The world's richest Chinese wanderer has no house or car

"CZ may not come to the scene. I heard that he was infected with the new coronavirus." OOKC labs partner Max said with a little regret.

OOKC labs is a blockchain/digital transformation solution service provider headquartered in Dubai. On March 28, when Max attended the "Blackchain Week" organized by Binance in Dubai, he thought he could communicate with CZ up close at the event, but he returned disappointed.

Binance is the world's largest digital currency exchange, and CZ is its founder and CEO. His real name is Zhao Changpeng, a Chinese Canadian born in Lianyungang, Jiangsu. He is 45 years old this year and has been called the "richest Chinese" by many media.

Four years ago, a set of "cryptocurrency boss playing cards" was circulated in the cryptocurrency circle. The king was Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin who has never appeared, the jack was Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum known as "V God", and Zhao Changpeng was ranked 8th, codenamed "King of Hearts".

Today, the cryptocurrency world has undergone tremendous changes. Some of the bigwigs ahead of him have left the cryptocurrency world, and some have disappeared. Zhao Changpeng is one of the few bigwigs who is still active in the front line and has become the person with the most say in the cryptocurrency world. He has 5.5 million followers on Twitter, while the former "Little King" Vitalik Buterin has only 3.6 million followers.

According to the latest Forbes Global Rich List in April, Zhao Changpeng ranked 19th in the world with a net worth of US$65 billion, ranking second among Chinese, only US$700 million less than the "richest Chinese" Zhong Shanshan, and US$15 billion more than Zhang Yiming, who ranked third.

At noon on March 30th, Dubai time, "Blackchain Week" came to an end. According to the original plan, Zhao Changpeng should have given a closing speech on site, but instead he gave a 3-minute remote video.

In the video, he spoke briskly, thanking friends who attended the conference and Dubai for their support. Although he did not directly say that he was infected with the new coronavirus, his words still revealed relevant information - "I will see you all after the quarantine period."

The picture is a screenshot of the Blackchain Week live broadcast, and the person on the screen is Zhao Changpeng

In the short video, he did not talk about his observations and predictions on the industry, nor did he answer questions of concern to the outside world - whether Binance will locate its global headquarters in Dubai.

Previously, Zhao Changpeng was not very famous in China. However, at the end of last year, he attracted widespread attention from the 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 Nongfu Spring Chairman Zhong Shanshan and becoming the richest Chinese.

Not only Caijing, but also Bloomberg, which has a wide influence internationally, believes that Zhao Changpeng is the richest Chinese.

On the real-time updated "Bloomberg Billionaires Index", Zhao Changpeng has surpassed Zhong Shanshan many times to become the richest Chinese in the world. For example, on February 10, his net worth reached 86.8 billion US dollars, surpassing Zhong Shanshan's 74.4 billion US dollars, ranking 12th in the world, only one place lower than Facebook founder Zuckerberg.

The picture is a screenshot of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index official website

However, Zhao Changpeng is not recognized by mainstream society like the billionaires on the list.

On the contrary, due to the inherent sin of digital currency - money laundering, dark web transactions, etc., this industry has always been subject to strong supervision by various countries, and Zhao Changpeng and his Binance have also been wandering around the world, with no fixed place to live. But on the other hand, Zhao Changpeng frequently interacts with fans on Twitter and makes comments. He is regarded as an evangelist and prophet of the industry in the cryptocurrency circle, and has become one of the most active billionaires.

"The man with a net worth of $74 billion"

Zhao Changpeng’s wealth first attracted media attention in February 2018, when it was reported by Forbes.

At that time, this magazine, which is famous for reporting on the wealth of wealthy people, released a list of the richest people in the digital currency field, estimating Zhao Changpeng's net worth to be US$1.1-2 billion, and spared no space to give him a cover story.

A subheading on the cover reads “From 0 to Billionaire in Just 6 Months”, which is because Binance was only founded 6 months ago.

Many people would not have thought that four years later, Zhao Changpeng would become a shareholder of Forbes. In February of this year, Binance made a strategic investment of US$200 million in Forbes, becoming one of its two largest shareholders and promoting Forbes' listing.

