This is not the first time that the CEO of Binance has been at the top of the richest people within the cryptocurrency industry. In particular, back in February 2020, he was recognized as the wealthiest person in the blockchain community according to the Hurun Global Rich List.

At the time, experts said Chanpen’s fortune was estimated at $2.6 billion. That means the entrepreneur has increased his fortune almost 37 times in less than two years.

Founder of Binance Changpen Zhao

That said, understanding what is happening is quite simple: after all, Binance is the leader among all cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Accordingly, the huge number of users generates volumes on which the platform charges fees. It is the latter that is the main source of income for any such exchange.


We have clarified the latest data: today Binance is on the first place among cryptocurrency exchanges. For example, here is the information on spot trading, that is, buying digital assets at market prices. Here, Binance has $19.1 billion in trading volume per day, while its closest pursuer, OKEx, has $6.8 billion.


Rating of cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of spot trading

A similar situation is seen in derivatives trading. Futures platform Binance has generated $75.6 billion in trading volumes in the last 24 hours. OKEx is again in second place with 23.8 billion.

Ranking of cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of derivatives trading

How much money do cryptocurrency exchange executives have

To be precise: Satoshi Nakamoto now has around 1.1 million BTC in various cryptocurrency wallets. At the current value of the cryptocurrency, that’s almost $45.8 billion. Accordingly, the fortune of the head of the largest cryptocurrency exchange surpasses even that of the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, which he will most likely never touch again.

Considering his fortune outside the crypto industry, Chanpen is ranked alongside the likes of Tesla CEO Ilon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. They have a fortune of $263 billion and $188.4 billion respectively.

Binance CEO Changpen Zhao

The Binance exchange also had a great previous year. According to Decrypt, the platform earned around $20 billion. This is more than the expected profit margin of the largest US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

It is worth noting that the cryptocurrency market is still in an active growth phase and is subject to high volatility. This means that the size of Zhao’s fortune could change dramatically from year to year. And there’s no guarantee that these changes will always be positive – after all, the possibility of a new “crypto-zima” beginning exists one way or another. Changpen, however, clearly has nothing to worry about here.

Zhao’s tweet: “Don’t worry about ratings. Focus on the number of people you can help

Changpen responded to the ranking with the following quote on Twitter.

Unpopular opinion: Instead of ranking the richest people, there should be a ranking for philanthropic efforts.

Binance stock exchange logo on the shape of Porto

Aside from profits and new achievements, Binance has had its share of problems in the past year. Mostly it was about the platform’s friction with financial regulators, who wanted to see it more transparent and centralised. Zhao himself has repeatedly stated that he agrees with such claims and will do his best to allow the exchange to “peacefully” coexist with regulators. And so far the platform is clearly succeeding in finding common ground with regulators.


We believe that Changpen Zhao's financial performance is once again a reminder of how promising the cryptocurrency industry is for increasing its own fortune and launching a business. Still, almost two years ago the fortune of the Binance founder was under 3 billion, and now it is just under 100 billion. So there are clearly more than enough reasons to get involved in the digital asset niche.