Dear Judge Jones:
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I am the work partner of Changpeng Zhao (abbreviated as CZ), and I am also 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 school blockchain public event. Everyone called him CZ. Unlike the anonymous name used by many people, this is the initials of his real name. CZ was immediately invited to the stage to share impromptu that day after arriving, because the organizer found that he worked for the most popular Bitcoin wallet at the time (blockchain.info). He enthusiastically explained blockchain technology and Bitcoin principles to everyone. At that time, he had just sold his house to buy Bitcoin. Due to the decline in the price of Bitcoin, his assets shrank significantly, but this did not hit 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. Of course, he hopes that the company will succeed, but he is not a person who takes 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 medical expenses, so he publicly launched a fundraising campaign. CZ actively participated in the donation even though his personal assets had shrunk greatly, but unfortunately, this community member still died in the end. Inspired by this incident, Z and I jointly launched the “Love BTC” charity project. He built a website and a public Bitcoin wallet address. We raised funds through social media auctions of clothing, etc., and then directly exchanged BTC for goods and gave them to the beneficiaries. For this purpose, CZ also wrote a paper on how blockchain technology can achieve 100% transparent charity, ensure that the final beneficiaries receive 100% of the benefits, and ensure that no donations are eroded by middleman management fees. This paper can be found on Github in April 2014 (https:/github.com/cpzhao/bitcoin charity/blob/master/Bitcoin Charity.md); and this is the predecessor of Binance Charity. This was three years before Binance was founded, and CZ was not rich at that time. Many people think that charity is just for fame and reputation. Some people use it as a means to offset taxes, and some people will say that they will do charity when they are financially free. For Z, 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, that was 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 need to bear the consequences of your own mistakes. However, for this kid in his early 20s, those thousands of dollars may be his family’s annual income, his annual college tuition, and his hope for the future. After a brief discussion between me and Z, 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 from the wrong address. After the first time, there were countless times. Under CZ's guidance, Binance has helped more than 180,000 users recover assets totaling more than 441 million US dollars. This is a project that consumes a lot of resources and is not worth doing 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 the role of predators, 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, and the enthusiasm of investors 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 then disappeared, but according to the public on-chain information tracking, the money had just been transferred to Binance. According to the law enforcement procedures of most platforms today, users need to find the police first and report the case, and the police can only freeze the funds after providing a letter of cooperation. However, at that time, China banned cryptocurrency transactions, and Chinese police did not handle such cases.CZ said to us: "Do the right thing", we temporarily froze the stolen money, and then organized multiple calls between the victims and the scammers. In the end, 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 combating 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 promote law enforcement agencies. 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 personnel 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 line in Africa, and young men in rural Southeast Asia who did not want to be fishermen. It can be said that CZ really treated everyone equally regardless of race, belief, gender, education, and family background: whether it was 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 bringing danger to employees, CZ helped employees regardless of the cost: for a company boss, it is not uncommon to spend millions of dollars to help those scarce talents facing difficulties lead their families out of an unstable living environment and continue to pay allowances. When CZ decided these, he did not consider their background and rank, which also covered a large number of junior employees who were just starting out. These employees were generally easy to find replacements, but CZ made decisions for only one reason: they needed support. CZ's leadership style may not meet the traditional expectations of an excellent CEO. His commitment to transparency and fairness at Binance often clashed with the power expectations of a small group of employees accustomed to a meritocratic corporate environment, leading some employees to leave the company in dissatisfaction and make false accusations to the media.Although these reports sometimes make me feel frustrated, CZ has been shouldering this burden and continues to support justice and equality because he understands that true fairness is sometimes unfair to 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 provided by 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 was reluctant to give up the transaction in the end, the subsequent public information of the incident showed that multiple companies associated with FTX were misappropriating user assets, which made CZ dumbfounded. CZ believes that transparency is a better solution, so he disclosed the wallet address of Binance's trading platform, and launched products that allow users to verify their account funds and online wallet addresses to demonstrate Binance's transparency, which further promotes industry self-discipline. So far, CZ and I have experienced ten years of ups and downs in this industry. These ten years have been a decade of dramatic changes in the industry. In these ten years, Bitcoin has risen from a low of hundreds of dollars to more than 40,000 US dollars now. We have seen countless former celebrities lose their reputations and countless well-known institutions collapse in an instant. Most of the time, these people are self-proclaimed smart and talented, but they regard the law as nothing, thinking that they can deceive the public or get away with it. But CZ is not: he is upright, kind, sincere, smart and very, very hardworking: CZ underwent two spinal surgeries in 2020 alone due to work reasons, and he did not stop working for a day even when he was repeatedly lying in bed for 18 months. In the past six years, as CEO and the largest shareholder, he received a salary lower than that of multiple executives introduced by the company later, and did not make a single dividend or cash out for himself. This time, in order to keep Binance running, he chose to fly to the United States to plead guilty; between personal interests and public interests, CZ always chooses to sacrifice himself and achieve Binance, 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 when the Chinese government banned Bitcoin trading platforms and other project parties took the opportunity to make a fortune, CZ chose to clear out users at a higher price; it could also be when Binance was stolen, CZ was the first to disclose the information and take full responsibility; it could also be when countless project parties issued coins just to sell them to get rich, and CZ was helping users track down scammers and hackers in the industry, some of which 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, rides a balance bike to meetings, and is publicly ridiculed by reporters for enthusiastically showing his Toyota 6-seater van to reporters. He buys things out of efficiency and interest. He has no fanatical desire for money, reputation, and enjoyment. He hopes to live a meaningful life. At the same time, he always takes care of his friends' feelings as much as possible, regardless of their careers and social status; he also tries his best to take time out of his busy work to maintain high-quality interaction with his three young children. The children are very close to him, and now they are always asking: Why is Dad not at home? When can Dad come back? Of course, I am not saying here that CZ has not made mistakes, but his biggest mistake is ignorance. As a startup company without a gorgeous background, the founding team members have no legal background, and even most of the early management team members, except CZ, cannot even read English, such as myself. In the absence of experience and legal knowledge, CZ won users with fairness, integrity and sense of responsibility to the industry, but also made mistakes. In any case, the mistake has been made, and 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 and block the arrows. The hero is just in that position to protect his family, community, ethnic group, and country to do the right thing, and he has to become a hero in the process." I humbly hope that Judge Jones can comprehensively consider that in the early and chaotic cryptocurrency industry, even how to regulate this industry and how to define the United States have not been determined. As a founder who has never managed a company of this scale, he must encounter blind spots. If CZ knew the seriousness of the matter, he would definitely guard against it from the first day and block any American users. He does not want to be a hero, and of course he has no intention of becoming a criminal. All his behavioral logic follows universal humanitarian principles and does his best. Today, it is a sense of responsibility that makes him choose to face the trial, but he should never be regarded as the same as those evil murderers, robbers, and fraudsters. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open the eyes of God, be omniscient, and make a fair judgment after seeing a more complete CZ.Feel free to contact me for more details if needed.