Is Binance CEO the world’s richest man alive?

As per a latest report published by bloomberg, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s net worth is $96 Billion excluding his personal and Binance’s crypto holding. Even without considering his crypto holding his net worth is more than Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, Mark Zuckerberg and even Google founders Sergey and Larry.

How Big Is Binance?

Binance is world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and daily cryptocurrency trade volumes were more than $100 Billion for most days in 2021. Categorically, Binance is by far the largest crypto exchange for spot as well as derivatives market.

Even calculating only the trading fees, Binance is generating billions in revenue per month. As reported by Bloomberg, in 2021 Binance generated atleast $20 Billion in revenue, this is more than three times of Coinbase which generated $5 Billion. Apart from CZ’s personal crypto holdings Binance has several whale accounts which buy Bitcoin periodically and can be easily worth billions of dollars. As an example lets take this one Binance Bitcoin whale address, that currently holds 116k BTC worth $4.8 billion at the time of writing this article.

43k Bitcoin were purchased by this whale address on the recent Bitcoin dip as reported by Cointelegraph. This is just one of the many whale accounts that Binance owns.

So, considering most of CZ’s and Binance’s wealth is in crypto holdings we can easily verify that Bloomberg’s estimation of CZ’s net worth at $96 Billion is not even close to his actual. It’s not all, we haven’t even started discussing Binance’s native Binance Coin aka BNB which currently has a marketcap of more than $72 Billion.

Binance on the lookout for a new home?

If you were CZ or Binance, you will be in a rush to find a legal jurisdiction as soon as possible. Particularly in US both DOJ and IRS are investigating Binance for possible insider trading and market manipulation. Other countries including UK, Japan and Germany have already given consumer warnings to Binance.

UAE and Singapore, seems to be the target of Binance officials as a new home as per reports by Bloomberg. Binance CEO is reported to be meeting royalty in Abu Dhabi and hosting dinners near the Burj Khalifa. As per Bloomberg, UAE royalty is eager to bring Binance to Abu Dhabi.