In early April this year, Forbes did not shy away from Zhao Changpeng's status as a shareholder and re-evaluated his wealth. In the Forbes Global Rich List at the time, Zhao Changpeng ranked 19th in the world with a net worth of US$65 billion, ranking second among Chinese, only US$700 million less than the "richest Chinese" Zhong Shanshan.

The picture is taken from the 2022 rich list on Forbes official website

In addition to Forbes and Bloomberg, the Hurun Global Rich List 2022 released in March this year showed that Zhao Changpeng's wealth reached 145 billion yuan, ranking 67th in the world, up 269 places.

Among these rankings, Bloomberg has the highest assessment of his wealth. According to its official website, Bloomberg's main basis is Zhao Changpeng's equity in Binance. In some areas where information disclosure is required, Binance has made public statements and regulated documents. Based on these statements and documents, Bloomberg concluded that Zhao Changpeng owns 90% of Binance's controlling stake.

"When Binance was founded, domestic investors invested in it. Later, Sequoia and IDG also wanted to invest in Binance. These can be found in public information." A cryptocurrency investor told the author, "However, none of them got the equity. Zhao Changpeng has absolute control over Binance."

Chen Weixing, the founder and investor of Kuaidi Dache, invested in Binance when it was founded. However, the two sides later had a conflict. On August 31, 2020, Chen Weixing said in his circle of friends that he had invested tens of millions of RMB in Binance but had never received any shares.

In an article, Bloomberg analyzed Binance's trading volume and fees and concluded that Binance's revenue in 2021 was at least $20 billion, which is almost 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 its current market value is approximately US$35 billion.

A Binance spokesperson later responded that the valuation was "incorrect and off by a wide margin," but did not provide further details.

In addition to holding shares in Binance, Zhao Changpeng has also invested in BNB (Binance Coin) and Bitcoin. Among them, BNB is the digital currency issued by Binance and is currently the fourth largest digital currency in the world, with a total value of approximately US$65 billion.

"Digital currency is encrypted, and the outside world does not know how many BNBs he has." The above investor explained to the author, "When BNB is issued, it will be stated how much the team will keep and how much will be circulated in the market, but how the team divides it internally and how much Zhao Changpeng takes, the outside world does not know."

Bloomberg also stated that the estimated wealth of Zhao Changpeng does not include the digital currencies he holds. When Bloomberg evaluates the wealth of the rich, it will score the results with a "confidence level". For the evaluation of Zhao Changpeng, they only gave 1 star, which is the lowest level of confidence, meaning that the information they can objectively evaluate is very limited.

Nowadays, the discussion about Zhao Changpeng's wealth has become a hot topic for financial media.

On March 30 this year, Fortune, another media outlet well-known for its wealth rankings, published a cover story on Zhao Changpeng with the title “The Man with a Net Worth of 74 Billion US Dollars.”

Zhao Changpeng responded twice on Twitter, emphasizing that he is not that rich and saying that he only cares about the money in his wallet, but he also thanked Fortune for its attention to him.

Without a house or a car, "liquidity is king"

Regarding Zhao Changpeng's wealth, you can say he is worth hundreds of billions, or you can say he has nothing. It 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 question-and-answer session that apart from digital currency, Zhao Changpeng's most valuable things are his mobile phones and computers. He has not bought a house or a car.

He Yi also joked that if Zhao Changpeng were to be judged according to the standards that Chinese mothers-in-law have for finding a son-in-law, he would not be qualified.

"No car, no house" has always been Zhao Changpeng's label. He once stated that encrypted digital currency accounts for 99% of his personal wealth.

Today, this label has been broken. At the end of last year, he bought an apartment in Dubai, which was reported by some media. However, some people in the cryptocurrency circle speculated to the author that he might not buy the apartment for permanent residence or investment, but to show goodwill to Dubai - Binance is looking for a city to locate its global headquarters, and Dubai is a popular choice.

Liquidity is an important part of Zhao Changpeng's view of wealth. He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of liquidity to 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 Chinese, he responded by posting a message on WeChat Moments, writing: "Valuations without liquidity are all fake. Liquidity is king."

