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Binance Founder CZ Reveals How Bitcoin Turned Him Into A Billionaire

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Changpeng “CZ” Zhao says his path to crypto wealth began removed from buying and selling flooring or VC circuits in a Shanghai poker recreation the place a good friend instructed him to take Bitcoin significantly, and a second good friend urged him to wager a significant slice of his internet value on it.

Binance Founder On His Bitcoin Origin Story

By Zhao’s account in an interview with the All-In podcast, he first encountered Bitcoin in mid-2013, whereas he was nonetheless a junior accomplice at a Shanghai-based software program and providers agency. “One of my associates tells me, ‘Look, you bought to have a look at this factor referred to as Bitcoin,’” Zhao stated. “It took me about roughly six months to totally perceive it… again then there was the Bitcoin speak discussion board after which that’s just about it.”

That good friend, the Binance founder stated, was Ron Tao, then a enterprise capitalist in China, who introduced the subject up throughout a recurring, small-stakes poker recreation between entrepreneurs and traders. The pitch gained weight shortly when Zhao met Bobby Lee, who was getting ready to go away Walmart and be a part of BTC China (BTCC) as CEO.

Bobby, Zhao recalled, didn’t body it as a hobbyist curiosity. He framed it like a portfolio choice. Zhao stated Lee instructed him to place 10% of his internet value into Bitcoin: “There’s a small likelihood you’ll go to zero then you definately lose 10%. There’s a a lot larger likelihood you’ll go 10x and also you’ll double your internet value.” Zhao stated that was the second he began digging into the white paper “extra rigorously.”

By the time Zhao felt he “absolutely perceive[s] it,” he additionally felt he’d missed it. Bitcoin had run from roughly $70 in mid-2013 to round $1,000 by the top of 2013, he stated. “I used to be like, I’m too late,” Zhao recalled. “Because everybody you speak to… has purchased earlier than you.”

Still, he determined he wasn’t going to sit down the following main know-how wave out. “For me it was very clear I received to do one thing on this business,” Zhao stated, describing Bitcoin because the second foundational know-how of his working life after the web. “I used to be 35, 36 — I wasn’t going to overlook it. The subsequent factor that’s going to return alongside goes to be 10, 15 years later… and that’s AI.”

That conviction translated into an unusually blunt commerce: The Binance founder stated he offered his Shanghai condominium to purchase Bitcoin. “I stated look I’m going to promote my condominium in Shanghai after which purchase Bitcoin,” he instructed Chamath Palihapitiya. The sale, he stated, got here in tranches and he purchased every time money hit, even because the market slid. “I offered the condominium… for roughly $900,000… The first trench at $800 after which Bitcoin is dropping $600, $400. Kind of averaged to about $600.”

Related Reading: Binance SAFU Fund Adds 4,225 Bitcoin ($300M) As Price Reclaims $70K Level

He additionally described the social proof that mattered to him in that period: the early builders and miners he met whereas attempting to pressure-test his personal understanding, and a small Bitcoin convention in Las Vegas in December 2013 that contrasted sharply with the “drug lords” narrative dominating headlines after the Silk Road arrest. “When you go to the convention it was like a bunch of youngsters, a bunch of geeks… they usually’re very good folks,” Zhao stated, name-checking attendees like Vitalik Buterin and Charlie Lee.

Zhao’s account of “getting wealthy” isn’t a single lightning strike a lot as a sequence: shopping for Bitcoin after liquidating property, then taking working roles at early crypto corporations (together with Blockchain.data and OKCoin), and later constructing alternate infrastructure that turned the muse for Binance and its token-driven development story.

Today, the precise dimension of the Binance founder’s fortune is dependent upon who’s counting and the way they worth personal stakes and token holdings. Forbes’ real-time tracker listed Zhao at $78.8 billion as of Feb. 10, 2026, putting him among the many world’s richest people. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which makes use of its personal each day methodology, confirmed a materially decrease determine for Zhao about $52.2 billion on its world wealthy checklist across the identical time.

At press time, Binance Coin (BNB) traded at $592.44.

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