The part that moved me the most after getting the book is this recommendation preface by @heyibinance.

When CZ's experiences were depicted by the author with delicate strokes, what I saw is that in life there are really only two important things:

Doing the right thing,

And then staying alive.

The rest is just noise.

Thanks @cz_binance

“Preface (He Yi): There is no one else outside”

The first time I met CZ was in the spring of 2014.

At that time, I had just given up my glamorous and respectable identity as a host and dived headfirst into the cryptocurrency world, which was experiencing intermittent retreats. The entire environment was filled with noise; television, the internet, newspapers, everywhere declared that Bitcoin was dead. CZ and I were like being swept together by the retreating waves, frantically learning to swim against the current.

Bitcoin was plummeting, and his gamble of selling his house led to a significant shrinkage of personal assets. My career change looked like "social death"; the two of us who hadn't learned to swim were already learning to surf the waves. Standing on stage talking about blockchain technology, CZ's eyes sparkled brighter than Bitcoin’s price peaks.

I thought, if people smarter than me could all gamble, what was there to be afraid of?

Later, many people asked me: What kind of person is CZ?

I thought for a long time and felt there was no standard answer. A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets; ten million CZ fans have ten million CZs. Each person only sees themselves in others. There is no one else outside.

So, what I saw in him might be just the part I can see.

This book starts with the story before he knew me.

CZ's parents were both teachers, and he grew up in a rural area of Xinpou, entering elementary school at the age of five. That child, marveling at the light of technology in front of well water and electric lights, probably never expected that decades later he would become an unavoidable name in the wave of technology.

He moved to Canada with his family at the age of twelve. Overcoming a stutter, he worked at McDonald's frying fries and worked night shifts at a gas station while earning MVPs in sports competitions. That boy never changed—he believed in kindness, believed in hard work, believed in technology changing the world.

Later, he gave up biology to write code, went to Tokyo, went to New York, went to Shanghai, and then immersed himself in the world of Bitcoin’s programming, never coming out.

In the summer of 2014, we became colleagues. At that time, the cryptocurrency market was declining, and a community member was diagnosed with leukemia and started fundraising online. Even though CZ's own assets were shrinking, he donated money without a second thought, but ultimately that person still passed away. CZ quietly built a website and a white paper; he wanted to create a 100% transparent blockchain charity platform so that every penny could reach the beneficiary.

That white paper is still on GitHub, with the earliest timestamp from April 2014. There were still three years before Binance was established.

Then he founded Binance, losing ten kilograms in three weeks. Within six months, Binance became the world's largest trading platform, and he was worshiped like a deity. The events he attended were always crowded; the line for pictures stretched long, some even edited his face onto Jesus’ face, hanging it in their cars for safety; some flew thousands of miles just to shake his hand.

But he still wore cheap clothes from Amazon, rode a bike to meetings, and even showed off his Toyota van that could adjust its seat back to accommodate him after two spine surgeries. Journalists mocked him as a joke, but he wasn't angry. He said, “What they praise and what they attack is all about the person they imagine, no need to take it too seriously.”

Later, the wind changed.

Regulations came, lawsuits came, and headlines switched their tone. The same person's same actions, yesterday he was a "legend," today he is a "criminal." Those who once called him a "savior" turned around and cursed him as a "malignant tumor" in the cryptocurrency space. He was elevated to the status of Jesus, then trampled in the mud, lifted up again, and then put down again. All of this was directly related to the fluctuation of cryptocurrency prices.

Before the collapse of FTX in 2022, he said in an internal management meeting: “If we save FTX, we save the industry, and we also help ourselves.” But he did not expect SBF’s team to leave one after another, and within 24 hours they couldn't even present a complete balance sheet; only regulatory investigations were preparing to intervene.

In 2023, he decided to voluntarily fly to the United States to plead guilty.

During an online meeting, he told us: “If I don’t go, the Biden administration will kill Binance, and BNB holders will suffer severe losses; the industry could regress to ten years ago.”

He chose to bear it himself; he said Binance was no longer a baby, and he trusted that this six-year-old baby could walk and run on its own.

After a year in the United States, he lost a lot of weight, and the light in his eyes grew brighter. He always asked the children how they were, never mentioning his concerns about the Biden administration’s back-and-forth restrictions on his departure.

At that time, he started the Giggle Academy charity project, saying he wanted every child to learn for free. I asked him why; he said: “Because I am a beneficiary of education, and current education is very outdated. I can systematically multilingualize all subjects. If they learn, they can find jobs, and if they are willing to give back to society after benefiting, this cause can continue.”

The person who once stood in the rain still wanted to hold an umbrella for others.

Later, the "presidential pardon" from the United States sounded like a magical movie ending. The day the news broke, the phone was about to explode; no one could contact him. The hour of silence from his Twitter account was when he was on his way to meet with the Kyrgyz government. He was striving to promote blockchain, hoping to change the world with it, to the extent that he was the last one to know about his own pardon.

This book is his life, and it is also Binance's childhood.

From a rural area in Xinpou to Canada, then to wandering Earth, from McDonald's to Binance, from being trapped to regaining freedom. Ups and downs, down and ups. The public is keen on creating gods, and they are also keen on destroying gods. Gods are created; gods are smashed, broken into mud, then trampled a few times—then a new one is replaced. Throughout, he has always been just himself.

He was never a god, nor a demon. He was just himself. That five-year-old child staring in wonder at well water and electric lights, that boy working night shifts at a gas station dreaming of the future, that programmer who donated money to save others even as his assets shrank, that founder who decided to trade himself for the company’s survival.

He has never changed. Always believing that technology can change the world, always believing that "doing the right thing" is the only criterion. The rivers and lakes flowed through him, and he allowed the rivers and lakes to flow by.

There is no one else outside. What others see in him is merely a reflection of what each person wants to see. And he remains himself.

What a fortune it is to walk with him.

He Yi

Year 2026, Lunar New Year’s Day

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