over 10,000 eager participants each time. For me, doing business during the crypto winter was easier because the remaining teams were long-term focused, undistracted by short term market volatilities. BUSD At the conference, Rich Teo, co-founder of Paxos, proposed a partnership to launch a new stablecoin that would be fully regulated, independently audited, backed 1:1 by funds held in a regulated bank account, and carry the Binance brand. I had my doubts. I didn’t believe regulators would permit a bank to back a stablecoin. This is why USDT (Tether) kept their bank account details secret. They claimed whenever they disclosed them, they lost the account. I had known Rich Teo since 2014, from a crypto conference in Shanghai. We drank cheap beer on the street curb back then. Rich made a lot of money in the 2008 global financial crisis, by shorting stocks. He was the first self-made rich person in our circles. Despite that, he hung out with us plebs just fine. Rich Teo launched ItBit in 2011, one of the earliest crypto exchanges, which later morphed into Paxos. Even though there was some competition in our businesses, we have always been good friends. I told Rich that if he could solve the banking side of the equation, we would support BUSD on the marketing and distribution side from Binance. To my surprise, on September 6, 2019, Paxos successfully launched BUSD (Binance USD) with NYDFS approval. It was issued by Paxos but carried the Binance brand. I couldn’t even remember the commercial terms until the project unexpectedly grew significantly and my team reminded me. At Binance, we aim to have more than one stablecoin available in the market. Introducing competition leads to the best product for users and minimizes the risk of a single point of failure. I didn’t pay much attention to BUSD until my team told me that it had already reached a $2 billion market cap. Over the next few years, BUSD grew to a market cap of $23 billion USD, becoming one of the largest stablecoins in the market, with interest revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It had turned into a significant business. Unfortunately, on February 13, 2023, my original prediction came true. NYDFS shut down BUSD. The wind-down was orderly, and no user lost money, proving it was 100% backed dollar for dollar. The shutting down of BUSD by NYDFS was part of Operation Choke Point 2.0 during the Biden Administration. A month later, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was shut down by regulators on March 10, 2023. SVB, as the name suggests, was a popular bank for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. I was shocked that they would go that far to try to choke crypto. Further, two other licensed and fast growing crypto friendly banks were shut down within the same week, Signature and Silvergate. The powers that be might have thought this would kill crypto. But crypto demonstrated its decentralized resilience to go on making successive all time highs less than a year later. SBF I first met Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) at Binance Blockchain Week in January 2019. He was then CEO of Alameda, well before the creation of FTX. They co-hosted a dinner at the Singapore Aquarium, followed by a glamorous after-party. I left early due to the loud atmosphere. SBF seemed like a smart young kid. We didn’t speak again until a few months later when his team proposed a JV collaboration on a futures trading platform. We said no to the proposal, as we were planning to launch a futures platform of our own. Losing Market Share In early 2019, we started losing market share, especially among Chinese-speaking users. Since our 2017 launch, we consistently offered more tokens, better support, and superior apps, outpacing other exchanges. By 2019, our competitors had upgraded their wallets to support more tokens, and had developed more user-friendly interfaces for Chinese users. As Binance expanded, we accrued “technical debt” with quick fixes, needing an expensive architectural overhaul, slowing down user feature developments. We scheduled a major UI revamping to simplify screens. Unfortunately, these efforts backfired. The new UI had become prettier but less user- friendly. Yi pushed for urgent changes. I also realized that without drastic action, we might become irrelevant. I decided that we needed a personnel revamp. Allan, our founding Product Manager, struggled to manage the large team. Although well- liked, Allan was too lenient, especially with underperforming employees. I had a difficult conversation with Allan and we hired a new Product Manager. Allan took a three-month sabbatical, at the end of which he chose to migrate to a less demanding role within the organization, a decision I respected deeply. Senior leaders should be able to navigate both successes and setbacks. While most accept promotions with grace, few are able to do so with demotions. Life isn’t always an upward path; facing challenges with dignity is key to growth. Allan demonstrated this humility. Another challenge was Binance prohibited all employees from trading. While this policy aimed to prevent distractions and