CZ Life Before and After Prison, Crypto’s Future & The Truth About Money

The newspapers wrote that I was the richest person to ever go into a US prison. I started writing when I was in prison. My lawyers were telling me, "You are a prime target for extortion." The cops came and took me in handcuffs and put me back into a detention center. Detention center is worse than prison. Are you more cautious now? When everything's taken away from you, you got to figure out what you missed the most.

There are rumors out there that there were lots of money changed hands. So, in order to get a pardon, there's absolutely no deal to get a pardon. Some of our perceived competitors in the US, they don't want me to get a pardon. They're worried about Binance coming back to the US.

Do you think Bitcoin is still going to be the global money? There's nothing replacing Bitcoin just yet. In the future, there may be. If you're telling me that this is the rails for every single financial transaction and that financial market is going to a trillion x itself or a 1,000 x itself, crypto is the most undervalued asset. Absolutely.

You look at someone like Elon, you think about what he's thinking. My theory is he's alien. He wants to return to his home planet and Mars is just a stepstone.

So, the whole week I've been mentioning to you guys that I'm meeting a mystery guest in a mystery location. I couldn't reveal who the guest is and I couldn't reveal what the location is, but here we finally are. We're at the mystery location and we've got the mystery guest at CZ, and we managed to get an exclusive interview with him here in the secret location which I'll reveal a bit later today. CZ, it's so good to see you. I think it's the first time that we've actually sat down after you went on vacation. Yeah. It's been a while. Last time was what, 3 years ago? Something like that. Yeah. And I think we're here because you published a new book and we wanted to talk about the new book. It's called The Freedom of Money. Yeah.

When did you write the book? I started writing when I was in prison. So I had a lot of time. I just didn't have a lot of access. I didn't have access to internet. I was using a very dumb terminal 15 minutes each time. I got kicked out in 15 minutes. And the terminal doesn't allow cut and paste. So I have to type everything. I cannot delete anything. If I delete, I have to retype. So I was just a straight brain dump. And then I was emailing to my assistant and a friend. And then after I got out of prison, it still took about another year and a half to completely finish it. I think I finished writing about 6 months or so, but there's many revisions. And each revision is 2 to 3 weeks for a 400-page document.

So what goes through your mind before you write a book? Why? So you arrive in prison. I guess you're scared, you're nervous, you're anxious. Why a book? What was the thinking of writing a book? A brain dump. What is it? Well, there's a couple things. I think in prison I just want to keep myself busy. It's a really nice project to keep myself busy. I don't need anything else. I'm just in my head and writing down. Right. And then I was trying to get on the computer all the time. I'm always in queue. But more importantly for me, they say writing a book is really writing to yourself. Yes. Right. So you're kind of having conversation with yourself. You go through your life history. You kind of think about what's important, what's meaningful, what's not important, what's interesting, and you write it down. The advice I got from reading other people's memoir, I think there's a famous author called Ann Lamont. She's a bit older now, but she wrote quite a funny, humor type of a memoir. And she says, look, you got to write to yourself. So that's what I did. And then after prison I also thought it was a natural pivot in my life, a kind of a chapter turning point. And then so I actually wanted to publish right after getting out of prison, but it takes a bit longer. And then a few months after that I was applying for a pardon and then I was waiting. I was well, maybe it's kind of nice to, but I don't know when the pardon is going to come, right. But then actually I was kind of surprised when it actually came. And then I was that's a good punctuation for a book. So then I rushed to finish it, but still took 6 months after that.

Talk to me about writing a book in prison. So you said that you got access to a computer sometimes. I think no one knows what it's like on the inside. We've seen the movies and stuff like that. What's it like on the inside? You want to write a book where you get a pen and paper and start writing? Is there one computer? Is the computer connected to the internet? How does it work? Okay, so in our unit there's 200 inmates. There are three rows of cells on three floors, right. And there's four terminals and you got to wait in line to get in on a computer, and once you get on you got 15 minutes. The computer has no internet access. There's just one messaging app. You can send messages to your pre-approved contacts, which are up to 30 people. So I have two of them. One of them is my assistant, one of them is another friend, Michael Sanentos. And then so every 15 minutes I get on there. And once you finish the 15 minutes, once you get off, you have to wait for a couple hours before you can get on again. And then you get in line again. So every day I'll get three or four sessions like that. And I have a pen of paper as well, but then I would just write down the points I want to write for the next session kind of on one pager, and then when I get on the computer, I just brain dump as quickly as possible. Yeah. So that's the writing process took that went on for about a couple months.

So you were in there for 4 months. Yeah. You had to pass 120 days more or less. You had to do something to keep yourself busy for 120 days. Was that the mission to keep you busy for 120 days? Was it day 1, day 2, day 3 counting down and just keeping your mind occupied and stimulated? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Though I was actually only in prison, well, I was in prison for 76 days. I got out to a halfway house, which means I can come out to an office, still limited mobility. I cannot go anywhere I want. And I did that for 3 or 4 weeks and then I was put back into custody for the last 14 days of my sentencing. This is detailed in the book through no fault of my own. So this is pretty scary at the time. And the last 14 days I couldn't write because I just don't have access to anything. Yeah.

