CZ's Untold Story: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of Binance's Founder

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:00)
CZ, welcome to the All-In Podcast.

**Changpeng Zhao** (0:01)
Well, thanks for having me here.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:03)
It's really, really great to see you.

**Changpeng Zhao** (0:04)
It's a pleasure.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:05)
I want to go all the way back to the beginning, because I think a lot of people don't really know your background the way that they probably should. The part of the background that I really care about is there's parts of your early journey in Canada, which is very similar to mine. You worked at McDonald's, I worked at Burger King. But before that, your parents were able to emigrate from China right around Tiananmen Square, right?

**Changpeng Zhao** (0:27)
My father went to Canada to study in 1984 That's five years before Tiananmen Square.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:33)
How did that come about? So your father stayed in Canada once he went there or no?

**Changpeng Zhao** (0:37)
He could visit us twice a year, basically, but most of the time he was in Canada.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:44)
He was a teacher in China?

**Changpeng Zhao** (0:45)
He was a teacher professor. He was a professor in China. Then he went to do an exchange program in University of Toronto first. Then a couple of years later, he moved to UBC, University of British Columbia, even Coover, and then he was there. We were applying.
Back then, it's actually very difficult to get a passport. It takes like three or four years to get a passport. We started applying in 1985-ish, took like two or three years to get a passport. And then after you get a passport-

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:12)
Meaning a Chinese passport.

**Changpeng Zhao** (1:13)
A Chinese passport, yeah. So and then it takes like another few years to get a visa. Like that's just how long the process takes back then. And then, yeah, so we got it shortly after in 1989

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:27)
When you look back, it almost seems fortuitous. Isn't there a version where post-Tiananmen, they kind of just shut everything down and say, okay, let's just reset and then maybe they wouldn't have approved the visa or?

**Changpeng Zhao** (1:38)
No, actually, after that, the visa got easier. The passports got harder. So they no longer issue new passports. Like the ratio of new passports got harder. But we were lucky. So we got the passports like maybe a year before that. And then we're waiting for the visa. And then afterwards, the visa got easier. So in some ways, that actually kind of helped us to get the visa. Wow. Yeah, in some really weird way.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:01)
Did that event shape your perspective in any way, shape or form or not really? Were you too young or no? You were what, 12?

**Changpeng Zhao** (2:08)
I was 12 So I think consciously, no, it didn't change me that much. But subconsciously, I think there were discussions about democracy versus, so there were some discussions. I was actually living on a university campus back then. The China Science and Technology University is one of the top four universities in China. So there were a lot of discussions among the university students which were older, like which were probably seven to nine years older than me. So there were some discussions, but I was 12 So I wasn't really clued into it, but I think subconsciously you may have some kind of subconscious impact. I don't know.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:43)
And what was it like when you moved to Vancouver?

**Changpeng Zhao** (2:46)
I moved to Vancouver, yeah.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:47)
So you land in British Columbia and Vancouver. It's like a different, it's just different.

**Changpeng Zhao** (2:53)
It's very different. It's very different. It's just a completely new country. And then...

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:57)
Did you know English at all or no?

**Changpeng Zhao** (2:58)
I studied English for like a couple of years in high school, but I was not fluent at all. But yeah, Vancouver is great. Canada is, you know, nice green, nice greenery, open space. Everything's pretty, the living standards high. Everything's pretty, pretty good. Everything's very clean. The fruits are bigger. So it's just a really nice environment.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:22)
Did both your parents work when the family was reunited? What did they do?

**Changpeng Zhao** (3:25)
So my father stayed, was like assistant professor in the, in the university. He gets like a thousand Canadian dollars per month of like, I don't know what you call it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:34)
Like a stipend.

**Changpeng Zhao** (3:35)
Like a stipend. We get some like really low-cost housing, the faculty housing from UBC. So we lived on campus. I think on the third day of our arrival in Canada, my mom went to a factory, sewing factory to work, like sewing clothes. She was a math and history teacher in China, but she doesn't speak that much English. So she couldn't get the same level of jobs and she basically can only work at a minimum wage factory. She did that for like seven, ten years and yeah, so she just worked there.