insider trading, it also meant employees lacked firsthand experience with our own products. We went through a long and treacherous journey to revamp the product team, improve our products and user experience. It was not fun, but we slowly gained our market share back. The 7,000 BTC Hack (May 8th, 2019) On the afternoon of May 7th, 2019, our security team alerted me that an advanced virus had compromised several employees’ laptops. By evening, we found malware on the jump server for our production environments. A jump server was used as a central point of control to access the production environment back in those days. Although our security team assured me the virus was contained and production was safe, in hindsight, I should have immediately shut everything down. I learned that lesson the hard way. At 1 AM on May 8th, my team alerted me to an unauthorized withdrawal of 7,000 bitcoins, valued at $40 million at the time, the entire amount of BTC in our hot wallet. Although significant, our policy of keeping only 2% of coins in the hot wallet minimized the damage. The team had already shut down trading systems, halted withdrawals and suspended trading. Since the blockchain is public and transparent, others noticed the large withdrawal, causing panic in the community. I quickly tweeted about it, confirmed the theft, and took responsibility. By being upfront, the message helped ease the community’s concerns a bit. We discovered that hackers had inserted a withdrawal command at the final step of the withdrawal process. While our wallets remained secure, the withdrawal system was breached, prompting us to take all wallets offline as a precaution. This sophisticated hack showed the hackers had been in our network for some time, executing their attack at 1 AM after realizing we were onto them from a discussion the previous afternoon. We strongly believe the Lazarus Group from North Korea21 was behind the hack and possibly bribed employees to act as insiders. I scheduled an AMA (Ask me anything) livestream on Twitter for the next morning at 9 AM. I believed transparency would protect our users. An hour before the livestream, a friend introduced a Bitcoin OG, who suggested a radical idea: a controlled rollback22 to void that specific transaction. Since it was only a few hours after the hack, he suggested contacting major miners to offer them up to $40 million in bitcoins as network fees to fork the blockchain. This would keep every other transaction, except the hacked one, preventing the hackers from accessing the funds. It was a new idea to me. During the livestream, when asked about a rollback, I said we were open to all possibilities, not realizing the uproar this would cause in the community. The backlash from bitcoin enthusiasts over contemplating a rollback was greater than the hack itself. Even Vitalik Buterin tweeted, “What?” When reminded that Ethereum had similarly rolled back after their DAO hack, creating the ETH and ETC fork, he replied, “but that was a rollback with surgical precision,” referring to the same rollback of a single transaction, which was what the OG proposed. Charles Hoskinson, ex-Ethereum co-founder and Cardano founder, chimed in sarcastically on Vitalik’s Tweet: “surgical precision, huh?” It was chaos. The issue was that a $40 million rollback on the Bitcoin blockchain would challenge its immutability. Though it would be an isolated rollback, aimed to remove one transaction. I understood the community’s concerns. It was impossible anyway. No miner would agree to it. Coordinating a rollback was too complex. I also wanted to avoid any situation where Binance could cause a bitcoin fork. During the AMA, when asked about covering losses, I assured them Binance would take responsibility, and user accounts were unaffected. They questioned our liquidity to cover the $40 million loss. I confirmed we had the funds. Although significant, $40 million equated to about one month’s revenue at the time, and we’d already been profitable for a year and a half. Some experts even posted video analysis of my body language to gauge our ability to cover the loss. Though some were skeptical, most users trusted us. We paused withdrawals and deposits for a week, keeping trading open to maintain price stability. During this downtime, we overhauled our system architecture, implementing many advanced security upgrades. We completed a year’s security improvements in one week. A week later, we upgraded to a new architecture, replacing old servers and adding new security measures. Throughout the week, updates were tweeted regularly from both the Binance official account and my personal account to keep the community informed. As promised, a week later, we resumed withdrawals. Surprisingly, more people deposited funds than withdrew. And instead of crashing, crypto prices rose. On May 7th, 2019, bitcoin was around $5,200, and by May 14th, it reached $7,900. Our response to the incident ultimately built more trust with our users. It proved that by responding to an incident early and openly, not only were we able to keep faith with our users, they trusted us more after the incident. Binance Jersey & DNS