What was the scariest part of prison? Was it walking in? Was it when you were in prison? What was the scariest part? I think before you go in, you were okay, you don't know. I don't know what to expect. And then the newspapers wrote that I was the richest person to ever go into a US prison, right. And I was also the only person to ever go to prison for a single violation of a banking secrecy act, the BSA violation. So I think Bloomberg, Reuters, they all wrote articles about it. So going in my lawyers were telling me, look, you are a prime target for extortion. So how do we protect you from extortion? I don't know what extortion is going to look like. People put a knife, put a metal stick near your neck. How do we avoid that? So there was a lot of preparation and that gave me a lot of mental anxiety over that. I actually didn't write too much about this part in the book. But once I got in the intake process, it's kind of scary. You walk into this unit, there's 200 macho guys looking at you. But actually what turned out is that most inmates are pretty reasonable people. They, you know, some of them are criminals, some of them shouldn't be there, and some of them have been there for too long, but they have a system, right, you get along. So I kind of got along. And then the next thing to worry about is will they keep me there forever, right. Will they come up with some other charge? Will they come up with some other reason? Especially after I got to a halfway house, I was supposed to move to home confinement for the last nine days. But on the 13th, the last 13th day, they called me back into the halfway house, the cops came and took me in handcuffs and put me back into a detention center. Detention center is worse than prison. Detention centers are temporary. There's nothing, right. So and then it was, are they trying to put another charge on me? So that mental stress is quite high to the point where even when I was leaving, on the day when I was supposed to leave, usually they call people out from 8:00 a.m., between 8 to 10. I was ready at 6:00 obviously and then counting down the minutes. 8:00 call came, 8:30, 9:30, 10, they didn't call me. I was really anxious. And then 10:50 they call me and so I get out, sign all the papers. From the moment I left that detention center I went straight to the airport, got onto the airplane. Even in the airplane I was not relaxed. I was waiting for the airplane to clear US airspace, right. So you mean the worst kind of torture is when they think you kind of got away and they stop you, right. It sounds like you have a lot of PTSD or mistrust in the system, and I think maybe the mistrust is because I think you were expecting not to go to jail at all and at the last minute it changed and you landed up in, just almost sounds like the whole time you were, this could change at any time. There's no rules to the game here. The rules can change at any point in time. Is that what it's like? Yes, that's absolutely true.

So look, any lawyer can tell you no one in US history, even today, went to prison for a single violation of the Banking Secrecy Act. I'm the only one. I was the first one, only one. So I was special. They treated me specially. And then I don't know what other special treatment they have for me. Right. And this is five days before my sentencing. Senator Elizabeth Warren declares war on crypto. Right. So this is under the Biden administration. There was war on crypto. So there was a lot of uncertainty. I was a special case so I didn't know what to expect and even my sentencing judge. He's a nice guy, I think. But he said, look, he couldn't follow precedent because I'm a special case. You're a special case. You are a special case.

When you walk around, people walk up to you. You have a lot of respect here. What's it like in prison? When did the inmates know who you were? Did you have a, was there a sense of respect or were you just some guy that was in there for a crime and you were labeled a criminal with a number? So when I first walked in there, I think a couple people recognized me actually, but they didn't come and talk. So the guys who recognize me luckily are the guys who read newspapers, and those are sort of more educated guys. Most of the other guys don't read Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or New York Times, right. So they just get along in prison. Those guys didn't recognize me. But pretty soon people figured out you're kind of well off, right. So I didn't, like most people in prison, they have no one sending them money. They're really poor. They have to generate money for themselves in prison, right. So they have to do stuff. They have to help other people build stuff, service them, just random stuff. There's a little micro economy there. I had obviously supportive families that was sending me 80 or $90 every two weeks. That's the maximum you can get in prison, right. But for me that was good in prison. So they said, okay, this guy's well off though. And then so that kind of passes around. People come and ask, okay, what's your crime? Okay, it's a financial crime. When you say financial crime they automatically assume there's fraud. I try initially to explain to them there's no fraud. But then they don't care, right. So financial crime is financial crime. But financial crime they kind of assume that you're relatively well off. So people kind of, there's a level of respect in that way even though without knowing who I am, but later on people kind of figured out okay this guy's a pretty big shot. It's words passed around that they don't read. So this is more word of mouth. And I fit into a group pretty quickly. They put Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders, Hawaiians together into one group. Out of the 200 people, our group is six people. There's me plus another half Asian, and then a Native American and a couple other Hawaiians. So I fit in a small group, but once you're in a small group other people leave you alone. The group offers some level of protection. Yeah.

So what was the scariest thing that you experienced in prison? Was there a point, a night or anything? What is the scariest thing you saw there? I think there was a couple points where I was there for, relatively speaking I was there for a short period of time, for at the time I felt it's a very long period of time, but there were just a lot of new things, a lot of uncertainty. Right. One time I got called into a little room by a guard and he didn't tell me what's going on. I was just sitting there for two hours. Right. And then it turns out, okay, I somehow violated the dressing code of some kind, right. I was walking in the hallway without the uniform. When you're in the hallway you had to be in uniform. When you are in your own unit, you can be in sweatpants. So there's little things like that you just get caught in and they don't explain it. You know just sitting in a cell literally 1 meter by 1 meter for two hours, right. And so there's little mind games that keeps happening. I didn't have physical threats. I didn't get into a fight with anyone. I saw a couple of fights. They weren't that bad. There was no knife. I think the prison system in the US, at least the prison I was in, really control the physical violence, but the guards play games with you, but that's a different story.

Did you make friends there? I did. I still keep in touch with two of them. Yeah. So, yeah, he make friends everywhere. What was their crime? So one guy, he robbed 12 banks and, but he's a developer from Cisco. He robbed 12 banks but he had a gun with him. So he got 45 years for that because he had a gun and he also fought the case. So he got 25 years. Yes. And so, which means he have to serve even with good behavior have to serve 17 to 18 years and he only have three or four more years to go by the time I met him. So he's still there but he only have a couple more years. So he's one of those guys who read Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Bloomberg. He had the magazine subs while robbing banks. So he needed to get the information. So he need to read. But the way he robbed banks was so interesting. So he got to a point where he would play a poker game and lose a couple thousand dollars and the next morning he'll just, next lunch time he'll just go rob a bank. He has no research and no preparation. He wears the same t-shirt robbing multiple banks and that's why he got connected for all those different robberies that they couldn't appease him. He didn't shoot anyone. He's very mellow guy. He's an IT guy. He's a Vietnamese guy. Vietnamese ethnicity. Really nice guy. He was stupid when he were young, right. After 17 years in prison he kind of realizes that. So yeah.

Were you angry in prison? Was, were you, on the outside you're this big figure. On the inside you're a prisoner. I guess you were treated like a normal prisoner. That's a big adjustment. I mean, that's happened to me a few times on a micro scale where you're used to being the main hot shot and then you walk into a place where it's, you're treated like a number and it's not a great feeling. I can imagine that that's exacerbated. Was there a feeling of anger or resentment? I wasn't too bothered about being treated, I actually wanted to be treated the same as everyone else. I actually wanted nobody to know who I am. People don't treat me specially. I just want to get through the four months, right. So I actually prefer to, in prison I don't want to be this big shot. I don't want to run things in prison. So I actually prefer to be just normal which is actually good. The US federal prison is actually, they treat you pretty normally. I didn't get any special treatment both on the good and bad side. So that part I didn't, but I was kind of, there was quite a lot of mental stress. I just want to get it over with, right. I didn't want to be extended. I just want to get it over with and go back to my family.

