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JOURNEY · DETAIL
Binance — Changpeng Zhao's Regulatory Breakthrough from Tokyo and Shanghai Technical Roots to the World's Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange
Founded: Changpeng Zhao · Binance
JOURNEY
Key Fields
FIELD STAMPSIndustryFintech
RegionMulti-region
ScaleGiant
ChannelPlatform
Origin
Changpeng Zhao was born in rural Jiangsu and later immigrated to Canada with his family. Early in his career he worked on trading systems and high-frequency trading-related technology in Tokyo and Shanghai. After encountering Bitcoin in 2013, he sold his Shanghai apartment and put everything into crypto assets, joining a cryptocurrency wallet team and OKCoin as head of technology. In 2017, seeing the gap left by poor and slow exchange experiences, Zhao decided to found Binance himself, making the matching engine, liquidity, and global customer acquisition its core, and using his technical background to compress trading latency and costs.
Milestones
2017年
Startup PMF
In July 2017, Changpeng Zhao founded Binance and launched the BNB token in an initial coin offering, raising about USD 15 million in early financing. After launch, the platform quickly attracted users with extremely low trading fees, multi-coin coverage, and a high-performance matching engine. Within less than half a year, its daily trading volume entered the global top ranks. At the end of 2017, as the crypto bull market combined with tightening Chinese regulation, Zhao moved the team and servers overseas, but instead seized a gap in the global market, completing the shift from a regional platform to an international exchange.
2018年
Expansion Growth
In 2018, Binance continued expanding into Malta, Uganda, Jersey, Singapore, and other locations, and launched ecosystem modules such as Binance Chain, Binance Academy, and Binance Labs. That year Binance announced its user count had surpassed 10 million, and BNB's market cap at one point entered the top ten crypto assets. He Yi returned during this period and led marketing and brand expansion, helping Binance build strong reach on Twitter and community channels, gradually forming a combination of exchange plus public chain plus media plus investment.
2019年
Regulatory Conflict Failure
In 2019, Binance was warned by Japan's Financial Services Agency, which said it was providing services to Japanese residents without registration; that same year the New York State Department of Financial Services also opened an investigation into Binance. Zhao's team responded by migrating jurisdictions and restricting access for some users, but did not fundamentally resolve compliance issues. At this stage, Binance's global expansion outpaced its compliance buildout, planting the seeds for a long-term tug-of-war with regulators in multiple countries.
2020年
Scaling to the Top Turning Point
In 2020, the DeFi boom and institutional capital inflows drove crypto trading volumes to surge. Binance launched Binance Smart Chain (BSC), targeting Ethereum with lower gas fees and faster block times, attracting a large number of developers and meme projects to migrate. That year Binance's spot and derivatives trading volumes both rose to No. 1 globally. Zhao's personal net worth soared along with BNB and Binance equity value, and the company entered a turning period of expanding from an exchange into an on-chain ecosystem.
2022年
Industry Crisis Inflection Point
After FTX collapsed in November 2022, Binance initially announced plans to acquire FTX's non-U.S. assets, but abandoned the deal just hours later after due diligence. Zhao publicly questioned FTX's solvency on Twitter, triggering a bank run and accelerating FTX's collapse. Binance temporarily absorbed a large number of fleeing users and liquidity, but was subsequently pushed into the center of a regulatory storm, as the U.S. Department of Justice, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission successively brought multiple charges against Binance and Zhao.
2023年
Guilty Plea and Settlement Failure
In November 2023, Zhao reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, pleading guilty to violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions-related laws, and resigned as Binance CEO. Binance agreed to pay a total fine of about USD 4.3 billion, while Zhao personally paid an additional USD 50 million fine and faced up to 18 months in prison. In 2024, he was actually sentenced to four months in prison, becoming the crypto industry's most famous case of an imprisoned founder.
2024年
Transition and Prison Term Turning Point
In 2024, Zhao served four months in prison in California. During this period, Binance was led by Richard Teng, a former executive at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as CEO. Richard Teng emphasized compliance first and cooperation with regulators, pushing Binance from founder-driven to institutionalized governance. After release, Zhao publicly said he would not exit the crypto industry and would continue to focus on exchanges and crypto infrastructure building, but his role shifted from controller to minority shareholder and industry symbol.
2025年
Restart and Repositioning Growth
In 2025, after his release, Zhao gave multiple interviews, proposing Hong Kong as a financial sandbox for China and calling for the financial gene not to be limited to protecting the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, attempting to reshape his personal influence within a compliance narrative. Under Richard Teng, Binance continued to maintain the world's No. 1 trading volume while advancing license applications in multiple jurisdictions and compliance upgrades to its protocols. By 2026, the key question for Binance is no longer rapid growth, but whether, after losing the founder's absolute control, it can turn regulatory pressure into institutional barriers.
Turning Points
- In 2013, he sold his apartment and went all-in on Bitcoin, deeply binding his personal wealth to crypto assets and providing ammunition for his later Binance venture.
- In 2017, he founded Binance and issued BNB, raising USD 15 million, using his technical background to gain a trading-performance advantage in a very short time.
- In 2019, the Japan FSA warning and New York State investigation exposed the first severe wall his regulatory-arbitrage model hit.
- In 2020, he launched Binance Smart Chain (BSC), upgrading from an exchange to an on-chain ecosystem and rewriting the competitive landscape with Ethereum.
- In 2022, he publicly questioned FTX and then abandoned the acquisition, harvesting liquidity in the short term but attracting a coordinated global regulatory crackdown.
