Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, is ranked No. 17 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $110 billion. He co-founded the crypto exchange Binance, pleaded guilty to a US federal charge in 2023 and was pardoned by President Donald Trump in October 2025.
Changpeng Zhao was born in 1977 in Ganyu, in China’s Jiangsu province, to parents who were both schoolteachers. In 1989, when he was 12, his family emigrated to Canada after the Tiananmen Square protests and settled in Vancouver. He worked at a McDonald’s and a gas station as a teenager and studied computer science at McGill University.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 17, with $110 billion
- Later estimate: Wikipedia cites Forbes at $111.1 billion as of April 2026, making him the richest Canadian
Career
After an internship in Tokyo building trade-matching software, Zhao worked for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook, developing futures trading software. In 2005 he moved to Shanghai and started Fusion Systems, a high-frequency trading software company. He first heard of bitcoin in 2013, sold his Shanghai apartment and put his wealth into it. He then worked on Blockchain.info and served as chief technology officer of OKCoin.
Founding Binance
- July 2017: Binance launched and raised $15 million in an initial coin offering
- 2018: in less than eight months it became the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, as of April 2018
Legal Case and Pardon
- November 2023: Zhao resigned as CEO and pleaded guilty to US federal charges after the Justice Department alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act; he agreed to a $50 million fine, and Binance agreed to plead guilty and pay $4.3 billion
- April 2024: he was sentenced to four months in prison and finished his sentence by September 2024
- October 2025: President Trump gave him a pardon
Richard Teng succeeded him as Binance’s chief executive.
Why It Matters
Zhao’s fortune rests on Binance, the largest crypto exchange, and his case became a test of how US authorities treat the industry.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: A US Justice Department press conference on the guilty pleas of Binance and Changpeng Zhao, November 21, 2023 (Zhao is not pictured). Photo: U.S. Department of Justice / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
