The $110 Billion Dollar Man - Binance Founder Opens Up | PBD #797

Summary

Podcast Summary: The $110 Billion Dollar Man - Binance Founder Opens Up | PBD Podcast #797

Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Patrick Bet-David (PBD)
Guest: Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Founder of Binance

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Episode Overview

This expansive, candid conversation dives into the life and philosophy of Changpeng Zhao (CZ), “the $110 Billion Dollar Man” and founder of Binance, the world’s most influential cryptocurrency exchange. Patrick Bet-David explores CZ’s journey from rural China to global fintech disruption, his insights on entrepreneurship, his historic legal battles with the US government, philosophies on wealth and power, the future of crypto and AI, and his surprising minimalism.

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Major Discussion Themes & Key Insights

1. CZ’s Legal Saga, Pardon, and US Attitudes Toward Crypto

• Presidential Pardon and Its Impact

  • CZ discusses how his pardon from President Trump was crucial, removing his label as a felon:

    "Without a pardon, I'm labeled as a felon...my ability as a UBO...is significantly impacted. That means I cannot be a shareholder of many of our businesses or we will limit our ability to get licenses...After the pardon, this goes away. It's a full unconditional pardon..."
    (85:56)

  • The reversal of US policy:

    "Today, US is pro crypto and President Trump gave me a pardon. So it's 180 degrees different from 2021, 2022..." (83:57)

  • On the power of the US Constitution and American resilience:

    "The Constitution of the United States is a very, very strong piece of paper that's probably even stronger than the bitcoin paper." (84:57)

• Regulatory Crackdown & Scrutiny

  • CZ highlights the aggressive approach taken by the DOJ and SEC, intensifying after the downfall of FTX and SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried).

    "The DOJ wants to get to a deal...they were extremely aggressive...I've never seen a case where a government takes a BSA Banking Secrecy act violation this aggressively." (78:14)
    "They really tried to say, look, Binance facilitated terrorist financing...Binance never does that...it's not in my interest." (79:15)

• Business Impact

  • The aftermath included enormous penalties and drastic operational restrictions:

    "Binance US lost probably 99% of the revenue...They probably lost 99% of that value at one point." (82:55)

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2. CZ’s Entrepreneurial Journey & Life Story

• Early Background

  • Born in rural China, moved to Canada at 12, worked globally (Tokyo, NY, Shanghai):

    "I was born in a fairly rural village in China...moved to Canada when I was 12...high school in Vancouver, college at McGill, then started working globally." (16:45)

• Crypto Beginnings

  • The pivotal moment—selling his $900,000 apartment for Bitcoin:

    “I sold my house, sold my apartment, and bought bitcoin. That was a very long-term conviction.” (21:19)

    • He bought at ~$600 per BTC, making his $900,000 investment worth over $100 million.

• Early Risk and Minimalism

  • Financial risk was high, but conviction and confidence in the technology propelled him:

    “I didn't need the $900,000 to maintain my lifestyle. I can work for income that will maintain my life.” (24:50)

  • He self-identifies as “basic” rather than minimalist.

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3. Building Binance: From 0 to $100 Billion

• No VC Support, But Community-Funded

  • Binance’s initial funding came from a $15 million ICO after VCs dismissed him:

    "When I tried to raise money from VCs, no one invested...then we did an ICO...everyone wants to buy it." (34:49)

• Explosive Growth and Strategy

  • Emphasis on low fees and global accessibility:

    “If you provide a value of 10 and you charge only 2...your business will grow really fast.” (45:43)

  • Binance rapidly became the largest exchange by trading volume, hitting $1 billion in profits in a year:

    “We are one of the fastest companies to reach $1 billion in profits...about a year.” (39:04)

• Business Resilience

  • Hostility from competitors and aggressive FUD was common, but CZ stresses the importance of user trust and scaling.

    “People were like, competitors...were hostile...smear articles...which is great for us, new platform, free advertising.” (40:08)

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4. Philosophy of Wealth, Leadership, & Personal Character

• Wealth with Minimalism

  • No luxury cars, no wild material splurges; focus remains on function and family:

    “I have a Lexus van now...I usually sit in the back, I have a driver...I don't think I've ever sat in a Lambo yet.” (97:04)
    “I do fly private...for the privacy and the security.” (99:37)

• Giving Back

  • Intends to give away 99% of his wealth:

    “I don’t think I can spend more than 1% myself. I want to use money for...impactful stuff.” (100:11)

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5. Competitors & Industry Culture

• Relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried

  • Limited personal connection, critical of SBF’s manipulations:

    “I normally would not use that kind of language...that was a pretty strong language.” (68:56)

    • On SBF’s influence and the post-FTX regulatory fallout.

• Regulatory Arbitrage & Global Nomadism

  • CZ advocates for businesses to keep a global perspective due to the mobile, intangible nature of modern wealth:

    “Have a global view instead...we no longer need to do business in one country and then expand.” (10:30)

• American Opportunity (Then & Now)

  • Once avoided the US for crypto business; now sees the US comeback as beneficial:

    “During the Biden administration...one of the worst places to live in...now it’s one of the best.” (09:16)

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6. Crypto, Intangibles & The Nation-State

• Rise of Intangible Wealth

  • Dramatic shift from tangible to intangible assets has profound effects on entrepreneurship and state power:

    “The wealth today is IP, technology, crypto. They have no borders...Countries with favorable regulations...will attract the top talents.” (06:25)

• Regulatory Competition

  • Countries like UAE, Singapore now outcompete US/Europe for entrepreneurial talent.

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7. AI, The Future, and Technological Change

• Next Big Shifts

  • Identifies three monumental technologies: Internet, Blockchain, and AI; predicts AI will accelerate progress:

    “We’re going to see a dramatic increase in productivity and progress.” (53:42)

• AI & Risk

  • Concerned about alignment, but optimistic about humanity’s self-correction:

    “If AI becomes self conscious and we get in the way, that’s the risk...I have pretty optimistic view on humans, our civilization.” (54:49, 56:35)

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8. Leadership Style and Values

• Pragmatic, “Zero to One” Leader

  • CZ sees himself as a builder, less suited for bureaucratic management:

    “I view myself as more of a 0 to 1 kind of guy...running things...drives me nuts.” (88:13)

• Team Loyalty & Rewards

  • His co-founders and early team members are well-taken care of; 80% remain at Binance. (“There's a saying, especially in the Chinese communities, that I have been a pretty good leader, that I treated my people well.” 43:11)

• Cultural Identity

  • Ethnically Chinese but business mindset is “much more Canadian/US”:

    “The way I think and do business is much more US capitalist, Western ideology, freedom-driven.” (43:40)

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9. Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Risk and Conviction

“I saw the clear future of the technology...there was white paper...there was a forum...community made a huge difference...once you realize you can send money to anyone, full control, instantaneous—that’s a technology for the future.” (22:41–23:55)

On SBF & the FTX Collapse

“No healthy business can be destroyed by tweet...If anyone selling can kill your business, you don’t have a business really.” (70:53, 72:19)

On the Constitution

“The Constitution of the United States is a very, very strong piece of paper that’s probably even stronger than the bitcoin paper.” (84:57)

On Leadership Ego

“I’m not an ego. I’m a normal guy.” (88:36)

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10. Philosophical and Political Views

• On Regulation

  • Regulation is reactive and slow; industry self-regulation and competition are more effective.

• Money as a Tool

  • Money enables security, impact, and serves to improve society—not just personal comfort.

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11. Lightning Round & Personal Questions

• Satoshi Nakamoto: Prefers not to know the identity; leans toward Hal Finney as most likely.
• No interest in luxury; practical, function-first lifestyle.
• On legacy: Wants to give while alive, not via charity/estates after death, to ensure values-aligned impact.
• On next great technological shift: Open, but cautious; “Could happen tomorrow.”

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12. Most Important Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |---------------|-----------------------------------------------------|-----------------------| | # Legal saga/Trump pardon starts | 00:00; 83:57; 85:56 | | # Selling everything for Bitcoin, early risk | 21:19; 24:50 | | # Building Binance, early meetings | 34:00–36:00 | | # ICO and early explosive growth | 34:49; 37:09; 39:04 | | # Enemies, FUD, & regulatory scrutiny | 40:08; 78:14 | | # On Sam Bankman-Fried & FTX | 63:57–74:04 | | # Wealth, minimalism, giving it away | 97:04–100:45 | | # AI, the future, and philosophical reflections | 53:42–56:55 | | # Favorite unknown historic event (Gold Standard) | 103:42 |

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Conclusion

From humble beginnings to shaping global finance, CZ’s story is both improbable and inspiring. His ethos—pragmatism, technological optimism, and humility—shines throughout the episode. Listeners are left with hard-won insights on risk, regulation, entrepreneurship, and the promise (and perils) of decentralization and AI.

“You make it seem like anybody can start a company and get to 100 billion.... But it’s a crazy story. Maybe one day they’ll make a movie about you, and the Lexus van has to be in there.”
— Patrick Bet-David (116:34)

“Thank you for having me. It’s a great conversation.”
— Changpeng Zhao (117:24)

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Buy CZ’s book "Freedom of Money" for more on his life and outlook.

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Summary compiled by AI. All quotes and context preserved in the spirit and tone of the speakers.

Transcript

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

President Trump gave me a pardon.

[Patrick]

Who cares about getting a pardon?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm labeled as a felon. Binance founder sentenced to four months in prison.

[Patrick]

You could tell they were interested in targeting a guy like you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The timing is coincidental. Today, US Is pro crypto. The White House pledged to make America the crypto capital of the world.

[Patrick]

You're not making friends with the Democratic Party.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That's crazy.

[Patrick]

Your tweet was one of the reasons that caused them to go out.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Don't think those were my exact words.

[Patrick]

There it is. That's the tweet. He was the biggest guy giving money to them. You just took that money away. Sam. Mini Madoff arrested. Adam Back is set. Satoshi Nakamoto. Do you think there's a chance that it's him? In their eyes, would China look at you as they made you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Because I look Chinese. I'm part of the CCP or anything like that. That's completely false.

[Patrick]

You make it seem like anybody can start a company and get to 100 billion.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm a normal guy.

[Patrick]

You're not a normal guy.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think I've ever sat in a Lambo yet.

[Patrick]

Stop it. Guys worth $100 billion, give or take. Never been on a Lambo. Enjoy today's conversation with the one and only cz. Cece. Great to have you on a podcast.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

[Patrick]

I told my guys, I said, listen, I noticed everybody was going in the cigar lounge to meet you. I said, you better not ask him for a loan. You better not go and see. You want a donation or a loan from this guy? Because the first thing they found. What's his net worth? Is he really worth $110 billion? That's what. That's the first thing people want to find out. And you're like, yeah, you know, he's a pretty rich guy. But it's funny. I got all these things I want to go through with you with your story. I was telling you earlier how your story's a movie. They could turn it into a movie at any time. And I hope it turns into a movie, because you've lived an interesting life. But you did. You flying from uae?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes.

[Patrick]

Okay. Is it true that you guys just got attacked or you got bombed yesterday by Iran at a couple oil facilities?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't know where they attacked, but as we were leaving, there were missile alerts, and the flight was on, off, on, off.

[Patrick]

When you were leaving?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

When we were leaving, yeah. So just on my way to the airport, like, no, the Flight was off and then 20 minutes later, the missile warning was, was canceled. Well, was resolved. It was on again and then it was off again and on again and then. Yeah, so that's how we fly. And we, we wait. So just before we were supposed to take off, there was off again. We said, well, let's just wait for 20 minutes. It was, it was, yeah, so. And then we had a 20 minute window.

[Patrick]

The plane, what did the pilot say? The pilot say, hey, we don't know, are they giving a safety protocol or no, hey, we're going to take off. It's going to be fine. It's going to be a long flight. We're going to be okay. There's going to be a little bit of turbulence. What warning did the pilot give?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So the pilot's just waiting for. The pilot's just following instructions. So whenever there's a warning, they huddle everything into this, into a safe room that's like in the middle of the airport, away from glasses, windows and stuff like that. And whenever the warning's off, you say, well, you can board the plane and then you fly off. And it was actually no turbulence. It was calm day. It was calm day.

[Patrick]

Turbulence. Were you worried while you're taking off

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

or no, I wasn't worried. Okay, so like 99% interception rate and super safe. Yeah, it is worrying because that missile flying in, but it's super safe.

[Patrick]

So living there yourself, you feel safe living in uae, Abu Dhabi. You do?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Very safe.

[Patrick]

When you think about all the things that you can buy with money, you can go to a restaurant, customer doesn't, you know, the waitress doesn't give you good service. You can buy the restaurant and say you're no longer here. You have that kind of money. You can go to a sports game, you don't like the team's management, you can make a massive offer the next day and buy an NBA team or an NFL team. But when it comes down to security, living at a place, what made you pick UAE out of all the places to live in?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I mean, it is the safest country. Well, safest country in the world.

[Patrick]

You believe that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

By far, yeah.

[Patrick]

Tell me why.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

If you drop your wallet on the street and it has like, I don't know, 3,000 bucks in there, you walk up, you come back in a week, you're still there, you'll find it. And people who find it will return it with a cash in there. There's basically zero crime, there's no petty crime, no big crimes, etc. And the fiscal security on the street translates into financial security, fintech, it's just very well run. And also the leadership of the country is very pro business, very, very smart, very, very calibrated, extremely visionary. So it's one of the best places to be.

