Aa year and a half ago, Changpeng Zhao had just been released from prison. After a wide-ranging investigation into Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2017, Zhao (better known by his initials CZ) pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and agreed to pay a $50 million fine (on top of the $4.3 billion paid by Binance), resign as CEO and serve four months in a California prison.
What a difference 17 months makes.
Forbes CZ is now estimated to be richer than ever. His net worth soared to $110 billion, up $47 billion from last year, on the annual list of the world’s billionaires. CZ now ranks as the 17th richest person on the planet, by our calculations, and one of 20 people worth twelve figures. He is richer than Bill Gates.
SSome of Zhao Smaller assets have taken a slight hit over the past 12 months, with the value of its estimated 1,400 bitcoins falling 25%, to around $100 million. And its reserve of what is considered the majority of Binance assets $BNB the token in circulation has simply remained stable.
But, despite stepping down as CEO in 2023, the core of Zhao’s wealth – and the reason for his rising net worth – remains Binance. The private company, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (where the Canadian citizen resides), does not disclose detailed financial data or a clear ownership structure. Conversations with industry insiders and comparisons with other crypto exchanges, including publicly traded Coinbase, suggest that Binance — which remains the world’s largest crypto exchange, with about 38% market share — is worth about $100 billion, and legal documents from the investigation indicate that Zhao owns about 90% of it.
“Binance generated an estimated $16 billion to $17 billion in revenue in 2024 and 2025, about two and a half times Coinbase’s $6.6 billion,” says Zheng Jie Lim, an analyst at crypto data provider Artemis. The exchange handles more than $30 trillion in trading volume annually across spot and derivatives markets. It also manages a broader activity linked to its own blockchain network ($BNB Chain, which has a market cap of $88 billion) and frequent giveaways and incentive programs that distribute tokens to users, he adds. With numbers like that, Forbes figures, the exchange would likely sell for twelve figures, if CZ ever decided to dump it, even after applying a generous discount, because it operates largely outside of US regulation, unlike Nasdaq-listed Coinbase.
Heit’s not a coincidence that CZ’s increase in wealth comes as Donald Trump, who promised pro-crypto policies and owns his own crypto businesses during his time in office, has returned to power. Last March, Binance agreed to accept the $1 stablecoin from the Trump family’s crypto firm World Liberty Financial as payment for a $2 billion investment in the company made by Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX. This provided a major boost to global freedom. In October, six months later, Trump granted CZ a full pardon for his crimes. It’s no wonder Zhao showed up at a Mar-a-Lago forum hosted by World Liberty last month, re-entering American business circles. (Trump – who claimed CZ’s “I don’t know who he is” in November – has denied granting the pardon because of the two men’s business ties.)
Questions around Binance’s compliance with global sanctions have not gone away, however. In recent weeks, reports of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal And The New York Times The company reportedly recently fired its top investigators, who reported that $1 billion had been transferred to sanctioned Iranian entities, suggesting similar behavior to what the exchange had previously been accused of by the U.S. government. Binance has disputed these claims and defended its compliance program.
Nonetheless, CZ remains the richest person in crypto and is now one of the richest people in the world. He’s higher on the list of global billionaires than traditional Wall Street types, such as former New York mayor and Bloomberg LP co-founder Michael Bloomberg (whose estimated worth is $109 billion), trading titan Jeff Yass ($67.4 billion), and hedge fund and market-making giant Ken Griffin ($49.8 billion). CZ’s overtaking of Bill Gates, who spent years as the world’s richest person, is particularly striking. Gates’ net worth has fallen to around $108 billion thanks to huge charitable donations and his 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates. It now ranks 19th in the world, two places and $2 billion below CZ.