The Future of Blockchain, According to the CEO of the World's Biggest Crypto Company
Changpeng Zhao is down to earth for a crypto billionaire. The CEO of Binance, which emerged out of nowhere last year to become the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, isn’t given to boasting or swaggering pronouncements. Instead, the man people call “CZ” is friendly and quietly focused on building a blockchain empire that could remake swaths of the world’s financial system. In an interview with Fortune, he shared some very big ideas about the future of Binance and cryptocurrency. According to CZ—who doesn’t mind if you pronounce it “C-Zee” or “C-Zed,” as they do in Canada where he studied—most blockchain predictions end up being wrong. Nonetheless, many people may be keenly interested to hear what he thinks will happen next.
Here are three insights I gleaned from CZ during the course of our interview. What follows is a loose paraphrasing of his comments.