What's the thing you miss most? You're sitting in prison. What's the thing you miss most? I know I would have probably thought I miss my phone. I miss pizza. I don't know. What's the thing that you miss most? It's very clear. You miss the people. You miss the people. You miss your family, your kids, your loved ones and your friends. It's when everything's taken away from you, you kind of figure out what you miss the most. Yeah. You miss the food, you miss your own bed, you miss the nice shower, the decent shower. But it's the people that you miss the most.

So, did you have a moment of, when I get out of here, I'm really going to change the way I am. I'm going to spend more time with these people. I'm going to spend less time with the, did you get that? A little bit of that. Yeah. I was basically gonna, I thought to myself I'm definitely going to spend way more time with my family which I didn't spend enough time with them before, right, playing with kids. And less time on random people, so, and then also the other stuff that people kind of think they should miss, the parties, the events and that stuff you actually don't miss that at all. So the luxury stuff you don't miss.

Did you miss social credibility? Did you miss social validation? Did you miss likes and shares? No, not that much. So I actually thought about that. So this is why coming out of prison, in my book I said I actually don't care about fame or even legacy. I don't care about what other people think of me. What I care about is what I think of myself when I'm old. And was that different before you went to prison? I think it was the same but I was probably not as crystal clear as even before prison right because after stepping down from Binance CEO position I've been thinking okay what am I going to do next, what's important, what I care about. So that's when I was starting to think about that, yeah.

So was there any good that came out of the prison, let's talk about the whole experience, the beginning to the end of prison. If you were to summarize it and say yes it was a bad experience I ended up in prison it's not great. What's the good stuff that came out of it. I think there's some good stuff. Well, some basic stuff. You know, I got fitter. You got stronger. I was working out from prison and I decided to keep it after prison. That's one thing good that I took out of prison. The other thing is it gives you much more mental clarity on what's important as you said. So that kind of changes the way I do things afterwards. And you also kind of got me to appreciate life a bit more. I kind of just be working 20 hours a day. For I did that for six, seven, eight years. And it was fun while, no, it was fun.

Do you regret it? Do you regret working 20 hours a day neglecting? Neglect is a strong word, but maybe not spending as much time with love, or do you think at the time that was the vehicle that got us to where we got to now? I don't regret it. I actually think that was a good experience. I kind of enjoyed it, but I also am quite happy that I was forced to pivot and take a break. So I think, different stages in your life, you do different things, right. So I still work pretty hard now, but not as hard as when I was running Binance. So I don't regret it. I think that's a fantastic experience. And I was younger and my body was in a better shape. It's a very physically demanding exercise to do that for so many years. So, but yeah, you go through different stages in your life. So I think that was a great experience. Yeah.

Do you miss being busy now? Because I mean, when you were running Binance, I remember you were busy. There was managers, there was Europe, there was legal problems. It feels like today you're much more relaxed. I'm still quite busy but definitely less busy than before. So I still get dragged into Google Academy which is really fun. Different problems they're solving, how to increase the retention rate on the app for kids who are learning, how to make sure that they keep coming back. And then Easy Labs does a bunch of investments. So there's a lot of deals to look at, a lot of founders to talk to. So that's still pretty interesting. I work my ass off still with a lot of governments. They require a lot of time to help them to regulatory frameworks for crypto. And the BNB chain I still try to help out over there.

So wait let's break up CZ's life. I imagine that CZ's life before the vacation was 95% Binance and 5% everything else maybe in that 5% 1% gym and 1% family time. As I said you feel and look much more relaxed you're looking strong now talk to me about your 100% today. Where and when I say 100% not necessarily time but brain function brain wise. I think right now there's four things that take equal, there's just four things. So there's Google academy the education platform there's Easy Labs there's BNB chain stuff there's government kind of consulting that's kind of how I, that's on a work function. What else in the path? Work kind of occupies about 80 90% of my time and then the other 10 20% of my time is family, chilling, relaxing. So that's kind of a, what are you doing differently now with your family that you weren't doing before? I just kind of spend more time with them now. I actually don't know what I do specifically, but I think my philosophy is as long as you spend quality time with them, like when I spend time with them, I'm not on my phone. So I'm not checking messages while I'm spending. And when we talk about family, kids or kids? Kids. So how many kids? How old are your kids? I try not to talk too much about my kids, but I have five kids in total. So yeah, two older ones, three younger ones. Yeah. Can we just talk about the age range just to get a feel for it? Yeah. Well, the older ones are just finishing college. And then the younger ones are toddlers. 7, 5, 3. So the 7, 5, 3 you're spending more time with them when it's cool because they're young.

Talk to me, do you have a sense of guilt about the older ones that you didn't spend enough time and then how do you make it up to them at a later point in life? I don't feel as much guilt. I think everybody grows, have a different path in life. I think they got much better environments to grow up in than myself. So and I even though I didn't spend as much time with them I still care about them deeply. So I still help them and I think they appreciate that too. So they have random questions now they're older so they have all these new questions from young adults. So yeah we chat all the time and I don't think they feel resented or I don't think they feel there's an issue but the reason why I ask is because I'm working very very hard and I've got young kids and I'm always balancing between am I spending enough time or am I going to hate myself later in life for working so hard when you don't I don't really need to do the work. I'm doing it because I really enjoy working. Yeah. Yeah. Well there's also a flip side of that too. I think you can spend quality time but spending too much time caring too much for your kid may actually make your kid weaker. I don't know if that makes sense. Right. So if you overly protect the kid. Yes. If you overprotect the kid the kid becomes less anti fragile.

Let me ask you a question about kids. You have a lot of money now. You're probably one of the wealthiest people in the world today. You came from a background where you had nothing. I mean, I know your story and I guess the viewers know your story, but you came from a background where there's nothing. You moved to Canada. And I think you worked at McDonald's or Burger King or one of those. Yeah. I guess that the fact that you never had money gave you the drive and the fire to try and make things right. Correct. What are you going to do about your kids? How are you going to make sure that you don't have kids that have no fire and spoiled spoiled little rich kids. Yeah. Yeah. So, I kind of subscribe to Warren Buffett's philosophy on this, right. I think he famously said that he wants to give his kids enough money so that they feel like they can do anything, but he doesn't want to give his kids so much money that they feel like they don't have to do anything, right. So I kind of subscribe to that philosophy.

