Source: Visual China
Author | Chen Fu also
Edit | Jan Pudding
Produced by | Prism Tencent Xiaoman Studio
"CZ probably won't be on the scene anymore, I heard he had COVID-19." Max, a partner at OOKC labs, said with a little regret.
OOKC labs is a blockchain/digital transformation solutions provider headquartered in Dubai. On March 28, when Max participated in binance's "Blackchain Week" (Blockchain Week) in Dubai, he thought he would be able to communicate with CZ at the event at close range, but he was disappointed.
Binance is the world's largest digital currency exchange, and CZ is its founder and CEO. His real name is Zhao Changpeng, a 45-year-old Canadian Born in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, known by many media as the "richest Chinese".
4 years ago, there was a set of "coin circle gangster playing cards" circulating in the coin circle, the king was the bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, who had never appeared, the little king was the Ethereum founder Vitalik known as the "V God", and Zhao Changpeng was ranked 8th, code-named "Red Peach K".
Nowadays, the coin circle has undergone earth-shaking changes, the big guys in front of him, some have left the coin circle, some have disappeared, Zhao Changpeng is one of the few big guys who are still active in the front line, and has become the most powerful person in the coin circle - he has 5.5 million fans on Twitter, while the former "Little King" V God has only 3.6 million fans.
According to April's latest Forbes Global Rich List, Zhao Changpeng ranked 19th in the world with a net worth of $65 billion, ranking second among the Chinese, only $700 million less than "the richest Chinese" Zhong Jian and $15 billion more than the third Zhang Yiming.
At noon on March 30, Dubai time, "Blackchain Week" came to an end, according to the original plan, Zhao Changpeng should go to the scene to make a closing speech, but instead a 3-minute remote video.
In the video, he spoke briskly, thanking his friends who attended the meeting and the Dubai side that provided support. Although he did not directly say that he was infected with the new crown, he still revealed relevant information in his words - "I will see you after the quarantine period."
The picture is a screenshot of the Blackchain Week live broadcast, and the screen is Zhao Changpeng
In the short video, he did not talk about his observations and predictions about the industry, nor did he answer questions of concern about whether Binance would have its global headquarters in Dubai.
Previously, in China, Zhao Changpeng's fame was not too big. However, at the end of last year, he attracted a round of widespread attention from domestic society. At that time, the domestic media "Caijing" pointed out in a report that Zhao Changpeng's net worth was as high as 90 billion US dollars, surpassing Zhong Sui, chairman of Nongfu Spring, and becoming the richest Man in China.
It is not only Caijing that believes that Zhao Changpeng is the richest man in China, but also Bloomberg, which has extensive influence in the world.
On the real-time update of the "Bloomberg Billionaire Index", Zhao Changpeng has surpassed Zhong Jingwei many times to become the richest Chinese in the world. On Feb. 10, for example, his net worth reached $86.8 billion, surpassing Mr. Zhong's $74.4 billion and ranking 12th in the world, just one place lower than Facebook founder Zuckerberg.
The image is a screenshot of the official website of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index
However, Zhao Changpeng is not like the billionaires on the list, who are recognized by mainstream society.
On the contrary, due to the inherent original sin of digital currency - money laundering, dark web trading, etc., this industry has always been strongly regulated by various countries, and Zhao Changpeng and his Binance are also wandering the world, homeless, and have no place to live. But on the other hand, Zhao Changpeng frequently interacts with fans on Twitter, comments, and is regarded by the currency circle as an evangelist and prophet in the industry, and has become one of the most active billionaires.
"The $74 billion man"
The first time Zhao Changpeng's wealth received media attention was in February 2018, when forbes it was Reported.
At that time, the magazine, which was famous for covering the wealth of the rich, published a list of the rich in the field of digital currency, and the assessment of Zhao Changpeng's wealth was 1.1-2 billion US dollars, and it did not hesitate to cover it.
A small headline on the cover is "From 0 to Billionaire, Only 6 Months", which is because Binance at that time was only established 6 months ago.
Many people will not think that 4 years later, Zhao Changpeng became a shareholder of Forbes. In February, Binance made a strategic investment of $200 million in Forbes, becoming one of its two major shareholders and pushing for Forbes to go public.
