Before former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) will face the sentencing court hearing, Binance co-founder He Yi, who is also the mother of CZ’s three children, wrote a letter to the judge, taking us through He Yi’s perspective A more realistic look of CZ.
(Recap:Changpeng Zhao (CZ) issued an apology letter before the trial, and 161 people pleaded with the judge. He Yi: He is the guardian of the crypto wilderness…)
(Background supplement:Volatility warning!Changpeng Zhao announced his sentencing on 4/30. Former New York prosecutor: Binance’s Hamas money laundering case may be detrimental to CZ)
currencyBefore facing his sentencing trial on April 30, former CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) sent a letter to the judge in charge, stating that he would take all responsibility for his “wrong decisions.” He Yi, another co-founder of Binance and the mother of CZ’s three children, as well as other family members and friends of CZ (161 people in total) also wrote to the judge in charge.
Below, Dongzhu compiles the full text of the letter written by He Yi for you.
Dear Judge Jones
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I am Zhao Changpeng (abbreviated as CZ)’s work partner, and I am also the mother of his three children. I hope this letter can help Mr. Judge understand a more realistic Zhao Changpeng.
In the spring of 2014, I met Changpeng Zhao at a school blockchain public event. Everyone called him CZ. Different from the anonymous names used by many, this was the acronym of his real name. When CZ arrived that day, he was immediately invited to the stage to share impromptuly because the organizer discovered that he worked for the most popular Bitcoin wallet at the time (blockchain.info).
Due to the decline in the price of Bitcoin, his assets have shrunk significantly, but this has not dampened his obsession with blockchain technology. His speech is full of idealism about the positive changes that blockchain technology can bring to the world, which is also extremely The earth influences and inspires me. Later, CZ chose to get involved in the encryption field and founded Binance. Of course he wanted the company to succeed, but he was not a person whose ultimate goal was to make money. He sincerely hoped to use technology to promote the progress of the world.
In the summer of 2014, CZ’s matchmaking and trading technology background accumulated over many years could not be used to his advantage in Blockchain. After many invitations from me, he joined OKCoin, the encryption trading platform where I work.At that time, the currency circle had entered a downward cycle. Amidst the wailing in the industry, a community member unfortunately suffered from leukemia and he could not afford his own medical treatment.To pay for medical treatment, a public fundraiser was launched.
CZ also actively participated in donations even though his personal assets were greatly reduced, but unfortunately this community member passed away in the end. Inspired by this incident, CZ and I jointly launched the “Love BTC” charity project. He built a website and a public Bitcoin wallet address. We auctioned clothes and other items through social media to raise donations, and then directly exchanged the BTC for items. to the beneficiary.
To this end, CZ also wrote a paper to introduce how blockchain technology can achieve 100% transparent charity, ensuring that the final beneficiary receives 100% of the benefits, and ensuring that no donations will be eroded by middleman management fees. The paper can be found on Github with a timestamp of April 2014 (https://github.com/cpzhao/bitcoin_charity/blob/master/Bitcoin_Charity.md); and this is the predecessor of Binance Charity. This was three years before Binance was founded, and CZ was not wealthy at that time. Many people think that charity is just for fame and reputation. Some people use it as a means to offset taxes. Some people say that they will do charity when they have financial freedom. But for CZ, no matter he is poor or rich, he takes it seriously. Charity and social responsibility because he is kind and has a humanitarian spirit.
In August 2017, which was the first month I joined Binance, a young user came to me and said that he had transferred thousands of dollars to Binance’s wallet address, but Binance did not support that token. , so Binance cannot receive the token; this is a very common mistake in the early days of the industry. According to the industry practice at that time, you need to bear the responsibility for the mistakes you make. However, for this young man in his early 20s, those few thousand dollars may be his family’s income for a year, his college tuition for a year, and his hope for the future.
After a brief discussion between CZ and I, he mobilized our already stretched development resources and quickly helped the user retrieve the asset. This was the first case in the industry to help a user retrieve an asset that was entered into an incorrect address. The first time was followed by countless others. Under CZ’s guidance, Binance has helped more than 180,000 users recover assets totaling more than $441 million.
It was a resource-intensive project that was not cost-effective in terms of ROI, but we were able to spark hope in the midst of despair for our users. To this day, publicly listed exchanges like Coinbase still do not support this service. In this emerging Wild West, countless practitioners are playing the role of predators, and CZ has always insisted that we should do the right thing: protect users.
At the beginning of 2018, the price of Bitcoin rose by more than $20,000, and investor enthusiasm also spawned a large number of frauds. One day, a group of Chinese users came to me. They pointed out that they were lured to invest in a project by an account on social media. After transferring the money, the person subsequently disappeared, but according to public on-chain information tracking, the money had just been transferred to Binance. According to the law enforcement procedures of most platforms at the time, users were required to first call the police, and the police would provide a letter of assistance before freezing. However, at that time, China banned cryptocurrency transactions, and the Chinese police did not accept such cases.
CZ said to us: “Do the right thing”, we temporarily froze the stolen money, and then organized multiple phone calls between the victim and the scammer. Finally, the scammer returned the money to the user, and the scammer closed the door. account. This is just one of countless examples of CZ’s insistence on fighting evildoers. In the past 2023, Binance cooperated with law enforcement agencies in various countries on more than 58,000 case investigations. Many of these cases were initiated by Binance to promote law enforcement agencies to open investigations. This That’s why even though the mainstream media tries to portray CZ as an evil bad guy, millions of community users and ordinary people regard him as a hero in the industry, because CZ has always had his own insistence on justice. If the cryptocurrency industry is compared to Wild West, CZ is the guardian of this wilderness.