[Patrick]

Do you think about the importance of like, what level of importance do you put on where to raise your family on the strength of the military of that country in today's turbulent times that we have, do you say, man, I wish UAE had a stronger military or no?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, I think I was actually surprised at how strong the military of UAE is. I didn't know until there were missiles flying in and they were intercepting it. I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. And I didn't like. You have to think about it, right? How much do you have to prepare that in advance to be able to intercept that many missiles coming in and takes years and years of preparation. So this foresight there, that's really hard to match. I think UAE does rely very heavily on US support from military equipment, technology.

[Patrick]

They rely on us for that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think so. Okay, so they're a very strong partner for the US So I think they do quite well. There's. But other than that, I think just the countries very well governed. If you have sensible leaders, you have smart leaders that are fair and that wants the country to grow instead of growing their own pockets, then you have a pretty good country.

[Patrick]

I saw a stat the other day and I wonder how you answered this one. In the 70s, in the S&P 500, it showed that 85 to 93% of the wealth was tied to tangible assets. In 1970.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

So if somebody was a billionaire and they lived in a state, they ran a business, they couldn't move to another state or they couldn't move to another country because it's tangible asset wealth that they have today. We've gone from 85. Yeah, 85 to 93% back in the days to now. It's the other way around. 92% is an intangible. Assets, patterns, you know, brands, you know, Bitcoin, crypto, AI, all this stuff that they're building moving forward. Do you think this is going to be a threat to countries that don't know how to handle small business owners or big businesses? That person can say, great, I'm going to go move in uae, I'm going to go to Singapore. How do you view that with how much of the wealth today is tangible instead of intangible?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think that's a great point. I think I agree with you 100%, which is right now, if you look at the wealth today, it's ip, it's technology, it's crypto. They have no borders. Even with IP and technology, there's some country limitations. Right? So if you run an IT company like say AI, you run in US or you run it in China, you're still kind of confined to those countries. Whereas in blockchain, in our industry, crypto, there's no borders. Your bitcoin is yours no matter where you are. You fly to a different country, you don't have to even make a transfer. That crypto stays with you. Right. And also technology startups, we're seeing a lot of technology companies amassing very high valuations. Those are the big drivers for this. Economies of countries and the world, they can be based anywhere. And this is good and bad. So now countries with favorable regulations, with good leadership, good regulations, good environments will attract the top talents. And talents are very mobile now. You get educated in one country, you can move to a different country very easily and you learn your skill. You can also work remotely. Binance has remote work. 5,000 people working remotely. So all of this is possible now.

[Patrick]

So in how many countries, the 5,000?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't really know for sure, but more than 100 countries, I would say.

[Patrick]

You have 5,000 employees working for Binance.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

They're all remote.

[Patrick]

In 100 plus countries, everyone's remote.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Pretty much everyone's remote. Wow. So I don't run Binance anymore. But no, this is the status. Pretty public.

[Patrick]

You still own 90% of it, though?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, actually I'm a large shareholder, but not 90%, so quite a bit less than that.

[Patrick]

But you still have majority control though. You're above 50.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm. I'm the, I'm the, I'm the single largest shareholder. So majority. Yes, yes.

[Patrick]

Okay, got it. So even though, after all this, which we'll get into, even though all that stuff happened, they said you couldn't be CEO, still, as a majority shareholder, you still carry a lot of influence, I think.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Influence, yes, But I don't run the company. I don't, I don't try to. I don't give them instructions. But, you know, my shareholder rights are intact, so I'm a shareholder, so I get shareholder information.

[Patrick]

Yeah, that's pretty wild. So 5,000 employees, 100 plus countries, you're a thinker. When I watch you in interviews and things you say, I've watched you with Peter Schiff debate on the way you brought the kilo of gold, you're like, here let's split it. You're trying to kind of make the point of the difference between traveling, airport. Why live in uae? Why not live in America? Why not, you know, from the outside yourself? Because America's always been known as the land of all opportunities, you know, the place to be for entrepreneurs. Do you, as an outsider, you're not an insider. Do you view America as the greatest country to live in today, moving forward as an entrepreneur?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Okay, I'll give you a very blunt answer, please. I think since the last one year and a half, I think America is probably back to the best country, to one of the best countries to live in. But during the Biden administration, it was one of the worst places to live in. I think I basically just tried to stay as far away from US as possible. During that time they were very hostile on crypto, they were very hostile on our industry. So I just wanted to stay as far away as possible. So it was not possible to run a crypto business in America before. I think now it's more possible. So I think in the last year and a half, we're seeing 180 degree reversal, which is great for the US economy, I think.

[Patrick]

Now would you consider ever coming down here and living here or no? You're happy in uae?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think right now my lifestyle is pretty set up and it's not easy getting US passports, etc. So I'm pretty content where I am. But I think we will definitely want to do more business and invest more

[Patrick]

in the us so if I'm a friend of yours, I know you do some mentoring as well for some of the founders that you work with. And if I ask you, I said, look, I got a bunch of different places to live in in crypto space. Should I go build my hub out of America or should I build it outside of America? What advice would you give me?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think today I would say definitely do have a presence in America, but you may want multiple presences because the crypto regulations today are country specific. US regulations doesn't service the rest of the whole world. Actually. I think UAE is actually one of the very few places that offer global crypto licenses for crypto exchanges. And that's fairly new as well. So we're still at the early stages of this regulatory frameworks in different countries. And US I think is progressing extremely well, extremely quickly. I think there was some progress on Clarity act even last night, but I think US is definitely one of the places to be. But I wouldn't say I always have a global view on business. I wouldn't focus on only one country. I think we're living, as we said before, we're living in a world where the country borders are much fuzzier in terms of technology, in terms of digital assets. So have a global view instead of we no longer need to do business in one country and then expand to another country and then expand to another country. We can. No, you can do parallel progress.

[Patrick]

So even if you did get a passport to come down here, you would still choose UAE today?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think today my life is pretty set up in the UAE right now. I will probably just stay there. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Again, the whole point with me is do countries realize what's going to happen to the future of these wealthy entrepreneurs who their assets are intangible, that they can no longer bully them with regulation because they got 200 other countries that would love to have them. Maybe not all 200 of them, let's just say 100 of them, they can go to have a decent Life. And then 10 countries that are very competitive for business, say UAE, Singapore, some of these countries you can go to. I wonder if as bad as it is today, we see reports of people leaving California with the whole wealth tax. I don't know if you're following that closely or not. And we see what they're talking about in New York and a trillion dollars left New York and California during COVID California just lost another trillion dollars and their net migration rate report came out that they're even losing more people now and they want to offer this 5% tax, billionaire tax on the couple hundred people that I have there. I wonder if they're going to realize how horrible of a move this is long term because you can go anywhere today. I wonder if they'll figure that part out. What do you think?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, what I hear is a lot of companies moving into taxes in the U.S. right? I don't know the details, but generally at a high level, I think high taxes doesn't work that well. When you impose high taxes or high transaction fees or just generally high cost for doing business, a business move away, basically you're taxing on a much smaller volume. You actually get less net tax tax, I think, or less net fees or income or revenue, whatever you call it, the concept is about the same. And as you said, now the 200 countries, they are kind of actually competing for favorable regulations for businesses, favorable environments for businesses. So yeah, I do think that place, that consideration is definitely in play. So it's not like the business won't move and you can just tax the Hell out of them. When you increase tax from, I don't know, from 1% to, to 10%, yeah, you might have less tax income. It's not that straightforward.

[Patrick]

Being close to Iran, what is your opinion on what's going on with Iran?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, I didn't follow geopolitics that closely before. I'm just like a business guy doing crypto, etc. But after the war started, I'm really not. I live in a country that was attacked by Iran. UAE did not initiate any attacks. And even UAE was the most missile attacks from Iran out of all countries. I think it's just because of the fiscal proximity, because they're just across the water. But even being attacked, being the most attacked, they didn't retaliate. Right. So UAE held back. They probably could, but they didn't. This goes to the wisdom of the country leadership. But living there, seeing missiles flying overhead can't make me support Iran. So I'm against all wars. And also I think based on my limited understanding, the fact that Iran hit every country in the Gulf is a bit crazy. I wish the war will stop soon. I wish people come to their senses. And also based on what I'm reading, it's just like there's no leadership there. There's no leadership in Iran. It's fairly chaotic. I really wish we can help put like somebody puts order in there and then people can move on to, to build businesses.

[Patrick]

You think it's unified, the Gulf states, like against Iran?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not too sure. I'm not an expert on this topic, but it doesn't seem to be super unified. I think everyone have different opinions, right? We see UAE withdraw from opec, which is pretty significant and also which is pretty strategic. So there's some. I wouldn't say everything's aligned. You have multiple countries, you have multiple personalities, you have multiple people involved. It's a dynamic environment. Again, I'm not an expert on this kind of.

[Patrick]

No, I asked that because you're also not a regular guy though. You know, you have a lot of money, you have a lot of influence. You build one the fastest growing companies to a billion dollars. At the time, it was the fastest. The total amount of money transactions that's been done in binance, I saw $125 trillion. I think I saw a number like that. So it's not like you, you know, you founded a just a regular company. It's a big company with a lot of influence and compliance. And I know when you're saying not all the Gulf states, UAE Saudi. Saudi dictates prices for oil. So there's probably not happy that UAE left and Qatar left in 2019. I was just wondering what your opinion would be on that, because safety matters at this phase. So going back to it, your story, fascinating story. You know, before everybody learned about you with Binance, at the time, I think you guys went from zero to billion, the fastest out of any other company that we had. And then reports came out you on Twitter, you have a massive following when it comes on to bitcoin, the comments you've made, the stories of you selling your house for $900,000, all of that. But for some of the audience that maybe doesn't know before you became the business tycoon that you are today, how does the story begin?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, we trace back, right. I was born in a fairly rural village in China. I grew up there, moved to a city when I was 10, and then moved to Canada when I was 12. And then I did high school there. I did high school in Vancouver and then started college in Montreal in McGill. Didn't graduate there. I did four years and then my intern boss gave me a job. Then I delayed and delayed and I never went back to McGill. I started working, then I worked in Tokyo, New York, Shanghai and then where else? Singapore. So I started as an IT guy and then turned into an entrepreneur. I worked in New York, in Bloomberg, in New York. And so I was always in the sort of financial tech, fintech field. And then I started a company. I was a junior partner of a IT company. I started a company with six other older guys in Shanghai in 2005, did that for eight years. And then I came across Bitcoin in 2013. And then I was like, this is the future technology. So at that time it was actually pretty interesting because I think there's three big technologies in my life. There's Internet, there's blockchain. And at the time, I didn't know what was next. Right at the time, I thought the next one was going to be like 10, 15 years later. Now we know it's AI. So I think this is the three big technologies in my life. When the Internet was happening, I was too young to really do anything meaningful with it. When blockchain is happening, we got lucky. We founded a platform that's impactful, that's useful. And then, so, yeah, that's kind of how I came to be. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Well, if I was in high school with you, say you're 14, 15 years old, who were you in high school? We're in a Class together. Who's cz?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I was a normal kid. I was a big geeky. I played a lot of sports and I was like, you know, Asian kid in Canada that played volleyball, that. Just normal kid, nothing. I wasn't super smart. I wasn't super. I wasn't the best in any academics. I was pretty decent in math and science. A bit weaker on the literature. Like, no, English, French. I was very bad in French. Yeah. So. But I was a normal kid. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Did people like, did you know you're gonna do something special? Like was there something where, like one day. Were you a driven kid or.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no, no, it was not. No. It was like there was no indications I was anything special. I was just a normal kid. Yeah. There was never any indications. Oh, this guy is gonna build a billion dollar company. Even.

[Patrick]

Were you a dreamer, would you dream about one day, you know, I'm gonna do this, make my family proud. Was there any thoughts like that with you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I didn't have any of the. I wanted to be successful. I want to do. I wanted to do well. But I never dreamed of being a billionaire or like, you know, run a largest crypto exchange like that. Just never, like, you know, I. I just wanted to like. No. Have a. I want to be financially successful. I want to have a successful career. I want to build a good life. I want to. I always worked hard, so. But it was. It was like I wasn't dreaming. Like. No, I want to be the worst. I don't know, whatever ranking that just does not.

[Patrick]

That wasn't you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

So I don't know if you read the book Accidental Millionaire. It was a book written about Apple, about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It was. I think it's a former employee that wrote. It's a little bit of disgruntled guy that was saying bad things about him. There's a different copy of it. If you go to Accidental Millionaire and you put Apple, just go to images, you'll see which one it is. Apple. That's the one right there. Then they wrote a book called the Accidental Bill. Yeah. If you notice, it's only got 11 reviews. This came out in 87. It's actually a very good book for somebody in the space. Lee Butcher was actually very good book. I read. Then the book came out called An Accidental Billionaire and that was written, I think, about Mark Zuckerberg who, you know, he became a billionaire. Now, I don't know what they call it. What's 100 is what senti is a hectare is 10 centi senti. Right. So. So you're an accidental centi billionaire.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm centy, to be honest. I think the Forbes estimates are a bit off. They're too high.

[Patrick]

Okay.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. But yeah, kind of accidental. Yeah.

[Patrick]

And how did it happen when you. Because I know the story. When you sold your property, if you want to share that story. When you sold the property and you bought all bitcoin, what got you to the point of saying I have to, have to be able to get into bitcoin?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I started learning about Bitcoin in 2013. Right. And at the time I was like, what, 36, 37? And then I was like, okay, this is, this is the future technology. This is bigger than the Internet. And when the Internet was happening, I was too young, so I was at 36, 37 ish. I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass by, so I said, look, I just got to get involved in this new technology field. I don't know what I'm going to do first. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I'm going to buy bitcoins first. So I sold my house, sold my apartment and bought bitcoin. So that was like pretty clear to me. That was a very long term conviction.