Tell me how that works practically though. So I don't give my kids a lot of money. So they're young adults, right. I told my kids, look, if you want a comfortable life for the rest of your life, I can support that. But if you want luxury, if you want a sports car, if you want to fly private, if you want a yacht, if you want the big house, you got to earn that yourself, right. So I will make sure I support you for the, if you earn nothing, I will support you for the rest of your life. Do you think your kids are going to be hungry? Do you think they're going to have because it's I mean, they're the kids of one of the wealthiest people in the world. Do you think they're going to be hungry? The two older ones look pretty hungry. They're pretty eager to get jobs. They ask me for advice on job prospects, different financial advice. So I think the two older ones because of this partial neglect they're pretty hungry I think.

And how do you think the kids feel about the fact that daddy was in jail and it was publicized and I mean this is the most high-profile financial case out there. How do you think that impacted on them socially? I don't think that impacted them at all. I think I was very public. So they understand the issues. Yes. They understand why I was in jail. The circumstances I went to jail. I was the only one who went to jail for banking secrecy violation. There's no fraud. There's no other serious bigger crimes. And I was a special case. So my kids don't really talk to their friends about me too much anyway. I try to ask them to keep it very lowkey. But I mean you walk into college, you walk into school, two weeks ago your dad was taken to jail. People talk about it. I mean that's actually not too much. I think only the close friends know who that dad is. Okay. So the close friends are obviously very supportive and also the kids these days they're pretty smart, right. So they look at my case, they say I've not lost respect from my kids, from their friends, from my friends about the fact I went to jail. Yeah.

What are you going to leave your kids? So, I mean, I guess that when you pass, you're going to pass with billions of dollars and you're going to pass with billions of businesses. What are you leaving to your kids? Cuz I guess if I was your kid and I knew that one day daddy's going to go and I'm going to become a multi-billionaire, then no, I'm not going to leave them billions. I'm going to leave them some probably double digit millions. And the way I want to set it up is when they're younger they get every year from a trust basically they'll get a certain amount of money. When they're younger they get much less. When they're older they get much more. So the logic is look if by 45, by 50 they still haven't achieved much. Yes. Then they'll get a bit more. And you'll be but it's not double digit. That's the incentive not to achieve basically. No, no, it's incentive to achieve. But if they achieve that money is basically I want the money to be meaningless for them at that time.

So what are you going to do with all your money? I mean I'm going to try to make the money work. So money is the enabler. I want to make the money to contribute to enable positive things in the world. So that's actually pretty tough. Just giving money away, putting the money to use to make positive impact is actually pretty hard. Actually I want to use most of the money when I'm alive. So actually I don't believe in this little I'm going to donate to charity at the end of my life. I think that's a very bad way to put money into use because you actually don't control it. I'm still not old. I'm not young. I'm close to 50 now. Yeah. You're in the middle. You're in the middle. I'm in the middle. So luckily I still have hopefully multiple decades to go. So that's still time for me to try to deploy the money for positive impact. I mean I'll give you some perspective. So the average human is 28,800 days. That's the average human life. I think the first 5,000, last 5,000 probably not worth talking about. The first ones are formative. So you got 18,800 days and you're in probably in the middle of that 18,800 days which means that there's not many, there's 9,000 days left. Yeah. Yeah. You got to put it all to work here.

So you say you want to build things or invest your money in things that are going to give social return one day. What kind of things is that? Yeah. So well there's charity stuff you can give money to people. I think that has some definitely direct positive impact but actually that's not the maximum impact. The maximum impact is to improve the technology we have. So I invest very heavily in AI biotech. So for example this 9,000 days that we have left, right, maybe we can invest heavily in biotech so that maybe we can make that longer and higher quality. So I think we're at the stage where with the AI that can comb through very large amounts of data looking for patterns doing experiments, the biotech, we don't understand our human bodies that well. So we can try to, I can use the money to make impact there even though I'm not a biologist. So yeah so let's talk about the things that occupy your time. So first of all crypto, I don't want to talk too much about your crypto journey because I mean there's 100 interviews out there which talk about that a lot. We've probably spoken about that a lot. Do you still have a passion for blockchain crypto cryptocurrencies? Absolutely. Of course. I think look, blockchain is going to be, there's three fundamental technologies in my adult life. There's the internet, there's blockchain and there's AI, right. Just because AI is new and sexy doesn't mean we don't do internet and blockchain, right. Blockchain is money. Blockchain is a technology for money. We're always going to need money and we're going to need more and more of the money, right. And we're going to need more and more efficient, more and more freedom type of money, right.

What is going to be the killer use case for blockchain? Is it going to be AI agent money? AI agent money? That's one. Well, basically, we can reframe the question. What's going to be the killer app for money, right. For better money. So that's kind of the question and there's multiple fronts. It powers the economy. It powers innovation. It's a system that powers global finance. Today the money is divided into countries. So you look at companies in one country then another then another. But the money should be global. So there's a lot of different use cases for blockchain. I still spend 80 to 90% of my time and money and energy on blockchain. I think AI biotech is great but those are not my specialty, right. So I think a person should do what you're good at. Yes. What you're interested in and then what's useful to other people, the intersection of the three.

