Today, it is a sense of responsibility that leads him to choose to face the trial. However, he should never be regarded as being in the same category as those evil murderers, robbers, and fraudsters.
On April 24th, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Zhao Changpeng, the founder and former CEO of Binance, should serve a three-year (36-month) prison sentence. The reason given by the U.S. Department of Justice lawyers is that Zhao Changpeng helped Binance violate federal sanctions and money laundering laws, and they believe he should pay a higher price, thus the increased sentence.
Just before the trial, CZ wrote a letter of apology to Judge Richard A. Jones, who is responsible for this case, expressing regret for his “wrong decision” and acknowledging that he must take full responsibility for his actions.
In addition to CZ’s letter of apology, there were 161 support letters from his family, friends, and others, all providing different perspectives to portray the true CZ Zhao Changpeng. CZ’s sister, Jessica Zhao, a former managing director at Morgan, mentioned that although her brother made a mistake, he has always strived to help others in his life. She also mentioned the FTX incident, emphasizing that CZ ensured that Binance never misused any client funds. CZ’s children, Rachel and Ryan, who are currently studying at universities in the United States, hope that the judge will not define Zhao Changpeng’s character solely based on this incident.
The most significant letter came from He Yi, Binance’s co-founder and the mother of their three children. In her letter, she wrote, “If the cryptocurrency industry is compared to the Wild West, then CZ is the guardian of this wilderness.” She further stated that for CZ, whether poor or rich, he takes charity and social responsibility seriously because he is kind and humanitarian.
Finally, He Yi expressed, “Today, it is a sense of responsibility that leads him to choose to face the trial. However, he should never be regarded as being in the same category as those evil murderers, robbers, and fraudsters. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open the eyes of God, omniscient, and make a fair judgment after seeing a more complete CZ.”
Below is the full text of He Yi’s letter:
Dear Judge Jones,
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I am Zhao Changpeng’s (CZ) business partner and also the mother of his three children. I hope this letter can help you, Mr. Judge, understand a more authentic CZ Zhao Changpeng.
In the spring of 2014, I met Zhao Changpeng at a blockchain public event at a school. We call him CZ, which is the abbreviation of his real name, different from the pseudonyms used by many people. On that day, CZ was invited to share impromptu on stage because the organizers found out that he was working for the most popular Bitcoin wallet at the time, blockchain.info. He passionately explained blockchain technology and the principles of Bitcoin to everyone. At that time, he had just sold his house to buy Bitcoin, but due to the price drop, his assets had greatly reduced. However, this did not dampen his enthusiasm for blockchain technology. His speech was full of idealism about how blockchain technology could bring positive changes to the world, which greatly influenced and inspired me. Later, CZ chose to enter the cryptocurrency field and founded Binance. He certainly hoped that the company would be successful, but he was not a person whose ultimate goal was to make money. He sincerely hoped to use technology to promote progress in the world.
In the summer of 2014, CZ’s accumulated matching and trading technology background was not being fully utilized at Blockchain, so after my repeated invitations, he joined OKCoin, the cryptocurrency exchange where I worked. At that time, the crypto market had entered a downturn, and amid the industry’s lamentations, a community member unfortunately contracted leukemia and could not afford his medical expenses. So, he publicly initiated a fundraising campaign. Despite CZ’s personal assets being greatly reduced, he actively participated in the donations. Unfortunately, the community member still passed away. Inspired by this incident, CZ and I jointly launched the “Love BTC” charity project. He built a website and a public Bitcoin wallet address. We auctioned off clothing and other items through social media to raise funds, and then directly converted the BTC into goods for the beneficiaries. For this, CZ also wrote a paper introducing how blockchain technology can achieve 100% transparent charity work, ensuring that the ultimate beneficiaries receive 100% of the proceeds and that no donations are eroded by intermediaries’ management fees. This paper can be found on GitHub with a timestamp of April 2014. (https://github.com/cpzhao/bitcoin_charity/blob/master/Bitcoin_Charity.md), and this was the predecessor of Binance Charity.
This was three years before Binance was founded, and CZ was not wealthy at that time. Many people think that charity is just a way to gain fame, some use it as a means to offset taxes, and some say they will do charity when they become financially independent. But for CZ, whether poor or rich, he takes charity and social responsibility seriously because he is kind and humanitarian.
