CZ, Binance founder, wants to clear up 'misunderstandings' about who he is

Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao is one of the most famous CEOs in crypto history. But he doesn't want to run the global exchange he largely owns. He doesn't want to run its U.S. arm he mostly owns. He doesn't want to be a CEO at all, or serve on boards.

But when he talks about Binance, it's clear he sees himself at the center of its efforts, and he said its U.S. plan is to break the hold that a few leading exchanges have and to offer a lower-cost service.

As the dominant shareholder of Binance's global exchange and also of Binance.US, the 49-year-old has clear influence over the direction of both, though he denies he's pushing any day-to-day buttons. CZ sat for a lengthy interview with CoinDesk in Washington, D.C. earlier this month and revealed he was on a mission to reintroduce himself to the U.S. following his stepping down from the exchange he launched at prosecutors' request, a four-month prison stint and a presidential pardon over the past few years.

"I've perceived there's a lot of misunderstandings about Binance, about myself," he said. "I'm here to just talk to more people who may want to understand us more, just so that when they see me, they hear from me too, they get a sense of who I am."

The version of CZ who made the rounds earlier this month said he prefers to help founders from the background, rather than be at the center of a headline, he said.

And while he said he isn't involved in the immediate operations of Binance.US , he still suggested that he's trying to boost the company's profile in the country.

"We want to do more in the U.S., and personally, I really want to help make the U.S. the capital of crypto," he told CoinDesk. "I want to bring more crypto services into America."

CZ's argument for letting Binance.US tap the global exchange's liquidity is simple: the global exchange has much more liquidity than any U.S. platform can have on its own.

"U.S. consumers, as I said before, don't have access to the best liquidity," he told CoinDesk. "That means they pay a much higher price to buy and sell crypto. ... Crypto is the only place where U.S. consumers, the largest capital markets in the world, do not have the best prices … we're trying to figure out how to fix it."

This means that U.S. markets have higher slippage — the difference between the expected price of something and the actual price when conducting a transaction — and higher fees than their overseas counterparts may have, he contended.

If the U.S. wants to be the crypto capital of the world, it needs to have better liquidity, a goal for Binance.US , he said.

U.S. exchanges could just try to grow their liquidity without tapping offshore markets, but the fact that other countries are also welcoming crypto and 80% of global gross domestic product (GDP) is outside the U.S. means there's no guarantee that this approach will work, he said.

One of the more curious aspects of CZ's role with Binance is the fact that, while he doesn't handle everyday business at the exchange he founded, he still owns most of it.

"I'm still the single largest shareholder of Binance, but I don't run Binance," he said.

This is also true for Binance.US , he said, where he is now a board member. The two companies maintain distance from each other, despite both having CZ as a majority shareholder. They have separate leaderships, different investor groups and so on, he said, calling them "two very separate companies."

"Binance.US has a CEO, Binance.com has two co-CEOs," he said. "They almost never talk to each other. Actually, I don't think they ever talk to each other. So, yes, two independent teams. Binance.US does license the product and technology from Binance Global, but they have a licensing agreement."

CZ can't see himself running the U.S. business, he said, adding that he did not think he was the best candidate to run a U.S. platform. "It needs to be somebody local; it needs to be somebody who's on the ground," he said.

The other companies CZ is heavily invested in — Giggle Academy and YZi Labs — are similarly independent, he said.

This independence extends to CZ's personal life, he said. Yi He, one of Binance's co-CEOs, is CZ's partner, and the two share a home in the United Arab Emirates. Despite this, CZ said they do not talk about Binance at home, and the two keep their respective work lives separate.

"To be very frank, even when I was CEO of the company, she had a lot of strategic input into the company," he said. "She was probably giving me more instructions even when I was CEO. So now, [after] stepping down, she's running it. Our conversations at the max would be like 'oh two days ago the bitcoin price dropped because of this policy,' but we don't even talk about that anymore."

That being said, CZ said he does look at the top-level figures for the exchanges he founded, like the number of users, trading volume and third-party reports about deposit volume.

"The other thing I look at is very simply, just the bitcoin price," he said. "If the bitcoin price is going up, the company is generally doing well, but if the price goes down, the revenue will be down. It's a very good index, so I don't need a lot of information to feel how the company is doing."

"I'm not a guy who looks at financial statements," he said.

It's a hands-off approach CZ seems to be applying to other businesses he's invested in. His ideal role, CZ said, is in informally advising companies and founders, rather than joining boards.

"We invest in a few hundred portfolio companies and we're usually minority investors, but if any of those guys wants to talk to me, they can just send me a message," he said. "We'll set up a call for 10 minutes and if that's not enough, we'll do another call … so I operate on that very short, frequent interaction kind of way."

Asked if he wanted to become a CEO of an exchange or another type of firm, CZ demurred.

I don't have any plans to do that right now," he said. "I'm okay being a one trick pony for now."

In May, combined exchange volumes fell 3.45% to $4.41T; the lowest since September 2024. RWA perpetual futures volumes rose 10.4% against the trend, hitting a new all-time high.

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