Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said a single tweet could not have brought down FTX, defended the logic behind early-stage token investing, and described his biggest fear before going to prison in a wide-ranging appearance on the podcast When Shift Happens on Sept. 25.
The interview moved across Zhao’s personal history, Binance’s early days, token listings, meme culture, regulation, decentralization and the FTX collapse. He also spoke about artificial intelligence, saying he believes future opportunities will exceed those of the past and that AI will drive major efficiency gains that speed up broader shifts already set in motion by the internet and blockchain.
Zhao described himself as a firm believer in blockchain technology and said most of his contribution has been in that field. He added that he often travels to different countries to advise on crypto regulatory frameworks, which is why some people see him as a promoter for the industry.
Growing up in an immigrant family
Asked what drove him, Zhao said he does not remember a traumatic childhood event, but he did grow up in a family with limited means. After his family immigrated to Canada, his parents worked jobs that were close to minimum wage. Some of his friends, by contrast, came from wealthy investment-immigrant families from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and he said that comparison created some pressure when he was young.
Even so, Zhao said he considers himself fortunate and sees himself as standing on his parents’ shoulders. He said his parents moved to Canada for him and his sister, and he described himself as a second-generation immigrant. In his view, second-generation immigrants often watch first-generation parents work extremely hard in low-paying jobs, often because of language barriers, and that experience creates a strong push to move forward. By the third or fourth generation, he said, that drive often fades.
Zhao also spoke about his sister, who he said worked in technology, spent time at a startup in Tokyo, then joined Morgan Stanley and became a managing director at a relatively young age. He said Morgan Stanley has about 400 managing directors globally out of a workforce of around 100,000, which is why he sees her as highly successful in her career. She later retired at around age 42 after experiencing postpartum depression following the birth of her child. Zhao said she has fully recovered and now counsels people dealing with depression.
When asked how he plans to prevent that loss of drive in later generations of his own family, Zhao said he does not have an answer. He said education is key, but also called it very difficult.
How Binance started
Zhao said Binance did not begin in the same way as many startup stories. Before launching the exchange, he had already spent two years leading a 15-to-20-person team at a company called BJ Tech, which sold trading systems to other platforms. He said 80% to 90% of those clients were not crypto exchanges at all, but operators in traditional markets such as stamps and jade that also used order books.
In May 2017, he gathered the team in a meeting room and told them it might be the right time to build a crypto exchange. His thinking, he said, was simple: if he did not do it then, the idea would keep coming back, and if he never did it in that life stage, he would probably still end up doing it later. The team already had the product, the system and the engineers. What it lacked was a marketing team and customer support, because BJ Tech was a B2B business with sales staff and account managers rather than support operations.
According to Zhao, everyone in the room agreed. The team then discussed domain names, and he chose Binance from two options he had on hand. That, he said, was the moment Binance was born.
Asked what allowed Binance to go from zero to the world’s largest exchange in six months, Zhao did not point to any secret formula. He said the team was hardworking, practical, low-ego, humble, highly aligned and strong in execution. Team members trusted him and were willing to follow his lead.
He tied part of that to cultural differences. In his telling, Western teams often discuss decisions at length and expect everyone to voice an opinion, while in Asian cultures people may follow a leader with very little hesitation once they commit. That can produce exceptional execution if the direction is right, he said, but it can also end badly if the leader is wrong. In Binance’s case, he said, the direction happened to be right.
What hard work means to him
Zhao said hard work means different things to different people, but he cares more about output than hours alone. Many people work long hours and produce little, he said. What matters is building high-quality products that users like while also putting in the time required.
He said passionate people are not best measured by hours worked, but by how much they care and how quickly they can produce high-quality results. Still, he added, that kind of performance usually requires a team that is deeply committed and willing to work very long hours. In finance, he said, people often do not count hours in a rigid way. A task may start at 9 p.m. after putting a child to bed and still need to be finished before midnight, or even by the next morning.