[Patrick]

What did you. Is this a $900,000 apartment?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes, this is a $900,000 apartment.

[Patrick]

And when you bought it at the time, what was the average price of bitcoin?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The average price I got in was about 600. I bought it at. I got payments in installments. Right. So I bought it at 800-600-400. So average to us.

[Patrick]

So we do six, we do 900,000 divided by 600 times 81,000. You're looking at $121 million, give or take something.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, just.

[Patrick]

Yeah, about 100 million selling a $900,000 apartment turn into $121 million.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

The average person listening to this thinks that's crazy. But what made you say, this is what I'm going to be doing? That's a pretty bold decision to make. That's a big risk to make.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, number one is I saw the clear future of the technology. I don't know what it's going to be like exactly, but I know it's going to grow.

[Patrick]

What made you say that? Is it a paper, Is it a white paper you read? Is it someone's paper you read or.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Back then there was much less materials about it. There was white paper That I read there was a forum called bitcointalk.org that I spent a lot of time on. And then going to conferences, meeting the people, the community made a huge difference. And also doing the first transaction with bitcoin, when you install your own bitcoin wallet and you realize, wait a second, this is a network. I can send money to anyone. Full control. There's no bank involved, there's no other fees involved. It's instantaneous. So once you realize that, it's like, this is a technology for the future. Not only did I just sell their apartment, I actually quit my job to look for a new job in this industry. So most people will say those two combined are pretty high risk. But I think, as I detail in the book, risk is not based on the action. It's based on your individual circumstance. For me, my risk tolerance at the time was high because I know I can get a job. If bitcoin went to zero, I can get a job in a bank. I can get a job on Wall Street.

[Patrick]

Again, that confidence came from what? You're just pure skill set and knowled.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. So like, no. By the time I learned About Bitcoin In 2013, between 2001, 2005, I was working in Bloomberg in New York. And so I was doing entrepreneurship for eight years afterwards. I thought my experience and everything else have increased. My value should have increased.

[Patrick]

At the time when you sold your apartment and you quit your job, how much did you have in liquid cash? Did you have some money or not very much.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Because I put most of my cash into the company that was working before, and the rest the cash was in the apartment.

[Patrick]

Less than a half a million bucks.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, way less, actually, probably much less. The department money was pretty much all I had.

[Patrick]

The reason why I say this is it's not like that was a. You made the decision because you had a couple million dollars in a bank from a previous exit. Oh, no, you're not rich at this time.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no, no. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Okay.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

So that's a risky decision right there. But you trusted your ability on the way to work and the skill set that you had and the knowledge that you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, so I didn't need the 900,000 to maintain my lifestyle. I can work for income that will maintain my life.

[Patrick]

And you were a minimalist even at that time?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, I wouldn't call myself a minimalist. I'm just pretty basic. Right. So I wouldn't like, you know, if you look at my table is, it's got all kind of camera gadgets I wouldn't like minimal, like very clean. That's, that's how I like think of minimalist. I'm just a normal, basic guy.

[Patrick]

Got it. Okay.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't do anything fancy.

[Patrick]

So when you found out bitcoin, was it like a three o' clock in the morning, aha, moment. You're calling your friend. Wake up, John. I got to tell you something. We're going to do something special. Did you have a, did you have a moment like that or was it gradual?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, a friend told me. A friend, Ron Tao, told me about bitcoin over a poker game. It was a very friendly poker game. And then afterwards I spoke to another friend who, who's. His name is Bobby Lee. He was just about to join.

[Patrick]

Bobby Lee.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, he was just about to join BTC China, which is at the time,

[Patrick]

not the comedian Bobby Lee.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, different. Different. Okay.

[Patrick]

When I think about Bobby Lee, all I think about is Bobby. The whole Bond thing.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not this guy. Not this guy. Yeah. But, yeah. So there was a couple of friends who were like, who are around me. They were getting pretty serious into bitcoin. I was like, okay, let me, let me learn about this a little bit more. Yeah.

[Patrick]

And so from there is it, you know, inviting friends over, guys, we're going to go do this, we're going to go do that? Or no, it was more I got to go find a company to work

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

for at the time. First I spoke to a bunch of guys. We tried to do a few different businesses. Basically, let's do this and that. I talked to a couple of friends in Taiwan who used to work for tsmc, the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturer. Manufacturer. Basically all the Nvidia chips, all the AI chips, 80% of the world's chips are manufactured there. We wanted to do a bitcoin mining chip or a mining machine, but that didn't materialize. It involves a lot of logistics, which are not my specialty.

[Patrick]

How close did you guys get to executing that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not very close. We discussed business concepts. We had like maybe even a business plan, but we didn't pull the trigger. I did a couple like robot ATM machines. I actually sold a couple, but that also didn't grow. And then I said, okay, well instead of trying to do a startup, let me try to work for a company first. And I bump into a few guys at Blockchain Info and then I joined them for like a few months.

[Patrick]

Big company, small company, startup, very small company.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I joined as a third person there.

[Patrick]

And who were the. Were they players? The other two guys, were they players? In the bitcoin space?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, the founder. Yeah, the founder is a 20 year old kid who wrote a website that attracted 20 million users.

[Patrick]

Wow. At the time he was 20.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

At the time he was 21, 22. Yeah.

[Patrick]

And how old were you at the time?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I was like 30, I was 36. 37.

[Patrick]

So 36, 37 year old goes, works for a 20 year old build a website with 20 million users.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, he already built the website. I was just helping him. Really? Yeah. So yeah.

[Patrick]

So did you go in as an equity position player or. No, just a regular person?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I joined without much equity. I was have an earn out to earn the equity but I didn't stay that long. I didn't stay more than a year, so I didn't have.

[Patrick]

Did he end up becoming a major player like his? Is he a known guy in bitcoin today? Become very successful?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No. His name is Ben Reeves, he's the founder of the company. But he sold his shares later on for at least a few million, probably double digit millions. But then he's a very low key introvert so he stayed out of sight.

[Patrick]

Got it. Ben Reeves, is that part of blockchain.com

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

or I think they later renamed to blockchain.com? yeah. This page doesn't talk about Ben Reeves, but Ben Reeves is a founder, is a true founder. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

Benjamin Reeves, Peter Smith and Benny Reeves. Got it. So what did you learn from what he did? So now you're working there, what, what did Ben do? Because you're not there for too long.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

How long were you there?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I was there for eight months.

[Patrick]

And during that eight months, was it an accelerated learning curve of finding out everything with bitcoin?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I learned a lot actually. Number one is the community is very dynamic. So this guy, Ben Reeves, his only marketing was based on one thread on bitcointalk.org, which is a virtual bulletin form.

[Patrick]

That's what brought 20 million people.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. And then also blockchain info at the time didn't have a company, they don't use bank accounts, they don't have an office. They pay everybody in bitcoin, they pay all the. You know, when we grow into like 18 people, we just. The company just pay every month, sends some bitcoin to all the employees. It's up to them to how they handle that bitcoin. Those bitcoins, they didn't have the office, they didn't even have the company back then. So it's just like 18 people working together and they're still growing. So I learned a lot of different stuff about blockchain, about crypto during that time.

[Patrick]

Yeah, got it. So the whole. Did your idea of not having a headquarters kind of come from the experience here that you don't need it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That definitely contributed to like when early on in Binance, I said, look, we don't need a headquarter, we can pay everybody in crypto.

[Patrick]

Yeah, got it. So then from there, eight months later, what do you do next?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I actually joined a bitcoin exchange in China, OkCoin at the time. And then I learned a bit about how exchanges operate. Exchanges were actually much closer to what I know best. I dealing. Been dealing with trading systems quite a lot. So yeah, so actually he hired me into. Into. Into OkCoin. Yeah.

[Patrick]

So that's OkX. And then how long are you there with them?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I was there also just under a year.

[Patrick]

Under a year, yeah.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So yeah.

[Patrick]

So this turned into a big company. They got 5,000 plus employees. This is San Jose, Cal. How big of a company is this?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think they are about 2 to 3,000 people, maybe 5,000. I don't know, I haven't. But they're, they're still around. They're. They're the decent size. Size Exchan probably about, I would imagine, like about 10 times smaller than Binance.

[Patrick]

10 times smaller than Binance? Yeah. Even. Even Coinbase, I saw the numbers. Even Coinbase is what, a third of your size?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Depending on how you calculate by trading volume, they're much less than that. But by bitcoin reserves they're probably about. I actually don't know the numbers on top of my head anymore. But bitcoin reserves, they start. Coinbase has a, has a decent bitcoin reserves. They started early.

[Patrick]

Got it. So from, from that company you go to, from China, how much longer after that do you start Binance?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So I left that company. That took. Took me another. I left that company in 2015 and it was two years later, in 2017, I launched Binance.

[Patrick]

So at this point, when you're leaving and you're working at these different companies, what. What is? Are you sitting there saying, I'm eventually going to start something, I'm eventually going to start something? Or that's not even on your mind right now.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So in 2015 I said, look, I'm going to do my own startup, right? And I actually wanted to do a bitcoin exchange basically very similar to what Binance is. But then the team I assembled, we only had tech guys and we don't have a marketing team. We don't have a. And I want to do the bitcoin exchange in Japan. And none of us spoke Japanese. So I tried to raise money from VC investors and they said, like, no, there's no way you can do this bitcoin exchange thing, but you can provide the technology for bitcoin exchanges. So we pivoted to a technology company providing exchange systems to other exchanges. And we did that for two years. And then was 2017, we said, well, there might be a chance that we can pivot to running a bitcoin exchange ourselves. So 2015, we tried to do a bitcoin exchange, but we were not quite ready.

[Patrick]

Pre 17, are you a known player in the crypto world and the bitcoin world?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think I had a bit of a reputation by 2017, because back then,

[Patrick]

what would people say about you? Who was CZ pre starting Binance? Like, if somebody came up, like right now we talk about Ben Reeves. If Somebody said, hey, CZ in 2017, pre binance, what would they say about CZ?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

They would probably say, like, CZ is a technology guy, been involved in the crypto industry relatively early and worked being a senior position in a wallet company, senior position in exchange company, and then build his own business as a technology, exchange systems, technology company. That's probably what people would say. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Okay. And so from there, now you have a reputation. Are you at a point that if you start something, people want to work with you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Generally, yes. Okay, yes.

[Patrick]

So now you start Binance. When you start Binance, what. What were some of the big early meetings you guys had? Like, do you, you know, you think about the meeting that everybody has seen with Jack Ma when he's doing Alibaba and he's there with, you know, five, six, seven guys. I'm sure you've seen this video. It's not black and white, but it's old video where you can tell it's not a. Did you have a meeting like that where he said, guys, here's what we're building?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a meeting like that. We said, look, let's build this thing called crypto to crypto exchange, right? And put the guys into a room and says, this is what we're going to build. And I told him, look, I've been for the last, I don't know, 17 years in my career. I've always been working on exchange systems, and now I think this is the time to build it. If I don't do this, I'm going to keep thinking about this for the rest of my life. So if I don't do this today, I might try again two years, five years, 10 years later. So it's something that we have to do sooner or later, and now might just be the right time to give it a shot. None of the other people objected. Everyone's like, yeah, let's go.

[Patrick]

Was everybody in?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Everybody was in.

[Patrick]

So nobody's like, I don't know, cz, whether you're going to be able to pull this off. Nobody doubted you on my team.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Nobody doubted. Everyone's just, okay, sounds good. Let's go for it. But when I try to raise money from VCs, no one invested. Everyone's like, no, the exchange space is too crowded. There's too many exchanges out there already. You can't do it. So that's the VC investors. And then we did an ICO initial coin offering.

[Patrick]

I saw that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

And then everyone wants to buy the ICO.

[Patrick]

This is the $15 million or something?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, this is the $15 million ICO. It was like, so it was like a stark contrast. So.

[Patrick]

And it's $15 million. Am I correct when I say it gave 4100x return?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah, Pretty much, yeah. Yeah.

[Patrick]

So if somebody would have put a dollar, it's worth 4300. If somebody would have put $1,000 into it, 4100X would be, what, 40,000, 400,000? $4.1 million.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

Just from a thousand dollars?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even more, like, depending on the BNB price at different times. Yeah, yeah. But it was, but at the time was just crazy because we had a white paper and people were willing to give us $15 million for about half of the total supply of the coins.

[Patrick]

Did anybody give money that was a player where you're like, oh, wow, that guy is willing to give us money? Was there any.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

Who were some of the big names?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, they're all crypto guys, right? So this Gu. This guy, his name is Shenor, he runs. What's his company name? Invictus. He, he, he did a couple different companies.

[Patrick]

I think China or Japan.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He was in China at the time.

[Patrick]

He was in China. Okay, got it.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

And so he, when I, when I, when I asked him, he just told me. He just told me that, no, cz, I'll give you this much money. This is before he read the paper. This is before he read anything. He just said, oh, cz, you're going to do a project, I'm going to support you. I think he sent me I want to say like 100 ETH at the time was. I don't know, I forgot the price, but, you know, he gave me like a couple hundred thousand dollars.

[Patrick]

Yeah, that's pretty wild. So people have your back. People are believing what you're going to be doing. They're sitting there, you know, they're believers of what CZ is going to be doing. At what point was it when you're like, guys, this thing's off to the races? We built something special. When did that happen?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think it was about a month after launch. So we launched in July 14, 2017. A month after launch, we were like, we were growing. The first three weeks. The BNB price was actually underwater, was below the ICO price. So that was like high pressure, period. And then about a month late, but a week, the next week, BNB price went 29x. This is like 2,900 times in one month. 2,900% in one week? In one week, in the fourth week. And then that's when I, okay, this thing might work if it stays. And also we look at our user growth on the platform. The users were growing like this. So there were real users with real training. And then it was about. I forgot. It was like maybe two months, three months in. Asked our finance like, how are we doing financially? The guy said, well, we're making a couple hundred bitcoins. I thought that number was wrong. I was like, there's no way we're making that kind of fees.

