Binance CEO calls for an end to conspiracy theories about the secret owner of the cryptocurrency exchange

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has responded to conspiracy theorists who claim that the company is a Chinese «criminal organization» and belongs to the Chinese government — according to Zhao, such accusations are lies.

On September 1, Binance’s official website posted a message from Changpeng Zhao, where the CEO answered the most common provocative questions from the cryptocurrency community. Zhao spoke about the first most popular thesis of conspiracy theorists that the exchange is actually run by Chinese resident Guangyin Chen. Some users believe that Chen is the secret owner of both Binance and Bijie Tech (a company founded by Zhao in 2015, which went bankrupt in 2017). However, according to Changpeng Zhao, Chen is an acquaintance of his who once ran one of Bijie Tech’s offices and was in China, and now Guangyin Chen works for Binance. Due to her long stay in China for work and management of the Bijie Tech office, conspiracy theorists believe that Chen is the Chinese government representative who runs the exchange.

Another false accusation, according to CZ, is Binance’s close ties to China and its government. Zhao said that the exchange was recognized as a criminal organization in China, so there is no question of any cooperation. Also, according to CZ, people think about the exchange’s ties to the Chinese government only because of its nationality: Zhao and some other Binance employees are Chinese.

According to Changpeng Zhao, it was the Chinese government that hindered his activities many times and continues to do so to this day. «Two years before founding Binance, I started a company called Bijie Tech. We had 30 clients and the business was going well. However, in March 2017, the Chinese government shut down all exchanges, including ours. All of Bijie Tech’s clients went bankrupt,» Changpeng Zhao recalled.

CZ later recruited several former Bijie Tech employees to launch Binance. However, the Chinese government shut down the exchange six weeks later, issuing a memorandum stating that cryptocurrency exchanges are not allowed to operate in China. «At this point, most of our employees left China. By the end of 2018, only a small number of customer service agents remained,» CZ summarized.

As a reminder, apart from new ideas from conspiracy theorists, Changpeng Zhao has enough problems — the US Department of Justice’s Anti-Money Laundering Unit has asked Binance to voluntarily hand over the emails of Changpeng Zhao and 12 other top executives of the cryptocurrency exchange. The department also asked for any company records with instructions to «destroy, alter, or delete documents from Binance’s digital archives.»