Do you think Bitcoin is still going to be the global money like you know we've now had Bitcoin around for x years and we know what the problems are, we know there's quantum risk, do you think Bitcoin is going to be global money or have you changed your thesis there? Not yet, not yet. As far as I can see now, today based on all the information we have today, Bitcoin still has the dominance and Bitcoin still has the stamina to continue to dominate. There's nothing replacing Bitcoin just yet. In the future, there may be a better version of a Bitcoin money, but today I don't see it yet. And where we are today with blockchain and we've been around, let's put it 15 years, 16 years, depending on, 16 years, I guess if you look at the killer apps that we've created, we've created a store of value, which is Bitcoin. It's not really money. We've created a way to bring fiat money on chain and to be able to transact it whenever we want. We've created a way to create digital value and to be able to trade it. Anyone can create and trade digital value, but you can argue that we haven't actually got a killer killer killer use case. It's a 15-year-old technology and we haven't got chat GPT yet. Yeah. Yeah. So, I agree with that. But we also got to understand that the last 15 years crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin was under heavy government suppression, right. So it's only in the last year and a half we saw US turning really pro crypto so we only had one year and a half of government supported development before there was suppression. And this happens in almost every other country, a few exceptions like UAE is probably one exception. And now we're only seeing the government slowly turning to support it. They realized though even with the suppression the technology is growing. Bitcoin grown from five cents to today's $80,000, right. So even with that suppression is grown so that's why a lot of the killer apps were actually killed before they were able to grow. So payments, micropayments, agentic payments, that's going to, agentic money that's going to come. So all of that is going to happen in an AI world where agents are where there's billions of agents, we're all going to have, I mean I've already got probably 10 agents. I think we're all going to have hundreds of agents, there's going to be billions of agents worldwide. They're all going to be doing billions of microtransactions. The way I see it, we're going to get an economy that is exponentially bigger than the one we have, but so exponentially bigger that we can't even fathom how big. It's going to someone who used to light coal fires and showing them the internet and saying, Look at what electricity did. That's basically, I think, where we're going to get to. Yeah.

What money will those agents use? Absolutely. It's blockchain, right. But is it going to be Bitcoin blockchain? Is it going to be US dollar onchain? Those details we don't know yet. Those details are very hard to predict. Any predictions on what could happen? Well there's a few different possibilities. I don't know which one. Right. So one is okay they're going to use Bitcoin either lightning network or some other L2 on Bitcoin. So that's instantaneous microtransactions low fees. Let's talk about that for one second. The advantages there are we know it works. It has network effects. It's global and it can't be controlled by any nation and therefore we get this global agentic world without borders right so that's the first option. What are the other options? The other extreme is much more centralized extreme, right. So the AI companies today are highly highly centralized, right. So there's less than 10 really top-notch AI models probably less than three or four. So the AI landscape is going to be highly centralized at least for now, maybe in the future the open source ones will win, who knows. In that highly centralized structure the AI companies can launch their own blockchains or their own tokens, the crypto tokens, not AI tokens. And then in that way it could be a new blockchain. It could be a much more private or enterprise level blockchain. That's one possibility. I think there's going to be many different attempts on all across the spectrum and then we'll see where we land. Yeah.

I must say I got to my bottommost point on crypto this last okay after October 10th I got to my bottommost point and I was Bitcoin can be hit by quantum risk potentially and no one really cares about it. There's very few other use cases except moving fiat dollars on chain. And then at some point the agentic commerce thing clicked and then I kind of asked myself okay how are they going to transact? What's the money? What's the money? And I just kept trying to be negative towards crypto. And I said, What? Can they use PayPal? They're not going to use PayPal because China and America can't, the agents are going to be Chinese and America and they're going to work together and not going to care. And I got to a point where I said the only money that they can use is blockchain. And therefore, this whole AI revolution is great. We're in V1 of the AI revolution where they're not transacting on our behalf yet. But in V2 and V3, they will be transacting. And you cannot do that without blockchain. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also we got to understand it's not AI transacting with AI only. It's AI on behalf of a human transacting with another AI on behalf of another human in a different part of the world. So I use an example which I think is a very easy example. It's if me and you are driving to the airport and we're driving in driverless cars and I'm going to the airport and you're going for coffee and I need to go fast. Our cars need to negotiate. That's effectively two AI agents negotiating. CZ if you move over then I will pay you. Cool. Then you need two things. So you move over. Yeah. And I pass you. The smart contract's got to say, Okay, look, the Oracle's got to say, look, he did pass. And then I've got to pay you and I don't know you and you don't know me and that's trustless. So I think there's going to be billions of those transactions happening every single second. Now again, I try to prove to myself that there's an alternative to crypto, but I don't see an alternative to crypto. Is there an alternative? Am I wearing crypto bro glasses? Well, I don't see one. It has to be crypto. So, but again, I'm a crypto bro, so too, but if that's the case, then then I would say that today crypto is the most undervalued asset class. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, this is it's ridiculous how undervalued it is. If you're telling me that this is the rails for every single financial transaction and that financial market is going to a trillion x itself or a thousand x itself and the entire monetary system with the rails and the is a $2 trillion asset class, I'm what's wrong here? It's definitely going to be so much bigger than two trillion, it's going to be so much bigger than the money system we have today as you mentioned. Yes. The future money system is going to be way bigger than the money system we have today. Yeah. The economy, the normal economy let's take crypto aside. The normal economy in my opinion is going to be a thousand times bigger. Yeah. And therefore the financial system which is going to be made up of many more microtransactions the rails of that financial system has to be exponentially more valuable. Absolutely. And also if you think about it let's say Elon goes to Mars right goes to moon first and then Mars and develop a population there. How are we going to transact with them right? It's going to be we're not going to trust anyone on Earth. So we don't trust people on Earth. We're not going to, yeah. So if you look a bit longer, we do believe we're going to become an interstellar species. Yes. Very soon. So we need proper money. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

So, crypto you're still you say 80 90% in crypto. What's your outlet? Is that your investment company? Is Easy your outlet for, is this where you stimulate your crypto mind where you see and work with founders and make investments? Yes, mostly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm shifting instead of being myself being the founder or running a project. I'm much more of an investor now, we invest for the people who doesn't mind my advice then I coach them or give them advice, mentor them. So I try to help other people to become more successful.

So talk to me, I'm sure people have just heard this and gone wow there's a possibility CZ will invest in me. If people want to get an investment from you. What are the characteristics you're looking for? You must see a thousand applications every single day and they must be filtered and then it gets down to one or two that you actually invest in. What are you looking for, what's the killer ingredients that you're looking for in those founders? It's pretty basic. For me I don't look for shiny stuff. I don't look for fancy oh this is great brand brilliant new idea I don't look for that I look for very basic fundamental stuff. If you have a product or if you have revenue and profits that's fantastic that's easy to look at. Yes. Before that if you don't have those then you have a good product that we can play with and we think that there's a good product market fit that's also good. Before that if you don't have a product yet then we look at the team, right. So is your team strong, does your team gel together, we look at the team regardless of the stage. And then is there a specific thing that you look for when you look for a founder cuz I'll tell you what I look for after but I'd like if I want to stick out as a founder what are you looking for? There's two things. There's technical capability and there's a mission-driven. If you're just trying to make money I think you will stop at a relatively successful place but you won't be the great company in history. So I look for people who really believe in their mission. This is they would do it without money. Yes. But we want people to do something that's valuable. So if they do something valuable and have a mission then they will create wealth. Yeah so those are the two things skills and mission.