[Patrick]

Couple hundred bitcoins.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Back then, bitcoins were maybe like $3,000. It's not like $100,000 today. Well, not like 70, $80,000 today. But yeah, it was like a couple hundred bitcoins on revenue. I was like, there's no way that's correct. And so we double check the numbers. We're like, okay, then we got this correct. Well, then we got a. We probably got a viable business.

[Patrick]

Wow, 200 bitcoins a day.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, not a day, like over, Over a period of time.

[Patrick]

Over that, that few weeks that you're

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

talking about over like maybe one or two months. I don't. Yeah.

[Patrick]

And you know, in your mind, that's a lot at that point. Like, things are starting to pick up for us. $600,000, right? 200 bitcoins at 300, $3,000. By saying it correctly, $600,000. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So, so things start growing and then how long did it take you guys until you got the billion dollar valuation?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So we, I don't know when the valuation is. But we probably want. We are one of the fastest companies to reach $1 billion in profits. I think that took about a year.

[Patrick]

Profits took one year.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Not rev.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not rev. Not rev. So it's profits. Yeah. Well, at the time, profits rev is

[Patrick]

pretty similar because your margins are so.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Because our team is small, our cost is low at that time, TNT is very small. And so. Yeah, so that's when. Yeah, that's about a year. A year.

[Patrick]

So at that time, who are the major. Who are the top five biggest players in crypto Bitcoin in 2017, 2018?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, there was Polonax, which was the biggest. And then later on Bitrax become the biggest by the time we launched. Well, Coinbase was up there, but not the biggest. There was a bit flyer in Japan who was like, pretty big. The biggest for a while. Bitfinex was the biggest for a while too. Who else? Those were kind of like the three or four players.

[Patrick]

Got it. So a billion dollars in profits. Did you yet sense that you're making enemies or. No? Everybody is good with you guys. You're not getting weird phone calls. People are not upset at you. Other people are not experiencing envy or did you start experiencing enemies?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

We started. Experienced jealousy even from day one. Even before, like, just from day one we launched, people were like. People were like competitors. Other exchanges were somewhat hostile. But that's just competition. Right. So that's just business competition, nothing dirty. Some of them are a little bit borderline. Right. So there's a lot of smear articles that are sponsored by our competitors. Which is great for us. Which is great for us because we're a new platform. We couldn't afford the advertising money and they were talking about us. Yeah. So there has been like, attacks, what we call fud, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Basically false news even from day one. But I thought that was just business competition. The regulatory scrutiny came much later. The regulatory scrutiny came like 20, 20, like three, four years later.

[Patrick]

Yeah, the year one where you're going zero to a billion in profits and you guys are getting. Oh, my God, we got 200 bitcoins. What are you talking about? That. What does your schedule look like? Year one.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, that was. Year one was crazy.

[Patrick]

Give me the schedule. What does it look like? What are you doing?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I basically will go home to sleep from like 2:00am to about 6:00am like, that's returning home and leaving home. Right. So that's shower and sleep in between. And then I will probably take a nap in the office like around 2 to 3pm Somewhere around there, like depending on who's in what meetings we have. And the team probably did the same very similar stuff for, like, basically a year. The whole team was in the office the whole time. The office is very high, like very loud. It's just buzzing with energy, just people yelling over each other. It's like a flea market. So, yeah, that was like the first year. And it was just constant issues, constant stuff happening.

[Patrick]

You miss that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Actually, some part of me do. There's a feeling that people really miss. It's like fighting with. Fighting in the trenches with your comrades, with your teammates. That's a very rewarding feeling. It's a very strong social network connection. But honestly, I don't think my body can handle it now. Right.

[Patrick]

When you tell the story and you go through a phase like that, the average person, they won't believe it when you tell them the story.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, yeah. Most people cannot imagine how hard we work.

[Patrick]

Were you ever hospitalized for anxiety, for exhaustion? Were you ever experiencing dehydration where you had to go and get yourself iv?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I have not, but other people on our team have.

[Patrick]

On your team?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, other people on our team. So I tell people entrepreneurship is a physical, demanding activity. It's not just mental, it's a physically demanding activity. Our CTO still use eye drops from today, from those days. He got an eye infection, he had to use eye drops. He still uses that till today.

[Patrick]

So he's still there.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He's no longer CTO now, but he's still there. He's one of the co founders who.

[Patrick]

The original people that were there. Is it fair to say they're all financially successful? Beyond wildest imagination. They all are success. And you guys are all friends still. You guys have relationships together. That's a beautiful thing about building something like that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

And 80% of the CO founders still with the company. I'm actually one of the person that stepped back. And also even the people who left, we're friends. So my co founders made money. So there's a saying, especially in the Chinese communities, that I have been a pretty good leader, that I treated my people well.

[Patrick]

That's good. And by the way, would you consider yourself Chinese? Like, if somebody asks you nationality, would you say I'm Chinese?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I think I'm definitely like, so I'm ethnicity wise, I'm Chinese, right? By blood. But my thinking, my way of doing business, my mental process is much, much more Canadian U.S. even. Canadian U.S. yeah. Like, I think my. I think my English accent is more US centric. Even though, like, May not be perfect, but the way I think and I do business is much more US capitalist, Western ideology, Western ideology, freedom, freedom driven, etc. Yeah.

[Patrick]

So let's go back to Binance. So you're at a billion. You're starting to get some articles being written about you. You're getting some enemies coming to you at this point. Has Sam Bankman Fried started anything or nothing yet?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no, no. He started way later. He started 2000. Earliest I met him was January 2019.

[Patrick]

So. So you start 17, you don't meet him till 19.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

And does he have a name in the market? Like, do people know who he is or nothing yet?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, when I met him, I didn't know who he was. Our, our client, Our client manager tells me, you know, Alameda was a pretty decent trader or pretty big trader on Binance. Like, okay, who's Alameda? Okay, I'll go shake his hand.

[Patrick]

Got it. And that was Alameda. Was him?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Okay. Okay. So in the Market now, by 2020, who is Binance? By 2020?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

By 2020, Binance. Well, by 2020, Binance has been the biggest crypto exchange for more than three years. So people just view Binance as the largest crypto exchange.

[Patrick]

But at that point, back to back to back, you're the King Kong of the space.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I wouldn't say King Kong. We have the largest. Well, Binance was the largest centralized exchange, but there's like decentralized, there's blockchains, there's other things. There's stablecoins, there's other businesses in the ecosystem.

[Patrick]

The criticism that some people give is, and I wonder, of course it's a strategy when it's the zero fee strategy that you had. How did you guys. What was your thinking behind that? What prompted you to say, we're not going to charge a fee. Here's how our approach is going to be and the market's going to react to it. How did that idea come about?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think it's a very simple business idea where you want to provide a large amount of value and you only want to realize a small portion of it. So you want to provide a value of 10 and hopefully only take five for yourself. If you can do that consistently, people will do a lot of business with you, your customers will come to you, and you will grow quickly.

[Patrick]

Why didn't others do it? If it's such a simple thing, why didn't the other guys do it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think a lot of people have in their heads that they want to maximize their, their cut on Each transaction. What you want to do is actually you want to minimize your cut on each transaction and you want to increase the number of transactions so you multiply the scale. Many people just can't handle it. Many people just want to like I want to take the maximum that's possible. That's harsh. But for example, if you look at some of the largest businesses, Google, Google makes fees on advertising, but they provide a lot of free infrastructure in the Internet space. The time clock that we use is probably synced by with a Google time server that's completely free. The DNS services that is completely free. So they provide a lot of infrastructure to run the Internet completely free. They just make money from advertising, like from some ads. And now the ads coverage is more spread across different products. But for years they only advertise on search. Like Gmail was no ads. Google Maps was no ads for years. But they were able to make enough money to sustain themselves. We had the same, we were in a very lucky, same fortune problem situation where our revenues from a small amount of business, from a few businesses were able to sustain us, to provide more free services to everyone so that we can grow the industry, we can grow the crypto industry. So if you provide a value of 10 and you charge only 2 and you can sustain yourself and you can scale, your business will grow really fast. So many people don't realize that you actually want to charge the minimum cut until you are sustainable and hopefully you can scale. If you can do that, you'll make way more money than you charge. 8 or 9.

[Patrick]

So where's the real money made with Binance?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Trading fees?

[Patrick]

Actually Trading fees.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Just trading fees. When people trade, we charge a small commission or Binance charges a small commission

[Patrick]

comparable to others. How much lower are you compared to others?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think compared to some, especially some of the US players, we're probably 20x lower.

[Patrick]

20x lower?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, in some places. So we provide the lowest fees in the non US markets. We don't have access to that fee. We don't have access to the US markets yet.

[Patrick]

Yeah, got it. So 20 times less.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Than competitors. So that got the world to come to you. So then you have volume that other people try to replicate that model as well.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

People do. People. People try, yeah.

[Patrick]

To make it a 0 fee, like a very low fee.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

And people try. People even try to compensate, like pay users to trade on them. People try all kind of different models.

[Patrick]

Has anybody succeeded as wildly as you guys did coming out?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I would say no. The fees is important. Fees is one part there's other parts like no. How you protect users, how good is customer service, how well you do things overall, how good is your technology? There's multiple things in play, but fees is important, I think.

[Patrick]

So can you give me some numbers? Because when I look at the numbers that I pulled up with what you guys have done, some of these numbers are wild when you look at the stats. So lifetime trading volume $125 trillion total users registered users globally 280 to 300 million registered users. At peak, you held 70% of market share during zero fee promotions. Closest competitor by bit. Only 8% of market share revenue estimate 16 billion to 20 billion in 2024, 2025, 22 and a half times Coinbase. I mean I can go through a lot of these numbers. It's insane. What some of the things at peak promotions 85% the total weekly volume was zero fee Market share skyrocketed from 50 to 70% when you announced a zero fee bitcoin trading on July of 2022. Some of these numbers are staggering. At what point were you. When did the company's valuation hit 100 billion?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, actually I don't even know what. I'm not sure if that happened yet.

[Patrick]

What was the biggest milestone you guys celebrated? What was something where even you were shocked by?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think we. Well, Binance generally count its number of users. That's probably the easiest milestone trading volume. It's pretty easy to count as well. Valuation. Binance is a private company. I don't think Binance has ever done a deal, had a raise or had

[Patrick]

a numbers you will hear about is 100 to $300 billion. But to you it's a private company, so you don't even know what it's worth.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

There's no transaction at those valuations. So those are estimates by third parties. But the company has never raised money at those valuations. So. Yeah, but the thing we for me personally as a shareholder not running the company anymore. I just look at the user numbers, I just say, look, they publish that publicly. So 300 million, 315 million. Those are good numbers to service pretty well to service users.

[Patrick]

Where do you think it can go in the future? I know you're not running it. What do you think it can turn into?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think, well, the CEO He Yi just announced the target is 3 billion users users as the next target. But I don't think that's the ultimate target. That's just the next target.

[Patrick]

What do you think would be the ultimate target?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think, well, everybody on the Planet should use money and that's humans. And then they are AI agents and that's going to be. All of us should have thousands. Each person should have thousands of AI agents, so in the future we may count humans plus agents. I don't know.

[Patrick]

Each of us should have thousands of AI agents working for us. Yeah, working for us.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah. So you know, they can edit this podcast video for you. They can buy your coffee, they can, I don't know, book your trips, hotels, flights.

[Patrick]

Yeah, you just fired 15 people here. CC, these are nice people here. You're talking to them.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

They're going to use their agents to do the work for them and then they're going to. You're going to have more podcasts.

[Patrick]

So if you have 5,000 employees, not you, but you're the majority. Chef Binance has 5,000 employees today in 100 plus countries. How many AI agents do you guys have?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Actually, I don't know how many agents they use. One number I just heard very recently is this just came from an anecdotal conversation. I heard they pay like $10 million per month on AI fees.

[Patrick]

Per month?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Per month.

[Patrick]

Binance is paying $10 million a month in AI fees.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's just like tokens. AI tokens. That's what I heard. This is what I heard like a second third hand information. I didn't verify it.

[Patrick]

Very interesting. And what did they use that, what do they do with that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't know for sure, but I would think that it's probably a majority on developer like coding. I don't know if they use cloud code or some other AI code. Probably just coding is a big part. Customer support is a big part. Because customer support is also language interactions. Yeah, I think those probably are the bigger two. I, I do encourage them to use more AI for risk monitoring, risk control, compliance. All of those areas can use AI, but I'm not sure if the models are very mature yet. In those areas. I don't think there's a lot of training, a lot of data, et cetera.

[Patrick]

What do you think maturity looks like in 5 to 10 years when language learning model ChatGPT came out like this life change for everybody. Teachers didn't know how to react. Universities like, wait a minute, this is a perfect paper. What are these spaces for? Who wrote this paper? Right. Everything was a disruption. Right. What is life going to look like where companies in five, 10 years have tens of thousands of AI agents? What do you think is going to happen?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think we're going to see a lot more faster Progress. So I always believe that technology is a tool that increases productivity and that leads to faster progress of our civilization. Hopefully we don't get overran by AI that becomes sovereign, etc. But I think before that we're going to see a dramatic increase in productivity and progress. So we should be able to discover drugs much quicker, cure diseases, we should be able to discover new materials that are lighter and harder and stronger and we can go explore space. We should solve many of the problems we can't solve today. Both economics and I think we'll just progress faster. We can build applications much faster, we can write software much faster already. So we are seeing much better apps, much more apps. So yeah. So I think our productivity is just going to increase.

