Changpeng “CZ” Zhao shares the story of his journey to crypto wealth, which began not on trading floors or in venture capital circles, but in a Shanghai poker game where a friend advised him to take Bitcoin seriously, and another friend encouraged him to invest a significant portion of his net worth in it.
Origin Story of Binance Founder in Bitcoin
According to Zhao, he first came across Bitcoin in mid-2013, while working as a junior partner at a software and services company in Shanghai. “One of my friends told me, ‘You need to check out this thing called Bitcoin,'” Zhao recounted. “It took me about six months to fully grasp it… back then, there was the Bitcoin talk forum, and that was pretty much it.”
That friend, as Zhao mentioned in an interview with the All-In podcast, was Ron Tao, a venture capitalist in China, who brought up the topic during a regular, low-stakes poker game involving entrepreneurs and investors. The idea gained traction when Zhao met Bobby Lee, who was preparing to leave Walmart to become the CEO of BTC China (BTCC).
Lee, according to Zhao, didn’t present Bitcoin as a mere hobbyist interest. He framed it as a strategic investment. Zhao recalled Lee advising him to allocate 10% of his net worth into Bitcoin: “There’s a small chance it might go to zero, in which case you lose 10%. There’s a much higher chance it could increase tenfold and double your net worth.” Zhao mentioned that this was the moment he began delving into the white paper “more attentively.”
By the time Zhao felt he had a comprehensive understanding of Bitcoin, he believed he had missed the boat. Bitcoin had surged from around $70 in mid-2013 to about $1,000 by the end of the year, he stated. “I thought, I’m too late,” Zhao recollected. “Because everyone you talk to… had bought in before you.”
JUST IN: ASIA’S RICHEST MAN TALKS ABOUT HOW HE MADE OVER $80,000,000,000 ON #BITCOIN AND CRYPTO
“YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL LATE TO BTC.” 🚀 pic.twitter.com/GqilPyC6xI
— The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_) February 10, 2026
However, he decided not to miss out on the next major technological wave. “It was clear to me that I had to be involved in this industry,” Zhao asserted, regarding Bitcoin as the second foundational technology of his professional life after the internet. “I was 35, 36 — I wasn’t going to miss it. The next big thing would come around 10, 15 years later… and that’s AI.”
This conviction led to a bold move: The Binance founder mentioned that he sold his apartment in Shanghai to invest in Bitcoin. “I said, I’m going to sell my apartment in Shanghai and buy Bitcoin,” he revealed to Chamath Palihapitiya. The sale occurred in stages, with Zhao purchasing each time cash was available, even as the market declined. “I sold the apartment… for roughly $900,000… The first tranche at $800 and then Bitcoin dropped to $600, $400. Averaged out to about $600.”
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He also highlighted the social validation that was significant to him during that period: the early innovators and miners he encountered while stress-testing his own comprehension, and a small Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in December 2013 that stood in stark contrast to the prevailing “criminal” narrative following the Silk Road shutdown. “When you attended the conference, it was like a group of kids, a group of geeks… and they were very kind individuals,” Zhao remarked, mentioning participants like Vitalik Buterin and Charlie Lee.
Zhao’s narrative of achieving wealth wasn’t a singular stroke of luck but a series of strategic steps: investing in Bitcoin after selling property, assuming executive roles at early crypto companies (including Blockchain.info and OKCoin), and subsequently constructing exchange infrastructure that laid the groundwork for Binance and its token-driven growth narrative.
Currently, the precise extent of the Binance founder’s wealth varies depending on the source and the valuation of private holdings and token assets. Forbes’ real-time tracker listed Zhao at $78.8 billion as of February 10, 2026, positioning him among the wealthiest individuals globally. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which uses its daily methodology, reported a notably lower figure for Zhao at around $52.2 billion on its worldwide rich list around the same time.
At the time of writing, Binance Coin (BNB) was trading at $592.44.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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