Former richest Chinese man Zhao Changpeng is in jail!
On April 30, Zhao Changpeng received his final sentencing in the United States. The Seattle court announced that Zhao Changpeng was sentenced to four months in prison.
In fact, before this, Zhao Changpeng had paid a fine of 4.32 billion US dollars in order to avoid jail time, but this 4.32 billion US dollars only reduced Zhao Changpeng's imprisonment time.
Who is Changpeng Zhao?
The richest Chinese and the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. He is talented and has a unique vision. In 2011, he became the richest Chinese with a net worth of 573.3 billion yuan.
However, not long after, he was "blackmailed" by the United States and fined more than 50 billion yuan, and is now behind bars.
Why did Zhao Changpeng end up like this? What did he do to make the United States take advantage of him so much? How did he, who looks ordinary, build his own business empire?
Zhao Changpeng was born in the 1970s. He is originally from Jiangsu and his father is a university professor.
When he was 12 years old, in order to give Zhao Changpeng a better educational environment, his family immigrated to Canada and gave up their Chinese nationality.
In Vancouver, the family did not live well. The mother worked as a seamstress and the father drove a broken car.
When he was in high school, most of the Chinese students here came from the wealthier Hong Kong and Taiwan, China. Although there was a huge gap between the rich and the poor, Zhao Changpeng got along well with them.
Zhao Changpeng does not feel inferior because he is not rich. In his spare time, he works part-time at Chevron and McDonald's. He is one of the few people who can support himself by working.
At that time, his father spent 7,000 Canadian dollars to buy an IBM-compatible 286 computer. This computer was not only a tool for his father to do research, but also opened Zhao Changpeng's programming journey.
Zhao Changpeng was full of gratitude for this and said that this helped him get on the right path.
During college, Zhao Changpeng successfully studied computer science.
However, at this time, Zhao Changpeng did not have a very clear plan for the future. The most he did was to keep his father's teachings in mind, find a decent job, and then work hard.
But a book changed his life - (Rich Dad Poor Dad).
This is a book for typical middle-class, ordinary people. It tells the story of two fathers who have completely different life paths. One worked hard all his life but got nothing in return, and the other became rich as an entrepreneur or investor.
Zhao Changpeng began to doubt his father's plan. He began to think, why couldn't he own a company, create some meaningful business, and then create wealth?
Zhao Changpeng decided not to follow his father's arrangements.
As soon as he finished college, he interned at the Tokyo Stock Exchange and later went to Bloomberg Trading Company in New York.
Because of his outstanding work performance, Zhao Changpeng was promoted three times within less than two years of joining the company and became the technical director.
But it is impossible to work forever, Zhao Changpeng has bigger ambitions.
At that time, China's economy was entering a period of rapid development, and someone said to Zhao Changpeng: "Why not go to Shanghai to start a business!"
In 2005, Zhao Changpeng resigned from his executive position and returned to Shanghai to establish Fusion Technologies.
But what Zhao Changpeng didn't expect was that an accidental encounter completely changed his life.
In 2013, several big names gathered at a poker game in Shanghai.
One of them is Zhao Changpeng, and the other is Li Qiyuan, the founder of "Bitcoin China".
At that time, many people didn’t know about Bitcoin, and many people wanted to get a piece of this new trend, and Zhao Changpeng was no exception.
At the poker table, Li Qiyuan told Zhao Changpeng that "Bitcoin is the future" and claimed that investing 10% of the net assets in it could multiply infinitely, and if it returned to zero, the principal would only be lost.
Zhao Changpeng was stunned. Although he didn’t know much about Bitcoin, he was fascinated by the Bitcoin described by Li Qiyuan.
Zhao Changpeng felt that this was an opportunity, an opportunity to move towards a wider world.
So he left the company he founded and joined Blockchain, a company that tracks Bitcoin transactions, to be responsible for product development.
A year later, the appearance of a woman accelerated Zhao Changpeng's pace of entering the Bitcoin market. She was He Yi, the "No. 1 Lady in the Cryptocurrency Circle". The two later raised three children.
He Yi's experience can also be called legendary.
She was born in a rural family in Sichuan. After graduating from college, she worked as a product promoter, bedding store manager, university class teacher, and host.
Until he met Xu Mingxing, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange OKcoin, and joined OKCoin as vice president.
With his vigorous and decisive style of doing things, He Yi once led his team to help the company improve its performance.
At an internal meeting, Zhao Changpeng's outstanding performance attracted He Yi, who invited him to join OKCoin. From then on, a three-person team was formed.
After joining OKCoin, Zhao Changpeng became more and more obsessed with virtual currency.
Not long after, Zhao Changpeng did something shocking. He sold his property in Shanghai and used the money to buy Bitcoin.
No one would dare to gamble their entire fortune, but Zhao Changpeng did it.
Unexpectedly, the value of Bitcoin plummeted, while housing prices in Shanghai skyrocketed, and Zhao Changpeng suffered huge losses.
But a ruthless person is a ruthless person. Zhao Changpeng still firmly believes in the magic of digital currency and believes that Bitcoin is profitable.
At this time, the conflict between Zhao Changpeng and Xu Mingxing also intensified. The two often had disagreements due to different ideas. Later, the two parted ways unhappily.