[Patrick]

When you do a SWOT analysis and you're talking about AI and AI agents, what's the T, what's the threat long term with AI?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, obviously if AI becomes self conscious and they want to compete or they don't even have to compete with us, if they just pursue a goal that we get in the way and they just want to move us aside, then that's the risk. Right. So we just need to figure out how to build AI safely, which is difficult I think because of the competition right now.

[Patrick]

Yeah. How do you do that? Because if we as a society run as a higher regulated environment where maybe China is not running on a high regulated environment and they kind of lose control of the AI, what could happen if some people get a little too aggressive? Will they'll be, you know, a moment where there'll be world AI regulation that everybody will deal with.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I have a slightly, I'm not sure if regulation is the cure. I think it's one of the solutions that will help. I think the industry itself has to self regulate. Well, self regulate. I think by the time regulators figure out what's going on, the problems already occur.

[Patrick]

That's right.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Right. So your speed is too slow. Regulators are always reactive. So they see a problem, then they try to fix it and they're very slow. Whereas the industry players, they're competing. This multi hundred billion dollar company is competing for business. China, us, maybe other countries as well. They have significant drivers to push progress to the max. But at the same time, long term I do hope the positive forces will win. So it could be like you have a bad AI, then you have to make a good AI to combat it potentially. Who know?

[Patrick]

Yeah, got it. So you're going to have the bad AIs which will naturally happen, the evil, the villain, the enemy and it will produce more good to take over the bad and fight against it.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think so. I think in any industry there's always going to be some players that are unethical, bad. There's always going to be a few bad apples. But by and large, I think our society overall, we are around because we are overly. We have more positive forces. So that's, that's. I have a pretty optimistic view on humans, our civilization.

[Patrick]

When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscan Italy. We chose true Italian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience. Spent two years perfecting every detail. And we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the future. Looks bright collection. Not rushed. Not disposable. Not ordinary, rather intentional. Luxurious. Timeless. Do you remember that conversation between Jack Ma and Elon Musk where Jack Ma is like, you know, humans, you know, AI can't do anything that we're doing and they're kind of. Do you remember that exchange between the two of them, Rob, can you find that? It's a short clip between two of them. Is this the one? Jack Ma? Humans or computers are smarter? Yeah, maybe start a little bit. Let's just see how quickly it gets into. Let's see if we can get any of it. Press play when. Go ahead. Basically, there's just a smaller and smaller corner of intellectual pursuits that humans are better than computers and that every year it gets smaller and smaller and soon we will be far, far surpassed in every single way, guaranteed. Is there a reaction from Jack Ma to Elon? See if there's a part where he reacts. So we used to think like, for example, being good at chess was an example of a smart human. I mean right now your cell phone could crush the world champion of chess, literally.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

My view is that computer may be clever, but human being are much smarter. Yeah, definitely not clever. Is very academic. Is knowledge driven. Smarter. Is experience driven. Computer is smart. Is clever. But it's human being. We invented a computer.

[Patrick]

Okay, you can pause it right there. Who do you agree with?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not too sure, to be honest. I don't take binary reviews on this type of things. I take a more gradient balanced view. I think there's somewhere there's multiple aspects to it. I think, as we will see, this

[Patrick]

is a tough spot for you to be in because Jack Ma, you know where he's at. And then Elon Musk, I'm actually curious your thoughts on this.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think we will see increasing intelligence capabilities from AI. They can solve more and more problems and they can compute. The computational power is going to increase. They can do more and more complex things. I'm not sure about the emotional or what do you call it, the human, the sort of emotional aspects of it. I think AI so far is not sentient. They don't have consciousness, they're probably not sympathetic to a lot of the human emotions, et cetera. They may be able to, we may even be able to mimic that. AI may even be able to mimic that. But I don't think they're the true human feelings. And I think humans can use AI with this increased intelligence. Humans are very adaptable. Also based on business success. Business success doesn't come from intelligence alone. Right. Smarter people don't build large businesses. There's a lot of fairness, ethicalness, eq, a lot of other things that interesting. Right? So just being smart doesn't mean you have more money.

[Patrick]

Right?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The word doesn't work.

[Patrick]

So the point there is just because AI is smarter than human doesn't mean their EQ and empathy is going to help them retain people. So somebody may argue that and say they don't need people, they don't need to have EQ because they're talking to other AI agents that you don't need to tell them how amazing they are. You don't need to ask them how their wife and husband and kids are doing because they don't need that validation. So makes drama a little bit easier. You don't lose efficiency because somebody's in a bad mood because you didn't give them a high five that morning. So that argument may be made against humans.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, it can be. It certainly can be. So AI may be more efficient and less dramatic and less troublesome to manage, etc. So that is possible. But I don't think they replace humans in that sense.

[Patrick]

You don't think so?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think so in the short term and I also think that we'll find the proper safety guardrails against it. Against it. So there might be some accidents, there might be some damages, there might be some problems, but I think over the long run we will find the guardrails.

[Patrick]

So future looks bright.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think so. I'm always.

[Patrick]

I like it. By the way, if you were 20 years, if the 35 year old CZ who was working crazy hours, those 12, you know, the 12 months that you guys went zero to a billion in profits, if he's 35 year old today, in today's market, what industry are you entering? What are you doing, how are you, you know, what software are using, what technology are using? What would you get into today?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, I think for me I was still getting to the same, same industry. I think you gotta, you can't just chase every hot industry. You have to, you have to do what you do do best. You have to do what you're good at, what interests you and what's valuable for others. You got to find the intersection of those three things. And those three things doesn't change overnight for a young person. You can learn about blockchain or you can learn about AI, both are good. So I wouldn't change what I would do, but I would change the way I would do it a little bit. I would be much more focused, much less distractions and just with hindsight you will know, okay, I can be so much more focused instead of getting distracted in a lot of different places, et cetera.

[Patrick]

Got it. So Internet was first, blockchain was second, AI is third. What do you think is going to be fourth?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't know. That's very hard to predict. Like for example, before ChatGPT came out, AlphaZero, AlphaGo was there, right? That wasn't a big industry. But then ChatGPT came, that was suddenly okay, all this AI things happening before, before that, you know, Sam may know, but I didn't know. So I have to wait for it, for it to happen to see what's next. And what's next probably going to be another, I don't know, another 10 years away.

[Patrick]

You think the next is going to be another 10 years away?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I don't know for sure. I'm just saying that roughly, right? I don't know for sure because at

[Patrick]

any point we could wake up and something new, we're like, wait a minute, what is the quantum, you know, computing and you know it's going to take this long to build it and all of a sudden, what if they do it faster? What could that turn into? So who knows what's going to be taking place?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It could happen tomorrow.

[Patrick]

So yeah, yeah, true, it can happen. So it's a safer answer to say could happen tomorrow, but. So let's go back to Binance. We're talking about sbf. When the conversation came up, Sam Bankman fried with ftx. So at one point you guys did have a relationship together, right? The two of you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, we had, we had an investment into, into ftx.

[Patrick]

So there was, was there ever a

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

relationship or no, no, I wouldn't. Well, we know each. We met each other, we had each other's contact, but I wouldn't call it a very close relationship. I probably talked to him less than 10 times in total.

[Patrick]

Did you guys ever break bread, just the two of you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

We had one meal together.

[Patrick]

Just the two of you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Just the two of us.

[Patrick]

What was that like?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

This was when he was seeking investment from Binance. Right. And we just chatted. No, we just tried to get to know each other a little bit better, etc. We had one meal together, just the two of us.

[Patrick]

When you walked away, what was the feeling you got from him?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The feeling I got is he was very high eq.

[Patrick]

High eq.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He's very. Yeah. So he knows what to say to. He knows to. This is the impression I got for him. He knows what to say, when to say, in front of whom, in what kind of circumstances, he will say the right stuff. He was very respectful to me. He was saying all the right stuff, like, we're going to collaborate, we're going to build this, we're going to help to grow the crypto industry, we're going to solve, we're going to help the regulatory evolution. He was saying all the right stuff that, you know. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Did you walk away saying, I like this guy, I trust this guy, sounds like a good player?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

We were actually, after that meal, we actually declined to invest. I think that was in summer 2019.

[Patrick]

Where was it at? Were you guys in the States?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Actually, it was somewhere in Asia, I think. I think Singapore somewhere. But we actually turned, like, he wanted investment from us. We actually turned it down. And then he came back in November to our CFO at the time, Wei, and he made a much improved offer. And then we invested.

[Patrick]

Why'd you take the meeting? The first time he came, was he already player? Was he somebody that was a known

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

guy at that time? He was one of the larger traders. He was a VIP trader. Alameda was a VIP trader on Binance. So the VIP manager's like, well, give him a meeting. Right. I usually don't. Don't meet with VIPs, but he has a specific proposal where he wants to build a future exchange. He wants to build ftx. He wants us to invest.

[Patrick]

And this is where you guys put $2 billion into it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no, no, no. We're putting much less money into it. I think we. If I'm mistaken, not mistaken, we probably put a couple hundred. Well, no, sorry. A couple million dollars into it.

[Patrick]

This is way early on.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

This is early On.

[Patrick]

Okay.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think we got close to $2 billion out of the deal when we exited at the time. And then we held them in FTT tokens. Part of it was NFT tokens, which went to zero now.

[Patrick]

Oh, and that's why they're soon binance for I think 1.76 billion or whatever the number is. Right.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

There is an ongoing litigation.

[Patrick]

So between them, though, you're not involved in that litigation.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not too sure. I don't think I'm.

[Patrick]

But you haven't gone to court, so

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

my lawyers handling it. I actually. But my lawyers did. Did advise me not to talk about ongoing litigations.

[Patrick]

Yeah. If I remember correctly, your tweet or the decision was one of the reasons a lot of people said that caused them to go out. Because you came out and you said, we're out. We're not doing anything. You were speaking to Sorkin. If I'm. If I'm not mistaken in a right from. You got on Aaron Sorkin, you guys are on MSNBC or cnbc. And then you said, no, I don't feel good about it. You made some comments. We're out. And then from there, everybody said, if CZ doesn't feel good about it, there may be something going on here. The crypto billionaire who helped expose SPFs and solves and calls him one of the greatest fraudsters in history and accuses media and thought leaders of being manipulated. It's a pretty strong words right there. Who said that, by the way, Rob? Is that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Don't think those were my exact words.

[Patrick]

Can you go a little bit lower in Fortune Meltdown. SPF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history. He is a master manipulator when it comes down to media and key opinion leaders. He wrote in a tweet, SPF perpetuated a narrative painting me and other people as bad guys. It was critical in maintaining the fantasy that he was a hero.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Can you click on that Tuesday tweet link to see if. I don't think that I would call him that. I don't think I said all of those words.

[Patrick]

Good for you. That, you know, whether you said that or not, it's just.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's just not.

[Patrick]

Why would fortune write something like that? Go right there. Keep going lower, Rob. It's critical maintaining his VSP is one of the greatest fraudsters in history. Oh, there it is. That's the tweet. He's a master manipulator when it comes down to media and key opinion on leaders. Is that your Twitter Account or.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, that looks okay. This is an actual Twitter page, right? Okay, that. Okay, that does look. Okay, that doesn't look like.

[Patrick]

So you don't. You don't. You don't remember it? You were pissed off.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I normally would not use that kind of language. So that was a.

[Patrick]

That was pretty strong.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That was strong. That was strong.

[Patrick]

What got you to the point of saying something like that about him?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Okay, I think. Can you scroll back on top on that tweet a little bit more? Because it would be good to get some context here. I think this is probably a tweet. I was responding to accusations of. Yeah, so this is a list of wrong narratives I've seen recently.

[Patrick]

So a list of wrong nerves I've seen recently. 1. CZ wants to be the savior of crypto. Crypto doesn't need saving. Crypto is fine. So FTX was killed by xyz. No. FTX killed themselves because they stole billions of dollars of user funds, period. SPF has good intentions, but just made mistakes. Lying is never good intentions. Go a little bit lower. Rob CZ's tweet destroyed FTX. No healthy business can be destroyed by tweet. However, there was a tweet that may have. Caroline's tweet 60 minutes after mine on November 6th shows data that it was real cause for people to dump ftx. Caroline said, but if you're looking to minimize the market impact on FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you at $22. Go a little bit lower up. She gave her floor price away. SPF per page perpetuated a narrative painting me as other people. It was critical maintaining the fantasy that he was a hero. SPF is one of the greatest fraudsters. Okay, so that's where you said that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Patrick]

All right.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess that was a pretty strong language. I normally would not say that. But you don't remember this. Well, I don't remember the whole thread. Right. Yeah. So, like, you know, there's a lot of details in that thread. It's not like one single message.

[Patrick]

And this is 2022. So it's not like ChatGPT wrote that tweet. That's you writing that tweet.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. So this account is operated by me. So, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Okay. So, well, why such aggressive language towards him?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think at the time, I guess a lot of people were saying that my tweet somehow killed ftm. Right. Which I said, look, that's not true. As I said here, I actually really like the Answer.

[Patrick]

Tweet cannot destroy great business.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah. So I think there was a sequence of events here, right? So There was a CoinDesk reporting, and then that was on early November, November 3rd or something. And then our finance people asked me, like, cz, we still have hold the FTT tokens, should we sell? So I write a tweet, I said, yes, we should sell. And then our finance team moved the tokens on the blockchain and people saw it and people were asking questions. And then our finance team says, maybe you want to put a tweet out there saying, like, look, you want to clarify that we're selling? So, yeah, so this is a tweet that I wrote and I said, we're going to sell our FTT tokens and this is the place where we got them and people can track it on the blockchain. I said, we're going to sell them over many months. Right. We're going to sell them slowly not to have market impact. And many people blame me for causing the ftt.

