Zhao is the founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency-exchange by volume. The company offers markets in more than 350 cryptocurrencies and has said it has over 300 million registered accounts. Zhao was sentenced to four months jail in April 2024 after pleading guilty to anti-money laundering violations.
Zhao's fortune is derived from his controlling stake in Binance, a crypto exchange. Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency-exchange by trading volume and had more than 300 million registered accounts as of December 2025 according to its website.
Binance's transaction fee revenue is calculated using the average of the company's 2025 spot and derivative trading volumes through Dec. 18, 2025, as tracked by research service Coingecko.com, and an estimate of average spot and derivative transaction fees based on fee disclosures. The figure, $6.4 billion is adjusted by the average of the transaction fee-to-total revenue ratios at publicly-traded peers Coinbase Global Inc and Gemini Space Station Inc to calculate total revenue of $11.5 billion.
It's valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales multiple of publicly-traded peers Coinbase Global Inc, Riot Platforms Inc., Gemini Space Station Inc., Circle Internet Group Inc. and CBOE Global Markets Inc., and has been discounted by 50% due to institutional, regulatory and related risks. The revenue figure used in the calculation was updated in December 2025 and this led to net worth gain of about $13 billion.
Zhao is credited with 90% of Binance based on his public statements and filings in regions where ownership is publicly disclosed.
He also owns Binance.US, a related US exchange, that was valued at $4.7 billion in a March 2022 fundraising round. Its been valued at zero since June 2023, when it announced it was transmitting to crypto-only model.
The billionaire has said that he's also invested in Bitcoin and Binance Coin. Cryptocurrency held directly by the billionaire isn't included because the amount is unknown.
Hazel Watts, a spokesperson for Binance, said in January 2022 that valuation estimates for Binance were "incorrect and far off" without providing further details. The company didn't respond to a request for comment in October 2023.
Born in Jiangsu, China in 1977, Zhao's mother was a teacher and his father an academic. The family moved to Canada in the late 1980s after his father got a job at the University of British Columbia.
Zhao started coding at about 16 and later completed a computer science degree in Montreal at McGill University. An internship in Japan was followed by a stint at Bloomberg's Tradebook in New York starting in 2001.
He moved to Shanghai in 2005 to develop high-frequency trading software at Fusion Systems. An interest in cryptocurrency began in 2013 following a discussion at a poker game. He later downloaded the Bitcoin white paper and began learning about the technology.
After about a year at Blockchain.info beginning in late 2013, Zhao founded a startup that provided systems and software to exchanges before starting Binance in 2017. By 2018, Binance was the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
Zhao, Binance and Binance.US were sued by the SEC in June 2023 for mishandling customer funds, misleading investors and regulators, and breaking securities rules. He pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering and sanctions violations and agreed to step down as chief executive officer of the firm in a settlement in November 2023. In April 2024, he was ordered to spend four months in prison.