Career
After graduating from McGill, Zhao was selected for an internship in Tokyo working for a subcontractor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. He later went to work full-time for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook, where he was a developer of futures trading software.[9]
In 2005, Zhao moved to Shanghai to launch his business career, where he established his first technology startup company called Fusion Systems,[11] which was known for "some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stockbrokers."[9] Zhao first heard of bitcoin in 2013 when playing poker with Bobby Lee (brother of Charlie Lee) who would later go on to found BTCC. Lee advised Zhao to put 10% of his money into bitcoin. Zhao instead "went all in" and sold his apartment in Shanghai and invested all of his wealth in bitcoin, much to his family's dismay.[10]
In 2013, Zhao was a member of the team that developed Blockchain.info and he also served as Chief Technology Officer of OKCoin.[9]
In 2022, Zhao invested $500 million through Binance to finance the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.[12]
On April 7, 2024, he was appointed by the Pakistan Ministry of Finance as a strategic advisor to the Pakistan Crypto Council.[13][14][15]
On May 3, 2025, he was appointed as an advisor to the president of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, on the development of digital assets.[16]
Binance
After its launch in July 2017, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was able to raise $15 million in an initial coin offering, and trading began on the exchange eleven days later.[17] In less than eight months, Zhao grew Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume (as of April 2018).[18][17] Zhao also launched Binance Coin in 2017, a utility token that gives its owners various benefits, such as discounts on trading fees.[19] In April 2019, Binance launched Binance Smart Chain, which has smart contract functionality and is an Ethereum competitor.
In February 2018, Forbes placed him third on their list of "The Richest People In Cryptocurrency," with an estimated net worth of $1.1-2 billion.[18]