In August 2017, my first month at Binance, a young user approached me saying that he had mistakenly sent thousands of dollars to a Binance wallet address, but Binance did not support that token, so Binance could not receive the funds. This was a common mistake in the early days of the industry.
According to the industry’s practices at the time, individuals were responsible for their own mistakes. However, for this young person in his early twenties, those thousands of dollars were possibly his family’s annual income or his entire year’s university tuition fees, representing his future hope. After a brief discussion with CZ, he mobilized our limited development resources and quickly helped the user recover the assets. This was the first case in the industry of a platform helping users recover assets sent to the wrong address. With the first case, there were countless more afterwards. Under CZ’s guidance, Binance has helped over 180,000 users recover assets totaling over $441 million. This is a project that consumes significant resources and does not seem worth it from an ROI perspective, but we can ignite hope for our users in their despair. Even today, public listing platforms like Coinbase still do not support this service. In this emerging Wild West, countless practitioners play the role of predators, while CZ has always insisted that we should do the right thing: protect the users.
In early 2018, when the price of Bitcoin exceeded $20,000, the enthusiasm of investors gave rise to a lot of fraud. One day, a group of Chinese users approached me, pointing out that they had been lured to invest in a project by an account on social media. After sending the money, this person disappeared. However, according to publicly available information on the blockchain, the money had just been transferred to Binance. According to the usual procedures of most platforms today, users need to first report to the police and provide a request for investigation before freezing the assets. At that time, cryptocurrency trading was prohibited in China, and Chinese police did not accept such cases. CZ said to us, “Do the right thing.” We temporarily froze the stolen funds, then organized multiple phone calls between the victims and the fraudster. In the end, the fraudster returned the money to the users, and the fraudster’s account was closed. This is just one of the many examples of CZ’s insistence on fighting wrongdoers. In the past year of 2023 alone, Binance has cooperated with law enforcement agencies from various countries in over 58,000 investigations. Many of these cases were actively initiated by Binance to push for investigations. This is why, despite mainstream media attempting to portray CZ as an evil person, millions of community users and ordinary people see him as an industry hero because CZ has always had his own persistence for justice. If the cryptocurrency industry is compared to the Wild West, then CZ is the guardian of this wilderness.As a professional translator, I will translate this news article into English using descriptive language. I will ensure accuracy and coherence while appropriately retaining proper nouns and . I guarantee the same meaning without any grammatical errors. Please note that I will not add a period at the end of the translation. Here is the translated content:
He is the guardian in this wilderness.
Since 2019, the company has experienced rapid growth in personnel, with a highly diverse and globalized team. During this period, the team consisted of Ivy League graduates from Wall Street, dropouts from Europe, frontline NGO activists from Africa, and young men from rural Southeast Asia who didn’t want to be fishermen. CZ truly treats everyone equally regardless of race, belief, gender, education, or family background. Whether it was a junior employee in Southeast Asia whose house was destroyed in a fire, or the lack of epidemic prevention supplies due to the global spread of Covid, or even the danger brought to employees by the war between Russia and Ukraine, CZ spared no expense in helping his employees. For a company’s boss, it is not uncommon to spend millions of dollars to help talented people in difficult situations, lead their families out of unstable living environments, and provide continuous allowances. However, when CZ made these decisions, he did not consider their backgrounds or positions. This also covered a large number of junior employees who were easy to replace. The only reason for CZ’s decision was that they needed support.
CZ’s leadership style may not conform to the traditional expectations of an outstanding CEO. His commitment to transparency and fairness at Binance often clashes with the power expectations of a small group of employees accustomed to elite corporate environments. This has led to some employees leaving the company with resentment and making false accusations to the media. Although these reports sometimes make me feel frustrated, CZ has always shouldered this burden and continued to support justice and equality because he understands that true fairness can sometimes be unfair to a few privileged individuals.
In November 2022, FTX faced a crisis, and Sam (SBF) made a final plea call to CZ. Without receiving any valid reports or documents provided by SBF, CZ convened a management meeting to decide whether to assist FTX. He said, “We don’t need FTX as a company, but we should save FTX to save this industry.” Although the deal was eventually abandoned, subsequent public information revealed that multiple companies associated with FTX were misappropriating user assets, which left CZ dumbfounded. CZ believes that transparency is a better solution, so he publicly released Binance’s trading platform wallet addresses and launched a product that allows users to verify their account funds and online wallet addresses, which further promotes industry self-regulation.