So honestly speaking when let's say you invest in a company. Yeah. Do you think you're a good partner? I generally think I am. What makes you a good partner? If I'm lucky enough to get an investment from you what do I expect? Obviously money but what else do I get from you? So I always ask every founder we interact with what else can we help you with in addition to money right? So in crypto this is why I still spend 80 to 90% of my time in crypto. In crypto we have reputation. We can give you exposure. We have a community with a very large user base. We know the crypto landscape quite well. We can advise the crypto founders on

Token economics, token design. What kind of unlocking schedule? What kind of pitfalls? We can connect you with resources. Do you need other investors? Do you need even a market maker? Do you need a different type of, if I'm lucky enough to get the investment from you? Yeah. How much do I get from you and how much do I get from your team? You have an amazing team. I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

It depends. I think every project's different. I like every, we have Easy Lab run incubation seasons. Each incubation season, I spend as a group a few hours with them answering questions. And then for the projects that really want and are a fit for my help, I can't help every kind of project. Sometimes some projects I'm just not an expert in. Yes. Right. So for the biotech projects, I spend very little time helping them because I can't help them. And then for crypto projects, especially if they're closer to trading, if they're closer to exchange type of product or wallet type of product, then I can help them more. There's an AI data project, right. I talk to them once every couple of months or so too. But they are in a different product field that I'm not an expert on and so, but they ask me about token economics, token design, all those questions, then I give them my advice. Yeah. So other projects that are closer to the trading side of crypto things where you're passionate and you understand and you're close to, you can, yeah. And there I can give more specific advice where otherwise it's a generic startup founder mindset. How do you deal with pressure?

How big is the team in your investment company? It's about 15 people, right. So it's a small team. But I think we don't need a large team. Yeah.

How much of your time does Binance still take? I mean, it is the biggest exchange in the world and it's so, I'm still a shareholder. So their shareholder matters. Whenever anything that impacts shares like investors, I get involved, but I don't spend that much time.

As part of your pardon? Yeah. One of the things when you were convicted was that you were not allowed to operate Binance again. As part of your pardon, is that does that fall away? Are you basically, you can go back there? I think for me, it falls away. So I don't have any restrictions. But I think for the company, they may or may not be some restrictions. Actually, there's some legal opinions about that. Yes. I actually, I'm not a lawyer. So I think we need lawyers to. If I want to, nowadays whenever I do something, I go through a lawyer.

So wait, actually, I actually want to talk a little bit about the pardon. So you get out of jail, you've done your time, you've got a little black mark next to your name. Yeah. That little black mark, how restrictive was it? How much of a thing was it? So, yeah, without the pardon, I'm labeled as a felon. So I had a criminal, a financial crime history, which actually makes me not fit and proper as a UBO, as an ultimate beneficiary owner for financial companies. It actually severely impacts our ability to get financial licenses in different parts of the world, not just in the US, right. So with a pardon, it's much better. And there are still some, I would say, unreasonable regulators that will still try to argue I'm still not a fit and proper. But we can fight that. There's no legal basis for those. Okay.

And I mean, small restrictions. I know there's some countries that won't let you in regardless of who you are and how much money you've got. There's some countries that say, look, if you've got a criminal record, you can't come in. I've only experienced one country like that. South Africa. No, not South Africa. I don't want to name them. It's a small island country. It's a small touristy island country. I think it's their loss.

So, how do you get a pardon? So the process, look, you get a lawyer to write a petition and then you submit that through the legal channels. I think there's a White House pardon Tsar, her name is Alice Johnson. She went to jail for a decade. She wrote a book, a very good book. And so you submit it and then you wait. The thing is, no one knows what, at least from my experience, no one knows what the process is. Because every president, so the constitution, my understanding is the constitution gives the president power to do pardons, but he doesn't say how or what process.

But how do you get the attention of the president? Because I'm sure he gets a thousand applications for a pardon. I mean, what I'm asking for is, is there lobbying in the background? Let me be straight with you. There are rumors out there that there were lots of, there's lots of money changed hands or changes hands. So in order to get a pardon, there's absolutely no deal to get a pardon. My lawyers are very specific with me on that one. You don't want to get into more trouble to get a pardon. But how do you get the attention? Well, you submit your case and then I think my case is relatively have very strong merit. US wants to be crypto. President Trump wants us to be the capital of crypto in the world. So right place, right time. And he pardoned Ross Ulbricht on his third day in power. He also pardoned Roth Hayes, who didn't go to prison but had the same charge as me, a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. So there was even with, he did that within two or three months.

So were you confident? Were you anticipating it? You never know. You never know because we actually had a very strong lobbying, anti-lobbying, counter-lobbying from some of our perceived competitors in the US. They don't want me to get a pardon. So the other crypto exchanges in the US don't want me to get a pardon. They're worried about Binance coming back to the US. This is business competition, right. And I mean, there's business, but then there's people and emotions and empathy. And in an ideal world, you compete on business, you don't do this kind of stuff personally, right. You don't attack people personally. But I'm pretty confident it happened to some extent. I don't have concrete evidence of any of it, but I'm pretty confident there was pushback. But the pushback actually again, may also help me to get visibility, right. When they push back, right. So you may, this guy's a, you know, it's game theory at its finest because you want pushback, but you also want the pushback to be just on the border of not, yeah. So yeah. So if there was no pushback, this guy's not important. If there's pushback and stuff, the discussions may escalate. So you may actually, I think at the time I thought it was really unhelpful when I first learned about it, but now looking back, it may have helped. Who knows? But I don't know the process. It's a black box. You submit a petition, you.

