This article has been translated from English to Gen Z Slang.
Changpeng Zhao, fam just calls him CZ, is this lit Chinese-Canadian boss famous for starting up and being the big boss at Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the game. 🚀
Low-key, CZ is one of the most fire peeps in the whole crypto scene. 🔥
CZ popped out in Jiangsu, China in 1977, from a fam of teachers. When he was 12, they packed it up and dipped to Vancouver, Canada. 🎒 He hit up McGill University in Montreal, dropping knowledge at one of Canada's top unis, and got schooled in computer science. 🎓
After graduating in 2001, CZ was living that travel life, and landed an internship in Tokyo, dealing with software at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He hung out there for four years before leveling up to a gig at Bloomberg Tradebook in NYC, where he was crafting futures trading software like a boss. 💼
Post-Bloomberg, CZ bounced to Shanghai and launched Fusion Systems, making some high-key trading software for banks. 🤖
In 2013, he linked up with Blockchain.info (now Blockchain.com). It started as a blockchain explorer and went big with a crypto wallet, exchange, and mad services for the big-time investors. CZ was the Head of Dev at Blockchain.com from December 2013 to May 2014. 💻
He vibed with Ben Reeves, founder of Blockchain.info, and Roger Ver, aka Bitcoin Jesus, who was in early on a bunch of bitcoin startups. 🙏
By June 2014, CZ ditched Blockchain.info to flex as CTO at the China-based OkCoin exchange. They leveled up with features like futures trading, becoming China's top dog exchange. 📈
But he peaced out after 9 months in Feb 2015 because he was not about that executive team life. OkCoin wanted to go global, setting up in the U.S. or Hong Kong and bringing new peeps to the bitcoin squad. 🌏
CZ had other moves planned, like dropping his own exchange. But first, he dropped his second company, Bijie Technology, making cloud exchange software. It blew up and was all over 30 exchanges in no time. ☁️
Fast-forward to 2017, while munching with big dogs like Neo founder Da Hongfei and Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek, they chatted ICOs as startup fund hacks. CZ went home and cooked up a whitepaper for a crypto-only exchange, skipping fiat. 🔄
He named it Binance, like a mashup of “binary” and “finance”. 💡
Binance broke ground as the first to run on Bijie Tech's cloud exchange software. 💥
The rest, my dudes, is Binance history. 🚀✨
In November 2022, word dropped that CZ and Binance were eyeing a deal to scoop FTX, which was in deep water after a Coindesk report shook up its financial vibes. FTX was already dealing with $6b in withdrawals in like 72 hours. 💸
CZ hit Twitter with the tea about the deal but came back to backtrack because of “the latest news reports" about messy funds and U.S. agencies getting nosy. 💬
Post-FTX drama, CZ and Binance pledged $2b in BUSD for a recovery fund to snatch up distressed assets and support the whole crypto ecosystem. 🤝
Coindesk dubbed CZ as “Coindesk’s Most Influential” in 2022. 👑