Editor's Note: This interview records the complete journey of CZ (Changpeng Zhao), the most influential and controversial figure in the global cryptocurrency industry, from peak to prison to rebirth.

It breaks the myth of a hundred billion giant portrayed by outsiders and reveals an extremely real and minimalist ordinary person: he flipped patties at McDonald's, wrote low-level code at Bloomberg, and even after gaining financial freedom, he still prefers to book economy class. Beyond the rise of Binance, the most shocking aspect is his first detailed disclosure of the details of his game with government authorities. Faced with weeks of psychological warfare, media portrayals of extortion risks, and complex racial gang rules in Seattle's prison, he maintained absolute emotional stability.

CZ candidly recalled the origins of his entanglement with SBF, as well as the painful crying when he was forced to leave Binance's management team. Now, he has turned to a global educational cause that does not involve tokens and is purely altruistic. This is not only a chronicle of the crypto industry but also a profound reflection on the boundaries of power, money, and freedom.

Highlights

· From China to Canada

· CZ's Early Career Experience: Surprisingly "Ordinary"

· Founding the First Company in Shanghai

· Discovering Bitcoin

· Full Investment in the Crypto Industry

· Establishing Binance

· The FTX Incident: Relationship with SBF and Its Collapse

· Facing the Biden Administration's "Anti-Crypto" Justice Department

· Life Inside Federal Prison

· Life After Leaving Binance and New Ventures

Below is the complete podcast dialogue:

From China to Canada

Chamath: CZ, welcome to the All-In podcast. I want to pull the timeline back to the beginning because I feel many people don't know much about your background, at least not as much as they should. Your early experience in Canada is very similar to mine, and I particularly care about this part. You worked at McDonald's, while I worked at Burger King.

CZ: My father went to Canada to study in 1984.

Chamath: How did that opportunity come about at the time? Did your father stay in Canada after that?

CZ: He would come back to see us once or twice a year, but most of the time he was in Canada.

Chamath: Was he a teacher in China?

CZ: He was a teacher and a professor. He initially went to the University of Toronto for an exchange program, and then a few years later he went to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Later, we also started applying to go there, which was quite difficult at that time; it took three to four years to get a passport. We started applying around 1985 and received our passports about two to three years later.

Chamath: You mean getting a Chinese passport?

CZ: Yes, a Chinese passport. Then it took another few years to get a visa; the process was slow.

Chamath: What was it like when you moved to Vancouver?

CZ: Completely different; it felt like moving to a brand new country.

Chamath: Landing in British Columbia, in Vancouver, everything is different.

CZ: Yes, it was really another world. Did you speak English at that time? You probably didn't, right? I studied English for a year or two in school back in China, but I wasn't fluent at all. But Vancouver is great; you know Canada—good greenery, spacious, pretty everywhere, high living standards, and everything is clean. The fruits were also bigger. Overall, the environment was very comfortable.

Chamath: After the family reunion, did your parents both work?

CZ: My dad was an assistant professor at a university and earned around 1,000 Canadian dollars a month... how should I put it, a subsidy/allowance? The school provided very cheap faculty housing (UBC's faculty housing), so we lived on campus.

Three days after we arrived in Canada, my mom started working at a clothing factory, doing sewing and making clothes. She used to teach mathematics and history in China, but her English wasn’t good, so she couldn’t find a job at her level and had to work at the lowest-wage factory. She worked there for about seven to ten years, just doing that.

Chamath: My mom was a nurse in Sri Lanka. Later, after we immigrated and received refugee status, my father never found work. My mom became a maid to make ends meet. Later, she returned to work as a nurse assistant. I think I was about 14 when I got my first paycheck.

CZ's Early Career Experience: Surprisingly "Ordinary"

CZ: Yes, that's right. I also had my first job at McDonald's when I was about 14 or 15. I think I was 14.

Chamath: We’re the same age, so I guess it was also at 14. Do you remember what the minimum wage was in British Columbia at that time?

CZ: I remember; the minimum wage was 6 Canadian dollars.

Chamath: McDonald's... that's incredible. At that time, it was 4.55 Canadian dollars in Ontario.

CZ: But at McDonald's, they only paid 4.50 Canadian dollars. That was below the legal minimum wage because McDonald's seemed to have a special exemption at that time; after all, they hired many young people. I remember applying on my 14th birthday. A week later, I was flipping patties there. That was my first income.

Chamath: Did you consider yourself that kind of precocious "tech prodigy"? You know, one of those kids who coded 24/7 and delved into computer science?

CZ: No, I wouldn't say I was that kind of person. I was a tech enthusiast; I studied computer science in college and started learning programming by myself in high school, but I wasn't some "programming genius." I consider myself a decent programmer; I've written some decent code in my career. But around the ages of 28 to 30, I started to step away from coding to focus more on business development and sales.

Chamath: Living the typical immigrant child adaptation period in Canada. Did you have many friends at that time?

CZ: Quite a few.

Chamath: Were they all Asian friends, or was there a mix of different ethnicities?

CZ: Both. Actually, I had friends from both Asian and non-Asian backgrounds, but at our school, most Asian kids tended to stick together while I was an exception; I had quite a few white friends, with a diverse social circle. My teenage years in Canada were fantastic; those were the best years of my life. I think that time shaped my optimistic personality; I'm generally a pretty happy person.

Chamath: What was it like when you didn't get into my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, and had to "settle for" McGill University?

CZ: Well, I was actually torn between Waterloo, McGill, and the University of Toronto. But I knew I definitely didn't want to go to UBC because I wanted to change cities. Actually, UBC had accepted me, but I just didn’t want to go. A very respected elder suggested I should become a doctor because it’s a respectable job with a good salary. I followed her advice and chose biology. And the University of Waterloo isn't particularly known for biology, right? So I went to McGill. But after one semester, I told myself, "No more biology; I want to switch to computer science."

Chamath: Was that typical university life? Did you find a good job during the summer, or were you like the average student, hustling to pay tuition?

CZ: I worked every summer. I also worked part-time during the school year.

Chamath: So you were debt-free? Did you think, "I have to graduate without any debt"?

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。