8/25/2023 0 Comments Binance sign upThis is what he said at a conference in 2021. And CZ continues to insist he is not totally against crypto regulation. Binance and CZ deny the charges, and they say they intend to fight them. But the SEC's lawsuit is the biggest challenge so far. Binance has faced allegations it's facilitated money laundering and it has business ties to China, which the company disputes. GURA: But today, the future of Binance, at least in the U.S., and CZ's future in the industry are up in the air. ZHAO: There are some people who are uncertain about the future of this industry. CZ showed off a tattoo he'd gotten of his company's logo on his forearm. And a few months later, at a conference in Singapore, he stressed how much faith he had in crypto's staying power. And as its value and its popularity surged, CZ saw an opportunity to build a new exchange that would make it easy for people to get into crypto. ZHAO: My relatives were all, like - well, my mom wanted to smack me on the head, saying, like, you stupid kid. And he got a rude awakening a few months later, when Bitcoin lost half its value. CZ first learned about it at a poker game in Shanghai, where a businessman told him he should convert 10% of his money into bitcoin. By design, the crypto economy is borderless, built to operate outside the boundaries of traditional finance. GURA: And that explains what's made cryptocurrencies so appealing to him. ![]() ZHAO: I was living different places, so I never really got married to one currency, one country, etc. And he's been on the move ever since, which has given him a unique perspective on global finance. CZ went to college in Montreal, interned at a software company in Tokyo. GURA: It's the beginning of a crypto rags-to-riches story. I also worked at a gas station after that. CZ was born in China, but his family immigrated to Canada a few years later.ĬHANGPENG ZHAO: When I was 15, I was flipping burgers in McDonald's in Vancouver. Binance declined NPR's request to interview CZ, but, in 2021, he was asked how he got his start. GURA: The SEC has accused Binance and CZ of deceiving customers and of funneling their money into another firm CZ controls, drawing comparisons to what was going on at FTX before that crypto company collapsed spectacularly less than a year ago. We know that investors were misled about the risk controls and that they concealed an awful lot from the investing public. He told Bloomberg TV there's a lot Binance's customers don't know about what CZ and his company do with their money behind the scenes. ![]() But that's not how SEC Chair Gary Gensler sees him. GURA: To other bitcoin true believers, CZ is a visionary. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's a great pleasure. He's a crypto celebrity who's gotten top billing at business conferences all over the world, like one recently in Germany. And the agency says Binance sits atop a sprawling and shadowy web of corporate subsidiaries - a web that's been spun by Changpeng Zhao, better known by his initials, CZ. In a sweeping lawsuit, the SEC claims Binance is operating an illegal exchange in the U.S. GURA: Wall Street's top cop, the Securities and Exchange Commission, wants crypto companies to follow the rules every other financial firm has to. YADAV: It is an organization that is presenting a massive headache for regulators to understand how it works and the risks that it's creating. And that's led to scrutiny of businesses like Binance. Companies operate in a regulatory gray area. Well, that's a model that doesn't exist in traditional finance, and it's alarmed regulators, who argue crypto is like the Wild West. ![]() It's effectively a crypto Amazon, a one-stop-shop for everything. And Binance is also a marketplace for even riskier investments and digital art. In some countries, it offers a crypto debit card. Binance has a research arm and a lending business. GURA: It's a multibillion-dollar company with a gargantuan footprint, Yadav says. YESHA YADAV: It's really hard to overstate how important Binance is to the crypto ecosystem. She's an expert on digital assets at Vanderbilt Law School. But Binance is not just a trading platform like the New York Stock Exchange, according to Yesha Yadav. More than a hundred million people use it to buy and sell bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. NPR's David Gura has the story.ĭAVID GURA, BYLINE: Binance may not be a household name. It's a fight between a powerful financial regulator and someone who went from flipping hamburgers to starting and running the largest cryptocurrency exchange out there. Now, a legal battle is underway that could determine crypto's future. They were supposed to revolutionize the world of finance, but cryptocurrencies have gone through a rough patch lately.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |