6 Facts About Changpeng Zhao (CZ Binance) You Probably Didn’t Know

Changpeng Zhao, popularly known by his cool moniker CZ, is the CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. In just a few months, Binance grew from an idea to the biggest market for crypto trading. CZ, who loves wearing black, became a crypto billionaire pretty quickly, becoming a sensation in the world of blockchain.

Let’s take a look at some interesting facts about him.

CZ Rose to Fame in Less than 180 Days

Binance was founded on July 1, 2017. In a little under six months, it became the biggest crypto exchange market in the world. Its initial coin offering was Binance Coin (BNB), which started at around ¢ $11 and is now valued at around $10. It was over $24 in January this year.

He Worked on Another Trading System before Founding Binance

In 2005, Zhao was in Shanghai, where he founded Fusion Systems, a trading platform for brokers. He started his crypto journey in 2013 with blockchain.info. In 2014, he sold his Shanghai apartment for about $1 million to use this money on Bitcoin.

He Loves Binance and wears Binance

Well, this goes without saying. After all, he founded the company. But the fact is that he loves it so much that he isn’t passionate about houses or cars, but only Binance hoodies and T-shirts. He doesn’t own a single car or a house. But check him out in his mostly-black clothes. And since he’s generally seen in black, we’re guessing that’s his favorite color – like Steve Jobs.

The Lambo Giveaway

He seems to love rather unusual marketing tactics. Binance has offered several promotions. One of them had a Lamborghini as a giveaway! While CZ himself isn’t interested in cars, his company’s promotional methods have generated a lot of attention. We’ll have to give it to his marketing chief, who came up with this idea.

He worked at McDonald’s

CZ was born in Jiangsu, a coastal province in China. His parents moved to Canada soon after his birth. As a teenager, he started working to help with household expenses. In the 1980s, he joined McDonald’s and flipped burgers to help his family.

Later, he attended McGill University and studied Computer Science. He was also passionate about stock markets and trading, which led him to choose this career.

He’s Minting Money Now

He worked at gas stations and McDonald’s, and he’s here now. His company, Binance, is expected to rake in about $1 billion in profits in 2018 alone. While big cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple saw a little downfall in their values this year, Binance has been booming and is making big bucks for CZ.

With such unprecedented success, Zhao has become a crypto star, and rightly so. His company, Binance, can easily handle 1.4 million transactions each second.