Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has denied owning a personal fortune of $28 billion, following his inclusion in Bloomberg’s “Financial New Rich” list. He also said that he did not consider FTX to be a rival, contrary to what Bloomberg had mentioned.
Changpeng Zhao denies holding $28 billion
Changpeng Zhao was not happy with a new ranking drawn up by Bloomberg and soberly entitled “The new rich of finance”. Indeed, the CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume, has been attributed a personal fortune of $28 billion.
This puts Changpeng Zhao in 3rd place out of a total of 26 individuals in the finance sector, behind Ken Griffin and his Citadel fund, and Jeff Yass, the founder of the Susquehanna International Group trading company.
The individual concerned formally denied the facts on Twitter, indicating that he did not hold such a sum.
4
Numbers all wrong. I don’t have anywhere near as much. Don’t know why they do this. ♂️
Also, never viewed FTX as a rival. We welcome more (well run) exchanges in the space. pic.twitter.com/xfa31RZp7t
– CZ Binance (@cz_binance) April 27, 2023
” 4 [The CZ symbol means don’t listen to rumours, editor’s note] The figures are wrong. I don’t have that many. I don’t know why they’re doing this. I’ve never seen FTX as a rival. We welcome other (well-managed) exchanges in this space. “
According to Bloomberg’s presentation, Binance would generate, according to recent figures, more than 12 billion dollars in annual profits. Furthermore, the financial information group does mention “rival exchange FTX”, a description that Changpeng Zhao does not seem to agree with.
Changpeng Zhao, enemy of the traditional media
Unfortunately, the CEO of Binance is no stranger to this kind of classification and random information. Back in July, CZ filed a complaint against Bloomberg for making “false, malicious and defamatory statements” about it, and the headline of the article in question was “Changpeng Zhao’s Ponzi scheme”.
Going further back, the Bloomberg Bilionnaires Index estimated the net worth of CZ’s fortune at 96 billion dollars in January 2022. A few months later, the media outlet Forbes put the figure at around 65 billion dollars. This discrepancy seems to prove that calculation methods tend to vary considerably.
Following his recent response to Bloomberg, someone publicly asked the CEO of Binance on Twitter if he was “one of the richest men on the planet”, to the point of “surpassing Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin”, which he said would be a good thing for the industry.
To this, Changpeng Zhao simply replied: “
“.
“It’s not like that. I’m a small potato in a small (but growing) sector. These people are 100 times bigger, if not more.”
