Zhao Changpeng's memoir released: revealing a lot of industry insider information, prompting a fierce rebuttal from Xu Mingxing

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

On April 8, Zhao Changpeng's personal memoir "Freedom of Money" (Chinese title: "Binance Life") officially launched on the Amazon platform, presenting a first-person perspective of his journey from grassroots rise, establishing the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, to ultimately pleading guilty and going to prison. Since his imprisonment in 2024, Zhao Changpeng has been planning to write this book, which was finalized at the end of 2025, totaling 364 pages.

In Zhao Changpeng's view, the narrative about himself has long been dominated by media reports, court documents, and public commentary, and he hopes to provide a more complete context through this book. At the same time, the human aspects behind Binance's rapid rise are often overlooked in the media's fragmented reports, and Zhao Changpeng also attempts to fill in those simplified gaps through this book.

As one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry today, Zhao Changpeng has personally experienced the difficult development journey of Binance and the cryptocurrency industry in its early years, bringing many little-known insider stories and details to this book, adding much to the conversation in this long and dull bear market.

Difficult Early Life

In this book, Zhao Changpeng spends a significant amount of space describing his growth experiences from adolescence to his entrepreneurial period, especially the humble living conditions and difficult poverty during his teenage years.

In the 1980s, Zhao Changpeng's family of four lived in a shabby dormitory at a middle school: two rooms, one for sleeping (with two beds taking up most of the space) and one serving as a living room, study, and dining room. The floor was dirt, with no concrete laid. There was no running water, and the nearest well was 300 meters away, with his mother carrying water back and forth daily. Each person could only bathe with a bucket of water, and in winter, it was rare to wash at all. The village had long been without electricity; CZ did his homework by kerosene lamp, and later when electricity was available, it was only for a few hours a day at irregular times.

A few years later, a hand-pump was installed in the yard, and Zhao Changpeng said this was the moment when he "planted the seed of longing for technology" in his heart.

Zhao Changpeng's father later studied physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, and the family moved to Hefei. They first lived in a staff dormitory in a high-rise building, in a single room with two bunk beds for the four of them, and the kitchen was a public gas stove in the corridor, which smelled of cooking oil during meal times. After a short time, they moved into a small two-bedroom apartment: no living room, the master bedroom served as the living room, and CZ and his sister shared the second bedroom, "the space was so narrow that it was hard to turn around," and there was no place to bathe in the entire building, requiring a ten-minute walk to the public bathhouse.

After the family immigrated to Canada in the 1990s, they lived in a single room in a student dormitory on the UBC campus, crammed into two bunk beds, while Zhao Changpeng worked multiple jobs there: McDonald's, dishwashing at PNE, night shifts at a Chevron gas station, and as a volleyball referee.

After graduating from university in 2002, Zhao Changpeng joined Bloomberg, which became one of the important turning points in his life. At 25 (in 2005), he led a development team of 60 people, earning an annual salary and bonus of $390,000.

Through these descriptions of his early experiences, Zhao Changpeng hopes to inspire more entrepreneurs with courage and insights.

"I came out of rural China and later built one of the world's leading crypto technology companies. Of course, there is an element of luck in this, and it is inseparable from a lot of hard work, but ultimately, I am still an ordinary person. I worked at McDonald's flipping burgers when I was 14, earning $4.5 an hour. So I have always felt that anyone can walk the path I have walked and achieve what I have achieved," Zhao Changpeng said in an interview earlier this year.

Disclosure of Many Industry Insider Stories and Decision-Making Considerations

In this book, Zhao Changpeng also dedicates a significant amount of ink to disclosing the details behind many of Binance's decision-making processes and little-known industry insider stories.

On September 4, 2017, seven ministries in China jointly issued a notice explicitly prohibiting the operation of cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency mining, and ICOs. The night before, CZ recalled in his memoir that he had a message on his phone saying there would be a "major rectification" the next day. At 12:30 AM that day, CZ held an emergency conference call with senior executives including He Yi, ultimately deciding that he, He Yi, and Heina would go to Tokyo while the others would temporarily stay in Shanghai.

Binance was an early investor in Terra, and when the project collapsed in 2021, with Binance's paper wealth of over $1.6 billion facing total loss, Zhao Changpeng chose not to sell.