[Patrick]

You don't think you had any influence over it? Your voice carries a lot of weight, especially at that time.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, but this also, I think my weight. My voice carries weight. But also there's a balance between being transparent and just do this quietly. Like we just sell our FTT tokens quietly without letting the market know.

[Patrick]

Well, I actually really know. I like the approach you took. Here's what we're doing. It's being honest with the market. Your customers are seeing what you're doing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a negative impact on ftx.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It probably does have some market impact, but again, I think many people have tried to sell BNB tokens, which is our token, which is the token that we're building. But again, if anyone selling can kill your business, you don't have a business, really. Right.

[Patrick]

No, that's a good point. Now let me ask you. So this makes me think about something else. So at that time, reports came out. One report said that he gave 40 million to the Democratic Party. Then another report said he gave 70 million. Then a federal prosecutor came out and said it was $100 million that he gave up to a bunch of different people, by the way, on both sides of the aisle. So it wasn't like it was only one side. Were you. Yeah, right. The federal prosecutors alleged that Sam Bankman fried used over $100 million and stolen FDX customers to make political donations ahead of 2022 midterm elections. Were you doing anything like this at the time yourself?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, we couldn't donate. We're like, no, we're. I'm not a US citizen, so political donations are not possible for me.

[Patrick]

Political donation. So did anybody from the Biden administration come up to you and say, hey, if you give this much money, we'll let this go? Did you get anybody knocking on your door saying, can you support our political campaign by sending some bitcoin? By sending some this?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not that I know. I don't think that. I don't know any of that.

[Patrick]

You don't know any of that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It didn't happen with me.

[Patrick]

Didn't happen with you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

So you don't remember a phone call, you don't remember an email or a text or anybody coming to you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no, no. No one asked us for donations.

[Patrick]

So yeah. Do you, do you sit in the back of your mind and because right afterwards, how much after this that the government start knocking on your door to start saying, hey, we notice Binance is doing xyz. How soon after this did they come after you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I, I think this I think was like the timing wise is very coincidental. Right. So but yeah, I mean we were outside of the US I didn't make a trip to Washington DC at all. Sam Bankerman was making all those trips. So no one asked us to even donate. We're also foreign. I'm not a US citizen, I'm a Canadian. So we didn't get asked. But I think there's definitely, I don't know if there's any correlation, but the timing is coincidental. We got a lot more scrutiny from the US Sec, from the other US agencies on us.

[Patrick]

Of course you just took away one their biggest. He was the biggest guy giving money to them. You just took that money away. You're not gonna making friends by doing that again.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think I took them away. His business crashed.

[Patrick]

I get what you're saying. No, but in their eyes, they don't look at it that way. In their eyes is what are you doing? This guy's giving us money knock out and you know, knock it off. And so they probably immediately wanted to target you cuz you put their biggest backer out. So you're not, you're not making friends with the Democratic Party.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, yeah, well this happened end of 2022. By early 2023, BUSD what we call the Binance USD stablecoin was shut down. And then June I think USACC sued Binance. Binance us myself. 2323.

[Patrick]

So six months after this so then there you go. So then that makes sense. So six months after this, they come after you and they come after Binance?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Pretty much, yeah.

[Patrick]

And this was around the hundred thousand. What is it the transactions with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with, you know, with who? Is it Al Qaeda? No, I'm sorry, isis. Is that. Is that what caused it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I actually don't even know what those transactions are. But, yeah, there was negative articles about those things.

[Patrick]

Yeah. Because there was something that I think I saw Chief Compliance officer saying in an email thread that, hey, these guys are making such little transactions, they can't even afford to buy an AK47, something like that. In an email exchange with a compliance office, they show the picture. It's public right now, so it's not like I'm reading anything that's not public.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

So when they first approached you, at what point did you know this is real? Because I'm sure when you're big, like, you know, we run small. I've been running an insurance company for 20 years. We get lawsuit stuff that comes up and like, okay, yeah, we have. Let's call this. But sometimes you get something like, this is serious. When did you know this was serious?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Early 2023. So I think it was January, February 2023. My legal team says, look, the. The DOJ wants to. The DOJ has a case, and they're pretty serious and they want to. They want to. They want to get to a. Well, they want to get to a deal. So that's 2023 was when the negotiation.

[Patrick]

Garland.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

This is Garland. This is under Garland.

[Patrick]

Yeah, yeah, this is Garland. And so he is. His team is reaching out to your team?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, I think he, like, people like, probably three or four levels below him.

[Patrick]

Did they at all reach out to you in 2022?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think there were some communications with our teams in 2022, but I think my involvement with the U.S. dOJ negotiations started kind of in 2023.

[Patrick]

Okay, so. And then, you know, so when that comes in, you're starting to see their team, you know, three, four layers down there coming to you. Is it cz, man, this is. This is urgent, man. We got. This could be very nasty, very ugly at this point. Is it getting. Is it public already? Is the entire market reacting to it? Is the market writing about it or. Not yet?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not yet. It was. Most of the negotiations were done privately. The market didn't know about it, and yeah, it was done privately.

[Patrick]

Do you feel the negotiation with them and your legal team was fair? Did you feel that there was some Animosity. Did you feel some things that was unfair? How did you process it when their team was working with you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Fair or not? I think it's very subjective. Right. So on the receiving end, you always feel a bit. A bit unfair. But they were extremely aggressive. And the comment I heard most from my lawyers were like, no, they've never seen a case where a government takes a BSA Banking Secrecy act violation this aggressively. Yeah. So, yeah.

[Patrick]

And what was it about? What was the main premise of the

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

case at the beginning? My personal thought is, well, they said, well, Binance violated the BSA act, which I don't dispute. Right. We had US users in the first two years of our operations when we started in Asia, and we were like a technology platform. So that part is fine. They really tried to say, look, Binance facilitated terrorist financing or facilitated, actively facilitated illicit transactions. Binance never does that. I never does that. I never do that. It's not my business, it's not in my interest. I don't even facilitate good transactions myself. It doesn't scale. So I don't handle VIP one wants to do, I don't know, $10 million buy. I handle it myself. We have a platform that people use. So those allegations were, I think, was quite extremely unreasonable. And to some extent, I think they were just hostile towards crypto. And we're the largest player in crypto.

[Patrick]

Yeah, got it. So. So facilitating was the issue. And I think if I saw the number, it was $8 billion is what they said the total number was. And if we say $8 billion. 8 billion on 135, $125 trillion of money being moved. 8 billion may sound like a lot of money, but 8 billion on 125 is not a lot of money. It's not like it's going to impact your revenue in a major way. So, you know, one could speculate and say, all right, they were targeting. That shouldn't have happened. Because, you know, when you, whenever you're dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah and, you know, whatever, Al Qaeda and isis, you probably shouldn't be looking the other way and compliance should look at it. Did you. Did you eventually, after that, create some controls that now triggers when something like that happens, like, will you be able to tell or can somebody still be able to create transactions without you guys catching it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, I think I'm no longer running Binance anymore, but I think they have a very, very strong compliance program. The compliance program is probably stronger than any bank in the world. The thing is, though, as strong as that is, no compliance program can be 100%. So compliance programs rely on third party tools like chain analysis, elliptic to do the blockchain analysis to detect the transactions. And sometimes they're slow. Sometimes when you call them today, when the transaction is happening, they say it's not a problem. And then 10 days later when that address interacts with other addresses, then they label that address as bad as. Right. So you can be slow, you can be like a days later that you know the label.

[Patrick]

Banks deal with the sold attempt, Chase deals with the sold attempt as well. So no matter how good of a compliance you create, you're going to go through it.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. So as you said, there's no way to block it 100%. But if you look at the percentages of what we call bad or illicit transactions, it's much lower in crypto. In crypto, like I think chain analysis, own report. Chain analysis is a third party blockchain analyst compliance tool that all the US agencies use. So they own reports that only 0.41% of the transactions in crypto may be illicit, whereas in traditional finance this 2 to 5%. So this is like two orders of magnitude difference. Right. So the percentage of transactions in crypto are much, much less in terms of illicit transactions.

[Patrick]

Yeah. And I saw this. That's very good to know because the market to be able to say on what some of the banking are doing, you guys are more secure than them. I'm sure. It also brought more highlight on getting compliance tighter. But Garland comes out in a press conference and he's bragging about the fact that you're paying the biggest corporate fee or fine for $4.3 billion. And then you think the company paid 4.3, and I think you paid 50 million or so. And then you did four months where you went away. Right. This whole thing. Rob, do you have that clip of Merrick Garland when he's announcing this? Did you ever meet Merrick Garland or no, you guys have never had any interaction?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, never.

[Patrick]

So you're not in texting mode? You guys don't text each other?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

Yeah, yeah. It was interesting when he did this to brag about it. So when this is going on, is it having a negative impact on Binance's business itself? Oh yeah, it is for sure. So you're seeing customers going away to a different place when this is going on?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

For sure.

[Patrick]

Yeah. Okay. And how big was the impact?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I would say well, on Binance, it's hard to measure, but Binance lost most of the banking rails both globally. And Binance US lost complete all the banking rails in the us so Binance US actually became a crypto to crypto only business. It does have US dollars.

[Patrick]

Put that to numbers. Like the audience knows. How much revenue did you lose? How much dollars business was lost?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Binance US lost probably 99% of the revenue.

[Patrick]

And how much is that? How much is that revenue?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think, I think. Well, I don't have the revenue numbers above my head. Binance US raised around in 2021 at a 4.5 billion valuation. They probably lost 99% of that value at one point.

[Patrick]

Wow. Okay, so it was a real impact to the company.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh yeah, this is real dollars.

[Patrick]

Got it. And so, you know, and so when that happens, Rob, do you have the part when he says it or. No, because it's like a, you know, it's a, you know, when he, the way he says it, you can tell he is celebrating that he hurt somebody. He's celebrating that he hurt somebody. But you're saying. Because earlier in the podcast when we started I asked you about living in America versus living in UAE, you said if you asked me this in 2022, no, US wasn't a place to live. Now last 18 months, America is a much better place to live than it was, you know, a few years ago. Three years ago. Why, why would you say it's different today than then?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I mean, today US is pro crypto and President Trump gave me a pardon. So it's 180 degrees different from 2021, 2022, we were dealing with negotiations with a very hostile DOJ and us was clearly. And not just us. Right. SEC sued a bunch of other crypto companies. There's probably more than like two dozen lawsuits from sec and some of them are us, but many of them are US companies too. So yeah, so the environment is just a very different environment. Hopefully, I think. But to the credit of the U.S. the U.S. constitution. I didn't realize this before. I thought for the next 20 years I'm just not going to set foot in the US but here I am. So the US Constitution baked in a self correcting mechanism. So every four years there's an election and you can be very round for the four years and then there's a point where people can vote. So yeah, this amazed me actually.

[Patrick]

The Constitution here in the states.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The Constitution.

[Patrick]

Interesting.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think the Constitution of the United States is a very, very strong piece of paper that's probably even stronger than the bitcoin paper.

[Patrick]

That's powerful. But to get the context of dates Right. So when do you go away? When do you get the pardon?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So I arrived in US November 21, 2023. And then I was supposed to be sentenced. Going through the court, I was sentenced on April 30, 2024. I went to, I think I self surrendered to prison on May 30, 2024. I got out of prison on September 27, 2024. So did four months there. And then I think in October 21, 2025, I got the presidential pardon.

[Patrick]

So yeah, so a year later.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

A year later.

[Patrick]

But what is the big deal about getting a pardon though, year later? Like what does it do? What benefit? That you're not a US citizen, you don't live here, who cares about getting a pardon? Why was that such a big deal?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's a big deal. It's a big deal. Without a pardon, I'm labeled as a felon. So I have a criminal record. Right. And then especially in my industry where we deal with finances, we have to get financial licenses. My ability to what they call the fit and proper as a ubo, ultimate, ultimate beneficiary owner is significantly impacted. That means I cannot be a shareholder of many of our businesses or we will limit our ability to get licenses. This is not just in the us, this is global. And in the US even more after the pardon, this goes away. It's a full unconditional pardon. And yeah, so the pardon is the big deal. With a pardon, we don't get the fines back, but that's still. It's a big deal that we get our name cleared.

[Patrick]

Got it. So it helps you out for licensing and the way US qualifies you, the rest of the world will pay attention to it. So it kind of opens the market up for you that if you choose to get back into business, you can.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes, yes.

[Patrick]

Okay. But you have to step down as the CEO of Binance.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes, when I step. Yeah, yes, that's true.

[Patrick]

What can you do? What can you not do?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

With Binance, I actually have a legal opinion from my lawyers, but basically, largely my shareholder rights are intact. But now, given the pardon, I believe I have a lot more freedom. But I still don't run Binance and also the company still have two monitors on them, et cetera. So there's still some limitations. But largely nowadays I actually don't really want to run Binance either.

[Patrick]

Would you like, after getting the pardon, could you now go back and be the CEO of Binance or you couldn't do it legally?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think there's still some restrictions around that.

[Patrick]

Is it permanent or is there a time on it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I actually need to check with the lawyers. Nothing is really permanent in my opinion. But I believe that there's still some restrictions today.

[Patrick]

So in five years, would it be a impossible thing that we get news that says CZ makes a comeback and he's the CEO of Binance? Is there a possibility that that could happen?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

A very small possibility, I think.

