Sold an Apartment for $900,000 and Bought Bitcoin: CZ’s Story in a Major NYT Feature

• The New York Times published a piece about Changpeng Zhao.
• It focuses on his life after the criminal case in the US.
• After four months in prison, he became an informal “crypto diplomat” and continued to maintain ties with Binance, despite being barred from running the exchange.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) did not step away from the crypto industry after the criminal case in the US. On the contrary, he strengthened ties with the Emirati elite, began advising governments in various countries, and remained one of Binance’s most influential shareholders. This is detailed in an in-depth profile of Zhao published by The New York Times.

The piece traces CZ’s path from a Chinese immigrant and early bitcoin investor to the founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, his conflict with Sam Bankman-Fried, the criminal case in the US, his prison term, and his subsequent return to Abu Dhabi.

The Incrypted editorial team has pulled together the most interesting highlights from The New York Times report.

From Bitcoin to Binance

Zhao was born in China, and at age 12 he moved to Canada with his family. After studying at McGill University, he worked in tech and lived in the US, China, and Japan.

In 2013, during a poker game in Shanghai, CZ first took a serious interest in bitcoin. After several months of studying cryptocurrency, he sold the family apartment for about $900,000 and invested the money in Bitcoin.

Before launching Binance, Zhao worked at several crypto companies in Asia. In July 2017, he founded Binance, which within a few months became the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform.

The author cites the exchange’s focus on high-risk trading as one reason for its rapid growth. Binance actively expanded margin trading, leverage, and other speculative instruments. Another factor was weak user verification. In its first four years, Binance allowed users to open accounts without full KYC checks.

Later, these very practices became one of the key elements behind US authorities’ claims against Binance.

According to CZ, the problems arose because he lacked sufficient experience in regulatory matters. At the same time, court documents included testimony indicating that he understood the regulatory risks and discussed ways to conceal activity by US Binance users operating without the required licenses.

How did CZ end up in the UAE?

After Binance left China in 2017, the company considered various jurisdictions, including Japan and Singapore.

In 2021, businessman and former Barbados ambassador to the UAE Gabriel Abed advised Zhao to take a closer look at Dubai. CZ arrived in the city in October of that year. According to the report, within a few hours he met with UAE minister Omar Sultan Al Olama.

Zhao was offered a 10-year “golden visa.” To process it, a doctor was even sent to him for a blood test. He received the documents, which typically took weeks to issue, in less than 12 hours.

Soon after, Binance began taking part in shaping local crypto regulation. The company sent three employees to work on the UAE’s regulatory framework. A draft of the rules was completed in January 2022, and a few weeks later it was enacted into law.

As a result, Binance found itself not only among the companies operating in the UAE market, but also among those involved in setting the rules for the country’s crypto industry, the statement said. CZ himself later gained access to members of the ruling family. He spoke about personal contacts with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Zhao also spoke positively about the Emirates’ governance model. In his view, democracies can be inefficient due to lengthy debates, while a “benevolent dictator” can make decisions much faster.

“Crypto Sheikhs” and Tahnoun bin Zayed

CZ’s ties became especially close with members of the Emirati elite, whom he himself calls crypto sheikhs.

Among them, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan holds a special place — the brother of the UAE president and one of the country’s most influential figures. The report notes that the asset structure under his control totals roughly $1.5 trillion.

Zhao gained access to his inner circle and took part in private meetings at the palace.

He also began urging other figures in the tech industry to work in the UAE. In particular, CZ spoke with Sam Altman and encouraged him to establish a corporate presence in the country. Zhao’s argument was that tech companies in other jurisdictions could face tougher regulation.

Conflict With FTX

One of the most high-profile episodes of CZ’s career was his conflict with Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX.

According to Zhao, FTX was poaching Binance employees by offering salaries three to five times higher. He also heard that Bankman-Fried was speaking negatively about him in Washington.

In November 2022, after CoinDesk published a report on FTX’s financial troubles, Zhao said Binance would sell its FTT tokens worth roughly $500 million. After that, customers began withdrawing funds from FTX en masse. The exchange ran into a liquidity shortfall, and it later emerged that customer funds had been used on a massive scale.

