Changpeng Zhao in Hong Kong, answered 15 questions | On-site Live Coverage

At 5:05 a.m. on August 27, Hong Kong issued a red rainstorm warning, suspending all morning and full-day schools.

Zhao Changpeng's flight was also delayed by the storm, and he did not arrive in Hong Kong until 3 a.m. About six and a half hours later, he appeared at the book club event for *Binance: Life Lessons from a Crypto Revolution*. The venue, which was originally planned to only open half of its capacity, was fully packed, and the organizer temporarily opened all areas.

Zhao Changpeng is better known by his alias CZ. He sat in a conference room on the 40th floor of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, talking to a group of young people who traveled back from The University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as Imperial College London, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of California, Irvine, and Johns Hopkins University for more than an hour.

This event was hosted by Xie Yafang, a senior media professional and founder of Yafang Innovation & Transformation. She stated at the opening: "Today we will not talk about the industry, nor the success or failure of a single entrepreneurial attempt. We want to return to the underlying logic of a person: how a man who once influenced the flow of global wealth, fell to the lowest point of his life, and served four months in prison sees the world after being released."

The new book is titled *Binance: Life Lessons from a Crypto Revolution* (English name: *Freedom of Money*). The very first line of this book was written in prison.

1. This book was written to "find something to do" in prison

When asked why he wrote the book, his answer was so simple that it sounded a little funny: "I was quite bored in prison at that time, so I thought I'd just find something to keep myself busy."

Thus he formed a daily routine: sleep, eat, work out, and then write for 15 minutes. As he wrote, he accumulated a large amount of content, and he thought "I shouldn't waste this time", so he decided to organize the content and publish it. As it turned out, the time he spent on sorting out the content was longer than the time he spent writing it.

What really tortured him was not the four months in prison, but the period before he was imprisoned. He was trapped in the United States for more than five months, unable to leave, preparing for the trial while not knowing what the verdict would be. He said the most unbearable part of that period was the uncertainty: "Will they keep me there forever? Will new charges pop up after a while?"

After being imprisoned, he became peaceful instead. There was no internet, and he could not check the timeline, so he could only write based on his memories. After being released from prison, he went through all the content he had posted on X for proofreading, and found several things he had missed —

"But the things I missed don't seem as wonderful as what I remember."

The things you can remember are inherently the important ones. He joked that his memory is "only slightly better than that of a goldfish", and he would forget things people told him within five minutes, but he could not forget the details of major moments: just like what you were doing when the 9/11 attacks happened, you probably still remember it.

He wrote the book in English by himself. He once found a professional to help rewrite the content, but after reading the revised version, he found that "it no longer sounded like his own words", so he almost sent all the revisions back. For the Chinese version, He Yi wrote the preface and translated several chapters for him. When he read it, he found: "I can't even pronounce some of the words she used."

His way of handling it was very CZ-style: "There can't be any Chinese characters in my book that I can't pronounce." All difficult characters were deleted in the end.

2. What on earth was he calculating when he sold his house to buy BTC?

This was the question most students in the audience wanted to ask: Why did you dare to sell your house at that time?

He split his answer into two parts. The first part is cognition — the track.

"Society is always progressing, and humanity is always progressing. As long as new things have value, they will be adopted." He said that a large track is actually very easy to identify, so easy that "everyone will tell you": in the early days it was computer hardware, then the internet, and now it's Web3, AI, and biotechnology. All companies that succeed in these tracks will grow thousands or tens of thousands of times.

He added a very honest remark: Web3 seems to be a large track, but its development to date is still very narrow. "It is basically only related to money", and things like land right confirmation have not really started to develop.

So the real question is not whether the track is right, but — "what you can create in this track is determined by your own ability."

There is another sentence he repeatedly emphasized: 80% of success in life lies in showing up. "You must participate. If you don't participate, you have no chance."