In 2015, Zhao Changpeng left OK Exchange and founded Bijie Technology, which specializes in providing trading systems for collectibles such as coins, stamps, and phone cards.
Soon after, many people used the Bijie Technology platform to commit fraud, and many people lost their fortunes as a result. Bijie Technology was ordered to shut down.
However, Zhao Changpeng, who has already achieved financial freedom, will certainly not give up easily.
In 2017, cryptocurrencies skyrocketed. Zhao Changpeng seized the opportunity and founded a Bitcoin trading company - "Binance", and set a slogan: Exchange the World.
At the same time, Zhao Changpeng invited He Yi to join Binance as a co-founder.
Since then, Zhao Changpeng, with Binance as his backer, has become increasingly ambitious.
Since its inception, Binance's development has exceeded imagination. It received 15 million yuan in financing in less than 10 days. In just 3 months, it attracted one million users and achieved a profit of 7.5 million US dollars.
Less than half a year after its establishment, Binance achieved a staggering profit of US$200 million, and Zhao Changpeng became a legend in the industry.
If this trend continues, the future of Zhao Changpeng's Bitcoin will be immeasurable. However, in China, Zhao Changpeng and his company are destined to have no soil for survival.
In September 2017, my country defined token issuance financing as an unauthorized and illegal public financing behavior.
As domestic cryptocurrency trading venues were shut down one after another, Zhao Changpeng and his companies began a “wandering journey” around the world.
He migrated data hosted on more than 200 servers to Amazon Web Services and other overseas servers overnight, and moved Binance to Japan.
However, Japan also issued an "expulsion order" shortly afterwards.
After leaving Japan, Zhao Changpeng went to Malta, which is friendly to cryptocurrencies, but Malta soon suddenly announced that Binance was not under its jurisdiction.
In desperation, Zhao Changpeng looked around for a place to stay, but no place could truly accept Binance.
After a series of setbacks, Zhao Changpeng decided not to look for a headquarters for Binance, but instead to adopt a unique approach to manage Binance.
The company adopts online office mode, with more than 3,000 employees scattered across the country. Zhao Changpeng also maintains a sense of mystery, and almost no one knows his itinerary.
Zhao Changpeng said: "Wherever I am, there is Binance's office."
However, the "wandering" of Binance has not affected its wild growth, because it has always been following the international route and has never lacked users.
In January 2018, the number of Binance users soared to 5 million, and its peak daily trading volume reached US$10 billion, making it one of the world's class exchanges.
In 2021, the cryptocurrency issued by Binance rose by about 13 times, Binance's daily trading volume reached US$76 billion, and its valuation reached US$300 billion.
Such achievements are indeed brilliant enough, and Zhao Changpeng's net worth has also risen sharply.
At the end of 2021, Zhao Changpeng surpassed Zhong Shanshan and Zhang Yiming to become the richest Chinese with a net worth of US$94.1 billion, and ranked among the top ten richest people in the world.
Zhao Changpeng was at the peak of his career at this time, but because he was operating in a gray area and had such astonishing wealth, he was destined to be targeted.
In March 2023, the United States filed charges against Binance and Zhao Changpeng, accusing them of suspected illegal transactions.
In June of the same year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced 13 charges against Binance and Zhao Changpeng, and required him to go to the United States to face punishment.
However, the SEC couldn’t find Zhao Changpeng at all and couldn’t even submit legal documents.
In desperation, the SEC requested the court’s approval to ask Binance’s attorney to transfer the case. Zhao Changpeng, who received the lawsuit, said he was in the UAE.
There is no so-called extradition treaty between the UAE and the United States, which means that as long as Zhao Changpeng is in the UAE, the United States cannot take coercive measures against him.
However, there was no way the United States would let him off so easily. It said that as long as Zhao Changpeng came to the United States to pay the fine, the matter would be resolved.
Zhao Changpeng really thought that he could get away with it by paying the fine, so in November 2023, Zhao Changpeng went to the Seattle Federal Court in the United States and signed a plea agreement.
At the same time, Zhao Changpeng paid a fine of approximately US$4.3 billion in exchange for Binance's continued operations, and as the founder, he also resigned from the position of CEO.
After pleading guilty, Zhao Changpeng was released on bail of $175 million and was allowed to return to his home in the UAE during the bail period.
However, what he didn't expect was that the United States soon reneged on its decision and banned him from leaving the country.
This is not the end. A month later, the U.S. Futures Trading Commission announced that it would impose another fine of US$2.85 billion on Zhao Changpeng.
After several penalties, the United States took away more than 7 billion US dollars from Zhao Changpeng.
But it’s not over yet.
On April 23, 2024, U.S. prosecutors stated in court documents that Zhao Changpeng should serve 36 months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering charges.
However, before the trial, Zhao Changpeng submitted his own letter of apology to the judge, as well as 161 letters of support from important figures such as family, friends, politicians, and employees.
Finally, on April 30, Zhao Changpeng was sentenced to four months in prison.
This former richest Chinese man eventually became the richest man in the history of global prisons.
Why is the world so big, but Zhao Changpeng is being expelled everywhere?
Because Bitcoin seems to be a simple cryptocurrency, but it is extremely dangerous. Many people have become rich overnight because of it, and many people have also lost their fortunes because of it.
There is no shortage of myths about getting rich overnight in this society, but behind huge wealth lies an unknowable abyss.