CZ uses new book to share his ‘principles’ — they’re totally unhinged

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s (CZ) autobiography, Freedom of Money, isn’t a good book. Mercifully for anybody intending to read it, this becomes clear within the first few sentences, which amount to an unreadable brain-dump of completely random statements and claims presented in no decipherable order.

I, against my better judgment, waded through 270 pages (and nearly put the book down) before noticing that the Appendix section wasn’t an appendix at all but a long list of “CZ’s Principles” — and wow, is it unhinged.

Let’s take a closer look…

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A mishmash of advice, opinions, and nonsense

While the bullet-point list of principles goes on for 26 pages (yes, you read that right) and covers everything from how to properly operate a global business to what type of friendships are worth having, I finished the list still unclear if CZ even knows what principles are or how they differ from regular advice.

Indeed, most of the principles aren’t principles at all. These include:

• Friends, you won’t be able to have too many of them, at least not at a close level. I am not a hub, I don’t/can’t maintain too many friends or relationships. It takes too much time. I am careful to have friends who are hubs. They know many people so that I can ask them when I need to “network.”
• Binance is the most global organization in the world. No other organization before us started or operated at the same level of “globalness” in terms of user base, team, and mindset.
• Be careful, many labels apply differently in different parts of the world. For example, in China, if you move more than $50,000 equivalent out of the country in any given year, that’s called money laundering. In many parts of the world, it is legal and normal to have four wives. The list goes on and on.

None of these are even close to resembling what you’d call a principle; they’re more statements of fact or opinion.

In fact, when you boil them down, they don’t amount to much more than “I don’t have friends and view people transactionally, Binance is big, definitions change depending on jurisdiction.”

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In addition to this, many of his so-called “principles” are contradictory or bizarre.

For example, numerous times, he declares that money shouldn’t be the focus of any businessman because time is more important, repeatedly iterating that time, not money, is limited.

He later explicitly states that “money shouldn’t be an unlimited supply asset.” So what exactly does CZ want from money? How does he think people should value it? It’s never properly explained.

If the richest man in crypto had hired a proper editor, perhaps these issues could’ve been fixed. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and the reader is left to parse through the consequences.

Why publish this?

I reached out to CZ and asked him some questions that had been on my mind since starting his book, two of which I continue to struggle with:

1. Why would you publish this?
2. Why didn’t you hire an editor to cut out the repetition and grammatical errors, and actually find a compelling narrative to focus on?

Though CZ never bothered to answer these questions, I’ve been able to come to my own conclusions by reflecting on his “principles.”

What CZ makes clear is that he has almost no friends, doesn’t read the news, doesn’t watch sports, and doesn’t listen to music. In fact, he hardly does anything for leisure whatsoever.

In the book, he often speaks disparagingly of coworkers who go out to parties or spend time together outside of the office. CZ doesn’t trust anyone to accomplish anything as well as he believes he can accomplish it.

Why hire a well known editor to go over your book when you know a guy who you think could edit the book perfectly well instead?

Why outsource the writing to a professional writer when you can just write the book yourself?

How can you possibly share this with anyone and get honest feedback when you have no friends and it sounds like everyone is already fearful of you?

Read more: CHART: Returns of memecoins attributed to CZ since leaving prison

Indeed, CZ describes his own method for giving critical feedback and it’s to never say anything an employee has done is good, only to tell them what they’ve done wrong.

While that sounds like an awful work environment to me, from this book I can tell without a shadow of a doubt that this isn’t how people treat CZ.

No one is telling him to fix the mistakes, hire an editor, or just flat-out tell him that the book is straight up awful. They’re saying “great job!” and that’s extremely embarrassing.

Through his own “principles,” CZ has created a bubble where he can treat others, even those who seem to be extremely close to him, with total impunity.

He’s feared, not loved, and interactions with him are likely conducted on eggshells, not through heartfelt honesty.

Read more: CZ cries FUD as anti-Binance posts flood X

Reputation laundering

I know why CZ wrote this book: it’s called reputation laundering and other billionaires have done it successfully.

But that’s the key word here. There’s a massive difference between the successful reputation launderers and CZ.

Elon Musk, for example, who is just as unhinged and awful in his own right, knows he isn’t a writer. So, when he needed good PR, he had Walter Isaacson and an editor write a glowing love letter about him.

Even Sam Bankman-Fried let Michael Lewis write his story, with many feeling the end result was too sympathetic to the largest crypto scammer in history.

CZ, who admits he’s a terrible writer at the very beginning of the book, decided that, regardless of his abilities — or lack of — he was the only one who could properly share a book about his life.

This, unfortunately for him, paints a very clear picture of who he actually is: a billionaire who trusts no one but himself, who rarely does anything that’s not business-oriented, doesn’t know how to interact with people on a human level.

CZ mentions charity dozens of times throughout the book, usually in reference to Binance Charity. He suggests that Binance Charity and his learn-to-read app called Giggle Academy are two of his most important projects. This is obviously not the case.

Binance Charity hasn’t funded a project since a few donations trickled in in 2022.

Almost all other projects have been inactive since 2020. If Binance Charity is important to CZ he’s shown his affection in a very strange way — by basically killing off the entire concept for half a decade.

Giggle Academy, his other project that’s supposedly great for the world-at-large and very important to him, has only 94 reviews on the App store. These include, “My kid likes this game, but I was really upset to discover that the storybook section is filled with creepy AI generated slop.”

The game also records children who are using it, which sounds like nightmare fuel to any true cryptocurrency and privacy rights advocates.

Needless to say, it’s easy to see that these concepts that CZ pretends to care about are pure spin, and an attempt to win back public affection since his arrest and pardon, and the major issues with how Binance runs its exchange.

Freedom of Money isn’t about money, Binance, or even CZ and his principles, it’s a fairytale to win over the hearts and minds he’s been losing for years.

Unfortunately, it fails miserably, reflecting an insecure, paranoid, overconfident billionaire desperate for love that he won’t receive.

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