The second part is risk — the bottom line. He said that risk varies from person to person, and there is only one judgment criterion:

If this thing goes to zero, all the investors' money is lost, and you can't hold on anymore — can your life still go on at this point? How much will your quality of life be affected? To what extent can you accept the impact?

His own answer was very clear: "Even if BTC goes to zero, I should have no problem getting a six-figure dollar job on Wall Street again."

"That is my bottom line, and also my confidence. Without this confidence, you may need to take fewer risks."

Following this logic, he gave two different suggestions for young people and middle-aged people: young people have a different risk-return ratio, with less family burden, so they can take higher risks; older people have heavier social burdens and weaker risk-taking ability, but they have more savings and connections, so they can also strike a balance — "that's why many entrepreneurs don't start their businesses until they are in their 40s."

Then he said a sentence that silenced the entire audience: "When I started Binance, I was already 39 or 40 years old."

3. The most stressful time was the weeks when BNB fell below its issue price

When asked about the peak of stress in his life, he did not mention prison, nor the 4.3 billion US dollars fine.

He said it was the two or three weeks after the ICO — BNB fell below its issue price, and 20,000 to 30,000 people had bought it.

"I was under a lot of pressure at that time."

His judgment on "success factors" is not mysterious at all: "I believe everyone here is already very smart. Once you cross that threshold, there is not much difference even if you are smarter than others." Emotional intelligence is also important, but in the end — "persistence still matters. The ability to resist pressure is quite important."

4. The most sharp question from the audience: Which moment in your life would you go back to?

The host asked: If you could go back to a certain point in your life, where would you want to go? What would you want to change?

He thought for a few seconds. "It's probably best to go back to when I was 18."

Why?

"Youth is the most valuable thing. If you say now that all my wealth can be taken away, but I can go back to being 18 — I don't even have to think about it, I 100% want to go back right away."

5. What you choose not to do is more important than what you do

This is a principle he has repeatedly talked about, and he emphasized that this sentence is not his original creation, he saw it elsewhere, but he implemented it extremely thoroughly.

"Most people today don't think about what not to do. When someone sends a message, they have to reply; when someone invites them out to play, they have to go; they have to socialize; if their friends like something, they have to like it too."

"Many of these things can be completely cut out, but people don't cut them."

The host then asked: So you chose to come here today because you really wanted to do it?

"Yes. I could have skipped this event entirely, but I still chose to come."

6. The order of entrepreneurship: Products and users come first, everything else comes later

For the students who are already running their own businesses on site, he gave a to-do list for entrepreneurs.

At the very beginning, there are only two things to do: products and users. "You need to be able to attract users, and you need to be able to provide value to users. If you don't have these two things, you won't have a company."

As the top leader, you can then move on to building the team, legal compliance, and marketing. He made a special distinction: marketing is not that important in the early stage; legal affairs depend on the industry — the legal risk of technology startups is very low in the early stage, but financial businesses are different.

Looking back at Binance, he gave two very specific "what if I could do it all over again" points:

Do compliance work first. Now most countries define exchanges as financial companies, which need to obtain specific licenses. "It's very simple in hindsight."

Block all US users first.

Regarding delegation of power, he said there is no such thing as "you can let go of everything once you reach a certain stage": "When you find someone you trust, you can let them do the work; if you can't find such a person, you have to do it yourself."

But even after delegating power, you must regularly "get down to the ground" — chat with users, check whether a certain function is well designed, and check the system performance. "There is never a time when you only need to talk to 10 executives in the company."

He also gave an actionable number: 3 to 5 high-quality feedback users with whom you maintain in-depth contact are enough. "You don't need to talk to hundreds of users every month. Talking to 5 users every month is enough."

7. Judging people: He will directly ask "What are your flaws" during interviews

When asked about his experiences of choosing the wrong people and misjudging others over the years, he started with a very philosophical opening:

"I think we live in a simulated world, and this game is not perfect. Your judgment of people will not be perfect either, and no one is perfect."

He divided misjudging people into two categories: one is pure judgment error; the other is more common — "when you look at this person, there are some flaws you don't know about."

