Changpeng Zhao

Zhao was born in Jiangsu province, China. In the late 1980s, he moved with his family to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His father was a professor in China before he was branded "pro-bourgeois intellect" and exiled from his country. In his teenage years, Zhao helped support his family by working a number of service industry jobs which included being a McDonald's employee.[3]

Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he majored in computer science.[3]

After college, Zhao began working for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. He also worked at Bloomberg Tradebook where he was a developer of futures trading software.[3]

In 2005, he moved to Shanghai where he founded Fusion Systems,[4] known for "some of the fastest high-frequency trading systems for brokers."[3]

Beginning in 2013, he worked for various cryptocurrency projects including Blockchain.info and also served as chief technology officer of OKCoin.[3]

In 2017, Zhao left OKCoin to start a cryptocurrency exchange called Binance. He launched the company in July 2017, following a $15 million funding raised during an initial coin offering.[2] In less than eight months, Zhao grew Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, as of April 2018.[1][2] In February 2018, Forbes Magazine placed him third on their list of "The Richest People In Cryptocurrency".[1][3][5] As of September 2018, his net worth is estimated at $1.4 billion.[6]