When Shift Happens Sep 25, 2026 1h 4m · 51m saved
With Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder of Binance
Changpeng Zhao says less than 1% of the world's wealth is in crypto, even after building the industry's largest exchange by trading volume.
Sam Bankman-Fried blamed one of Zhao's tweets for killing FTX. Zhao says no company has ever died because a competitor tweeted about it.
"If one of your competitors can make a tweet to kill your company, then you don't have a company." — Changpeng Zhao
Zhao turned a fifteen-person back-office trading-software team into Binance, served time in a US federal prison over a Bank Secrecy Act violation, was pardoned by President Trump in 2025, and now runs the venture fund YZi Labs and the free education platform Giggle Academy, which reached 1.3 million children this year.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 64 minutes of audio, 13 minutes of reading.
Here are the 16 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
No company has ever gone down because a rival made one tweet — not even his own on FTX
His 2022 tweet about exiting Binance's FTT position is the one everyone brings up
Crypto is still under 1% of global wealth, by his own estimate
Binance paid out about $800 million to cover user losses from a crash he says it didn't cause
He hired the same lawyer who won pardons for Arthur Hayes and Ross Ulbricht
He never had a phone call, an email, a text or a meeting with President Trump
Giggle Academy grew from 100,000 kids to 1.3 million in under a year
Blocking small investors from early-stage tokens makes them poorer, not safer, he argues
He pressed Binance's own "red button" during its 2019 hack — and says Bybit's Ben Zhou should have too
First movers don't always win, which is why he isn't worried about Hyperliquid
1. Growing Up Poor In Canada
Zhao's family immigrated to Canada when he was young, and both his parents worked jobs close to minimum wage while friends from wealthier immigrant families lived comfortably nearby.
He says the gap with wealthier immigrant friends left "a little bit of pressure" growing up, without any single traumatic event
"I grew up fairly poor." — Changpeng Zhao
His sister became a managing director at Morgan Stanley in her early forties, then retired after a bout of postnatal depression and now consults other people going through the same thing. Zhao jokes that immigrant families tend to lose their edge by the third or fourth generation, as the host put it back to him, and says he has no real plan for stopping that with his own children beyond hoping education helps.