Hack In January 2019, we launched Binance Jersey, a fully regulated local exchange supporting EUR and GBP. Located in the Channel Islands, Jersey is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, making it a notable international financial center. However, the exchange failed to gain traction. It was shut down on November 30, 2020. This experience showed that launching an exchange isn’t always effortless, even for Binance. Though I wasn’t involved in its operations, one security incident required my attention. Early on August 16, 2019, at 2 AM, I got a call from our security team informing me that the DNS services for Binance Jersey (binance.je) had been hacked. My first concern was whether the main site (binance.com) was affected. It wasn’t. I also asked if any funds were compromised, and they assured me none had been. “Alright, let’s deal with it,” I said, recognizing the issue’s scale was smaller since Binance Jersey had far fewer users. We registered the Binance.je domain under my name with 101 Domain, a low-security registrar. I had to get involved in resolving the problem. We learned that a hacker took over our admin account on 101 Domain, using social engineering to trick staff with fake IDs. He changed the admin email and password, locking us out, and altered the MX records to redirect all emails to his server, allowing him to read and respond to them. The hacker saw an email from Twitter and realized the Binance Jersey Twitter handle was linked to the email he now controlled. He reset the Twitter password, cutting off our access. Then our team discovered the breach. Despite having the potential to cause significant harm, such as sending scam messages, impersonating support, or redirecting our site to a phishing page, the hacker didn’t take any malicious actions. The URL remained unchanged, and he didn’t post anything on Twitter. Our security team closely monitored the site for threats and geared up to inform users if needed. The team had prepared a notice, ready to send. But notifying users too soon was risky too, potentially provoking hackers to steal funds, which at that point they hadn’t done yet. It was a delicate balance between informing users and escalating the potential problem. We were also working to regain control of the admin account and domain from 101 Domain. They were unresponsive to our request for support. After numerous emails and calls, we finally reached someone. We explained the situation and requested to restore our account. The hacker had manipulated their help desk rep with fake documents easily. Now the rep asked us, the rightful owners, for a barrage of paperwork, including: Letter of Authorization from our security team Copies of passports from our security team Copies of business cards from our security team Letter of Authorization from Changpeng Zhao A copy of my passport A copy of my business card Certificate of Incorporation for Binance Jersey Certificate of Incorporation for Binance Asia Service COBO of Jersey Financial Services ARCA of Binance Asia Services ROD of Binance (Jersey Exchange) Limited While we gathered those documents, we asked her to shut down the email MX service and lock the website domain to prevent further changes. She reluctantly agreed but said further action would require approval from her manager, who wouldn’t be available for a few more hours. I was in Singapore. It was 5 AM. Running on no sleep, I found it ironic that hackers easily bypassed their customer support, while real owners faced numerous obstacles. Meanwhile, we contacted Twitter to suspend the compromised account. As we awaited 101 Domain’s manager to come online, I left my phone on loud and took a brief nap to relieve my aching back. A few hours later, the manager, possibly the company owner, joined a conference call with us. The manager told us that the hacker had contacted them, complaining about the email service interruption and account lock, accusing us of hacking and demanding the blocks be lifted. The hacker’s audacity impressed me. At this point, we learned how the breach occurred. The hacker called 101 Domain claiming to have lost access to the admin account and requested a password and email reset. 101 Domain requested ID copies associated with the account, which included me and Frank Kim, our system administrator. While my name was easy to guess, Frank Kim’s name was likely revealed over the phone by the support staff. The hacker sent two photoshopped passport images, one for me and one for Frank Kim. The hacker photoshopped a Korean passport image for Frank, who is not Korean. He is Chinese. Despite these errors, 101 Domain accepted the fakes, reset the email, and sent a new password to the hacker. It was a simple, manipulative act of social engineering. Now, the manager of 101 Domain needed to confirm the real account owner. I suggested Googling my name with Binance and setting up a video call. Edward said the hackers were still insisting they were the true owners of the account. I suggested inviting the hacker to the video call. Predictably, they refused to join. I was shocked by the hacker’s persistence even after our intervention. This