I woke up early on the weekend and there was not much to say about the recent ups and downs in the market.
The whole internet has been eating melons these two days. The melon about Xu Bo is enough to be talked about for several days!
In my opinion, this kind of blessing will be squandered by him sooner or later. His virtue is not worthy of his position, and the cycle of cause and effect has led to his current situation.
As a person, no matter who you are, how much wealth you have, or what you do, your intentions must be positive. If your intentions are wrong, they will backfire sooner or later.
Next, let’s talk about the fact that cz Zhao Changpeng was sentenced to three years in prison. Many friends are worried about their safety.
Of course, this is understandable, but some people who call themselves big Vs (Gao Peng) on the Internet are even shady. They have no bottom line for traffic and are clever clowns with no professional ethics. Such people are shameful.
Let’s take a look at what kind of person Zhao Changpeng is in the eyes of CZ’s wife, He Yi.
I believe that the CZ in her eyes is the most comprehensive and core CZ that everyone understands. Binance can get to where it is today. I believe it must have done a lot of things right to get to where it is today. Similarly, a corporate leader without a righteous heart and mindfulness would not be able to get to where it is today.
How much money a company can make depends on its business model, and how far it can go depends on its values.
Below is the letter He Yi wrote to the judge
The Honorable Judge Jones
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I am the working partner of Changpeng Zhao (abbreviated as CZ) and the mother of his three children. I hope this letter can help Mr. Judge understand a more real Changpeng Zhao.
In the spring of 2014, I met Changpeng Zhao at a blockchain public event at school. Everyone called him CZ, which is different from the anonymous name used by many people. This is the initials of his real name.
When CZ arrived that day, he was immediately invited to the stage for an impromptu presentation because the organizers discovered that he worked for the most popular Bitcoin wallet at the time (blockchain.info).
He enthusiastically explained blockchain technology and the principles of Bitcoin to everyone. At that time, he had just sold his house to buy Bitcoin. Due to the drop in Bitcoin prices, his assets shrank significantly, but this did not dampen his obsession with blockchain technology. His speech was full of idealism about how blockchain technology can bring positive changes to the world, which also greatly influenced and inspired me.
Later, CZ chose to get involved in the encryption field and founded Binance. He certainly hopes that the company will succeed, but he is not a person who regards making money as the ultimate goal. He sincerely hopes to use technology to promote the progress of the world.
In the summer of 2014, CZ’s years of experience in matchmaking and trading technology could not be fully utilized in Blockchain. After I invited him many times, he joined OKCoin, the crypto trading platform where I worked. At that time, the cryptocurrency industry had entered a downward cycle. Amid the industry’s wailing, a community member unfortunately suffered from leukemia. He could not afford his own medical expenses, so he publicly launched a fundraising campaign.
CZ actively participated in donations even though his personal assets had shrunk significantly, but unfortunately, this community member still passed away in the end.
Inspired by this incident, CZ and I jointly launched the "Love BTC" charity project. He set up a website and a public Bitcoin wallet address. We raised funds through social media auctions of clothing, etc., and then directly exchanged BTC for items and gave them to the beneficiaries.
To this end, CZ also wrote a paper on how blockchain technology can achieve 100% transparent charity, ensuring that the final beneficiaries receive 100% of the benefits and that no donations are eroded by middleman management fees.
This paper can be found on Github, timestamped April 2014 (https://github.com/cpzhao/bitcoin_charity/blob/master/Bitcoin_Charity.md); this is the predecessor of Binance Charity. This was three years before Binance was founded, and CZ was not rich at the time.
Many people think that charity is just for fame and reputation, some use it as a means to offset taxes, and some say they will do charity when they are financially independent. But for CZ, whether he is poor or rich, he takes charity seriously and assumes social responsibility because he is kind and has a humanitarian spirit.
In August 2017, the first month I joined Binance, a young user came to me and said that he had transferred thousands of dollars to Binance’s wallet address, but Binance did not support this token, so Binance could not receive this token; this was a very common mistake in the early days of the industry. According to the industry practice at the time, you have to bear the consequences of your own mistakes.
However, for this kid in his early 20s, those several thousand dollars might be his family’s annual income, his annual college tuition, and his hope for the future.
