Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud
by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman · 17 Jul 2023 · 329pp · 99,504 words
number of meaningful players in crypto was actually extremely small. At or near the top of that list was the founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. Born in China but raised in Canada, CZ, as he preferred to call himself, graduated from college with a degree in computer science. After school
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Cayman Islands, Binance’s employees are scattered across the world, with growing hubs in Paris and the UAE. Binance’s crypto-nerd-celebrity chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, serves as the company’s face via Twitter while jetting among various global tech and financial capitals. He now appears to be based
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actually all hated each other. Everyone was punching wildly, with SBF criticizing Binance and CZ suing a magazine publisher for a cover line that read “Changpeng Zhao’s Ponzi Scheme.” That was along with accusations of market manipulation, fears of government intervention, and more rumors than even a gossip-hound like me
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to be getting into crypto. Sam decided to gamble bigger. Why not start an exchange? In 2019, FTX was born. Six months after its launch, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, reportedly purchased 20 percent of FTX for $100 million. In late 2020 and early 2021, as the market for cryptocurrencies exploded
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suspicions regarding Binance, the industry giant that Jacob and I had been tracking. It was a bit odd for Sam to throw shade at them; Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, was one of FTX’s first investors. Jacob asked if USDD, a new stablecoin, could be an eventual replacement for Tether
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fundamental had changed. Sam seemed genuinely nervous. What was going on? Alongside his colleague at FTX Ryan Salame, Sam started publicly shit-talking Binance’s Changpeng Zhao. The two yukked it up over Twitter. “Been an absolute pleasure watching @cz_binance have the extremely difficult but transformative debates on twitter this past
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DC, right?” It was an extremely bold move, even by crypto standards. Was Sam bragging about his government connections, which kept him safe and put Changpeng Zhao and Binance under the microscope? The bombshell came on November 2. CoinDesk, an online crypto publication, published an article about Alameda’s balance sheet, which
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testimony leaked. In it, Bankman-Fried included screenshots from a chat group on the encrypted app Signal entitled “Exchange Coordination.” Members of the group included Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of Binance, Paolo Ardoino of Tether, and Justin Sun of Tron. I thought back to my conversation with Bitfinex’ed from a year prior
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on February 16. Reuters broke the news that Binance had secretly moved $400 million from its American partner, Binance.US, to a company managed by Changpeng Zhao over the course of the first three months of 2021. Reportedly, the money was transferred from the Binance.US account at California-based Silvergate Bank
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setting local legally compliant entities such as Binance.US to steer their attention away from the headquarters-less mothership of Binance itself. The yin of Changpeng Zhao’s so-far-successful growth strategy seemed destined for a head-on collision with the yang of American law enforcement. Meanwhile, on March 3, 2023
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Crypto Shilling Is a Moral Disaster” (McKenzie, B., and Silverman) celebrity endorsement Celsius. See also Mashinsky, Alex Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) centralized exchanges Chalopin, Jean Changpeng Zhao (CZ) Chanos, Jim Chaum, David Claros, Wilfredo Clayton, Jay Coinbase CoinDesk collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) collateralized default obligations (CDOs) Collins-Rector, Marc commercial paper Commodity
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
by Jacob Silverman · 9 Oct 2025 · 312pp · 103,645 words
FTX customer funds. The collapse was already in motion. Within days of the balance sheet leak, the industry’s most powerful player entered the fray: Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, the co-founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Zhao and Bankman-Fried had been friends and
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trading on its own exchange—a form of potential market manipulation—and funneling billions of dollars in revenues to Swiss and Maltese companies controlled by Changpeng Zhao and a mysterious company executive whose role the company obfuscated. Despite the instability surrounding Binance, the company still managed, somehow, to maintain its pole position
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$500 million into Musk’s Twitter buyout—was registered in the Cayman Islands, with an office address on a residential street in Malta. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was known to spend a lot of time in Dubai, where Binance apparently had an office. That is, until Zhao went to prison. With Binance
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by Zeke Faux · 11 Sep 2023 · 385pp · 106,848 words
FTX were billionaires. And that was just a single crypto company. Many unprofitable start-ups with questionably legal business plans were valued in the billions. Changpeng Zhao, who founded another crypto exchange called Binance, made a fortune estimated at $96 billion. The numbers got so large that even the most delusional crypto
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of events that would finally reveal the rot at the center of crypto. The tweet was directed at the richest man in crypto: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. And it was meant to be a joke. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Assets Are Not Fine “Excited to see him repping the industry in DC going
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, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “we are operating”: SEC v. Binance Holdings Limited, BAM Trading Services Inc., BAM Management US Holdings Inc., and Changpeng Zhao, 1:23-cv-01599 (D.D.C. June 5, 2023), Complaint. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT whether there was any truth: CZ told my
Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street
by Jeff John Roberts · 15 Dec 2020 · 226pp · 65,516 words
, in a garage next door, his rival was detailing a Porsche. Brian’s new rival went by the name of CZ (the initials stand for Changpeng Zhao, but everyone uses the shorthand version). CZ wears wireless glasses and close-cropped black hair. In public, his go-to attire is a black hoodie
Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service
by Michael Lewis · 18 Mar 2025 · 186pp · 61,027 words
arrest of 370 alleged pedophiles. It has resulted in the largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency headed to Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. When Changpeng Zhao, chief of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, reported to prison in June, it was because Koopman’s small cybercrime team had uncovered evidence
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to know where to start the investigation. Even Binance’s location was unclear. It was initially in China, then Hong Kong, then Japan, then Malta. Changpeng Zhao, the Canadian co-founder and CEO, lived in Dubai. “They existed everywhere but nowhere,” Koopman says. “We had to come up with new methods.” The
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words
crypto market.” Qureshi explained to me that the cryptocurrency exchange market had been dominated by companies with Chinese founders—particularly Binance, run by SBF nemesis Changpeng Zhao. Between political risk associated with Chinese investments, a lack of cultural ties, and sometimes outright bias, an American founder was bound to get extra credit
The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto
by Benjamin Wallace · 18 Mar 2025 · 431pp · 116,274 words
Satoshi! When do I get sued?” Wright sued him too. Binance and Kraken, two of the three largest cryptocurrency exchanges, delisted BSV, and Binance leader Changpeng Zhao retweeted, “An attack against one is an attack against all.” There had long been a small tribe of volunteer Wright investigators—one had obtained Wright
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v. McCormack, High Court of Justice (U.K.), Queen’s Bench Division, Media and Communications List, August 1, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Changpeng Zhao retweeted: @cz_binance, Twitter, April 12, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT one had obtained Wright’s military records: Jameson Lopp, “OP ED: How
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac · 17 Sep 2024
Bitcoin. But it was Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, that pulled the trigger. The company, led by an enigmatic Chinese-born founder named Changpeng Zhao, was flush. It facilitated more than $75 billion in daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Dogecoin, and others. It committed $500 million to Musk
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by Michael Lewis · 2 Oct 2023 · 263pp · 92,618 words
would supply the customers, and the trust. The most likely buyer, and the person to whom Sam himself pitched the idea, was CZ. CZ was Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the crypto exchange Binance. Born in Jiangsu province, he was raised, from adolescence, in Canada, and educated there, returning eventually to China, with