So he will directly ask during interviews: "What are your flaws?"

"Many people don't like this question very much. But most people should know their own flaws and be able to face them. Even if you don't ask your partners, you need to know very well what their flaws are."

Having flaws does not mean you cannot cooperate with someone. The key is what kind of flaws they are. He drew a non-negotiable line here: "If there is a moral flaw, there is no way to cooperate. Anyone who can break trust should be kicked out as soon as possible."

He also criticized a very common social calculation by the way: "Many people think this person has some moral flaws, but they are acceptable, and maybe he will be useful to me one day, so they keep in touch with him all the time — this makes no sense."

"I have very few friends. But all of my friends are extremely reliable."

As for the "world-class big pit" he stepped into, his review was calm to the point of understatement. He said as far as he knew, no one else in the world had ever been imprisoned for a single violation of the US Bank Secrecy Act — most people were not even defendants, let alone fined or placed under house arrest.

"I am the only one who went to prison. But overall, I was lucky that it was only four months. It felt very long at that time, but looking back, I just got through it."

"Everyone will step into pits sometimes. After stepping into a pit, you just get up and keep going."

8. Binance only looks at one thing when recruiting: initiative

Many students on site wanted to join Binance, and the host asked about the recruitment logic on their behalf.

His answer was only three words: Be proactive.

"Binance is a fully remote workplace. You can slack off, and it's very easy to be lazy for several hours a day. But if you are not proactive enough, you may get no results after two months."

Then he talked about a working method that was enough to make his colleagues feel a chill down their backs:

"I am exposed to a lot of things, one after another, and I forget some things after I mention them. I generally don't follow up on them. If this person doesn't take the initiative to tell me the updates, I will forget. But I might remember two months later and ask him about it, and he says 'we stopped making progress after working on it for a week' — I will fire this person."

"I never follow up. I need them to push the progress to me."

He extended this point to a judgment of the whole era: "As long as you take the initiative to do one thing, you will succeed. If you only start working when your boss comes to check your performance, you will not succeed."

(The host immediately added a joke: "Everyone here today was selected only after writing emails by themselves, constantly pushing the organizer, and submitting questions.")

9. About the first job: He advises young people to work in large companies for 2 to 5 years first

A junior student who is interning at Tencent asked: What abilities can you learn in a mature organization, and what can you only learn by starting a business?

His advice surprised many people — go to a large company first, for at least two years, and 2 to 5 years is recommended.

"In a large company, you will learn the complete management system of others." He said the four years he worked at Bloomberg was the longest tenure he had at a company other than running his own business, "I still learned a lot of things."

He also clearly pointed out the downsides of large companies: "You are a screw, and you only see your own small part. If you are in the technical position, you only do technical work; if you are in the marketing position, you only do marketing work. Marketing work in large companies is very easy, because they have a mature system, and you don't need that much creativity."

But startups are rolling in the mud — you have to do everything, you have to be creative in everything, and there is no model for you to follow step by step.

"Many people are in a hurry. They see others succeed in starting a business when they are still in college, and they want to start a business right away. That's not necessary. Entrepreneurship is a very long process. Many people spend 10 years or more on their business, so there's no need to rush."

He also half-jokingly said to the student: You can work at Tencent for a period of time and then come to Binance.

10. Make your specialized skill rank in the top 1% globally

For the general advice for young people, he gave a very harsh but sober model.

"This world is a world of global competition. You must be much better than others in your strong suit — but to be honest, you may not be able to be much better than others."

Take programming as an example: there are millions of programmers around the world, and you can't be twice as good as everyone else. "You are only slightly better than another person at most."

But if this tiny advantage puts you in the top 1%, or even the top 0.1% of the world, the returns may be several times, dozens of times, or hundreds of times that of others.

"The gap may be very small, but the treatment between the first place and the second place will be very different."

After you have a specialized skill, if you want to start a business, you can then make up for connections, expression skills, and other skills