He also gave an example: If 900 billion coins were issued and sold for one dollar each, the market value would be 900 billion.

In the cryptocurrency world, issuing coins was once a shortcut to getting rich. Generally speaking, issuing coins is equivalent to a company going public, but the former is much easier. The price and quantity of coins can be set by yourself, and there is no supervision. It is not difficult to issue a coin worth 900 billion. What Zhao Changpeng meant was that if no one trades these coins, they have no value.

Public information shows that Zhao Changpeng was born in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province. His father taught at the University of Science and Technology of China. In 1989, his family moved to Vancouver, Canada.

A local in Lianyungang told the author that Zhao Changpeng was born in Ganyu District, Lianyungang City. Local people have noticed the news that he has become the richest Chinese, which should be a matter of pride, but because digital currency transactions are not recognized in the country, local people have not promoted him too much or even understood him.

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 at 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, whose main business is to build high-frequency trading systems.

His journey to make money in digital currency began in 2013. At that time, he learned about Bitcoin while playing poker with Bobby Lee, CEO of digital currency trading platform Bitcoin China, who encouraged him to invest 10% of his assets in Bitcoin. But after researching, he decided to sell his house in Shanghai and go all in on 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 disagreed with the company's future development direction, which triggered a war of words that shocked the entire cryptocurrency circle.

"He has the characteristics of an IT person, which is related to his technical background and trading experience. He is also more Western in his management team." Cai Kailong, former chief strategy officer of Huobi Group, told the author that he and Zhao Changpeng met at work many years ago because they were in the same industry. Huobi and OKCoin were once the top three digital currency exchanges in the world.

In Cai Kailong's view, some companies focus on the authority of the founder and obey the founder's orders, but Binance is more open and Zhao Changpeng can listen to different opinions, which is conducive to the development of Binance.

On Twitter, he is as active as Musk

"Zhao Changpeng's foreign identity is an important reason for Binance's rapid rise." This view was mentioned many times in the author's conversations with many people in the cryptocurrency circle.

In 2017, when Binance was founded, Huobi and OKcoin had already dominated the exchange market, and Binance was not favored. However, repeated strong supervision in China caused these exchanges to suffer a devastating disaster, and unexpectedly gave Binance the opportunity to "overtake on the curve".

On September 4, 2017, the Central Bank, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other seven ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing Risks in the Issuance and Financing of Tokens", and digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeted. In the currency circle, it is known as the "94 coin disaster".

At that time, digital currency players were mainly in China. Most of Huobi and OKCoin’s customers were Chinese, and their teams were also in China.

Under the continuous supervision, exchanges began to "go overseas" to save themselves. The huge domestic business became a burden for Huobi and OKCoin, and they were hesitant about whether to give up the domestic market. However, the newly established Binance could travel light and chose the overseas market without hesitation.

"Changpeng Zhao is Canadian, and Binance's user interface, user habits, and company publicity are all in line with foreigners' habits, 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 interview with Forbes, Zhao Changpeng also said that Huobi and OKCoin mainly focus on the Chinese market. Even though they have bilingual interfaces in Chinese and English, their operations are very Chinese; Coinbase, the world's second largest exchange, only has an English version. When Binance was founded, it supported four languages, and within a month it was upgraded to support nine languages, and later supported 31 languages.

On March 27 this year, Binance held an event in Dubai, a roadshow for Vietnam’s blockchain projects, and held discussions with some Binance executives. What impressed Max at the event was that all Binance staff responsible for the Vietnamese market were Vietnamese.

"Binance has always used local people for operations and customer service. This is one of their characteristics," said Max.

A few years ago, when digital currency was developing wildly in China, major exchanges and issuers also established their own communities. It can even be said that community maintenance is the most important operation in the currency circle, and the bigwigs in the currency circle are also extremely active on social platforms.

Those who overshadowed Zhao Changpeng at that time included Bitmain founder Wu Jihan, Canaan Creative founder Zhang Nangeng, Huobi boss Li Lin, OKCoin boss Xu Mingxing, and the so-called Bitcoin richest man Li Xiaolai. But in the past three years, these people have disappeared, and Xu Mingxing has even been besieged by cryptocurrency speculators many times and has been investigated by the police many times.

