Former McDonald’s employee and the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Changpeng Zhao, often known as CZ, is the world’s richest crypto millionaire, with a fortune comparable to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and other technological advancements tycoons. Bloomberg assessed Zhao’s net worth to be $96 billion. This was the first time he’d had his fortune calculated. Zhao’s $96 billion net worth (due to the cryptocurrency surge) catapulted him ahead of Mukesh Ambani, the 11th richest Indian billionaire, who was worth $92.9 billion as of January 9, 2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Larry Ellison of Oracle was the 10th richest person on the list, with a net worth of $107 billion, followed by Gautam Adani of the Adani Group, who had a net worth of $78.6 billion. Compared to other heritage businesses created decades ago, Binance was founded only four and a half years ago, in July 2017.
According to Bloomberg, Zhao’s riches is likely understated because the wealth estimate does not include personal crypto holdings such as Bitcoin and Binance’s own cryptocurrency, Binance Coin (BNB). BNB had risen over 1,300% from $41 at the start of 2021 in 2021, outperforming Bitcoin and Ethereum. Last year, the price of BNB increased at a faster rate than the price of Bitcoin, which increased by around 63 percent, and Ethereum, which increased by over 420 percent.
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Zhao’s net worth was projected to be $1.9 billion by Forbes in August 2021, while according to Hurun Global Rich List 2021, Zhao’s fortune was $8 billion, up 208 percent over the previous year. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was ranked 128th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $15.4 billion, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was ranked 279th with $8.9 billion fortune.
According to CoinMarketCap, Binance was the largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time of reporting this report, with a 24-hour trading volume of $11.8 billion. As per Binance blog post from November 2020, Zhao first learnt about Bitcoin in 2013 while playing poker and then decided to go all-in on cryptocurrency, selling his flat to do so.
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According to former firm insiders quoted in a November 11, 2021 piece by The Wall Street Journal, the Binance exchange may be worth over $300 billion as a public corporation.