At the beginning of April this year, Forbes did not shy away from Zhao Changpeng's shareholder status, and once again assessed his wealth. In the Forbes Global Rich List at that time, Zhao Changpeng ranked 19th in the world with a net worth of 65 billion US dollars, ranking second among the Chinese, and only 700 million US dollars less than the "richest Chinese" Zhong Jianshan.
The image is taken from the 2022 Rich List on Forbes' official website
In addition to Forbes and Bloomberg, in March this year, Hurun released the 2022 global rich list, showing that Zhao Changpeng's wealth reached 145 billion yuan, ranking 67th in the world, up 269 places.
In these rankings, Bloomberg has the highest assessment of his net worth. According to its official website, Bloomberg's main basis is the binance equity owned by Zhao Changpeng. In some areas where disclosure is required, Binance has had public statements and regulated documents, based on which Bloomberg concluded that Zhao changpeng owns a 90 percent controlling stake in Binance.
"When Binance was founded, domestic investors invested, and since then, Sequoia and IDG also want to invest in Binance, which can be found in public information." A currency circle investor told the author, "However, none of them have obtained equity, and Zhao Changpeng has absolute control over Binance." ”
Chen Weixing, the founder and investor of Fast Taxi, invested in Binance when it was established. However, the two sides later developed contradictions. On August 31, 2020, Chen Weixing said in the circle of friends that he invested tens of millions of yuan in Binance and has not obtained shares.
After analyzing Binance's trading volume and fees in an article, Bloomberg concluded that Binance's revenue in 2021 was at least $20 billion, which is nearly three times the revenue of Coinbase, the world's second-largest digital currency exchange, that year.
In April 2021, Coinbase was listed on the NASDAQ and currently has a market capitalization of about $35 billion.
A Binance spokesperson later responded that the valuation was "incorrect and varied widely," but did not provide more details.
In addition to holding the equity of Binance, Zhao Changpeng also invested in BNB (Binance Coin) and Bitcoin. Among them, BNB is a digital currency issued by Binance and is currently the fourth largest digital currency in the world, with a total currency value of about 65 billion US dollars.
"Digital currencies are encrypted, and the outside world doesn't know how many BNBs he has." The above-mentioned investor explained to the author, "BnB will explain how much the team retains and how much the market circulates when it is issued, but how much is divided within the team and how much Zhao Changpeng takes, the outside world does not know." ”
Bloomberg also said that in the assessed Wealth of Zhao Changpeng, he does not include the digital currency he holds. Bloomberg will score the results with a "confidence level" when evaluating the wealth of the rich, and for Zhao Changpeng's assessment, they only give 1 star, which is the lowest level of confidence, which means that the information they can objectively evaluate is very limited.
Nowadays, the discussion about Zhao Changpeng's wealth has become a hot spot chased by the financial media.
On March 30 this year, another media outlet known for its wealth ranking, Fortune, reported on Zhao Changpeng on the cover with the headline "The Man With a Net Worth of $74 Billion."
Zhao Changpeng responded twice on Twitter, both stressing that he was not that rich, and said that he only cared about the money in his wallet, but also thanked Fortune for his attention.
No house and no car, "mobility is king"
Regarding Zhao Changpeng's wealth, you can say that he is worth hundreds of billions, or you can say that he has nothing, which mainly depends on whether you recognize the value of digital currency.
In May 2018, at an online exchange meeting held by Binance, Zhao Changpeng's partner and Binance CMO He Yi said in a Q&A interaction that in addition to digital currency, the most valuable things for Zhao Changpeng were mobile phones and computers, and he did not buy a house or a car.
He Yi also ridiculed that zhao Changpeng was unqualified if he followed the standards of a Chinese mother-in-law to find a son-in-law.
"No car, no house" has always been the label of Zhao Changpeng, who once said that cryptocurrencies account for 99% of his personal wealth.
Today, that label has been broken. At the end of last year, he bought an apartment in Dubai, which was also reported by some media outlets. However, some people in the currency circle speculated to the author that he may not have bought the apartment for permanent residence or investment, but to show favor to Dubai , a city where Binance is looking for a global headquarters, and Dubai is a popular choice.
Liquidity is an important part of Zhao Changpeng's view of wealth, and he has repeatedly stressed the importance of liquidity for wealth, and said that the reason for not buying a house is that the liquidity of the house is too poor.
At the end of last year, when Caijing magazine reported that he was the richest man in China, he sent a circle of friends to respond, writing: "Valuations without liquidity are all imaginary." Liquidity is king. ”
He also gave an example: if you issue a coin, 900 billion pieces, a dollar to sell one, there is a market value of 900 billion.