Okay. So, I want to talk to you a little bit about the UAE. It seems like the UAE was very friendly towards you. It feels like the UAE gave you all the assistance that you needed when you needed it at the time. Yeah. Let's talk about your relationship with the UAE. First of all, how did you even land up there? Why did you land up there? Yeah. So, I went to UAE in October 2021. My friend told me, look, UAE is pro-crypto. They are very forward-thinking leaders. They're pro-crypto, pro-innovation, right. So this is even before AI was a thing, but now they're also very pro-AI. So I went there. I flew there. I booked a three-week trip there. So I flew there with only one meeting lined up. I was just meeting one minister and I was going to stay here for three weeks and see who I can meet. And then the minister really was really, really good. He understands crypto in a lot of detail. He bought Ethereum in 2015 or 16 when Ethereum was just out, right. So, and he's a young minister. He's a very tech-driven. So that gave me a lot of confidence. And over time, did you name him or is that? Yeah. Yeah. He's in my book. He's His Excellency Omar Al Olama. Okay. It's a great guy. And then he introduced me to a couple other ministers, a few other friends. It's private information. I didn't write in the book. I met with a bunch of very successful people there through him. I met with Telegram's founder Pavel through him, right. So there's a lot of interesting people who are in the UAE. Once you land in a place, you kind of slowly build your network. So, and then over time, I got to interact with more of the senior leadership in the country. They were extremely forward-thinking, extremely sophisticated, extremely well-educated on technology. They want UAE to be the new hub of innovation. This is not just crypto, this is AI, biotech, any sector you name.

How did they feel about, oh, and this is before the cloud was over your head, right. This is you're still operating Binance and everything's good. And so they welcome you and they want you there. And so they know me personally, basically, right. So when all these issues came, they know me personally. They know CZ is not this type of guy, right. So when you know somebody personally, you have a personal view, right. So they were very supportive of me. They want UAE to be a leader in crypto, right. And crypto is actually one of the very interesting industries where the world's leaders are not, the biggest businesses in that sector is not in the US. Yes. Right. And also Binance is not in China. We got kicked out of China. Right. China banned exchanges. So we're industry leader in the new fintech industry that's not in the US, that's not in China. And UAE welcomed us. UAE is, this is fantastic. Right.

So what did they give you? When you say they gave you support, they, I mean, walk me through the, they seem to have been very friendly towards you, which is amazing. Well, I think the most important thing is regulatory support, right. So having proper regulations in place so that we can run a proper business. And that's having clear regulatory guidelines. Is Binance in Dubai? Well, we are now headquartered in Abu Dhabi. Okay. Abu Dhabi ADGM, Abu Dhabi Global Market, the financial regulator there, gave Binance a global license to offer the crypto exchange. Okay.

Now, when you got attacked by the US and the indictment came out, what were the conversations in the UAE like? Actually, I didn't have that many conversations in the UAE with the UAE government about my, because it has to be, the negotiations has to be private, right. I can't tell that many people about those DOJ negotiations. So I didn't have much detailed conversations with them. And but coincidentally, not related to the negotiations, I was invited to join as a citizen of UAE, right. So they do this on invitation. They gave Pavel Durov one, and they invited me. I was very happy to accept. And this kind of, not related to the negotiations, but for me was very helpful for the negotiations, right. UAE is a non-extradition country to the US anyway. They almost don't extradite people. Yes. But as a citizen, there's zero chance you get extradited, right. So, so you became a citizen. So, I was invited, not related to the negotiation. They didn't really know all the details, but they invited me. I accepted, so I got a citizenship. And then, but I didn't use it. I didn't want to use that as I'm just going to hide out over here. Actually, once I got it, it actually prompted me to want to come to the US and solve it instead of relying on that. Yeah.

So, I've got two more questions for you before we end off here. I think one of them is around going back to the US. Are there any regrets? We are where we are today. Yeah. If you were to do things differently, and you are where you are because of what you did and where you've been, and you seem to be in a very good place. But if you could go back and change something or change a few things, one or two of the biggest things, what were the two or three things that you changed? One of the things you told me you would change is you spend more time with your family. Yeah. But let's talk about it. What if you could go back and change? And I want to go into your personal and I want to go into business mistakes. Sure. Sure. What would you have changed? I think, yeah, as you said, on a personal level, I probably will try to spend a bit more time with my family. But that's easier said than done when you're running a startup business. It just sucks all your attention away. And on the business side, it's very simple. Looking back, what I would do if I go back now is you start two platforms. One for Binance US, one for Binance global, binance.com. And then you just block US from day one. And you have much less trouble, right.

But it's simple as that. But hold on, if you had done that at the time, you would have made less money. You would have made less money. You would have, because the reason why you grew so quickly is because everyone was using your platform. Not necessarily. US was never more than 30% of the user base at any time. So it was 10, 20, 30% different times, right. 30% is a lot. That's, but even we were a smart platform to start with and we were growing. As long as user base is growing, you have a, it's when you run a proper exchange, actually quite easy to sustain. So one of the things within three months, we became profitable. And then our profits were pretty high. So I remember one conversation when I asked our finance, what's our profit? He said, a couple hundred Bitcoins. That's crazy. So we had a sustainable business very quickly. So even 30% less, we probably would survive. So do things more right? Be more compliant. Startups always balance this. Should we be compliant or should we be cowboys and ask for forgiveness later? Yeah. So most technology companies when you start, you worry about whether the business will exist in a year's time, right? Am I going to quit in a year because the business may or may not work? You don't think about, if you start today, where there are regulatory frameworks, then you get the licenses. But back then, there was no licenses. There was no crypto licenses. There was no VSP. There's no one to ask. Yeah. There's no MiCA, there's no VSP, there's no Genius Act, there's no Clarity Act. So there's nothing. And then also the definition of crypto, is this money? Is it a commodity? Is it securities? It wasn't clear. Yes. Right. So, but what I learned is much later, US has very long memory. They look back many years. So they look backwards.

And then are you more cautious now? You've been convicted before, you're pardoned, so you got a clean slate. When you post rubbish, when you tweet stuff, when you do, do you think, do you think twice? When I do business, I'm much more cautious. But I don't run all my tweets through a lawyer. That's just too crazy. But I kind of know where the guardrails are on tweets. So I try not to piss people off. And then on the business side, I involve way more lawyers now. So yeah, that's a lesson. And that's a lesson I learned. That's my weak area. I don't come from a legal. All entrepreneurs are that because when entrepreneurs make a mess, the lawyers usually catch up later.