So far, CZ and I have experienced a decade of ups and downs in this industry. These ten years have been a decade of dramatic changes in the industry. During these ten years, the price of Bitcoin has risen from a low of hundreds of dollars to over $40,000. We have seen countless former celebrities fall from grace and numerous well-known institutions collapse in an instant. Most of the time, these people were self-proclaimed geniuses, talented but disregarding the law, thinking they could deceive the public or escape legal sanctions by sheer luck. But CZ is not like them. He is honest, kind, sincere, intelligent, and very hardworking. For work-related reasons, CZ underwent two spinal surgeries in 2020 alone. Even during the 18 months he spent repeatedly lying in a hospital bed, he never stopped working for a day. As the CEO and largest shareholder for the past six years, he has been leading with a salary lower than that of many subsequent executives brought into the company. He has never taken any dividends or cashed out for himself. This time, in order to keep Binance operating, he chose to fly to the United States to plead guilty. When it comes to personal interests versus public interests, CZ will always choose to sacrifice himself and benefit Binance. And when it comes to Binance and its users, he will choose the users.
As CZ’s partner, I know very well how CZ has earned the respect of the community. It may be when the Chinese government banned Bitcoin trading platforms, and other project parties took advantage of the situation to profit, CZ chose to refund users at a higher price. It may be when Binance experienced a theft incident, CZ immediately disclosed the information and took full responsibility. It may also be when numerous project parties issued coins just to make money, and CZ helped users track down industry fraudsters and hackers. Some of these cases were not even related to Binance, but he had a sense of mission and responsibility for this industry.
As CZ’s life partner, I have known CZ for nearly ten years, so I understand another side of him that is unknown to others. He knows nothing about the jewelry, luxury goods, luxury cars, or art auctions that rich people are passionate about. He leads a simple life. He buys affordable clothes on Amazon, rides a balance bike to meetings, and enthusiastically shows his Toyota 6-seater van to reporters, which was later mocked by the media. When he buys things, it is for efficiency and interest. He has no fanatical desire for money, fame, or enjoyment. He hopes to live a meaningful life.
At the same time, he always tries his best to take care of his friends’ feelings, regardless of their profession or social status. He also makes an effort to spend high-quality time with his three young children amidst his busy work schedule. His children are close to him, and now they always ask, “Why isn’t daddy at home? When can daddy come back?”
Of course, I am not saying that CZ has not made mistakes, but his biggest mistake is ignorance. As a startup company without a glamorous background, the founding team members had no legal background, and even most early management team members, except for CZ, couldn’t even read English, including myself. In the absence of experience and legal knowledge, CZ won over users with fairness, integrity, and a sense of responsibility for the industry, but he also made mistakes. In any case, the mistakes have been made, and both Binance and CZ have paid a great price.
CZ has previously said, “No one wants to be a hero because no one is born wanting to stand in the front and take arrows. Heroes are only in that position because they have to protect their families, communities, ethnic groups, and territories and do the right thing. They have to become heroes along the way.” I humbly hope that Judge Jones can consider comprehensively that in the cryptocurrency industry, which is so early and chaotic, there is no consensus on how to regulate the industry or define it in the United States. As a founder who has never managed a company of this scale, there will be blind spots. If CZ knew the seriousness of the matter, he would have been on high alert from day one, blocking any U.S. users. He doesn’t want to be a hero, and certainly has no intention of being a criminal. All his actions follow universal humanitarian principles, and he does his best. Today, it is a sense of responsibility that made him choose to face trial, but he should definitely not be regarded as the same as those evil murderers, robbers, and fraudsters. I sincerely hope that Judge Jones can open the eyes of God, be omniscient, see a more complete picture of CZ, and make a fair judgment. If needed, you can contact me at any time for more details.
Sincerely,
He Yi
Co-founder of Binance and CZ’s life partner
January 11, 2024
Tags:
FTX
He Yi
Binance
Bitcoin
United States
Wallet
Source link:
https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_17543.html
Note: The views expressed in this article do not represent investment advice.
Original article link:
https://www.bitpush.news/articles/6641186
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