In the currency circle, issuing coins used to be a shortcut to getting rich. In layman's terms, issuing coins is equivalent to the listing of companies, but the former is much easier, and the price and quantity of coins can be set by themselves, and no one supervises. It is not difficult to issue a coin worth 900 billion yuan, zhao Changpeng means that if these coins are not traded, there will be no value.
According to public information, Zhao Changpeng was born in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, his father taught at the University of Science and Technology of China, and in 1989, the family moved to Vancouver, Canada.
A local person in Lianyungang introduced to the author that Zhao Changpeng's birthplace is Ganyu District, Lianyungang City, and the local government has noticed the news that he has become the richest man in China, which should be a proud thing, but because digital currency transactions are not recognized in China, the local government has not publicized or even understood him too much.
Zhao Changpeng's work has always been related to trading. According to the 2018 Forbes cover story, he graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a degree in computer science and worked for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg, where he was responsible for trading software development.
In 2005, he resigned from Bloomberg and founded Fusion Systems in Shanghai, where he built high-frequency trading systems.
His digital currency nugget trail began in 2013. At the time, he learned about Bitcoin by playing poker with Bobby Lee, CEO of the digital currency trading platform Bitcoin China, and Bobby encouraged him to invest 10% of his assets in Bitcoin. But after research, he decided to sell his house in Shanghai, All in Bitcoin.
The following year, he joined the exchange OKcoin as a co-founder and served as CTO.
But nine months later, he resigned from OKcoin on the grounds that he did not agree with the company's future development direction, which once caused a sensational war in the entire currency circle.
"He has the characteristics of an IT person, which is related to his technical background, trading experience, and he is more Western in the management team." Cai Kailong, former chief strategy officer of Huobi Group, introduced to the author that many years ago, because he was a peer, he and Zhao Changpeng met at work. Huobi and OKCoin were once the top three digital currency exchanges in the world.
In Cai Kailong's view, some companies pay attention to the authority of the founder and obey the founder's orders, but Binance is more open, and Zhao Changpeng can also listen to different opinions, which helps the development of Binance.
On Twitter, he was just as active as Musk
"Zhao Changpeng's status as a foreigner is an important reason for Binance's rapid rise." In the author's dialogue with a number of people in the currency circle, this point of view has been mentioned many times.
In 2017, when Binance was founded, the exchange market had formed a situation in which Huobi and OKcoin were dominant, and Binance was not optimistic. However, many strong supervision in China have caused these exchanges to suffer disasters and unexpectedly given Binance the opportunity to "overtake in curves".
On September 4, 2017, seven ministries and commissions, including the Central Bank, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, jointly issued the Announcement on Preventing the Financing Risks of Token Issuance, and digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum fell sharply. In the coin circle, history is called "94 coin disaster".
At that time, the players of digital currency were mainly in China, and most of the customers of Huobi and OKCoin were Chinese, and the team was also in China.
Under continuous supervision, exchanges began to "go to sea" to save themselves, and the huge domestic business became a burden on Huobi and OKCoin, and they were hesitant to give up the domestic market. The start-up Binance, however, can go light on the road and choose overseas markets without hesitation.
"Zhao Changpeng himself is Canadian, and Binance's user interface, user habits, and company publicity are all in line with the habits of foreigners, which allowed them to gain a firm foothold in the international market from the beginning." Cai Kailong analyzed to the author.
At the end of last year, in an exclusive interview with Forbes, Zhao Changpeng also said that Huobi and OKCoin mainly focus on the Chinese market, even if they have a bilingual interface in Chinese and English, but the way of operation is very Chinese; the world's second largest exchange coinbase is only in English. When Binance was founded, it supported four languages, upgraded to support 9 languages within a month, and later supported 31 languages.
On March 27 this year, Binance hosted an event in Dubai, a roadshow of blockchain projects in Vietnam, and held discussions with some of Binance's leaders. What impressed Max at the event was that Binance's staff in charge of the Vietnamese market were all Vietnamese.
"Binance has always used local people for operations and customer service, which is one of their characteristics." Max said.
A few years ago, when digital currency was developing wildly in China, major exchanges and coin issuers also established their own communities, and it can even be said that community maintenance is the most important operation of the coin circle, and the big guys in the coin circle are also very active on social platforms.