Your relationship with money. You've had a strange relationship with money. I've known you for a long time. You still wear, I mean, you've changed your shoes. You don't wear the black shoes with the yellow shoes or whatever it is. But I mean, you seem to have, money doesn't matter. I don't know. You've always been this really unassuming billionaire. Yeah. Well, this is a Skechers slip-on, right. So they're $50, $100 shoes. I think more $30. But it's okay. You seem to be oblivious to the fact that, or am I reading it wrong? Does it feel money doesn't matter to you personally? It matters to causes that you build and investments that you make. I think there's a different, a few milestones for money, right. So one is, you got to take care of yourself, right. You got to be able to have food, place to live, and that doesn't require that much, right. Like, you fly private? I usually do now. Just for privacy. You got your own jet? I have a long lease through an intermediate company. Do you have a yacht? I have a small boat. Yeah. So where else do you splash? Not very much. Do you have houses all over the world? Do you have a house outside here then? No, I try not to keep too many houses. I have one house in Dubai and one house in Abu Dhabi. But the house in Dubai is completely empty. I've been trying to sell it. Now the price is down. So which is okay. Which is okay. The my Abu Dhabi desperate seller. My Abu No, I'm not. I have had it for years. I'm not that desperate. The Abu Dhabi house is a 15-year-old house. The second floor bathroom leaks, so it leaks onto the living room on the first floor. Still, I mean, this is an old problem that you haven't fixed yet. Not completely. And the air conditioning doesn't work that well. I paid what I paid, I think I paid $57 million for the house. US dollars. So you said you have a boat. You said that you fly private. How else does, how, what else has changed in your personal life? Not that much. I mean, you don't need that much money to have a decent life. And also having luxury watches doesn't make you happy. What is that? A Garmin watch. This is a Garmin watch. It works all the time. So you can put in water, you can put in the sand, it just works. Skechers shoes, Garmin watch. The pants are from Amazon. I think it's Amazon Basics. So this is a merchandise t-shirt.

So what do you, what do you do with your money? How do you enjoy your, do you enjoy your money? I don't think you should make it your goal to enjoy your money and then you're working for the money. And then your money controls you. That actually leads to what are the things that money buys you that you really enjoy? Because it's not clothes, you've shown me now that it's, I have a lot of camera gadgets, but I don't use them. I use them once, I put them away. But it doesn't make me so, I don't think you should focus on money to make. Once you have enough money, which is not a high number, once you have enough money, then having more, you shouldn't rely on having more of the money to make you happy. In your calculations, for someone watching this today, what do you think that number is? When you say, once you have enough, what is that enough money? I think for almost everybody on earth, $90 million is enough. US dollars, right? You can go way below that. That's a big number. But I think $10 million is enough for financial freedom if you live a normal life, right. So, but if you want pretty, what I mean by $100 million is beyond that, it doesn't matter anymore, right. If you have $100 million and you say, oh, I'm not happy, and $200 million will make you happier, that's just craziness, right. That doesn't work. I think even beyond $10 million. Mhm. $20 million may still make a little bit of difference there. But the difference diminishes very quickly. Beyond $50 million, zero difference. And then if you're stuck on money to make you happy, you're going to be unhappy. And then there are other things. Family is your health good? Is your family good? For me, the health thing is the one that killed me. We get to, we feel that. Yeah. So I'll tell you why. This is exactly it. Yeah. So for me, number one is now when I get an injury. Yeah. I used to get an injury and it was, I'd be able to play again the next day. Now when I get an injury, it's three weeks of physio and maybe even six months sitting outside. And I think that that shows you. The other thing that scares me is we're all strong and rich and powerful and we have followers and we have likes and we have shares and it's all amazing. And then your body temperature goes up by one degree. Yeah. Yeah. 36 and a half to 37 and a half. And then you're lying in bed and you're shivering and you can't move. And that's just one degree. That's just a reminder of how it's one degree is the difference between I don't know how many billion you've got and being absolutely completely useless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And that's also why I said let's put the money to use to solve those kind of really hard to solve problems, right. Yeah. Yeah.

So how do you want to be remembered? How do you want to be, there's going to be a legacy because you're one of the most powerful people. You revolutionized industry. And how do you want people to remember you? I actually, as I said in my book, I also said multiple times publicly, I actually don't care too much about my legacy. I care about what I think about myself before I die. Yes. So, when I'm old and lying sick in bed, I want to look back and say, okay, I did my best to contribute to this world that I've been brought into. So, I want to leave the world a little bit better than when I came. So, I want to make a positive contribution. If my abilities are high, then I should do a lot. If my abilities are small, then I just do my best. So, I want to do my best. I don't want to be the best at anything. I just need to know I did my best.

When you look at someone like Elon, who's, I think maybe he's on a slightly different trajectory because he's trying to change the world and he's trying to change Mars. And how do you think about what he's thinking? I actually think, well, Elon has a, I have a whole theory about this. I actually think Elon doesn't care about money. He doesn't. I actually think that my theory is he's an alien. He wants to return to his home planet and Mars is just a stepping stone, right. So that's my theory. But this is kind of a half joke, half serious. But if you think about it, right. So gasoline cars don't work on Mars. Battery cars do. Solar is, there's no gasoline on other places. So solar is important. So that's why, if you think about SpaceX, batteries, Tesla, now Tesla robotics, all of this is just to go back to his home planet. And I think Mars is not it. Mars is probably a stepping stone. I'm laughing, but it actually makes so much sense. Total sense if you think about it. But this is completely conspiracy theory, right. And also, you need, you need because otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. So he's just bored on Earth.

Do you know Elon? Have you spent time with him? I actually have never met him in person. We chat randomly. We do maybe five text messages a year or less, right. So the years go by that we don't message each other. He's busy. I'm busy. We're entrepreneur types. I'm not a chatty type. I only message people when there's something to talk about. I don't, "Hey, how you doing, bro?" I don't. He's too busy for that. I'm too busy for that. So, yeah. So we, I never met him in person. Yeah. It's the same relationship I have with you. I never text you just to say hi. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the same as, although I did text you a few times when you were in trouble and I said, "Can I help? Can I help?" Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. So only when there's something to really, really say, right. Yeah.

CZ, it's so good to see you, man. And I'm glad we got to spend this relaxed time together in this secret location. It's been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you, guys.