[Patrick]

Even if you don't have the itch to come back at all.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Even if I could. Binance are very strong leaders now. They run the company much better than if I were to go back. I view myself as more of a 0 to 1 kind of guy. Where from like 1 to 100. There are other people who are.

[Patrick]

To say that that's not easy to say. Most people don't have the. That's why you're not an ego guy, though, for you to be able to say that. The average guy can't say something like that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not an ego. I'm a normal guy. Like I'.

[Patrick]

Yeah, you're not a normal guy, but you know, to say, you know, 0 to 1, you know, and you're not a 1, 200. Very few founders can say that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think my personality. Right. I like create things, whereas running things, you know, you have to be structured. You have a lot of, you know, there's a lot of structure, a lot of bureaucracy. When I see like, you know, even. Even sometimes I hear about what's happening in Binance and there's a bureaucracy that drives me nuts.

[Patrick]

Yeah, right. Yeah, I can. I can only imagine it. But it's probably gotta be also a little bit relieved to not have to make any decisions. You're free.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes.

[Patrick]

They have to do it. You're free. You're doing your own thing. And you know, they're gonna have to run the company and you still are majority shareholders, so if the company goes to half a trillion, you're gonna be benefiting from it. So that's a good place to be. So, okay, so this happens. You're off. By the way, did you ever meet with the president? Have you and the president ever met or.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, No, I saw him in person in Davos, where he was on stage and I was in the audience. We did. We didn't say hi. I didn't get it.

[Patrick]

What year was this?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

This is this last year? This is. That was last year.

[Patrick]

Oh, this is. That was last year.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This year, actually it was in January. Right.

[Patrick]

This is the one where Newsom was standing on the side and didn't let him give one of the talks. Yes, the controversy there. Did you see Newsom?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I didn't. I didn't see Newsom.

[Patrick]

Did any of the Democratic guys approach you and recognize you? Did they come up to you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No. At least they didn't talk. They didn't come and talk to me. Yeah, I was only there for one day. I was only there for like. No.

[Patrick]

Did you speak or was it just a networking dinner? Conversations.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I was there for a dinner and I spoke. Spoke on stage for. I was on a panel and then. And then I had the Andrew Sokins interview with cnbc. So I did those three things. I. I flew out.

[Patrick]

Is this it? This is a free man? Binance running sooner.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He was a. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was outside. So the sun. The sun.

[Patrick]

Like, my glasses look good on you, buddy. I gotta tell you that. You look good with those glasses on.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's the same glasses.

[Patrick]

Is it? Except that one, the.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's the same in the sun. It turns dark.

[Patrick]

Okay, well, the dark look is a good look. You got a James Bond looking, you know, look going on there for you. But by the way, you want to play that Merrick Garland clip? I just love the way he says it like he is celebrating your fall. Right. Is this it, Rob? I believe so. Okay, go for it.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Finance has agreed to plead guilty to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy act, knowingly

[Patrick]

failing to register as a money transmitting business. Go to the part about the biggest fine. It was a seven second claim clip fine facility. Billions of dollars. No, I wanted to get to the clip. Okay, you don't have the clip. It's okay, we don't have to show it. So he's not a very much liked guy. He did a lot of weird things when he had power. And he was one of those guys that wanted to use his power to take down different guys. And if you weren't willing to help them out and you took their biggest donor, I wouldn't be surprised if he got a call from somebody to say, let's target cz. Not saying the stuff that you guys did, you know, didn't. Probably didn't break a couple laws that we have because of the transfers that was taking place. But still, you could tell they were interested in targeting a guy like you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Till the last minute. They wanted to protect sbf. Sorry, you were going to say something.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. No. They even attacked President Trump. Right. And President Trump got charges, criminal charges for bringing a document to his bathroom. Like.

[Patrick]

Yeah, no, they tried it. They tried to they try to destroy the President. And the good thing about the market is, like you said, the Constitution. It's interesting for you to say how powerful the Constitution is to go from there to where it's at today. Relationship with Trump, there's a conversation about the fact that you help them with a technology that they have. What is the relationship with you and the family?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

There's basically no relationship. So there's no business relationships, there's no commercial relations.

[Patrick]

What is that company's name? There's a company name that they talk about something. Liberty. Right.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

We're Liberty Finance.

[Patrick]

Yeah. What's the relationship with UN World Liberty Finance?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

We don't have any. We don't have any relationships. Yeah, I think they. When they said so. World Liberty Finance issues a stablecoin called USD1. And USD1 is deployed on BNB chain, which is a public blockchain that anyone can deploy a smart contract. The smart contract is open source and BNB Chance developers probably give them like a sample code which is pretty much publicly available. So that's probably what they were referring to making up a story saying, and this has nothing to do with Binance, nothing to do with me personally. So we don't have any stake in USD 1 or World Liberty Finance. They don't have a stake in us. There were reports about there was a deal about giving some equity of Binance or Binance us to get a partner. There's no such transactions. They don't own any equity in any of those entities.

[Patrick]

Yeah, that's a story that you'll see all over the place. The fact that, hey, this was a back deal, you helped them out, this was their way in exchange for the pardon that you got, et cetera, et cetera. But let me ask you the next question here in regards to Satoshi Nakamoto. Okay. Article comes out recently. I don't know if I'm sure you saw that where it says Adam Back. Is it Adam Back? Adam Back. Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto. Now he comes and he says, that's not true. But by the way, people have been saying this about him for 15 years. So it's not like it's a new thing. The typical name is he's one of them. And then they'll talk about Hal Finney as another one. And there's a couple other guys. Do you care to know who it is?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I prefer not to know.

[Patrick]

Okay. So you're part of the camp that says, I prefer not to know.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, I think it's better if we don't know who he is and he doesn't come back. He doesn't come back in to become active again.

[Patrick]

Do you think there's a chance that it's him?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

There's always a chance. There's always a chance that it's Helfini. I think Helfini probably have a higher

[Patrick]

chance then Adam Beck. Really?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think so, yeah. Yeah. Hel Finney will make a lot of sense because I think he passed away in 2013 or 2014 early. Right. And his background matches. And he went away basically. Right. So all of that matches what we're seeing. If it's Adam back then, he's very good at hiding his trail digitally, which is extremely difficult in today's world. But Adam is a big contributor in the crypto ecosystem, so there's a chance it could be him that he just does a very good job of concealing it. You'd be fantastic. But yeah, there could be a few other potential people too.

[Patrick]

Your number one pick is it could be Hal Finney.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

If I were to pick one person, that would be Hal Finney, but you could be a group of people. You could even be software from the future, who knows?

[Patrick]

Yeah, yeah. I saw you saying that Suffer from the future came back, you know, agent and kind of wrote the thing to create this form in regards to Adam back and how Finney, when you hear the stories with who could be behind it, you know, they said it was 10 people that exchange emails. About 10 people that could know it. These 10 people, can you imagine getting 10 people that none of them want to go tell the market that they know exactly who it is? You got to respect these 10 people.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think it was 10 people who have email exchanges with Satoshi. But they don't even know, though.

[Patrick]

So even the 10 don't know who it is?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think so.

[Patrick]

Because he used the pseudo name. So nobody would know.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

They just received an email. They can respond, but they never met him. They don't know anything about it.

[Patrick]

You can't, like, track it, where it's coming from to see who it is? I mean, you know. So, okay, so you have enough money right now to do a lot of weird things, but you choose not to. Right. You don't have Ferraris?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

You don't have Lambos?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

You don't have crazy watches?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

Do you have crazy art collection?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No.

[Patrick]

I don't care. So is there anything that you'd want to own physically with the money that you have that you'd say, I wouldn't mind Owning such and such. Is there any interest in anything physical?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I own functional things. I enjoy outdoor sports. I feel like I can still enjoy them for maybe one or two decades and then I'll get too old, so might as well enjoy them. I like skiing, snowboarding, kite surfing and just other than that, just know I have a very small home gym, like much smaller than the studio. And I just do some weights and then the rest of the time I just enjoy hanging out with the family. So I don't have any crazy obsessions. But I do. I'm not a. As I said earlier, I'm not a pure minimalist. I have a bunch of junk in my home, but they're not that expensive.

[Patrick]

What do you drive?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I have a Toyota van. I actually have a Lexus van now.

[Patrick]

You upgrade it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Would you splurge? You bought a Lexus van?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The. The Lexus man is a new one. Yeah, this one.

[Patrick]

You drive a Lexus van?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, well, I usually sit in the back. I have a driver, so that's another luxury. But the, this van has a seat that goes flat. That's my requirement for a car because I have a back. I have a back. My back is not so good. So I like to like when I. Especially on longer trips, if I drive from like Dubai to Abu Dhabi, etc. Like for an hour, I like to lay down flat.

[Patrick]

That.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That's my requirement. But I'm happy with a van. I. I actually like, until very recently, I've never, I don't think I've ever sat in a Lambo yet.

[Patrick]

Stop it.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think I've. I've said in a Ferrari a couple times, my friend's Ferrari never sat a

[Patrick]

Lambo or Ferrari a Lambo yet.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think I've ever Setting no interest. My friend, another friend of mine has a, has a Porsche sitting it. It's like very uncomfortable. It's like you gotta. It's. Yeah.

[Patrick]

These crazy people that drive Porsches, right?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

They've lost their mind and they drive super fast.

[Patrick]

Yeah. Who wants to drive fast?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Like, who?

[Patrick]

Yeah, you get your license suspended. Reckless driving. Get your act together, right, people?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. So it's like for me, I enjoy. Even when I join out of sports, like high surfing, I don't go very fast. I'm scared, like hitting the water like, you know, really hard. I just chill, right? I'm. I'm here.

[Patrick]

How big is the house you live in?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The house is decent. It's like I don't know how to

[Patrick]

correct 20,000 square foot house.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Is it like it's about 20,000 square foot.

[Patrick]

Yes, it's a good house, you guys. At least you got a nice house.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, but the house is like 15 years old and the water leaks in my. In my living room, like, right beside the table. There's like two, like, stains on the. On the floor of the water leak. Yeah. From the second floor.

[Patrick]

Doesn't bother you?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I would wish that it doesn't leak all the time, but it happens. But it's functional. I got a lot of rooms. I got like eight or nine rooms. So just good for a large family, everybody. Yeah. But it's not a fancy, like, it's not a fancy house.

[Patrick]

So you don't sit there and say, hey, you know, like these guys. I'm gonna go buy one of the last 38 remaining T Rex skeletons that are going between 25. That's not you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, that's not.

[Patrick]

You're not gonna go buy a copy of the Constitution? That is, you know, it's been.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't collect art. I don't collect anything. I don't collect stuff. And like, no. Even. Yeah. So I don't. I'm just not a collector. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Wow. What's the craziest thing? You splurged on anything?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Not. Nothing too crazy. Nothing too crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing too crazy.

[Patrick]

Yeah. Wow. So it's kind of weird because, you know, for the average person, like, you know, what if I win the lottery, I'm gonna buy this, I'm gonna buy that. I'm gonna buy that.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I guess if you ask that detailed question. I do fly private. Right. Which is quite expensive, but I don't want to go through the airport. I get recognized, and then people want to talk to you on the airplane the whole way. So for the privacy and the security, that's good. I do fly private.

[Patrick]

You fly it or you bought a jet?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think I have a long lease, actually. I have a long lease on a jet or something through a company.

[Patrick]

Yeah. And you've said something where of your wealth at the end you're going to give 99% of it away? Why would you give it away?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think I can spend more than 1% myself. And I want to use money for. I think money is an enabler for you to take care of yourself and then do impactful stuff.

[Patrick]

Stuff.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think we get a lot of intrinsic reward when we can do positive stuff for our society. Basically, we came, we contributed, and then we leave. So I. Yeah. So I think, you know, I should Try to make the money to do, to work. It's actually very hard work to make money, to do positive things, to make the maximum positive impact.

[Patrick]

I read this book on legacy planning, estate planning, and it said one of the worst things you can do at the end of your life is give the money to charity. Because what ends up happening is the charity you may, you know, the people at the time you may support, but the boards change and the values change. And then eventually they could be putting money into causes that you never supported. Like Henry Ford started a charity back in the days, and he. Because I think in the late 30s, early 40s, I think Roosevelt announced that they want to take 70% of your estate when you die. And, you know, because they needed the money, all the stuff that was going on. So he's like, we got to make some adjustments. They start a charity and then he goes from three people, him and his, you know, they're making the main decisions. And then he decides to add a board of nine. And then all of a sudden he starts noticing the money they're putting into it. I never supported stuff like this. We no longer have control over it. So the book's entire premise is, never, ever leave your money in the hands of charity. Because when leaders change, the types of people that work for charity typically don't share common values with a creator, with a guy like you. So you're gonna have a hard time. You're young right now, so your money is going to be a lot of money. You probably, by the time you're done, you're going to be a trillionaire. So where that money is going to go to, it's a scary thought given a charity, and they put the money in places you may not agree with.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Actually, I agree with you that I actually hope to give that money away while I'm alive.

[Patrick]

Okay. Because you know who they are. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm with that because maybe building a museum, schools, you know, universities, some things. Like, you ever been to. What is that museum in LA off the 405 freeway? The Getty Center. You ever been to the Getty Center?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think I have been there 20 years ago.

[Patrick]

Yeah, me too. I've been there 20 years ago. I've been there. And this guy, J. Paul Getty, when he died, he created the museum that people can go to for free with the most amazing collection there. And I think the dividends or whatever he makes off the money pays for it. So at least that is a cause. Right. But unfortunately, if you had a museum it would be an empty museum. Because you don't collect things.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I don't.