The report says that Bankman-Fried misappropriated about $8 billion in customer funds. Two days after CZ’s statement, Binance announced its intention to acquire FTX, but backed out of the deal the very next day.

Zhao insists he did not plan to destroy FTX and wanted to sell FTT gradually. According to him, Binance itself lost about $500 million on the transaction.

Binance’s criminal case and CZ’s imprisonment

At the same time, US prosecutors were investigating Binance’s operations. The main allegations centered on weak controls that could have allowed the platform to be used by scammers, hackers, sanctions evaders, and participants in other illegal financial schemes.

In internal messages from Binance employees obtained by US authorities, staff even joked about laundering money from drug sales through the platform.

As part of a settlement with the US Department of Justice, CZ pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and stepped down as Binance’s CEO. Binance itself agreed to pay about $4.3 billion in fines and other payments as part of the resolution.

Only 26 minutes passed between Zhao’s release from prison and his jet taking off.

CZ does not formally run Binance, but remains influential

After Zhao’s resignation, Binance brought in new leadership. One of the company’s key figures remains Yi He, who became one of the exchange’s two co-heads.

Formally, the deal with US authorities prohibits CZ from running Binance or taking part in the company’s operational management. At the same time, Zhao retains a large stake in Binance, stays in close contact with leadership, and continues to monitor the exchange’s decisions, the NYT said.

Two years after the criminal case, Binance also created a board of directors with three formally independent members. It was chaired by Gabriel Abed — the same businessman who once convinced CZ to pay attention to the UAE.

New questions about Binance’s compliance

The New York Times report also includes new allegations about Binance’s operations after its settlement with the US.

According to the report, last year the company fired or suspended four compliance employees. They said that nearly $2 billion may have moved from Binance customer accounts to a group of organizations linked to Iran. This could potentially echo sanctions compliance issues that were already part of the 2023 US criminal case.

Binance disputed these employees’ findings and said they were not punished for reporting potential violations.

Separately, the US Department of Justice reported that two Chinese companies used Binance to launder proceeds from the sale of Iranian oil. However, no new criminal charges were brought against Binance in this specific episode.

CZ’s “crypto diplomacy”

After his release, Zhao began traveling regularly and meeting with government officials. He advises countries on cryptocurrency regulation, stablecoins, and digital assets. Among the countries he has engaged with, the piece mentions Pakistan, the Philippines, and Kyrgyzstan.

CZ himself describes these trips almost like diplomatic visits: according to him, in some countries he is met by officials, meetings with presidents and ministers are arranged, and a motorcade is provided to the plane.

At the same time, he continues to invest in tech projects. Among other things, CZ invested in a startup working on artificial womb technology.

Wealth and life after Binance

In the piece, Forbes estimates CZ’s wealth at around $114 billion. Zhao disputes that estimate and calls a $10 billion to $30 billion range more realistic. He lives in Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island in a nine-bedroom villa with an estimated value of $5 million. He has security guards, a chef, a private jet, and a yacht called Da Moon, the NYT added.

Despite this, Zhao tries to maintain the image of someone who is not all that different from ordinary people. In the piece, for example, he personally drives a journalist around the city in a Nissan SUV.

In his private life, CZ also remains closely tied to Binance. He is in a relationship with He Yi, one of the company’s key executives. They have three young children.

“It’s just a game”

A separate final section of the piece is dedicated to Zhao’s worldview.

In his memoir Freedom of Money, he describes the creation of Binance, the early development of the crypto market, the conflict with FTX, and his own vision of life after prison.

CZ also takes simulation theory seriously. He considers the existence of simulated worlds to be mathematically almost inevitable, and suggests that in about 20 years people will be able to plug into fully fledged digital simulations using neural interfaces.

Zhao also uses this worldview as a way of relating to his own life. He compares people to video game characters acting inside an artificial world.

His life formula, quoted in the piece, is simple: “It’s just a game” — “It’s just a game.”

As a reminder, in April 2026, CZ released the book “Freedom of Money.”

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