After a brief discussion between CZ and I, he mobilized our limited development resources and quickly helped the user recover the assets. This was the first case in the industry to help users recover assets that were entered at the wrong address.
After the first time, there have been countless times since then. Under CZ’s guidance, Binance has helped more than 180,000 users recover assets totaling more than US$441 million.
This is a resource-intensive project that is not worthwhile in terms of ROI, but we can ignite hope for our users in despair.
To this day, publicly listed trading platforms such as Coinbase still do not support this service. In this emerging Wild West, countless practitioners play more of a predator role, and CZ has always insisted that we should do the right thing: protect users.
In early 2018, the price of Bitcoin rose to more than 20,000 US dollars, and investors' enthusiasm also spawned a large number of frauds. One day, a group of Chinese users came to me and pointed out that they were lured by an account on social media to invest in a project. After transferring the money, the person disappeared. However, according to the public on-chain information tracking, the money had just been transferred to Binance.
According to the law enforcement process of most platforms today, users need to find the police first and report the case to the police, and the police can only freeze the case after providing a letter of cooperation. However, at that time, China banned cryptocurrency transactions, and the Chinese police did not handle such cases.
CZ told us, “Do the right thing.” We temporarily froze the stolen money, and then organized multiple phone calls between the victims and the scammers. Eventually, the scammers returned the money to the users and the scammers closed their accounts.
This is just one of the countless examples of CZ's persistence in cracking down on evildoers. In the past 2023, Binance cooperated with law enforcement agencies in various countries in more than 58,000 case investigations, many of which were initiated by Binance to push law enforcement agencies to initiate investigations. This is why, despite the mainstream media's attempts to portray CZ as an evil villain, millions of community users and ordinary people regard him as a hero in the industry, because CZ has always insisted on justice. If the cryptocurrency industry is compared to the Wild West, then CZ is the guardian of this wilderness.
Starting in 2019, the company's staff began to grow rapidly, and the team composition was very global and full of diversity. During this period, there were Wall Street elites who graduated from Ivy League schools, dropouts from Europe, female NGO fighters active on the front lines in Africa, and young men from rural Southeast Asia who did not want to be fishermen.
It can be said that CZ has really done it. Regardless of race, belief, gender, education, or family background, CZ treats everyone equally here. Whether it’s a junior employee’s house in Southeast Asia destroyed by a fire, or Covid sweeping the world causing employees to lack epidemic prevention supplies, or even the war between Russia and Ukraine posing a danger to employees, CZ helps employees regardless of the cost. For a business owner, it is not uncommon to spend millions of dollars to help scarce talents facing difficulties lead their families out of an unstable living environment and to continue to pay allowances.
When CZ made these decisions, he did not consider their background or job level. This also covered a large number of junior employees who were just starting out. It was generally easy to find replacements for these employees, but there was only one reason for CZ's decision: they needed support.
CZ’s leadership style may not conform to traditional expectations of a good CEO. His commitment to transparency and fairness at Binance often clashes with the power expectations of a small group of employees accustomed to an elite, hierarchical corporate environment.
This has led to some employees leaving the company in anger and making false accusations to the media. While these reports have sometimes frustrated me, CZ has shouldered this burden and continued to stand up for justice and equality because he understands that true fairness sometimes doesn’t work for the privileged few.
On a weekend in November 2022, FTX was facing a crisis, and Sam (SBF) made his last call for help to CZ. Before getting any valid reports and documents from SBF, CZ convened a management meeting to decide whether to rescue FTX. He said: "We don't need FTX as a company. We save FTX to save the industry. We should save FTX." Although he eventually gave up the deal, subsequent public information showed that multiple companies associated with FTX were misappropriating user assets, which shocked CZ.
CZ believes that transparency is a better solution, so he disclosed the wallet address of Binance's trading platform. The launch of products that allow users to check their account funds and online wallet addresses by themselves demonstrates Binance's transparency, which in turn further promotes industry self-discipline.
So far, CZ and I have experienced ten years of ups and downs in this industry together. This decade has been a decade of dramatic changes in the industry. In this decade, Bitcoin has risen from a low of hundreds of dollars to more than 40,000 US dollars now.
