Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is worth an estimated $96 billion, which rivals the fortunes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index has estimated Changpeng‘s net worth for the first time, and it finds that it exceeds that of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries in India and Asia’s richest person. Zhao’s personal crypto holdings aren’t included in the $96 billion figure, so it could be significantly even more as well.
Bloomberg reported that CZ’s wealth is likely to rival that of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The 44-year-old has the closest competitors among his crypto peers, including the founder of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried ($15.4 billion) and CEO of Coinbase Brian Armstrong ($8.9 billion).
According to CoinGecko, Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with a 24-hour trading volume of $106 billion as of Jan 6. It generated at least $20 billion of revenue last year.
Assuming Zhao owns 90% of Binance, Bloomberg calculated Binance’s revenue from spot and derivatives trading volumes and advertised fees and valued the business based on publicly traded peers. Binance disputed the accuracy of the estimates, and Zhao declined to comment to Bloomberg.
Binance CEO CZ to give away the vast majority of his wealth
In an interview with the Associated Press, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance, says he plans to give up to 99% of his wealth, according to an interview he gave to the Associated Press published on Wednesday. He also said he doesn’t understand dogecoin, but he’s fine with it.
“My personal finances are in great shape. I don’t need a lot of money and I can maintain my lifestyle in this way. I intend to give most of my wealth away, much like [John D.] Rockefeller did,” Zhao said as he plans to give away 90, 95, or 99% of his wealth.
Zhao also said that he doesn’t do much personal investing. He bought some bitcoins in 2014 and has retained most of those investments. In order to avoid conflict of interest, he said he does not own equity in any other project, whether crypto or non-crypto, with a majority stake in BNB (Binance coin).
Based on Forbes’ estimate, Zhao’s wealth is $1.9 billion, but given that he is Binance’s largest shareholder, it’s likely that he is worth significantly more. Former Binance executives told the Wall Street Journal that the company could be worth as much as $300 billion if it went public.
According to Zhao, “the most important factor hindering crypto’s growth is not its volatility but its ease of use. The centralized exchanges hold the coins people own. (But) holding tokens securely is a fundamental limitation factor today. We don’t have easy-to-use tools that are also secure enough. But I think as the industry evolves things will get better.”
