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Changpeng Zhao, the cryptocurrency man is getting richer and richer. Who is the Chinese Scrooge

2 years ago babelfish

Changpeng Zhao, the cryptocurrency man is getting richer and richer. Who is the Chinese Scrooge

Changpeng Zhao, history and chronicle of the Chinese Scrooge

It may be virtual money, but it still manages to make you damn rich. Changpeng Zhao , who since 2017, has been leading the world's largest crypto exchange company, is well aware of this. A market parallel to the real one, in which everything often passes, given that, as is well known, cryptocurrencies carry with them a lot of doubts and moral questions. Pecunia non olet , the ancients said, let alone a coin that doesn't even exist. But which, if necessary, can be exchanged for real and rustling money.

Central Banks, it is known, look at the phenomenon with suspicion, the authorities around the world continue to ask for regulations, but lawmakers are struggling to keep pace with technological evolution. And so, as in any bubble, as in the Far West before the 'law' arrived, there are those who, in the long shadows cast by the gaps in the regulations, have time to become shamelessly rich.

HOW RICH IS CHANGPENG ZHAO?

We are talking about 96 billion dollars of assets, million more, million less, according to the latest update of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Such is the wealth of Changpeng Zhao , CEO and founder of Binance, the largest crypto ecosystem exchange in the world, which snatched him a ticket for 11th position in the golden ranking of the richest men in the world.

The entry into the top ten led by another homo novus , Elon Musk , could be around the corner as Binance, founded in 2017, would be in the odor of listing on the stock exchange (BinanceUs). As if that weren't enough, in 2021 it jumped to third place among the most capitalized cryptocurrencies with a + 1,344 percent and a total capitalization of 87 billion dollars.

If you follow football, you may have heard of the club, which became the sponsor of Lazio precisely with a view to making itself known to the general public and, above all, to the small investor. And when Lazio are not playing, the company logo still covers the playing fields.

A STORY 'STRAPPALACRIME'

The personal story of Mr. "CZ", then, is liked by the press. Born in 1977 in China to a couple of professors branded by the government as dissident intellectuals and, therefore, expelled from the nation, they found shelter in Vancouver, Canada, where Changpeng Zhao also worked at McDonald's to help his people. While working, he still studied computer science at McGill University in Montreal. After graduating, he worked on the Tokyo Stock Exchange before becoming a software developer for Bloomberg Tradebook. Then, in 2005, he returned to China, in Shanghai, where he founded Fusion Systems, a company that assists brokers with the implementation of a trading system.

The turning point, however, came suddenly, in 2013, at the green table, during a game of poker with the former CEO of Bitcoin China , Bobby Lee , and the investor Ron Cao : the two, says Forbes , convinced him to investing 10 percent of his capital in Bitcoin, a system that CZ did not know and that 'drugged' him to the point that he even sold his apartment to continue buying cryptocurrencies. Three years later, in 2017, he founded Binance, which in less than a year has become the world's most popular platform for exchanging digital currency and today boasts over 1,000 employees in 40 countries.

For his part, Changpeng Zhao , yet another Chinese scrounger, continues to demand that the sector be regulated. In the open letter he published a few weeks ago, Zhao explained that "clear regulations are essential for continued growth."

But, in the meantime, according to what the Italian think tank Digital Gold Institute reported in the third quarter of 2021, in various circumstances, Binance's customers were unable to deposit or withdraw while control operations were in progress by the regulators (it happened in Great Britain, for example).

Binance was also dealt with by Consob , the authority that supervises the market in Italy, with a statement in which it explained that "the companies of the" Binance Group "are not authorized to provide investment services and activities in Italy", not even through the website www.binance.com whose sections called “derivatives” and “Stock Token”, relating to instruments related to crypto-assets, were also written in Italian.

Much, however, is due to the inattention to the issue on the part of politics, which is only now beginning to regulate the field, especially in the United States. In the meantime, Changpeng Zhao has continued in recent months to propose Binance as a reliable player on the market and to earn billions. While the entry into the ranking of the richest seems to have almost bothered him: «Don't worry about the rankings. Focus on how many people you can help, ”he tweeted. "Instead of rankings on wealth, there should be one on charity and philanthropy efforts."

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/changpeng-zhao-luomo-delle-criptomonete-e-sempre-piu-ricco-chi-e-il-paperone-cinese/ on Sat, 15 Jan 2022 07:20:47 +0000.