By cryptoadmin Ayear and a half ago, Changpeng Zhao was just getting out of jail. After a sweeping investigation into Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2017, Zhao (better known by his initials, CZ) pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and agreed to pay a $50 million fine (on top of $4.3 billion paid by Binance), resign as CEO and serve four months in a California prison.
What a difference 17 months makes.
Forbes estimates that CZ is now richer than ever. His net worth has skyrocketed to $110 billion, up $47 billion from last year, on the annual World’s Billionaire’s list. CZ now ranks as the world’s 17th-wealthiest person on the planet, by our count, and one of just 20 people worth twelve figures. He is richer than Bill Gates.
Some of Zhao’s smaller assets took minor hits over the past 12 months, with the value of his estimated 1,400 bitcoins dropping by 25%, to around $100 million. And his stash of what is believed to be the majority of Binance’s $BNB token in circulation merely held steady.
But, despite stepping down as chief executive in 2023, the core of Zhao’s wealth—and the reason for the surge in his net worth—remains Binance. The privately held company, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (where the Canadian citizen lives), does not disclose detailed financials or a clear ownership structure. Conversations with industry insiders and comparisons with other crypto exchanges, including the publicly traded Coinbase, suggest Binance—still the world’s largest crypto exchange, with roughly 38% market share—is worth around $100 billion, and legal filings from the investigation indicate that Zhao owns about 90% of it.
“Binance generated an estimated $16-$17 billion in revenue in 2024 and 2025, that is roughly two-and-a-half times Coinbase’s $6.6 billion,” says Zheng Jie Lim, an analyst at crypto data provider Artemis. The exchange handles more than $30 trillion of transaction volume a year across spot and derivative markets. It also runs a broader business tied to its own blockchain network ($BNB Chain, which has a market capitalization of $88 billion) and frequent giveaways and incentive programs that distribute tokens to users, he adds. With numbers like that, Forbes figures the exchange would likely sell for twelve figures, should CZ ever decide to offload it, even after applying a generous discount because it operates largely outside of U.S. regulations, unlike Nasdaq-listed Coinbase.
It’s no coincidence that CZ’s surge in wealth comes as Donald Trump, who has promised pro-crypto policies and owns crypto businesses of his own while in office, has retaken power. Last March, Binance agreed to accept the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin as payment for a $2 billion investment in the company made by Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX. That gave World Liberty a major boost. In October, just half a year later, Trump granted CZ a full pardon for his crimes. No wonder Zhao showed up at a Mar-a-Lago forum hosted by World Liberty last month, thus re-entering America’s business circles. (Trump—who claimed “I don’t know who he is” of CZ in November—has denied issuing the pardon because of the pair’s business ties.)
Questions around Binance’s compliance with global sanctions have not disappeared, however. In recent weeks, reports from Fortune, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times alleged the firm had recently fired its top investigators who flagged $1 billion moving to sanctioned Iran entities, suggesting similar conduct to what the exchange was previously accused of by the U.S. government. Binance has disputed the claims and defended its compliance program.
Nonetheless, CZ remains the wealthiest person in crypto, and is now one of the wealthiest people in the world. He ranks higher on the World’s Billionaires list than traditional Wall Street types, such as former New York City mayor and Bloomberg LP cofounder Michael Bloomberg (who is worth an estimated $109 billion), trading titan Jeff Yass ($67.4 billion) and hedge fund and market-making giant Ken Griffin ($49.8 billion). Particularly striking is CZ’s jump past Bill Gates, who spent years as the world’s richest person. Gates’ net worth has dropped to an estimated $108 billion thanks to enormous charitable gifts and his 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates. He now ranks 19th worldwide—two spots, and $2 billion, below CZ.