We have seen countless former celebrities fall from grace, and countless well-known institutions collapse in an instant. Most of the time, these people are self-proclaimed smart and talented, but they disregard the law and think they can deceive the public or get away with it.
But CZ is not like that; he is honest, kind, sincere, smart and very, very hardworking; because of his work, CZ underwent two spinal surgeries in 2020 alone, and even during the 18 months he was repeatedly lying in bed, he never stopped working for a single day.
As the CEO and largest shareholder in the past six years, he received a salary lower than that of several executives subsequently introduced by the company, and he did not pay dividends or cash out once.
This time, in order to keep Binance operating, he chose to fly to the United States to plead guilty; between personal interests and public interests, CZ always chooses to sacrifice himself to make Binance successful, and when between Binance and users, he will choose users.
As CZ's partner, I know clearly how CZ won the respect of the community; it could be that when the Chinese government banned Bitcoin trading platforms, other project parties took the opportunity to make a fortune, and CZ chose to clear out users at a higher price; it could also be that when Binance was stolen, CZ was the first to disclose the information and take full responsibility; it could also be that when countless project parties issued coins just to sell coins to get rich, CZ was helping users track down scammers and hackers in the industry, and some cases had nothing to do with Binance, just because of his sense of mission and responsibility for the industry.
As CZ's life partner, I have known CZ for nearly ten years, so I know his unknown side better. He knows nothing about the jewelry, luxury goods, luxury cars, and art auctions that the rich are keen on. He lives a simple life. He buys affordable clothes on Amazon, he rides a balance bike to meetings, he enthusiastically showed his Toyota 6-seater van to reporters and was later publicly ridiculed by the reporters. He buys things out of efficiency and interest.
He has no fanatical desire for money, fame, or enjoyment; he hopes to live a meaningful life.
At the same time, he always tries his best to be considerate of his friends' feelings, regardless of their occupations and social status; he also tries his best to take time out of his busy work schedule to maintain high-quality interactions with his three young children.
The children are very close to him, and now they are always asking: Why is Dad not home? When can Dad come back?
Of course I am not saying here that CZ didn’t make mistakes, but his biggest mistake was ignorance.
As a startup without a fancy background, the founding team members had no legal background, and even most of the early management team members, except CZ, could not even read English, such as myself.
In the absence of experience and legal knowledge, CZ won users with fairness, integrity and a sense of responsibility to the industry, but also made mistakes. In any case, the mistakes have been made, and both Binance and CZ have paid a huge price.
CZ once said: "No one wants to be a hero, because no one is born to rush to the front to block the arrows. Heroes are just in that position and have to protect their families, communities, ethnic groups, and countries to do the right thing, and have to become heroes in the process.
I humbly hope that Judge Jones will take into account that in the early and chaotic cryptocurrency industry, there is no consensus on how to regulate this industry and how to define the United States. As a founder who has never managed a company of this scale, he will definitely encounter blind spots. If CZ knew the seriousness of the matter, he would definitely guard against it from day one and block any US users.
He doesn't want to be a hero, and certainly has no intention of being a criminal. All his actions follow universal humanitarian principles and he does his best.
Today, it is his sense of responsibility that made him choose to face the trial, but he should never be considered the same as those evil murderers, robbers, and fraudsters. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open God's eyes, be omniscient, and make a fair judgment after seeing a more complete CZ. If necessary, you can contact me at any time for more details.
Sincere blessing!
After seeing what He Yi thinks of Zhao Changpeng, and how He Yi, a woman, can become the mother of Zhao Changpeng's child, she can be described in one word, that is, "real"
For the sake of Binance and its users, Zhao Changpeng stood up to face his responsibilities and sacrificed the safety of his users. This is something that most platform leaders cannot do. Most people would choose to escape or run away when faced with this choice, but CZ is a real man who can get things done and take on responsibilities. I believe that after this incident, Binance's foundation will be more stable and it will gain more user value.
I believe that through the above content, everyone can have a clearer understanding of Binance, or Zhao Changpeng as a person, and also have the confidence to whether they can put their assets in Binance with peace of mind.
The above content is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. Investment is risky and you should be cautious when entering the market.