At that time, Zhao Changpeng was overshadowed by Bitmain founder Wu Jihan, Canaan Yunzhi founder Zhang Nangeng, Huobi boss Li Lin, OKCoin boss Xu Xingxing, and Li Xiaolai, who was known as the richest man in Bitcoin. But in the past three years, these people have disappeared, and Xu Xingxing has even been surrounded by coin speculators many times and investigated by the police many times.
As a Chinese Canadian, Zhao Changpeng is active outside the control.
He has 5.5 million Twitter followers, making him the most followed by the currency circle. He's like an evangelist, tweeting a few tweets about digital currencies almost every day, as active as elon Musk, the world's richest man, and the two sometimes interact.
In November 2021, Musk and Zhao Changpeng had an interaction about Dogecoin, when some media reported it under the title of "Musk was knocked down by Binance CEO".
"He is actually relatively low-key, the digital currency exchange itself is hugely controversial, and no one wants to be too high-profile." He tweeted perhaps as a need to maintain the company's image. Cai Kailong introduced to the author.
At the same time, compared with the flags of Huobi and OKCoin, Binance is also in the limelight.
In February 2020, He Yi, the CMO of Binance, known as the "first sister of the coin circle", published an advertisement for recruitment and business in the circle of friends, the standard is "beautiful, big chest, network anchor, especially good after 00, and can chat". Before long, photos of several young and beautiful girls began to spread in major communities, and these people were successful Binance business people.
This move caused great controversy in the currency circle. Of course, such a high-profile promotion activity, Huobi and OKCoin are categorically afraid.
A person in the currency circle told the author that this strategy is beyond reproach, and most of the big domestic coin speculators are upstarts and coal bosses, who like young and beautiful girls.
Monopoly empire, trading volume exceeds the Shanghai Stock Exchange
The Blockchain Week, held in Dubai at the end of March, was one of the few ticket collection events in the cryptocurrency circle.
According to Binance's website, they sold a total of 1500 tickets, each up to $600, and soon announced that they were sold out. According to Max, on the days of the event, many of his friends from all over the world flew to Dubai for several hours to participate in the event.
At that time, Dubai was at the end of the postponed Expo 2020. Blockchain Week and the World Expo have made Dubai, a city known for its wealth and luxury, the focus of the global currency circle.
Today's Binance has become a huge digital currency empire, exchanges, digital currencies, data websites, wallets, everything is available, as well as research institutes, charitable foundations and other branches.
In this empire, exchanges are the most important asset. According to the official website, they have 90 million users, more than 600 digital currencies online, and a 24-hour transaction volume of $76 billion. Under the rules, Binance could charge up to 0.1 percent from transactions and up to $76 million for $76 billion.
Whether in the traditional capital market or in the digital currency market, this trading volume is very amazing.
For example, Coinbase, the world's second largest digital currency exchange, official website data shows that its quarterly trading volume is 547 billion US dollars, which translates to an average daily trading volume of about 6.08 billion US dollars, less than 1/10 of Binance.
Compared to traditional stock exchanges, Binance can also rank at the top of the world. For example, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the world's third largest exchange, will have an average daily trading volume of about 469.1 billion yuan or about $73.7 billion in 2021.
It is worth noting that Binance is 365 days a year, 24 hours a day non-stop trading, while the SSE trading hours are limited, only 243 trading days in 2021, if you calculate the annual trading volume, Binance is much larger than the SSE.
BNB is a digital currency issued by Binance. From June 26 to July 3, 2017, Binance held an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), BNB was launched, and raised $15 million. At that time, ICOs were in a state of madness, a large number of speculators through the issuance of coins to achieve rapid wealth, the year's "94 coin disaster" mainly hit this kind of ICO behavior.
When BNB was issued, 1 bitcoin could be exchanged for 20,000 BNB, and today, 1 bitcoin can only be exchanged for about 100 BNB, and bitcoin has risen more than ten times, so bnb has risen thousands of times.
Some argue that BNB is equivalent to the exchange's own stock, an explanation that is not comprehensive, but helps to understand BNB. In the traditional capital market, several major exchanges are not only trading platforms for other listed companies, but also issue their own shares for investors to trade, such as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, etc.
In fact, bnb is much more versatile in Binance's digital currency empire.
It can be monetized through transactions, can be used to pay transaction fees, and can also participate in token sales hosted by Binance, book airline tickets and hotels on designated websites, donate to Binance Charitable Foundation, and so on.