As a Chinese Canadian, Zhao Changpeng is active outside of control.

He has 5.5 million Twitter followers, the most in the cryptocurrency community. He is like an evangelist, posting several tweets about digital currencies almost every day, as active as the world's richest man, Elon Musk, and the two sometimes interact.

In November 2021, Musk had an interaction with Zhao Changpeng about Dogecoin. At that time, some media reported it with the title "Musk was knocked down by Binance CEO".

"He is actually relatively low-key. Digital currency exchanges themselves are hugely controversial, and no one wants to be too high-profile. He may post on Twitter to maintain the company's image," Cai Kailong introduced to the author.

At the same time, compared with the decline of Huobi and OKCoin, Binance remains in the spotlight.

In February 2020, He Yi, CMO of Binance, known as the "No. 1 in the cryptocurrency circle", posted a recruitment advertisement for business people on WeChat Moments. The criteria were "beautiful, big breasts, worked as an online anchor, preferably born in the 2000s, and good at chatting." Soon, photos of several young and beautiful girls began to circulate in major social groups. These people were the successful Binance business people who applied for the job.

This move caused huge controversy in the cryptocurrency circle. Of course, Huobi and OKCoin would never dare to carry out such a high-profile promotion.

A person in the cryptocurrency circle told the author that there is nothing wrong with this strategy. Most of the big cryptocurrency speculators in China are nouveau riche and coal bosses, and they like young and beautiful girls.

Monopoly Empire, trading volume exceeds Shanghai Stock Exchange

The Blockchain Week held in Dubai at the end of March was one of the few events in the cryptocurrency circle that charged admission.

According to Binance’s official website, they sold a total of 1,500 tickets, each priced at $600, and they were quickly sold out. According to Max, during the event, many of his friends from all over the world took a few hours flight to Dubai to participate in the event.

At that time, Dubai was at the end of the postponed 2020 World Expo. Blockchain Week and the World Expo made Dubai, a city famous for its wealth and luxury, the focus of the global cryptocurrency circle.

Today, Binance has become a huge digital currency empire, with exchanges, digital currencies, data websites, wallets, as well as branches such as research institutes and charitable foundations.

In this empire, the exchange is the most important asset. According to the official website, they have 90 million users, more than 600 digital currencies are online, and the 24-hour trading volume reaches 76 billion US dollars. According to the rules, Binance can charge a maximum fee of 0.1% from the transaction, and a maximum fee of 76 million US dollars can be charged for 76 billion US dollars.

Whether in the traditional capital market or in the digital currency market, this trading volume is astonishing.

For example, Coinbase, the world's second largest digital currency exchange, has a quarterly trading volume of US$547 billion, according to its official website data. That translates to an average daily trading volume of approximately US$6.08 billion, less than 1/10 of Binance's.

Compared with traditional stock exchanges, Binance can also rank among the top in the world. For example, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the world's third largest exchange, had an average daily trading volume of about 469.1 billion yuan, or about 73.7 billion US dollars, in 2021.

It is worth noting that Binance trades 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, while the Shanghai Stock Exchange has limited trading hours, with only 243 trading days in 2021. If the annual trading volume is calculated, Binance is much larger than the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

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, ICO was in a frenzy, and a large number of speculators became rich by issuing coins. The "94 Coin Disaster" that year mainly hit this kind of ICO behavior.

When BNB was issued, 1 Bitcoin could be exchanged for 20,000 BNB. Now, 1 Bitcoin can only be exchanged for about 100 BNB, and Bitcoin has increased by more than ten times. Calculated in this way, BNB has increased by thousands of times.

Some people believe that BNB is equivalent to the exchange's own stocks. This explanation is not comprehensive, but it 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 stocks for investors to trade, such as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

In fact, in Binance's digital currency empire, BNB has much wider uses.

It can be converted into cash through transactions, used to pay transaction fees, participate in token sales hosted by Binance, book air tickets and hotels on designated websites, donate to the Binance Charity Foundation, etc.