Misconceptions about Binance and the case for decentralization
Zhao said Binance faces many misconceptions. One is that it is a Chinese company. He said it is not, though it does have many Chinese employees. Another is that centralized exchanges are inherently bad or evil. Zhao said Binance has consistently pushed toward decentralization.
At the same time, he acknowledged that most people in crypto still prefer centralized exchanges because they are more comfortable with email, passwords and customer support than with wallet addresses and self-custody tools. Even so, he said he believes the future is decentralized and that Binance will continue to invest heavily in that direction.
Why so many listed projects disappoint investors
On the question of why so many projects listed on Binance end up disappointing investors, Zhao argued that this is normal in any new industry. Most projects fail when measured by count, whether in crypto, the early internet or AI.
He said there may have been millions of internet companies in the early days, while only dozens or hundreds succeeded in the long run, and only a handful became truly large. AI, he said, will likely follow the same pattern: most companies will die, but the survivors will be extremely successful.
Crypto differs because tokens are public and anyone can invest, which means anyone can get hurt. In the early internet era, ordinary people could not always invest at the earliest stages. Zhao framed that as a trade-off. He asked whether people would not want the chance to invest in a company like Anthropic when it was still small. In his view, most companies in a new sector fail, but the sector itself often survives and a small number of firms do very well.
He said the question of whether investors should be allowed in earlier is a separate debate, but made clear that he does not agree with the logic behind accredited-investor protections. Excluding people from early opportunities in the name of protection, he said, often leaves them poorer.
Zhao pointed to economic writing that, in his view, shows many Americans became wealthier because they had access to the stock market and because the U.S. has a strong stock market. Remove that access, he said, and many would be much poorer. In many countries outside the U.S., local stock markets are weaker and returns are lower, while those investors often cannot access U.S. equities either.
For Zhao, the core issue is whether more people should have equal access to investment opportunities or be kept out for their own protection. He said he does not know the perfect answer, but his own philosophy is to give people opportunity, give them education and let them decide. He said that is also why his side has worked on tokens and now on tokenized assets.
Market makers, Launchpad spending and retail odds
Asked whether retail investors can still win if projects have to spend money on market makers, launchpads and exchange access, Zhao answered yes.
He then added that the issue is full of fine distinctions. Advertising, he said, can be done well or badly. False promises clearly hurt people, but the line between falsehood and truth is not always black and white. Projects can overhype themselves or use wording that is technically defensible but easy to misread. A lot happens in that gray area.
Zhao said the right response is a combination of measures: founders should be encouraged to do the right thing, users should be taught how to evaluate projects based on fundamentals rather than hype and marketing, and regulatory frameworks should improve. He noted that most countries require disclosures in stock markets, while crypto markets remain underdeveloped on that front.
Over time, he said, industries tend to filter out the players that rely on excessive packaging and marketing at users’ expense. Some may gain in the short term, but they do not last. The platforms and projects that survive are the ones built on a solid and sustainable basis.
How the “4” meme took shape
Zhao was also asked to explain “four meme.” He said there is a group of highly active traders who look for tokens with culture, jokes, references and some viral potential.
He traced the “4” back to a tweet he posted in 2023 as part of his New Year plan. He said he wanted to focus on three positive things: education, regulatory compliance and product. The fourth item was to ignore FUD, fake news and negative narratives. He told followers that when he saw FUD, he would simply post “4” and let the community explain it.
According to Zhao, the idea caught on quickly. Within 24 hours, a negative article appeared, he posted “4,” and many people joined in. Later, a community member posted a selfie holding up four fingers. Zhao said he liked it, the community liked it, and a few weeks later he posted a similar photo himself, which pushed the meme further. Two years later, he said, there are roughly 1,000 “4”-related memes in circulation.
Asked whether there was ever a moment when he posted “4” while privately thinking the criticism might be right, Zhao said that most of the time he used it because he knew the report in question contained inaccuracies. He said he does not think he overused it, though others may disagree.
