Sam Bankman-Fried may be the one on trial, but his main rival, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, is also under pressure as falling trading volumes wipe out billions from his net worth Dollar.
According to the latest estimates from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Binance CEO’s wealth fell by about $11.9 billion, with his net worth falling to about $17.2 billion.The drop represents a significant decline since January 2022, when CZ was worth Up to US$96 billionjust shy of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s latest Estimated net worth $105 billion.
CZ’s decline in wealth is partly due to Binance’s declining revenue, with trading volume down 38% this year. Bloomberg reports. Although Binance increased its market share among cryptocurrency exchanges to 62% earlier this year by running zero-fee promotions on popular trading pairs, according to data, after the promotion ended, its market share dropped to third It fell to 51% at the end of the quarter. Research firm CCData.
Binance is under tremendous regulatory pressure in the United States, and its operations have been severely affected. In June, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued the cryptocurrency exchange and CZ for alleged violations of securities laws. The agency alleged that CZ and the exchange mishandled customer assets. It also claims that CZ and Binance allowed some U.S. customers to evade protocols designed to keep them on scaled-down versions of the exchanges, instead allowing them to trade on major exchanges abroad. CZ and Binance have Denies SEC allegations.
Binance’s regulatory scrutiny has hit its U.S. subsidiary hard. In June, Binance.US stopped U.S. dollar deposits, and earlier this month the exchange stopped U.S. dollar deposits Stop USD withdrawals. Although Binance.US was valued at $4.2 billion after a funding round in March 2022, the Bloomberg Wealth Index has reduced Binance.US’s value to zero.
Although Zhang Changpeng’s book wealth has dropped significantly, he has previously said that he rarely pays attention to the fluctuations of his net worth.In an interview in March 2022 wealthThe 46-year-old questions whether such estimates are accurate.
“If they think I’m worth that much, that’s what they think,” he said at the time. “This is fictitious pricing.”
Svlook