Coinmarketcap is a world-renowned digital currency data website. Its official website counts 9,860 digital currencies and is the most visited website for retail cryptocurrency traders.

On March 31, 2020, Binance acquired it and gained control of the traffic entrance for retail investors, who can jump directly to the Binance exchange from this website.

However, the deal has been criticized by peers. An investor of a small exchange once lamented to the author that after Binance acquired Coinmarketcap, it has formed a monopoly empire of "traffic entrance + exchange", which has reduced the diversion channels of small exchanges and increased customer acquisition costs, which is not conducive to industry competition and healthy development.

Wallets are a basic application of digital currency. Users can store digital currency in wallets or take it out for trading. At first, Binance did not have its own wallet. In July 2018, Binance acquired a wallet called Trust Wallet. With the rise of Binance, Trust Wallet also became the world's largest digital currency wallet.

No headquarters, no supervision?

For this huge digital currency empire, Zhao Changpeng once had an ideal design - no headquarters.

Decentralization and distribution are the characteristics of blockchain, and the headquarters-less model makes the outside world believe that Binance is practicing the concept of blockchain. At an event in May 2020, Zhao Changpeng also said that Binance has no headquarters because Bitcoin has no office.

In May last year, Zhao Changpeng said in an exclusive interview with LatePost that Binance has less than 3,000 employees in more than 60 countries and regions around the world, who collaborate remotely using various office software on a daily basis. They do not use the word "company" to refer to Binance, but the word "organization"; they do not use the word "employee" but "team members".

This distributed working method can also be seen in a recent incident.

On March 29, Trust Wallet founder Viktor Radchenko announced his resignation on Twitter. As the person in charge of the wallet, Viktor should have had many opportunities to communicate face to face with Zhao Changpeng, but Zhao Changpeng replied to this tweet saying that they had only met once.

In fact, this headquarters-less model helps Binance avoid regulation. Without a headquarters, there is no department that can regulate them.

In the early days, when digital currencies were developing wildly, governments around the world failed to introduce regulatory policies in a timely manner. Binance quickly seized the market with its decentralized operating model. When these countries and regions reacted, they found new ways to continue to develop, and gradually took the lead.

For example, in the US market, where Binance once conducted business, after being regulated, they announced that US residents would no longer be able to use Binance after March 2021. But they have already prepared for the rainy day and continue to develop in another way.

In the summer of 2019, Binance announced a partnership with a US company to establish Binance.US (Binance US version), and claimed that Binance and Binance.US were two independent exchanges, and the latter had obtained operating licenses in multiple states in the United States.

"When U.S. residents download Binance, they will be reminded that it cannot be used, but they will be directed to download Binance.US." A Chinese living in the United States told the author, "Compared with the global version of Binance, Binance.US has very few digital currency trading options and high transaction fees."

A tweet retweeted by Changpeng Zhao in March this year showed that Binance.US's trading volume in 2021 was US$2,780, which is far less than that of Coinbase.

Binance has always hoped to gain recognition from the U.S. market. They also hope to promote the listing of Binance.US and accept SEC supervision, and have done a lot of work to this end.

In May 2021, they invited Brian Brooks, former acting director of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, to serve as the CEO of Binance.US, which became a major event in the cryptocurrency circle at the time and was considered an important step in Binance's compliance. However, only three months after taking office, Brian Brooks resigned due to a conflict with Zhao Changpeng.

Since then, Binance has also invited several U.S. regulatory officials and government officials to serve as senior executives of Binance and Binance.US.

This is mainly because Binance and Binance.US are not having an easy time in the U.S. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the relationship between Binance.US and Binance, Zhao Changpeng, etc., and the U.S. Department of Justice has also investigated whether Binance facilitates money laundering and tax evasion.

The previous rapid development in the gray area has become Binance’s indelible black history.

Cai Kailong told the author that Coinbase has attached great importance to compliance since its inception, considering compliance more important than customers and operations, and even gave up many markets for compliance. Three years ago, he noticed that one-third of Coinbase's employees were working on compliance, while other exchanges had not yet realized the importance of compliance.