The tweet that was said to have ended FTX
The interviewer brought up Zhao’s Nov. 6, 2022 tweet: as part of Binance’s exit from its equity investment in FTX, Binance had received about $2.1 billion in cash equivalents, including BUSD and FTT, and in light of recent revelations it had decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on its books.
Zhao rejected Sam Bankman-Fried’s claim that the tweet killed FTX. He said that if a rival can destroy a company with one tweet, then that company was never real in the first place. No company collapses because a competitor posts on social media, he argued, no matter how large that competitor is.
He used a hypothetical example involving an AI chip company and Jensen Huang. Even if Huang posted that he was selling stock or tokens, Zhao said, a company with a good product, real customers and sound cash management would not collapse. Its price might move, but the business would remain intact.
Pressed on whether he had underestimated the impact of the tweet, Zhao said he does not believe it had the effect people assign to it. He called it one part of a longer chain of events and pointed out that CoinDesk had published a report three or four days earlier saying FTX might already be insolvent.
Zhao said the reality, as he understands it, is that FTX lied to customers, misused customer funds, claimed the money was there when it had been spent on other things, and then ran out of liquidity. He added that he did not know those details at the time.
His own intention, he said, was simply to disclose that Binance had exited the equity investment five years earlier, still held FTT and planned to sell it. He said it was better for Binance Group to be transparent about disposing of the tokens. He also noted that the tweet said the sale would be spread over several months to avoid affecting market prices. He said he did not know how the market would react and did not expect the volatility that followed.
Zhao also mentioned that Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison posted on X 20 minutes after his tweet. Many people, he said, believe her post revealed more than his did. He did not try to settle that question.
His view of why FTX failed
Asked whether there is still some hidden part of the FTX collapse that people do not understand, Zhao said he does not know of any deeper secret. His understanding is straightforward: customer funds were misused, tens of billions of dollars of customer money were taken to buy other things, and when the market turned, customers could not withdraw.
The hardest periods of his life
Zhao said he has gone through several very difficult stretches. One came right after Binance launched and conducted the BNB ICO. Once the platform went live, BNB started trading below its ICO price and stayed there for about two and a half weeks.
He said that period was psychologically brutal because tens of thousands of people had bought the token and were, in effect, backing the team while sitting on losses. The fact that it lasted only about two and a half weeks was, in his telling, a relief.
Another difficult period came later, when he went to the U.S. and dealt with the U.S. government. He said that lasted a year and a half to two years and brought heavy pressure.
What he feared before prison
When asked what belief he carried into prison and what he left behind, Zhao said the more accurate word was fear. His biggest concern was that he might be kept there permanently because one charge could be followed by another and then another, turning into an endless process. That did not happen, he said, and the matter ended there.
He briefly referred to Andrew Tate as someone who appears to be going through something similar, but said he does not know that case well and tries not to comment on other people’s legal matters.
Speaking about his own case, Zhao said no one in U.S. history had gone to prison for a single Bank Secrecy Act violation, and that remains true today in his telling. Most people are not prosecuted for that, he said, and most bank executives are not prosecuted either. Some receive deferred prosecution agreements. The only crypto-related example he said he could recall was Arthur Hayes, who received home confinement. Zhao said he had thought that was probably the harshest outcome available to him, but events turned out differently.
Asked whether he entered prison without knowing when he would get out, Zhao said the sentence itself was four months, so he knew the term. What he did not know was whether additional charges might be added. He said he had received some assurances from the U.S. government that no more charges would come, but the government is large enough that a promise from one agency does not necessarily bind another.
Who stayed and who disappeared
At the end of the interview, Zhao was asked whether people vanished when conditions became difficult. He said that did not happen among his friends or inside Binance. The co-founders from 2017 are all still there, he said, and none has left, which he sees as evidence of a tightly knit team.
Across the wider industry, though, he said many people did disappear. Crypto has too many projects that promise the world and then vanish a few months later.