Binance’s CEO CZ among world’s richest men

The CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao is now officially among the richest men in the world.

It is Bloomberg that ”does the math” on him this time.

CZ, assets close to $100 billion

According to the business newspaper, CZ has a $96 billion fortune, higher than Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, CEO of Reliance Industries Limited, a petrochemical refining group. 

In the Bloomberg Billionaires Index list, CZ would rank just outside the top 10, in 11th place, behind Larry Ellison (Oracle), 20 billion behind Warren Buffett. Elon Musk, with his $271 billion, remains at the top of the list, confirming his position as the richest man in the world.

Bloomberg points out that Changpeng Zhao’s fortune may well exceed $96 billion because the index does not take into account the cryptocurrencies he owns, above all Bitcoin and Binance Coin. After all, BNB itself was the protagonist of a rally in 2021 that saw it grow by more than 1,300%. It is hard to believe that the CEO of Binance is not among the beneficiaries of such a climb. 

Binance’s empire made CZ one of the richest men in the world

CZ’s fortune is due to his ability to build the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, for spot and derivatives trading. Both CoinMarketCap (part of the Binance ecosystem) and Coingecko agree: Binance is the largest exchange in the world. Taking Coingecko’s data from the last 24 hours, it shows that Binance has traded $19 billion, while the site has had 172 million visits. It lists 357 tokens, but in this case, it is outperformed by Gate.io which has 1209 tokens. 

To maintain this position, Binance will have to resolve its regulatory problems, which have led to it having to shut down its services in some jurisdictions.

This is nothing that scares CZ, who has repeatedly said that regulation will help the crypto sector grow. 

A concept reiterated even in recent days in an article by him published in Fortune India: 

“With crypto moving closer towards widespread retail adoption, there is need for regulatory clarity. Regulatory guidelines will protect investors and projects from exploitation, unwitting participation in criminal activities and malicious acts by unsavory actors”.

An unwelcome ranking

However, Changpeng Zhao does not seem to have particularly liked Bloomberg’s classification. In one of his tweets, he said he did not like this kind of ranking: 

Don't worry about rankings. Focus on how many people you can help.

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) January 10, 2022

And again, in a later tweet he stated: 

“Unpopular opinion: instead of wealth rankings, there should be a ranking of charity and philanthropy efforts”.

Binance and its Binance Charity are active on this as well, but this is always covered too little by the big newspapers.