Coinmarketcap is a world-renowned digital currency data website, its official website counts 9860 digital currencies, is the most visited website for retail investors.
On March 31, 2020, Binance acquired it and mastered the traffic entrance of retail investors, who can jump directly to binance exchanges from this website.
However, the deal has been criticized by peers. An investor in a small exchange once lamented to the author that after Binance acquired CoinmarketCap, it has formed a monopoly empire of "traffic entrance + exchange", which makes the diversion channels of small exchanges less and the cost of customer acquisition increase, which is not conducive to industry competition and healthy development.
Wallet is a basic application of digital currency, users can store digital currency in the wallet, can also take it out to trade. In july 2018, Binance acquired a wallet called Trust Wallet, and with the rise of Binance, Trust Wallet has become the world's largest digital currency wallet.
No headquarters, no regulation?
For this huge digital currency empire, Zhao Changpeng once had an idealized design - no headquarters.
Decentralization and distribution are the characteristics of blockchain, and the headquartersless model makes the outside world think that Binance is practicing the blockchain concept. At an event in May 2020, Zhao Changpeng also said that Binance does not have a headquarters because Bitcoin does not have an office.
In May last year, Zhao Changpeng said in an interview with "Late Point" that Binance has less than 3,000 employees, distributed in more than 60 countries and regions around the world, and will collaborate remotely with various office software on a daily basis. They don't use the company to refer to Binance internally, but use the word "organization"; they don't use the word "employee", they use the word "team member".
This distributed way of working is also evident in a recent incident.
On March 29, Trust Wallet founder Viktor Radchenko announced his departure on Twitter. The outside world thought that as the person in charge of the wallet, Viktor should have many face-to-face communication opportunities with Zhao Changpeng, but Zhao Changpeng said in reply to this tweet that they had only met once.
In fact, this headquarters-free model helps Binance circumvent regulation. Without headquarters, there is no department that can supervise them.
In the early days, when digital currencies developed brutally, governments failed to introduce regulatory policies in a timely manner, and Binance quickly seized the market with its decentralized operating model. When these countries and regions reacted, they looked for new ways to continue to develop and take the lead step by step.
For example, in the U.S. market, Binance once operated there, and after being regulated, they announced that U.S. residents would no longer be able to use Binance after March 2021. But they have already planned ahead and continued to develop in another way.
In the summer of 2019, Binance announced that it had partnered with a U.S. company to create Binance.US (Binance U.S.) and declared that Binance and Binance.US were two separate exchanges, the latter of which had been licensed to operate in several U.S. states.
"When U.S. residents download Binance, they will be reminded that they cannot use it, but they will also guide users to download Binance.US." A Chinese living in the United States told the author, "Compared with Binance Global Edition, Binance.US has few types of digital currency transactions to choose from, and the transaction fees are also high. ”
A tweet forwarded by Zhao Changpeng in March this year showed that Binance.US trading volume in 2021 was $2780, which is far less than Coinbase's trading volume.
Binance has always hoped to be recognized by the US market, and they also hope to promote the listing of Binance.US and accept the supervision of the SEC, and have done a lot of work to do so.
In May 2021, they invited Brian Brooks, former acting administrator of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, to serve as CEO of the Binance.US, which became a major event in the currency circle at the time and was considered an important step in Binance's compliance. But after only 3 months in office, Brian Brooks left his job due to a conflict with Zhao Changpeng.
Since then, Binance has also invited a number of US regulatory authorities and government officials to serve as executives of Binance and Binance.US.
This is mainly because Binance, Binance.US are not having a good time in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the relationship between Binance.US and Binance, Zhao Changpeng, etc., and the US Department of Justice has also investigated whether Binance has facilitated money laundering and tax evasion.
The rapid development in the gray area has become a black history that Binance cannot erase.
Cai Kailong introduced to the author that Coinbase has paid great attention to compliance work since its inception, regarded compliance as more important than customers and operations, and even gave up many markets for compliance. Three years ago, he noticed that 1/3 of Coinbase's employees were doing compliance, while other exchanges didn't realize the importance of compliance.
"Regulation in the United States is very strict and does not ignore the history of development in the gray area. Binance.US want to go public in the U.S. and face significant regulatory challenges. Cai Kailong said.
