Changpeng Zhao

Founder & CEO at Binance Zhao is the founder of Binance and in just 180 days he went from CEO of a start-up to CEO of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. He is a 41 year old Chinese/Canadian coder spent his youth flipping burgers before studying at McGill University Montreal. He then spent time in Tokyo and New York, first building systems for matching trade orders, then developing software for futures trading on Wall Street. In 2005 he quit his high flying role and moved to Shanghai to start Fusion Systems. It was there that he learnt about Bitcoin before joining Blockchain.info as a team member. Moving on to OKCoin as CTO, he had on his mind going it alone. Then when the ICO boom started he decided to launch Binance and raised $15 in the first round of funding. Since then Binance has become the most popular exchange in the world with 38% of users based in the US and its second largest market being Japan. Binance supports 120 coins, 100 wallets, and 240 trading pairs. In 2018, Zhao announced his intentions to relocate the headquarters of Binance to Malta. This is a huge boost for the islands economy and is also a significant vote of confidence in the country as a cryptocurrency jurisdiction.