"The U.S. has very strict regulations and will not ignore the history of development in the gray area. Binance.US will face huge regulatory challenges if it wants to be listed in the United States," said Cai Kailong.

The expelled Binance came to Dubai

In May 2018, He Yi once described her and Zhao Changpeng's working status as "the whole world is my 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 both had their own things to do.

In fact, in the early days, Zhao Changpeng and his Binance were growing wildly while being "expelled" everywhere.

Binance was founded in Shanghai in 2017. Zhao Changpeng once 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 coin circle also fled overseas. Someone who knows Zhao Changpeng once told the author that since then, Zhao Changpeng may never set foot on the land of mainland China again.

In the second year of entering Japan, Japanese financial regulators issued a warning to Binance, reminding them that they could not provide trading services to the public without obtaining a formal license.

Since then, the outside world believed that Binance's headquarters might be in the European country of Malta, but in February 2020, Malta announced that Binance was not under their regulatory jurisdiction. 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 in November last year gave the answer: During the two years of the epidemic, he has been in Singapore, often riding an electric scooter to work.

A person in the cryptocurrency circle told the author that Zhao Changpeng wanted to locate Binance’s headquarters in Singapore. Previously, Zhao Changpeng had said that Binance was seeking sovereign wealth funds to invest in it in order to improve governments’ understanding of Binance.

However, Singapore did not buy into Zhao Changpeng's goodwill and issued an order to expel him.

In early July last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore stated that it would review Binance’s subsidiary in Singapore. On December 13 last year, Binance stated that it had withdrawn its application for a digital payment token service license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and would close its trading platform in Singapore by February this year.

In May last year, Zhao Changpeng said in an exclusive interview with "Late Post" that two or three years ago, when they went to some countries for communication, they were often asked whether blockchain was used by terrorists.

Unlike its early days, Binance has now become the most influential company in the cryptocurrency world. It can no longer operate without a headquarters and operate outside the supervision of various countries as before. Coinbase has always insisted on compliance development and listing in the traditional capital market, which has also made Binance realize the importance of catering to supervision, and a crucial step is to establish its own global headquarters.

At present, it seems that Zhao Changpeng and Binance seem to have found a new safe haven, and their state of being a world-renowned home is expected to end. At the end of last year, Zhao Changpeng began to become a frequent visitor to the United Arab Emirates and purchased an apartment in Dubai.

Compared to Singapore, Dubai is much friendlier to digital currencies. According to a Reuters report in March, Binance has been approved to conduct some operations in Dubai and has established a blockchain technology center at Dubai's World Trade Center.

Max, who attended the Blockchain Week in Dubai, told the author that at this World Expo, many pavilions of various countries held NFT-related activities, such as the Israel Pavilion, the Australia Pavilion, the Slovenia Pavilion, etc. NFT is a way of playing with blockchain and has been promoted by many mainstream technology companies at home and abroad.

“There have been a lot of blockchain activities in Dubai recently. Some royal investment offices also come to participate and give speeches. They attach great importance to blockchain and are very friendly.” Max told the author.

Cai Kailong told the author that the most important thing facing Binance today is not business and profit, but compliance. Previously, they 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 the mainstream society.

"Dubai is an internationally renowned city and they attach great importance to blockchain. If Binance can obtain a license there, it will be a milestone on their road to compliance," said Cai Kailong.

Over the past year, Binance has been seeking mainstream recognition. They made a traditional announcement on Forbes and became one of its two largest shareholders; sponsored the well-known football team Paris Saint-Germain, allowing superstars such as Messi, Neymar, and Mbappe to wear uniforms with the Binance logo; and cooperated with the F1 team BWT to put the Binance logo on its cars.

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 honor for politicians from some countries and regions.

According to the information he published on Twitter, he has been active in Central and South America recently. He went to Brazil and met with the mayor of Rio de Janeiro and the governor of Sao Paulo State, and also went to Uruguay and El Salvador and met with the presidents of the two countries.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele met with Zhao Changpeng. Screenshot from Nayib Bukele’s Twitter