[Patrick]

So if we created a car museum, there would be no cars in it. There'd be a Lexus van in there. They would say, this is CZ's van from Texas. Last question for you. So you got all these things, and I'm curious to know how you're going to answer this. You got all these things in the world that people want to know about. You know, you have money to be able to get answers to a question. If you could use your resources to find out one thing that is not public to the world, what would it be?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, that's a. That's an interesting one. That's. That's already known by other people.

[Patrick]

Not known, but people know. Like governments know, societies know, but it's not to the public. Could be assassinations, could be events that took place. Could be. You know, you obviously said earlier you're not interested in. No, satoshi. You could know anything. One fact. Moon, anything. What would it be?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I think I will probably want to know how the golden. The 1971, when we switch off the gold standard.

[Patrick]

Nixon.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

What was. Yeah, Nixon. What happened kind of behind the scenes there. What was these discussions out of everything.

[Patrick]

That's what you would want to know.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, this is a pretty. I've only like had like five seconds to think about.

[Patrick]

That's pretty massive. That's one of the things we talk about a lot.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

Because why that?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, it's very relevant to our industry. I want to know what were the factors forcing the decision to move away from the gold standard? I actually kind of know the background, but I kind of want to know what were the real discussions. The background is, no, I have enough gold so they want to move it off and the government can print fiat money. But I want to know what the conversations were, etc. Just to get the. Like. I wish somebody wrote a book like my book. Like authentic discussions that happen at the time.

[Patrick]

Yeah, yeah, it would be. Do you think it was a good move or bad move or necessary move, like you didn't have a choice?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's a bit of both, to be honest. I think there's pros and cons for that move, but I think it just staying on the gold standard probably will limit the economic. Economic development. I think some quantitative easing, some inflation is okay. It's good. It's okay. Also may be necessary. But the problem is inflation always goes too high too quickly. So it's a balance. I'm not saying zero Inflation is the best. Usually when this kind of things first happen, very similar to the sort of trust of foundations or charity that you talked about. When these things first start, they always with good intentions, but with time the board changes and the mission moves and then people get more greedy and then it's just a poorly managed. So that's just, that's just human nature that nothing evolving. Usually things evolve and often degrade over time. So I don't think it's a bad move at the time particularly. But it's hard to maintain that over time.

[Patrick]

Yeah, I mean, you know, like you say you're limited, right. On how much you can lend because the limited supply. So we almost had to get off of it, but once we got off of it, fiat, what is it backed by a promise. And this goes to the Peter Schiff arguments, right? This is why gold. This is why gold. This is why gold.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

And yeah, but gold has a lot of limits, right. So you know, you don't know whether it's real or not. It's not divisible, it's not transportable.

[Patrick]

Funny when you handed it to him, he's like, I don't even know if this is real because I don't know who minted it. Remember when he said that he didn't even trust. I don't even know if this is real gold. Yeah, you're like, no, I bought paper. You paid $130,000 for it at the time, whatever the price was. $4,200. Yeah, yeah, you're right. So. And by the way, even with Nixon with the whole China deal at the time, because China was weak.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

You know, it was number 8, 910 and GDP and Russia was at the top and they were worried about USSR and communism or whatever. So let's strengthen these guys. And I look at China now. Yeah, you do you go back to China often or. No?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Very like I haven't been to China for the last seven years or longer.

[Patrick]

Any reason or no reason.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Well, China's not. China have not what? China actually explicitly said that they don't allow cryptocurrency exchange businesses. Right. So China's banned crypto exchanges. And if I go back, people will know I'm back. People want to have meetings with me, people want to have chats. I don't want to be that scene, I guess, like, you know, promoting.

[Patrick]

You're not worried about safety. Like if you go and they'll keep you there, that's not your concern.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm not sure to be able to be very Frank.

[Patrick]

Probably not a risk worth taking.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah. So, yeah, like, look, I don't try to cause problems for people. I don't try to go where I'm not welcome. Potentially, I think I'm welcome to go, I think just as a traveler, et cetera. But people will want to meet with me. They will want to talk about crypto. They will want me to go on stage, do a talk and

[Patrick]

do you talk to Jack Ma at all or no?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I've never talked to Jack Ma. I talked to other people. Very senior at Alibaba. Yeah. But I never talked to Jack, Matt.

[Patrick]

Really? I thought you guys would have talked for sure.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

There was a couple. There was a couple potential chances. You know, he visits Masayoshi san in Japan. We missed each other by a day. Like Binance Japan.

[Patrick]

That'd be an interesting sit down.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That'd be a very interesting sit down.

[Patrick]

If you did an event like in Singapore, you know, and for him to fly out, that would be an interesting. I think the world would show up to entertain that conversation for sure.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

But I think Jack Ma has also became much more low key.

[Patrick]

He has.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So he's.

[Patrick]

What happens when you talk a little bit and you say stuff about the government? They may silence you for whatever reason.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He's not much more low key, so I don't think he's gonna do too. It seems that he's not doing too many public talks, etc.

[Patrick]

Do you think there was a conversation behind closed doors? Hey, you better relax and not criticize us?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Most likely.

[Patrick]

Most likely.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

So you never know for sure.

[Patrick]

Yeah. Because he was everywhere. There was a time that he was one of the main entrepreneur voices and his stuff would go viral all the time. And he was a likable guy. He was a guy that. He had a sense of humor, personality. So it's interesting. He's been a little bit quiet. Would China look at you as they made you in their eyes because you were born there? Is it kind of like, hey, we made you, we taught you our values and principles. Without the way of our living, you wouldn't be where you are right now. Is that kind of how they would view it?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I don't think so. I left at 12.

[Patrick]

So you don't think that's the pride because the temperament you have is a very good temperament.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, I. Well, when people ask me, you know, like, no, do you identify as you asked, right. Do you. Do I identify as Chinese or not? Like ethnicity, I'm definitely Chinese, but like education, culture, like, no. The way you think about your Value system are really built when your teenager years. So I spent that in Canada and then after work I was like mostly outside of China. Right. So most of my work styles are thinking is more capitalist, capitalism, etc. So my way of doing business is more, much more American than Chinese. I would say. So. Yeah. So. But I know I have many, many Chinese friends, but. Oh, there was also another like common attack that people try to attack me with is because I look Chinese, I'm part of the CCP or anything like that. That's completely false. It's just.

[Patrick]

You're part of the ccp?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, this is just completely false. I've been away from China for 30 something years. My business couldn't operate in China. I'm a business guy, I'm never political. Yeah. So that's, that's also. Yeah. So I don't think China will try to view me as a Chinese business. I think we're like, we just don't have those touch points.

[Patrick]

But the likelihood of you taking a trip to China next five to 10 years, probably slim to.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

I'm open to it. Okay. All right. Like for example, if I get, if I get invited, I will go, but I probably wouldn't go unsolicited.

[Patrick]

So if Xi invited you, say, hey, we would like to have a meeting, you'd go?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh yeah, of course. So if anybody that's senior invites me out.

[Patrick]

So then that means your fear isn't a real high fear that you think if you go there they may not let you.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh no, no, no, I'm not feeling that. But I don't. I visit countries who are pro crypto. So if China says, look, come in, teach, help us with the crypto regulation, I'd be happy to go.

[Patrick]

And that's why you're in uae. You feel safe being there because they're pro crypto. That makes you feel safe?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, I feel safe in many countries, but I don't spend time in non pro crypto countries because if they're against crypto, what am I doing there? I'm just a sword in the eye cz, relationship wise.

[Patrick]

Because I'm trying to see the profile that you have with your personality. Are, do you have close friends who are very, very well known people in business, you know, who are major influencers, like relationship with Musk, relationship with guys like that. Are they, would you consider some of those guys your friends?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yes, yes. So I have friends, mentors, coaches. So I view those guys more of my mentors. So you know, I have a relationship with Ray Dalio I met with Larry Fink. Both of them rose quotes for my book. And many, many, many, many guys like that. Masa from. From Japan. So many guys like that. Even Eric Schmidt, etc.

[Patrick]

Eric Schmidt's phenomenal.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

He's a great guy. And he also, he's a. He knows all the problems. Like he went through all the problems we're facing.

[Patrick]

Oh, he's brilliant. Like when, when you hear him speak for. You know, if you get two, three hours of. You're gonna get smarter on what he. Ray is phenomenal. We've had him on as well.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah, but.

[Patrick]

But there's something different about Schmidt, the way he explains operating a business.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Eric is much more. On operations of a business, especially like a platform. I think Ray is much more macroeconomics, Countries, debts, national bond curves, et cetera. So he's much more like even politics, geopolitics, taising war money, etc.

[Patrick]

Yeah, he made a video. He made like a 25 minute video on YouTube that's got 40 million views. Rob, can you go to Ray Dalio's YouTube channel? Yeah, am I saying it correctly?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

It's a great.

[Patrick]

Yeah, it's like it's very rare to make a video that long that gets that many views.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

The cycles.

[Patrick]

Oh, the cycles. Go to videos and then go to most popular. Holy sh. Look at that. Well, it's the second one I was talking about. Does that say 297 million views? Yes, sir. Okay, go to the second one. Look at the second one. That's the one everybody should watch. How long is a video? 43 minutes. 43 minutes. 165 million views. Principles for Dealing with Changing World Order by Ray Dalio.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, the book is really good too.

[Patrick]

Yeah, it is. We had every one of our executives read Principle when it first came out. Phenomenal book. So. Okay, so Ray Dalio, Eric Schmidt and Larry Fink from blackrock. Any relationship with Warren Buffett? Have you guys had interactions or.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, no. Zero interactions.

[Patrick]

Zero.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Again, he's not that hard on crypto. I don't try to. I actually don't try to go to people who are against crypto or like anti crypto or skeptical about crypto and try to convince them. I don't, I don't. I don't try to convince people. I go to people who are willing to learn about crypto, who wants to learn, and I go interact with them.

[Patrick]

Makes sense. Makes sense. And then musk, because you put a half a million, a half a billion dollars into Twitter when he was going through acquiring It. Yeah, he won the top three, four investors. I think into it, I think Ellison called him. There's a call that Ellison says, hey, I'll put some money into it. You know, a billion dollars. And I think Ellison said, yeah, Elon said you should put 2 billion, not a billion. It's like, okay, I'll put $2 billion into it. It was a funny conversation. So why Musk? Why. Why supportive of Musk and what he's doing?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Oh, I think, well, free speech. Well, we want to. The book, the title of my book is Freedom of Money. Right. So we want to increase the freedom of money or for people all around the world to do that. You have to have freedom of speech. Right. So. And to have freedom of speech, you have to have freedom from slavery first, you have to have fiscal freedom first, and then you have freedom of speech, and then you have freedom of information, and then you have freedom of money. So supporting freedom of speech is really important. I think US has very good freedom of speech laws, principles, foundations, et cetera. But Twitter, or now X is the platform that. Where everyone. Quite a lot of the tongues. Global town square discussions happen. So I thought, you know, that's a fairly minimal meaningful cost for a crypto business to support. Yeah. So that's pretty much it. Yeah.

[Patrick]

Well, if that doesn't happen, you know, the world's a different place.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick]

Because Twitter forced everybody else to be more open to opening up, you know, Facebook, YouTube, everybody. If Elon doesn't do what he does, we're. We're in a very different climate today. Very different climate today. People forget how quickly. Was just a few years ago, the President of the United States was suspended from all social media.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

That's crazy.

[Patrick]

How the hell. Like the. When history books write about this, you know, they're going to be like, wait, they suspended who? The US President. Really? Yes.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

So it was a big deal when that took place. So the book, you want to share with us what some things are going to be in the book? Are we going to get some. Is there. Is there. Is your car collection in the book in the middle with pages when you open it up?

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

No, I don't have a car collection. Right. So, yeah, yeah. But the book is like a small snippets of my life and my perspective, how I saw things over the last. I don't know, over the last 40, 50 years almost. So it's really honestly how I saw things and how I experienced things. Most snippets. I'm not a great writer, so it's a very basic, simple English, but it's very authentic. I think it's what I saw. So I hope people learn about myself, my journey, Binance's journey, and also Crypto's journey through this book.

[Patrick]

Yeah, yeah. You're super likable and you're simple, humble, brilliant. Even though you don't, you know, you don't, you don't. You make it seem like anybody can start a company and get to 100 billion. You're obviously very brilliant for what you've done and to overcome all the fires that have come your way. So we're going to put the link below for the audience to be able to go support the book Freedom of Money. And I was telling you before, you know, the story's a crazy story that maybe one day they'll make a movie about you and we'll be sitting in the theater seeing all the different stories in it. And if that ever happens, whatever happens, I want to see the Lexus van in there. I think the Lexus van has to be in there. People have to know. And that'll be a big sponsorship from Lexus. Lexus is going to get nice product placement is what they call it, right, ain't it? Cz, appreciate you for coming down here. Truly an honor speaking to you. What a great story.

[Changpeng Zhao (CZ)]

Thank you. Patrick, thank you for having me. It's a great conversation.

[Patrick]

Anytime, time, anytime. Thank you. Thank you. You know, The Sultan with Val 10 and PBD podcast started with a phone, me and Mario, that's it. And it grew today to, you know, 15 million subscribers almost and 164 full time employees. And that relationship. Are you watching us and supporting us? Wouldn't happen without you. But did you know 51% of you that watch the content are not subscribed to the channel. And it would mean the world to us if you could press that subscribe button and notification. Why? It allows us to grow, hire more, do bigger interviews, have a bigger team and deliver a better product to you. So if you haven't yet, if you don't mind, press that subscribe button. It would mean the world to us. Thank you so much.