- In 2023, he settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for USD 4.3 billion and resigned as CEO, marking the complete end of the founder's control over the company.
- In 2024, after serving four months in prison, he stated he would not exit the crypto industry, turning his personal punishment into a narrative for staying at the table.
Failures & Pitfalls
- After the Japan FSA warning in 2019, it continued serving Japanese residents, making it impossible for a long time to enter Japan's mainstream compliant market.
- In 2021, regulators in multiple countries warned that Binance was operating without registration. Zhao long relied on jurisdiction migration and PR responses, without building a genuine global compliance system.
- In 2022, he announced plans to acquire FTX and then reversed course hours later. Zhao's tweets were seen by rivals and regulators as market manipulation and the trigger for a bank run.
- In 2023, he reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, was forced to resign as CEO, and paid more than USD 4.3 billion in fines, dealing a simultaneous blow to his personal reputation and corporate governance.
- Zhao long treated decentralization and having no headquarters as ideology, but overlooked a fact: an exchange itself is a heavily regulated centralized entity, causing compliance costs to erupt in concentrated fashion.
关键成功要素
- Turning experience in technical trading systems into an extremely low-latency, high-throughput matching engine was Binance's most core product advantage in its early days.
- When Chinese regulation tightened in 2017, it quickly went overseas, turning the crisis into a global user dividend rather than clinging to a single market.
- He Yi's return filled in marketing, brand, and community distribution capabilities, allowing Zhao's technical and product thinking to quickly reach massive retail users.
- Issuing BNB and tying exchange profits to the token ecosystem made early users into a community of interest, creating strong network effects.
- During the FTX collapse window, it used public questioning to absorb liquidity. Although it gained users and trading volume in the short term, it also drew regulatory fire toward itself.
- Settling with the U.S. Department of Justice and handing over control, trading the individual's exit for the company's survival, was a rare sample of institutionalized compromise under regulatory pressure.
Lessons
- In the early stage, trading platform competition is about matching and fees; in the middle stage, it is about ecosystem and liquidity; in the late stage, it is only about compliance and trust.
- Using overseas expansion and having no headquarters to evade regulation by a single jurisdiction can only delay problems; ultimately one will face joint enforcement by major global regulators.
- A founder's personal brand can become a growth engine, but once bound to the company's compliance risk, personal punishment directly shakes corporate governance.
- Publicly attacking rivals during an industry crisis may yield short-term gains, but regulators may deem it market manipulation or improper interference, leaving legal risk.
- When a company has already reached global No. 1, continuing to pursue a founder-hero narrative is inferior to building an institutionalized compliance architecture in advance.
Core Data
- 赵长鹏个人和解罚款：USD 50 million (public source basis, not independently verified)
- 赵长鹏实际入狱时长：4 months (public source basis)
- 用户规模：150 million registered users (public source basis, not independently verified)
- 巅峰日交易量：Over USD 100 billion (public source basis, not independently verified)
- 2023年币安与美国和解总额：USD 4.3 billion (public source basis, not independently verified)
- 币安币市值巅峰：Over USD 90 billion (public source basis, not independently verified)
- 2017年平台币首次发行融资金额：USD 15 million (public source basis, not independently verified)
Competitors / Peers
Binance's peer benchmarks are U.S.-listed Coinbase, the collapsed FTX, and established exchanges OKX and Kraken. Coinbase follows the path of U.S. licenses and public-market compliance, with revenue and profit highly tied to the regulatory cycle; FTX was once Binance's biggest rival, but it collapsed rapidly in 2022 due to a funding hole. Binance temporarily absorbed its users and liquidity, becoming the biggest beneficiary. OKX and Binance both originated from Chinese teams and offshore markets, but have continuously moved closer to Coinbase in compliance narrative and institutionalized governance. After 2023, competition has shifted from fee wars to licenses across multiple jurisdictions, fiat channels, institutional custody, and derivatives compliance depth. Binance still has the greatest advantage, but also the highest regulatory costs.
Sources
- https://www.hk01.com/%E5%B0%88%E9%A1%8C%E4%BA%BA%E8%A8%AA/60385347/%E8%B6%99%E9%95%B7%E9%B5%AC%E5%B0%88%E8%A8%AA-%E5%BE%9E%E8%BE%B2%E6%9D%91%E5%88%B0%E5%8D%83%E5%84%84%E8%BA%AB%E5%AE%B6-%E5%A5%89-%E5%9B%9B%E4%B8%8D-%E7%90%86%E8%B2%A1%E5%8E%9F%E5%89%87-%E5%81%9A%E9%80%99%E4%BA%8B%E6%9C%80%E5%82%BB
- https://global.hk01.com/%E4%B8%93%E9%A2%98%E4%BA%BA%E8%AE%BF/60385351/%E8%B5%B5%E9%95%BF%E9%B9%8F%E4%B8%93%E8%AE%BF-%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%9A%84%E6%B2%99%E7%9B%92-%E5%90%81%E9%87%91%E8%9E%8D%E5%9F%BA%E5%9B%A0%E4%B8%8D%E8%83%BD%E5%8F%AA-%E5%AE%88%E4%BD%8F-%E6%B8%AF%E4%BA%A4%E6%89%80
- https://www.gvm.com.tw/article/129791
- https://www.aicoin.com/zh-Hans/article/516335
- https://blockweeks.com/view/285725
- https://www.guanyunwang.com/2138.html