Changpeng Zhao is the founder and current chief executive officer of Binance (File)
Crypto exchange Binance and its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao have been sued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for"multiple violations".
Here are five facts about Changpeng Zhao:
- Changpeng Zhao is the founder and current chief executive officer of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. He was born in China's Jiangsu province in 1977 and his parents were teachers.
- Mr Zhao and his mother migrated from China to Canada in 1989, months after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He lived in Vancouver as a teenager and worked at McDonald's and did overnight shifts at a gas station.
- In 2005, Changpeng Zhao went back to China to launch an IT startup after stepping down as the head of the Bloomberg Tradebook Futures Research & Development team. The 45-year-old later entered the crypto space and launched Binance on July 14, 2017.
- In September 2017, the Chinese government banned cryptocurrency exchanges and Changpeng Zhao was again compelled to leave China.
- Changpeng Zhao went to McGill University in Montreal, Canada, to study computer programming. According to Forbes, he is among the 600 richest people in the world with a net worth of over $4 billion.
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