Ethereum

Larry

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Changpeng Zhao — the founder of Binance, better known as CZ — has published his autobiography. “Freedom of Money” went on sale this week, <a href="https://x.com/cz_binance/status/2041541368971993389?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">written</a> in part on a broken laptop during his prison sentence. All proceeds go to charity. The book is already generating significant attention — not just because of who wrote it, but because of what’s in it.
Ray Dalio, Larry Fink, His Majesty the King of Bhutan, Zhang Yong, and Matt Roszak <a href="https://x.com/cz_binance/status/2041684295303954874?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">contributed</a> quotes for the book. That’s a roster that tells you something about where CZ sits in the global finance and business landscape, regardless of the legal chapter he just closed.
The first draft took four months to write. Editing took nearly six more. The result is a first-person account of Binance’s rise, its regulatory battles, and the moments that shaped one of the most consequential figures in crypto history — told by the person who lived them.
Sam Bankman-Fried Asked for Billions “Like Ordering a Sandwich”
The detail that’s already circulating fastest is the one about Sam Bankman-Fried. During a phone call, SBF — on a completely serious note — asked CZ for a couple of billion dollars. CZ’s description of the moment is deadpan: it was delivered as casually as asking for a sandwich.
CZ is clear in the book that he never intended to buy FTX. The letter of intent that briefly made headlines during the exchange’s collapse was, in his telling, a formality — a way to assess the situation and protect users, not a genuine acquisition offer. What followed is now crypto history: FTX collapsed within days, taking billions in customer funds with it.
The book also offers CZ’s account of why FTX fell as fast as it did. His analysis points to a specific moment: Caroline Ellison publicly announced she was willing to buy FTT tokens at $22. The market read that price as a ceiling, not a floor — and began shorting aggressively. The token collapsed. The rest unraveled from there.
The Calls He Got Wrong — Ethereum, LUNA, and Gary Gensler
The most revealing sections of “Freedom of Money” are the ones where CZ is honest about his mistakes. There are several.
In 2013, CZ met Vitalik Buterin and learned about Ethereum from the beginning. He didn’t invest. His reasoning at the time: he wasn’t convinced the idea was actually buildable. Ethereum went on to become the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world and the infrastructure layer for most of DeFi. CZ acknowledges the miss directly.
The LUNA story is different in character but equally costly. Binance invested $3 million in LUNA back in 2018. By the time the Terra ecosystem began collapsing in 2022, that position had grown to $1.6 billion on paper. CZ chose not to sell.
His stated reason: he didn’t want to accelerate the panic and make things worse for the market. The position went to near zero. It’s the kind of decision that’s easy to second-guess from the outside and much harder to judge from inside the moment.
The Gary Gensler section will get attention. In 2019, CZ met Gensler and offered him an advisory role at Binance. Gensler declined, saying he wanted to lead the SEC instead. A few years later, with Gensler as SEC Chair, the regulator filed a major lawsuit against Binance. CZ doesn’t editorialize heavily on the irony — he doesn’t need to.
From Rural China to the World’s Largest Exchange
The book covers CZ’s full arc, and the early chapters are worth reading on their own terms. He grew up in rural China, the youngest in his class, catching fish and shrimp. The family moved to Hefei, then kept moving — a pattern of relocation that CZ says formed his habit of not accumulating things. He saw Shanghai for the first time just days before leaving for Vancouver.
High school in Canada was defined by volleyball — he captained the school team for four consecutive years — and by work. McDonald’s at 14. Dishwashing at 15. Driver’s license at 16, followed by night shifts at a gas station. It’s not the background most people associate with the founder of a trillion-dollar exchange.
He joined Bloomberg in 2001 as a senior engineer on futures trading systems. Promoted in under six months, he was leading a 60-person development team at 25. By 28, earning $390,000 a year, he cashed out his year-end bonus and quit. The Bitcoin moment came in 2013 at a poker game in Shanghai. A friend mentioned Bitcoin casually.
Another suggested putting 10% of assets into it. CZ made his first trade and, by his own account, was completely shocked — convinced immediately that blockchain was a revolutionary technology for money. He sold his Pudong apartment and went all-in on Bitcoin. Then Mt. Gox collapsed, the price crashed from $600 to $200, and stayed flat for a year and a half. He never sold.
After stints at Blockchain.info and OKCoin, he co-founded Bijie Tech — a trading system technology company for exchanges. That experience showed him every link in the exchange business from the inside. Then he built Binance.
What the Book Actually Is
“Freedom of Money” is filled with photographs from CZ’s personal archive — the family’s move to Vancouver, his first computer, pictures with Vitalik Buterin and Gary Gensler, and the urgent relocation of Binance’s offices out of China after the 2017 crypto ban.
It’s not a redemption narrative. It’s not a PR exercise. It reads, based on what’s emerged so far, like someone who went through one of the most public falls in crypto history and came out the other side still willing to be honest about the decisions that didn’t work — the investments he missed, the coins he didn’t sell, the call he made on FTX, and the colleague who became his regulator.
That combination of candor and consequence is what makes it worth reading — regardless of where you stand on CZ or Binance.

CZ Releases “Freedom of Money” — Sam Bankman-Fried Once Asked Him for Billions “Like Ordering a Sandwich”

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Other articles published on Apr 8, 2026

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