"There are three reasons: First, as a long-term investor, selling at this critical moment would cause more panic in the market. We had a large position, and selling would create significant selling pressure, harming the project. As a major player in the market, Binance should support various projects, not just focus on profits. Second, exiting such a large position usually takes place gradually over several months. And with LUNA on the verge of collapse at that time, it was clearly not the right moment. Third, I didn't want people to think Binance was 'selling ahead of retail investors,'" Zhao Changpeng explained. Within days, LUNA, worth $1.6 billion, dropped to just a few thousand dollars.

In Zhao Changpeng's account, many industry figures such as SBF and Xu Mingxing became "villains" attempting to obstruct him, Binance, and the industry's development.

In 2015, after leaving OKCoin, Zhao Changpeng was publicly accused by founder Xu Mingxing of "forging contracts" in a transaction, leading to a heated debate on Reddit, where He Yi sided with Zhao Changpeng and subsequently resigned. "Xu Mingxing saw this as a personal betrayal and began a sustained attack on CZ and He Yi from then on."

Additionally, Zhao Changpeng accused Xu Mingxing of reporting Li Lin to the police, leading to Li Lin's arrest. "At a dinner in 2025, I met Li Lin again after 11 years. Li Lin told me he had seen a screenshot showing that Xu Mingxing personally reported him to the Chinese police, and it was this report that led to his arrest."

In 2019, after Binance invested in FTX, SBF immediately changed his tune, luring Binance's VIP account managers away with five times the salary and taking all VIP customer data, resulting in customers receiving targeted offers from FTX. SBF, who outwardly appeared to have high emotional intelligence and promoted "effective altruism," soon after began badmouthing Binance in Washington to promote FTX.

In 2022, Binance's former CFO Zhou Wei wrote to the local blockchain association, trying to prevent Binance from joining the Philippine cryptocurrency association, stating, "I have always hated those who compete by lobbying the government or using other underhanded tactics."

Zhao Changpeng also revealed that he heard Fcoin founder Zhang Jian bought a top-floor luxury apartment in Singapore after the company's collapse in mid-2020.

At the end of the book, Zhao Changpeng included his 72 principles for work and life, including not using PPT, always having termination clauses, refusing exclusivity, eliminating the bottom performers, and regularly rotating teams.

Controversy

In response to some of Zhao Changpeng's statements, Xu Mingxing quickly retaliated on the X platform, stating, "After four months in prison, a person still talks nonsense to the world. I can only say that a habitual liar's nature can never change. These lies include the history of joining and leaving OKCoin, the Roger Ver contract dispute, whether he personally manipulated the market, whether he acted as a whistleblower against Justin Sun during the investigation, his marital status, and so on."

This is not the first time Xu Mingxing and Zhao Changpeng have publicly clashed online. Earlier this year, when Binance faced severe criticism for its responsibility in the 1011 incident, Xu Mingxing publicly stated that the incident was caused by irresponsible marketing activities from certain companies, leading to hundreds of billions being liquidated.

Later, in another topic, Xu Mingxing criticized Zhao Changpeng for confusing DEX with CEX, claiming that the latter was not open but rather trying to evade responsibility. This fundamental distinction reflects the long-standing value differences between OKX and Binance.

Xu Mingxing's fierce criticism not only reflects the irreconcilable conflicts between these two industry leaders but also suggests that many of Zhao Changpeng's statements may contain embellishments and controversies.

In fact, Zhao Changpeng has faced increasing criticism from the industry over the past year, primarily focusing on the lack of industry responsibility under his leadership at Binance. As an industry giant, Binance has not taken specific "market rescue" actions during the industry's downturn, only announcing a gradual purchase of Bitcoin to stabilize the market after widespread criticism. Additionally, Zhao Changpeng's intentional amplification and catering to the speculative culture of the meme community on the X platform is also one of the sources of community dissatisfaction.

From a 14-year-old flipping burgers to the sword bearer of a crypto empire, Zhao Changpeng has indeed written a unique "Binance Life." The narrative power of the crypto market has always been filled with tension; a single book cannot define the entire truth, but it can still serve as an important historical document, providing valuable experiences and references for all participants and future generations.