occurred during a time when I was suffering from severe back pains and had to resort to working mostly lying in bed. For the video call, however, I had to stand for nearly an hour, which was quite painful. After the call, 101 Domain restored our account, and we immediately moved to a more secure DNS hosting provider. We also notified the regulator about the hack. Later, our security team involved the police and managed to obtain logs from 101 Domain. About a week later, they traced the hack to a 16- year-old kid in Jersey. Since he hadn’t stolen anything or caused any real damage, I even considered offering him a job at Binance. However, given his age, we couldn’t hire him. So that was how the CEO of Binance ended up losing 36 hours dealing with a social engineering hack by a 16-year-old. While many imagine a CEO’s life as glamorous, this incident showed a small glimpse into the reality. BNB Chain In the summer of 2018, a group of developers approached me and said they could develop a new blockchain. The goal was to make it extremely easy for users to create tokens without writing any code, and have all the tokens natively traded on the on-chain DEX (decentralized exchange). I thought it was a great idea. I said, “go for it.” Other than that, I didn’t have much input or involvement. I was busy running the CEX (Centralized exchange, Binance.com). Eight months later, in April 2019, they said they were ready to launch the mainnet. I was pleasantly surprised. And we migrated BNB from an Ethereum ERC20 token to its own blockchain native coin. Soon, there was the DeFi summer in late 2019 and early 2020. It was good timing. People give me lots of credit as a master planner. Truth is, I don’t plan much. I just say yes when people approach me, and give them a lot of freedom and support to build. Futures Back to business, since inception, Binance focused solely on spot trading, rapidly becoming and retaining the largest spot exchange. However, we missed out on the futures market. In 2018, Yi proposed a Binance futures product, but I believed we weren’t ready back then as we had plenty of work cut out for us. By early 2019, during the crypto winter, I felt the conditions were finally right to build a futures platform. Futures are more complex than spot trading, requiring managing leverage and liquidations without market disruptions, which in turn require complex and intricate technical engineering. We had multiple teams working on competing futures products. In February 2019, a group of three former BijieTech employees approached me with a similar proposal. I asked Yi, who had known them since 2014, to coordinate. This was our Team A. Around the same time, I met with a group of Sea Turtles (overseas returnees) who proposed building a futures trading platform for Binance. They had experience working in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). I was initially skeptical but eventually decided to give them a shot. This was Team B. It was difficult to choose between the two teams, so I thought, “why not let both go for it and see what happens?” Some call this parallel development, dual-tracking, or horse racing. When a product is strategically important and resources are sufficient, it makes sense to take this approach. For us, futures was that kind of product. A little internal competition could be incredibly motivating, and both teams worked their asses off. By August 2019, both our A and B teams were ready to launch, competing to see who could go first. Both teams urged me to choose a winner. Unsure, I opted to launch both and let the users decide. This wasn’t the ideal approach since it generated confusion for users and more work for us. But with futures, success often depends on operational details, particularly how the platform handles liquidations. I couldn’t determine which was best by simply looking at a user interface or a demo. At Binance, we always let results determine success. On September 13, 2019, we launched Futures A and B, allowing users to choose. Soon, Futures B was getting more traction. We decommissioned Futures A and repurposed Team A members to other projects. FTX In the summer of 2019, a month after FTX launched, SBF returned to us asking for an investment. Wei, our CFO at the time, was handling the deal. Wei liked SBF, seeing him as an ambitious young man. SBF flew in to meet with me. In my recollection, SBF settled into our meeting with ease and came across as unassuming and respectful. Despite not having Elon’s sharp bullshit detector, I declined his invitation to invest in FTX that summer. Wei supported the deal, but Roger and Yi both opposed it. A few months later, in November 2019, Wei informed me that FTX had improved their offer significantly, seeking investment with a lower valuation and a BNB to FTT token swap. Economics-wise, it was a sound deal for us. After our investment, SBF requested to share a stage with me at a conference, which would help to elevate his profile. I agreed and I believed more exchanges would benefit users and the industry. Soon after our investment, FTX poached our junior VIP manager, who had access to our VIP database, upping