Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, used a one-hour AMA on Binance Square to address community questions tied to his new book Freedom of Money and to restate a view he has held for years: Binance will not actively pump meme coins, and bear markets are where serious teams stand out.
The session took place at 9 p.m. Taiwan time on April 15, 2026. CZ did not offer price targets or lean into market hype. Instead, he spoke about writing the book, serving four months in prison, and the investment principles he developed over 17 years of work and company-building.
Book writing became a way to close a chapter
CZ said the writing process was longer and harder than expected. Early drafts were bad, he said, and each section needed to be revised 10 to 20 times. The book includes his trip to the U.S. to deal with regulatory investigations, his four-month prison term, and the death of his father.
He told listeners that putting those experiences into writing and making them public helped him move on from that period. His tone stayed casual through the session. At one point, he joked that after four months in prison, he should be able to handle an hour of “spicy questions.” Still, the message was serious: difficult periods can leave useful lessons behind, and his outlook after release has become more detached and more focused on the long term.
Why he prefers investing during bear markets
On investing, CZ said he particularly likes deploying capital in bear markets. His reasoning was practical. If founders continue shipping products and iterating on protocols while prices are down, that says more about conviction than any pitch deck. In his view, the teams most likely to survive are those willing to keep going for more than two years.
He contrasted that with projects that show up in bull markets with no product, no users, and claims of a $100 million valuation. Those are the cases he said he dislikes most. Bear markets, by comparison, tend to force more realistic pricing and sharper execution.
CZ also spoke openly about failure rates in venture-style investing. Binance itself, he said, had once been rejected by every VC it approached. No investor can expect a perfect hit rate. If someone invests in everything, failure becomes almost guaranteed. A healthier model, in his view, is accepting a 70% to 80% failure rate as long as the winners can return 10x to 100x and pull the portfolio into positive territory.
Entrepreneurship, risk control, and debt
CZ pushed back on the image of the founder who drops out and instantly succeeds. He said that before starting Binance, he had already worked for 17 years. That background shaped how he thinks about risk.
His advice to founders was simple: investing should look more like a “buy” decision than a “loan” built on heavy debt. The point was not to chase growth at any cost, but to understand what risks can actually be carried.
Binance will not actively push meme coins
When asked about the recent meme coin wave, CZ said BNB Chain already has established infrastructure such as PancakeSwap to support that part of the market. Which tokens to watch and how to trade them, he said, should remain the user’s decision.
He repeated that Binance will not actively pump meme coins. His preference is for communities to keep building instead of chasing the latest short-term trend. To close the AMA, CZ gave away 10 signed copies of Freedom of Money to thank participants for joining the discussion.