In Venezuela, the government has taken drastic measures to block key online services, including cryptocurrency exchange Binance and social media platform X, amid escalating controversy over the results of the presidential election.

Binance is one of the world's leading exchanges, but its influence in Venezuela is greater than just cryptocurrency trading. Venezuela's local currency, the Bolivar, has depreciated significantly, and stablecoins and Bitcoin have been serving Venezuelans for years, who use Binance as their main trading platform. So today we will talk about the story of Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao.

Some people say that he is "the founder of Binance, a top cryptocurrency exchange; a man who rose from an unknown to the richest Chinese in four years; a top believer with a net worth of 500 billion yuan who sells his house to win; and an investor with no fixed place to live."

Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ in English, was once the technical director of Bloomberg. He later founded Fusion Information Technology Co., Ltd. He is not only the founder, but also the president of China. Changpeng Zhao also joined OKCoin as a co-founder and served as CTO. He managed OKCoin's technical team and was responsible for OKCoin's international marketing team. He quickly established OKCoin's international influence and finally left OKCoin.

In 2017, he founded Binance. In February 2018, Forbes Magazine listed him as the "richest person in cryptocurrency". The Forbes magazine article described Zhao Changpeng's "wealth-making" speed as follows: "In this craziest gold mine of wealth last year, speed is the lifeline. It took only 6 months for Zhao Changpeng, a Chinese programmer, to build the Binance platform and become rich."

In May 2018, his net worth exceeded US$1.39 billion. In December 2021, Zhao Changpeng surpassed Zhong Shanshan, the chairman of Nongfu Spring, who was originally ranked first on the list, to become the richest Chinese with a net worth of US$90 billion (about RMB 573.3 billion), and ranked among the top 10 richest people in the world.

1. Founding Binance

Binance is a global cryptocurrency exchange that provides trading services for more than 100 cryptocurrencies, including options, spot, u-margin contracts, coin-margin contracts and other trading products. The word Binance comes from the portmanteau of the words binary and finance.

Binance’s currency exchange service, which began in 2017, can process about 1.4 million orders per second and offers trading in more than 150 cryptocurrencies, including popular ones such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, as well as its own BNB token.

Binance was first founded in China, but since September 2017, China has banned cryptocurrency trading, so Binance has moved its servers and headquarters to Japan. As of January 2018, Binance has become the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, with its cryptocurrency BNB having a market value of $1.3 billion.

According to statistics, as of the end of 2022, Binance has more than 150 million users and daily trading volume reaches tens of billions of dollars, making it the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

2. Financing events

In 2017, as early as the establishment of Binance, Zhao Changpeng began to contact Sequoia Capital. In the negotiations in August, Sequoia set a round A valuation of 500 million yuan for Binance and planned to invest 60 million yuan based on this valuation. On September 1, Sequoia agreed to provide a bridge loan worth about 30 million yuan to Binance's Japanese branch. On September 4, the situation suddenly changed. China banned the initial coin offering and began to close cryptocurrency exchanges, causing a sharp drop in the price of coins. Sequoia re-evaluated whether to continue investing in Binance, so it has not paid the money.

Within two weeks, Bitcoin began to rebound and cryptocurrencies ushered in a full bull market. On December 14, Binance believed that the valuation given by Sequoia in the Series A financing was too low. At the same time, Binance contacted another investor, IDG Capital, which was willing to invest at a valuation of US$400 million in the Series B round.

On December 27, Sequoia unilaterally applied to the Hong Kong court to prohibit Binance from negotiating with other investors, and the Hong Kong court approved the ban. Binance protested the ban. It was not until April 2018 that the Hong Kong High Court announced in the first instance judgment that the ban would be lifted, but this matter was not officially finalized until the end of 2018, which also meant that Binance would be able to continue to negotiate financing with investors. In the end, Binance won.

Facing the industry's top investment institution, Sequoia Capital, Zhao Changpeng did not back down: I think the right to speak now should be in the hands of entrepreneurs. Now good projects and good teams will definitely not lack money. In the end, Zhao Changpeng not only did not take investment from Sequoia, but also did not take investment from IDG.

3. Summary

In any aspect, Zhao Changpeng has made a huge contribution to the development of the cryptocurrency industry. Although he is currently serving his sentence in a federal prison in California, it is rumored that he will be released on September 29. So can CZ's release from prison boost BNB? Let's wait and see. $BNB $LUNC