The deported Binance came to Dubai
In May 2018, He Yi once described her and Zhao Changpeng's working status as "four seas as home". She said that sometimes, she didn't know which country Zhao Changpeng was in, and Zhao Changpeng didn't know which country she was in, and they all had their own things to do.
In fact, in the early days, Zhao Changpeng and his Binance grew barbarically while being "expelled" everywhere.
In 2017, Binance was founded in Shanghai. Zhao Changpeng recalled in an online meeting that after the "94 coin disaster", the Binance team of more than 30 people left China and went to Japan. At that time, some big names in the currency circle also ran overseas. Some people who know Zhao Changpeng once told the author that since then, Zhao Changpeng may not have set foot in the land of Chinese mainland.
In its second year in Japan, Japanese financial regulators issued a warning to Binance, reminding them that they could not provide trading services to the public without a formal license.
Since then, it has been thought that Binance's headquarters may be in the European country of Ma others, but in February 2020, Ma Other announced that Binance was not in their regulatory scope. Since then, there have been few rumors about the specific location of Binance's headquarters, and many people do not know where Zhao Changpeng works.
Where is Zhao Changpeng? An article in the Wall Street Journal last November gave the answer: During the two years of the pandemic, he has been in Singapore and often rides an electric scooter to work.
A person in the currency circle analyzed to the author that at that time, Zhao Changpeng hoped to land Binance headquarters in Singapore. Earlier, Zhao Changpeng had said that Binance was seeking shares in sovereign wealth funds to improve governments' understanding of Binance.
However, for Zhao Changpeng's overtures, Singapore did not buy it and issued an eviction order.
In early July last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it would conduct a review of Binance's subsidiary in Singapore. On December 13 last year, Binance said it had withdrawn its application for a digital payment token service license with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and shut down its trading platform in Singapore by February this year.
In An interview with Late Point last May, Zhao Changpeng said that two or three years ago, when they went to some countries to communicate, they were often asked whether the blockchain was used by terrorists.
Unlike the start-up period, Binance has become the most influential company in the currency circle today, and they can no longer leave their headquarters and wander outside the supervision of various countries as before. Coinbase's ongoing compliance and listing on traditional capital markets has also made Binance aware of the importance of catering to regulation, and a crucial step is to establish its own global headquarters.
At present, Zhao Changpeng and Binance seem to have found a new safe haven, and their state of being home is expected to end. At the end of last year, Zhao Changpeng began to become a regular customer in the United Arab Emirates and bought an apartment in Dubai.
Compared to Singapore, Dubai is much friendlier to digital currencies. Binance has been granted permission to conduct some operations in Dubai and has established a blockchain technology hub at dubai's World Trade Center, according to a Reuters report in March.
Max, who participated in the Blockchain Week in Dubai, introduced to the author that at this Expo, many national pavilions have held NFT-related activities, such as the Israel Pavilion, the Australian Pavilion, the Slovenian Pavilion, etc. NFT is a kind of blockchain play, which has been promoted by many mainstream technology companies at home and abroad.
"Recently, there have been a lot of blockchain activities in Dubai, and some royal investment offices will also come to participate and give speeches, they attach great importance to blockchain and are very friendly." Max indicated to the author.
Cai Kailong introduced to the author that the most important thing in front of Binance's development to today is not business and profits, but more compliant. Previously, they had hoped to obtain licenses in some island countries and small countries, but the endorsement of those small countries did not allow them to be recognized by mainstream society.
"Dubai is an internationally renowned city, and they attach great importance to blockchain, and if they can get a license there, it will be a milestone for Binance on their compliance path." Cai Kailong said.
Over the past year, Binance has been seeking recognition from mainstream society. They made the traditional announcement at Forbes and became one of its two major shareholders; sponsored the well-known football team Paris Saint-Germain, so that superstars such as Messi, Neymar and Mbappe put on the uniforms printed with the Binance logo; and they also partnered with the F1 team BWT to put the Binance logo on their bodies.
Now, more countries and regions seem to have changed their understanding of digital currency, and Zhao Changpeng has also begun to become a guest of dignitaries in some countries and regions.
According to information he posted on Twitter, he has recently been active in Central and South America. He went to Brazil, met with the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the governor of the state of São Paulo, and also went to Uruguay and El Salvador to meet with the presidents of the two countries.
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele met with Zhao Changpeng, and the screenshot came from Nayib Bukele's Twitter
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