her compensation five-fold. Soon, our VIP clients received unsolicited offers from FTX. Clients asked if we could match FTX’s special rates. We clarified that Binance didn’t offer special rates; everyone received the best deal for their tier. Interestingly, one of the clients that went to FTX was Three Arrows, which later went bankrupt following FTX. I asked SBF to stop poaching our team, he agreed verbally but persisted in practice, offering 3-5x salaries to lure away some of the money-driven employees. In hindsight, it was probably good for us. SBF was an ardent promoter of Effective Altruism. But the way he carries himself always felt a little fishy to me. The media adored SBF, depicting him as the crypto-world savior and often positioning FTX as a competitor to Binance, despite FTX’s trading volume never exceeding 5% of Binance’s. I didn’t mind his constant self-promotion, but it often invited regulatory scrutiny to industry players, though it never seemed to land on him. In fact, regulators from the SEC to Congress liked him too. He had tricks I didn’t have. Almost as soon as we made our investment in FTX in 2020, friends told me that SBF was badmouthing us in DC. By 2021, the rumors grew more specific. Rich Teo, co-founder of Paxos, told me about Michelle Bond, an aspiring politician. I had not heard of her name until then. Despite not knowing anything about us, I was informed she was promoting FTX while disparaging Binance in US political circles. A few years later, in 2024, I was told that Michelle Bond was romantically linked to Ryan Salame, an FTX senior executive at the time. The day after Rich’s warning, another friend confirmed SBF’s slander of Binance at a closed-door retreat with US policymakers and crypto figures. I usually dismissed such rumors as self-promotion tactics, but the repeated reports of disparagement was too excessive to ignore. Gary Gensler Back in September 2018, Ella Zhang from YZi Labs introduced me to Gary Gensler, former CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) chairman. We first spoke via video call. I learned he was visiting Tokyo in early 2019. On March 29, we met at the Yamazato restaurant in the Okura Hotel, enjoying sushi while discussing the crypto industry, Binance, and the U.S. market. Gary provided valuable insight. He was pro-crypto back then. Guessing his intentions, I offered for him to become a Binance advisor. He passed on the offer, hinting that he was holding out for his goal to become SEC Chairman if the Democrats regained power. March 29, 2019, Tokyo. With former U.S. CFTC Chair Gary Gensler at the Yamazato restaurant. We enjoyed a friendly lunch, even snapping some photos together. I remember thinking that a U.S. political career was tough. He’d waited three years for a chance, unsure if his party would win again, but remained patient. On May 25, 2019, Gary emailed me a paper titled “BNB MIT student viability and valuation” that his students had written. I thanked him for sharing it. We continued a friendly correspondence. On July 15, 2019, Gary emailed me his written testimony for his upcoming July 17, 2019, House Financial Services Committee hearing. I responded saying I was super impressed with the content. This was two days BEFORE the public House Financial Services Committee hearing. On July 17, 2019, Gary emailed me again, asking if I would be willing to volunteer my time for an interview that would assist his preparation of an MIT crypto course he intended to teach. I readily agreed to his request. On July 24, we recorded a video interview between Gary and me for his students at MIT. After the interview session, I received another thank you email from Gary. A year later, on November 6, 2020, I saw in an article that Gary Gensler was expected to be the next SEC Chairman. I sent Gary an email congratulating him, and he responded with, “Thank you. I hope all is well with your family and you, particularly in these unusual times.” Then, 19 months later, on June 6, 2022, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. SEC was investigating Binance, probing whether Binance’s ICO of the BNB token violated U.S. securities laws by potentially being an unregistered securities offering. On February 13, 2023, SEC sued Paxos claiming BUSD, a $23 billion dollar market cap stablecoin, is a security. On that same day, NYDFS instructed Paxos to shutdown BUSD. On June 5, 2023, the SEC under Gary Gensler, sued Binance, Binance US and me personally, with 13 alleged charges, ranging from operating an illegal trading platform in the U.S. and misusing customer funds. None were true. Two years later, the SEC dismissed the case “with prejudice” completely (which in layman’s terms means the case is permanently closed and cannot be refiled) after Gary Gensler took early retirement. More on these later. Binance US In early 2019, news broke about the US government targeting Tether and BitMex, prompting suggestions for us to obtain US licenses. Our CFO, Wei, an American citizen, took on the “US initiative.” Wei engaged consultants and lawyers, receiving multiple proposals to form a separate US entity. We obtained Money Service