CEO, Binance
Crypto Net Worth: $1.1 billion-$2 billion*
"Seven months ago Binance didn't exist. Since then, its 1.4 million-transactions-per-second capability have attracted 6 million users, making it the world's largest crypto-exchange. "No decentralized exchange today can handle our volume, and none are as secure as we are," says its founder, Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ. The market seems to buy it: Since its July initial coin offering, a Binance token BNB has soared from about 10 cents to $13, giving it a market capitalization of $1.3 billion. Zhao, 41, who wears a black hoodie, like some cross between Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, also owns the biggest stake in the coins.
The man who’s only indulgence is mobile phones (he owns three), sold his house in Shanghai in 2014 to go all in on Bitcoin and doesn’t own any cars, yachts nor fancy watches. Among the crypto-rich, Zhao falls squarely in the builder camp.
CZ was born in Jiangsu, China. Both of his parents were educators; his father, a professor, was labeled a "pro-bourgeois intellect" and temporarily exiled shortly after CZ was born. The family eventually emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, in the late 1980s. As a teenager, CZ pitched in to cover the household expenses, flipping burgers at McDonald's and working overnight shifts at a gas station.
After studying computer science at Montreal’s McGill University, Zhao spent time in both Tokyo and New York, first building a system for matching trade orders on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and then, at Bloomberg’s Tradebook where he developed software for futures trading. But even after the 27-year old coding whiz was promoted three times in less than two years to manage teams in New Jersey, London and Tokyo, Zhao became impatient. So in 2005 he quit and moved to Shanghai to start his Fusion Systems, a company known for building some of the fastest high-frequency trading systems for brokers."