Since 2019, with the rapid growth of the company’s personnel, the team structure has become very global and full of diversity. This team includes Wall Street elites who graduated from Ivy League schools, dropouts from Europe, female NGO fighters on the front lines in Africa, and young people from rural Southeast Asia who don’t want to be fishermen. It can be said that CZ truly treats everyone equally within the company regardless of race, creed, gender, education, or family background.
Whether it’s a junior employee’s house being destroyed by fire in Southeast Asia, or the Covid pandemic causing a lack of protective supplies for employees, or even the dangers posed to employees by the war in Russia and Ukraine, CZ goes out of its way to help employees, no matter the cost. It is not uncommon for corporate bosses to spend millions of dollars to help scarce talents facing difficulties lead their families out of precarious living conditions and continue to pay out stipends, but CZ did not consider their background or rank when making these decisions . This kind of decision covers many junior employees who are just starting out, and these employees are generally easy to find replacements, but CZ’s decision is based on one reason only: they need support.
CZ’s leadership style may not meet the expectations of a traditional good CEO. His commitment to transparency and fairness at Binance often clashed with the power expectations of a small group of employees accustomed to an elite-level corporate environment. This resulted in some employees leaving the company with resentment and making false accusations to the media. While these reports have frustrated me at times, CZ has always shouldered the burden and continued to support justice and equality because he understands that true fairness sometimes means unfairness to the privileged few.
One weekend in November 2022, FTX faced a crisis, and Sam’s (SBF) last call for help was made to CZ. Without obtaining any valid statements and documents from SBF, CZ convened a management meeting to decide whether to assist FTX. He said: “We don’t need FTX as a company. We saved FTX to save this industry. We should save FTX.
“Although he had no choice but to abandon the transaction in the end, information disclosed after the incident showed that multiple companies related to FTX were misappropriating user assets, which shocked CZ. CZ believed that transparency was a better solution, so he disclosed Binance exchange platform wallet address, and launched a product that allows users to self-check their account funds and online wallet addresses to demonstrate Binance’s transparency, which further promotes self-discipline in the entire industry.
So far, CZ and I have experienced ten years of ups and downs in this industry together. This decade has been a decade of drastic changes in the industry. During these ten years, Bitcoin has risen from a low of a few hundred US dollars to more than 40,000 US dollars now. We have witnessed the disrepute of countless former celebrities and the instantaneous collapse of countless well-known institutions. Most of the time, these people think they are smart and talented, but they regard the law as nothing, thinking that they can deceive the public or escape the punishment of the law.
However, CZ is not like that; he is honest, kind, sincere, smart and very, very hardworking. Due to work reasons, CZ underwent two spinal surgeries in 2020. Even though he repeatedly lay in bed for 18 months, he never stopped working for a day. In the past six years, as CEO and largest shareholder, his salary was lower than that of many senior executives introduced later, and he has never paid himself a dividend or realized cash. This time, in order to allow Binance to continue operating, he chose to fly to the United States to plead guilty; between personal interests and public interests, CZ always chose to sacrifice himself to achieve Binance. When between Binance and a user, he always chooses the user.
As a partner of CZ, I know exactly how CZ has earned the respect of the community. It may be that when the Chinese government banned the Bitcoin trading platform, other project parties took the opportunity to cash in, and CZ chose to remove users at a higher price; or it may be that when the Binance theft incident occurred, CZ disclosed the information as soon as possible and Fully borne; it is more likely that when countless project developers are issuing coins just to sell coins and become rich, CZ is helping users track down scammers and hackers in the industry. Some cases are not even related to Binance, just because he is interested in this The sense of mission and responsibility of the industry.
As CZ’s life partner, I have known him for nearly ten years, so I know more about his unknown side. He knows nothing about jewelry, luxury goods, luxury cars, and art auctions that rich people are passionate about, and lives a simple life. He buys affordable clothes on Amazon and rides a balance bike to meetings. He once enthusiastically showed reporters his six-seater Toyota van, but was later publicly ridiculed by reporters.
He buys things out of efficiency and interest. He has no fanatical desire for money, fame, or enjoyment. He hopes to live a meaningful life. At the same time, he always tries his best to take care of the feelings of his friends, regardless of their professional and social status. He also strives to find time from his busy work to maintain high-quality interactions with his three young children, who are close to him and often ask: Why isn’t daddy at home? When can dad come back?
Of course, I’m not saying that CZ didn’t make mistakes here, but his biggest mistake was ignorance. As a startup company without a gorgeous background, the founding team members have no legal background, and even most of the early management team members, except CZ, cannot even read English, such as myself. With a lack of experience and legal knowledge, CZ won over users with fairness, integrity and a sense of responsibility to the industry, while also making mistakes. Regardless, the mistake was made, and both Binance and CZ paid a huge price.
CZ once said: “No one wants to be a hero, because no one is born to rush to the front to block arrows. A hero just has to protect his family, community, ethnic group, and country in that position to do the right thing. In the process, he must not Not to be a hero. “I humbly hope that Judge Jones can consider that in such an early and chaotic period of the cryptocurrency industry, there is no final decision on how to regulate the industry and how to define the United States. As a founder who has never managed a company of this size. People are bound to encounter blind spots.
If CZ knew the seriousness of the matter, he would definitely take strict precautions from the first day and block any American users. He does not want to be a hero, and of course he has no intention of becoming a criminal. All his behavioral logic follows universal humanitarian principles and he does his best. Today, it is his sense of responsibility that makes him choose to face the trial, but he should never be regarded as the same kind as those evil murderers, robbers, and frauds. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open the eyes of God and be omniscient and omnipotent, and see a more complete picture. After CZ, make a fair judgment. You can always contact me for more details if needed.
Sincere blessing!
He Yi
Binance Cofounder & CZ Mother of three children
January 11, 2024.