Business licenses in each state, with the intention of serving US users through a separate entity, Binance US. Around this period, Harry Zhou, a consultant, drafted a proposal that mentioned the word Taichi, a form of slow martial art. Harry served as the legal consultant for Huobi US, which had been established earlier in the United States. He offered to help us structure our operations in the US. However, disagreements arose between him and our legal team, and eventually, my team brought those matters to my attention. I decided we would not use Harry’s proposal and instructed everyone via email. Harry’s proposal, which I rejected, subsequently became the centerpiece of a Forbes article (as if I adopted it) in late 2020 when a former team member leaked the document, causing a stir. On June 13, 2019, we announced the launch of a separate US platform, operated by the independent US entity, separate from Binance.com. We hired Catherine Coley as the CEO. I found out years later that Wei had personally prepared Catherine before her interview with me, including advising her on potential questions I might ask. I considered Wei’s behavior borderline unethical. Regardless, Catherine turned out to be a great CEO for us. She was grateful for the opportunity and demonstrated strong dedication, running Binance US competently and professionally. FTX Abnormal Trading A few weeks after our futures launch, someone sold hard on a contract and pushed the price down. When we looked into it, it was Alameda Research, SBF’s company. Our team reached out to Alameda, as we noticed they were losing money on the trades. They claimed to be testing our platform for weaknesses, but a bug in their algorithm caused it to spiral out of control. FTX already had a futures platform of their own at this point, so it puzzled us as to why Alameda traded on Binance. After our call, they stopped. Alameda wouldn’t publicly admit to causing the strange pricing on Binance. A few weeks later, we noticed Alameda Research doing the same on Binance US. Again, their algorithmic trading caused an abrupt downward plunge on one pair, leading them to lose more money. Again, they refused to make a public statement about it. At the time, we still owned 20% of FTX. My skepticism of them increased. More on FTX later. CoinMarketCap & Binance Info When trading crypto, information about the coins is essential. CoinMarketCap.com (CMC) is the leading website for such data. CMC ranked among the top 20 websites globally and served as a major traffic source for crypto exchanges. On Binance’s trading page, links to CMC for coin details drove traffic away, so we decided to create our own Binance Info product. We launched in February 2018, with clickable icons linking to coin-specific information. However, our product didn’t match CMC’s quality, and users still preferred CMC. The challenge was in the details. Chart styles, mobile display, layout, and update speed were more complex than expected. We faced a choice: keep users on our own site with a subpar experience or risk them leaving for competitors by directing them to CMC. In October 2018, we canceled Binance Info, recognizing it as a failed experiment. After canceling the Binance Info product, Rock, its team leader, began contributing to smaller projects within the company and eventually developed Binance P2P, a significant success for the company. This highlights the importance of resilience as well as the ability to handle success and setbacks with equal grace. Instead of becoming disheartened or discouraged, Rock adapted, pivoted, and eventually built something that was crucial to Binance’s growth. On November 12, 2019, I met the low-key founder of CoinMarketCap (CMC), Brandon, at their Singapore conference. CMC was the most trafficked site in the crypto space, vital for crypto enthusiasts, investors, and analysts. Despite its high traffic, CMC wasn’t making much money, and was losing market share. I hinted at investing, and the founder seemed open to selling. I proposed a high number to avoid lowballing or sparking a bidding war. The founder didn’t negotiate the price but asked about our plans for CMC after the acquisition. He saw it as his baby and wanted it with the right owner. After I assured him of our intentions to protect the brand, he chose Binance without seeking other offers. We finished the deal within weeks. The announcement surprised everyone since CMC didn’t shop around. Several exchanges worried we might cut off their traffic, but we kept the platform independent and maintained its brand. When we acquired CMC, it relied heavily on ads, some of which caused poor user experiences and promoted questionable projects. Prioritizing user experience, we eliminated those ads, turning the $40 million revenue business into a cash-burning one. Before the acquisition, CMC was losing market share. We focused on rebuilding it, adding features like mobile apps, educational content, and news. Over time, CMC regained its market share and maintained market dominance. Istanbul Turkey After the CMC conference in Singapore, I went to the bustling Istanbul on November 20, 2019. Turkey, with its rich tapestry of culture and history, is not only lively but also home to a warm and welcoming crypto community that pulses with energy and enthusiasm. Our presence in Turkey is significant, with a substantial user base. Turkish cuisine was palatable. I relished the opportunity to connect with our dozen or so passionate Binance Angels, individuals whose enthusiasm for crypto was as infectious as their hospitality. We organized a meetup that drew an impressive crowd and we indulged in numerous meals together, at the cost of gaining a few extra pounds. During my visit, I discovered that many of our VIP clients in Turkey operated physical storefronts, places like jewelry shops or FOREX exchanges. These establishments proudly displayed the Binance trading page on TV screens, providing a live showcase for customers who were eager to explore the world of cryptocurrency. I captured a glimpse of one such shop on video and shared it on Twitter, where it quickly went viral. P2P As Binance expanded globally, we encountered low banking adoption in many countries. In Africa, banking penetration was reported to be below 11%. This presented both a challenge and an opportunity: buying crypto online was tough without banking infrastructure, but it also allowed us to onboard users directly into crypto, bypassing banks. Peer-to-peer (P2P) trading allowed users to trade without banks. Buyers and sellers listed their offers. The platform matched them and escrowed the crypto until payments were confirmed directly between the buyer and seller. Payments could be made via cash in person, mobile payments, or any other means agreed. In early 2019, one of our teams proposed to build a P2P product. I agreed, and we launched it on October 8, 2019. It quickly expanded globally, especially where traditional financial services were non-existent or banks refused to work with crypto exchanges. Crypto provided financial access. Over the years, I received many thank you messages from our users about how P2P allowed them to access crypto, which in turn improved their financial situation and quality of life. “Office Raided by Police” vs “Visited by Authorities” On November 21, 2019, The Block, still a small crypto news outlet at the time, released a misleading article titled “Binance Shanghai Office Raided by Police.” This piece was quickly cited without further verification by numerous other news organizations, such as Bloomberg, Reuters, and Forbes, sparking widespread panic within the crypto community. We immediately reached out to inform these media that their information was incorrect. The office of a customer support vendor who services Binance was visited by a Commerce Bureau officer as part of the Bureau’s normal administrative routine in China. Initially, The Block declined to make any changes. It wasn’t until 18 hours later that they revised the title to “Office Visited by Authorities.” That was a big difference. The article not only damaged our brand, it hurt the overall market. Right after the article was published, BNB’s value plummeted from $18 to $14, a decline of 28%, erasing several hundred million dollars from our token’s market capitalization. Bitcoin’s price fell from $8,000 to $6,900, a decrease of 15%. It took months for the market to recover. That article hurt a lot of crypto investors. I could see why traditional media would attack crypto to maintain the status quo and support fiat currency. However, a crypto-focused media outlet like The Block should have truthfully supported the industry instead of spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Three years later, Forbes reported that SBF confidentially had loaned $43 million to The Block’s then-CEO, Michael McCaffrey.23 About $27 million was used to restructure and fund The Block’s operations and investors buyout, while $16 million was used by McCaffrey to purchase personal real estate in the Bahamas. That story cast doubt on the neutrality of The Block’s journalism during its early days, to say the least. In 2023, The Block entered a new chapter under CEO Larry Cermak, setting the stage for a renewed operation framework. From YZi Labs’ conversations with a number of their journalists, the feedback has been that they approach stories with a more thoughtful attitude, seemingly an improvement from 2019. Singapore After the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) stated in 2018 that they didn’t regulate crypto, I began spending more time there. Although I traveled often, Singapore became a stable base. I rented a three- bedroom apartment in Sentosa with an ocean view, though the noise from busy shipping routes required keeping windows shut during calls. Singapore apartments were small. I could squeeze just a desk and a bed into my bedroom, with little remaining room to move around. For transportation, instead of owning a car, we used Grab, the Singapore version of Uber. On January 14, 2019, MAS introduced the Payment Services Act (PSA) 2019, bringing cryptocurrencies within their regulatory jurisdiction as of February 28, 2020. Since Binance Singapore had already been operational, we were grandfathered into the framework, allowing us to