Here Is What REALLY Happened... [CZ Interview]

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]CZ, very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on this interview. My name is Crypto Kids. I'm 18. I've been in crypto since I was 12, and Binance was the reason why I started. So, thank you for the opportunity. I read your book, The Freedom of Money.

[00:00:13]Um it was incredible. It goes into many of the troubles you faced and the story behind the success of Binance. How was it writing the book? Cuz it was a very unique experience from what I understand.

[00:00:24]>> Well, I started writing when I was in prison. But that was quite a limited uh tools available. But at the same time, that was also helped me because um I had a lot of free time, nothing to do.

[00:00:34]Right? So, even though the the I didn't have a cut and paste function, as I said in the book. But um I had a lot of time.

[00:00:40]I had nothing else to do. So, uh that was kind of good to get that first draft in. And then uh we took a long time afterwards still to to finish the book.

[00:00:48]So, uh I think I underestimated how long it just takes to write a book. Every revision takes like 2 3 weeks. My gosh.

[00:00:56]And um how was your time? Of course, you did it to save the industry, and we're all very grateful for your acts um because I think without you we would have faced so much unnecessary scrutiny.

[00:01:07]So, whilst doing that act of service, how are you feeling? Were you feeling isolated? Did you feel scared? Was it an environment that you were How how did it really feel? I think there was definitely a strong element of uncertainty and the mental stress.

[00:01:20]Before you go into prison, right? You don't know what what you don't know what to expect. Uh and then my lawyers are telling me like, "Look, you're the richest person to ever go to prison. So, you will probably be the primary extortion target." There was a lot of discussions about how to deal with that, how to avoid that, what do you do, what can you not do, etc. So, there was a lot of mental stress in that front. Um once I was in, um there was a lot of stress about like will they come up with another excuse to keep to keep me longer? Uh will there be another charge?

[00:01:46]Will there be Will there be something else? So, but for example, if I knew that was like a 4 month, you're guaranteed to be out, uh then it's probably okay. But then um I As I said in the book, I got three ICE detainers, each one can like you know add a year to my custody. So there was a lot of that mental stress that that happened. There was actually a lot of legal exercise that you have to do. There's a lot of lawyers working behind the scenes, etc. So that part was quite stressful. But luckily, there was no physical harm. I did not face any extortion in prison. It was just mental. It was just like the mental stress.

[00:02:18]Like you stated, you were one of the probably the most wealthiest individual to ever set foot in an American prison.

[00:02:24]I want to ask you a personal question.

[00:02:26]Through all of the success, monetary success you've had, with all of the wealth that you've built today, when you sit down, how what are your next goals? What makes you happy? What keeps you satisfied beyond financial attain?

[00:02:41]I think for me it's a now I have a very peaceful mind. I just want to do my best to help.

[00:02:47]All right. So as long as I'm doing my best, I'm not trying to be the best at anything. As long as I'm doing what I can, I'll be happy. So and luckily, I still have quite a lot to give I think. I'm not that old. I'm not young, but I'm not that old.

[00:03:01]>> Well, it's relative.

[00:03:02]>> [laughter] >> And I do have abilities and resources.

[00:03:05]So I can't just stop yet. I'm 49, so I I can't stop. Wow.

[00:03:10]So in the 20th century you were born.

[00:03:12]That's wow. I wanted to ask you as well.

[00:03:15]I love the name of the title of the book Freedom of Money. It is a concept that people who are non-crypto I think struggle to understand cuz they're stuck in a certain matrix or simulation as you describe it. What is the freedom of money and how can people my age, who are 18 years old, how can they start escaping from that? Sure. I think most people when they think about money, we're brainwashed to not think about money. We're brainwashed to think about money in a very simplistic way. What we call the piece of paper money is actually debt. It's a government IOU in most places in the world. When you have put money in the bank, you can be frozen at any given time. And also even if it's not frozen, if you want to transact, if you want to send money overseas, you try it with a with a decent amount, uh it's going to be very difficult. Uh it's very expensive, very slow, etc. Um and also, you prevent it from investing in certain type of assets. You're There's a lot of restrictions here.

[00:04:07]To the point that also, even worse, you could be made arbitrarily poor by quantitative easing, right? So, the government can print more money and and make you arbitrarily poor.

[00:04:16]So, all of those things, basically, you don't have a lot of freedom with your money. What people don't talk about it, but now the technology is there, uh the blockchain is there, there are alternatives. So, um this is why crypto uh is better in in all of those aspects, if you if you're learning to if you keep on digging into it, right? So, I think people don't think about it. And then, uh there's also because of the uh impact of blockchain technology, there's a lot of suppression, there's a lot of pushback. I think the industry has seen that for the last of what I'm uh 70 years. So, I think, you know, at any time we can increase the freedom of something without sacrificing anything else that our civiliza- civilization advances, right? So, if you look at uh freedom of from slavery, uh freedom of press, freedom of speech, the internet, freedom of information, and any of those transitions, uh soon we'll have freedom of intelligence, we'll see.

[00:05:04]The blockchain increases the freedom of the money. This is the industry we're in. So, I thought, you know, it's a good tie-in for the book. And I think most people get it wrong. When I teach my friends at school or speak to kids my age saying, "Hey, crypto and primarily Bitcoin is a way out from going into this generational amounts of debts and finding a way to perhaps retire early and focus on what you love." The main question that I see is, "How do I get rich quick?"

[00:05:30]For you, what is the real genuine way to become wealthy from cryptocurrency? The freedom's really the key. You could get rich quick, and but then people if people can make you arbitrarily poor by 50% the next day uh by quantitative easing, by printing more money, then you're still in the the rat race. You want sovereignty, you want control over your money. You want money that no one can print more. You want arbitrarily.

[00:05:51]You want money that you can you can store, you can custody, you have control over. And you want money that you can transact with anybody in the world freely, cheaply, fastly. Right? So, you want all of those properties that have increases your freedom. You want your own sovereign individual sovereign money. And crypto look at that. But Bitcoin, some of the major cryptocurrencies are are dogs. Where people just want to make get quick rich, they're still living in the sort of first layer mindset. They're not really thinking about what what are they working What are they trying to maximize? If they're still trying to maximize fiat money, then you're still in the in the old trap. Yeah. And I love the product that you're launching, Binance Junior. I think it has a lot of potential, and I'm very excited to see what happens with that next. For all of the future Binance Junior users, all the teenagers out there, do you have one piece of advice that you would like to give them if they're starting out young and wanting to become successful in the field of crypto? I think basically just learn about it as much Well, learn about crypto as much as you can, and then also play with it, use it small amounts.

[00:06:49]Especially for young people, many of the discussions in crypto is about price and trading.

[00:06:54]They're highly speculative. I would actually recommend youngsters not to try that. Yeah. Uh but look at more of the utility value of a crypto. How do you use this as a technology for micro payments, for the global overseas payments, for AI agentic payments? So, look at the use cases and technology first. Uh we're still in the early phase of building the technology.

[00:07:13]This is like the internet in the TCP/IP And later on, there will be more apps that people can build. So, I would encourage young people to to learn about how to increase the utility and build more apps for crypto. Before I I know you have a lot of interviews to get to. So, before I let you go, Mr. CZ, I have two final questions. The price of Bitcoin frustrated myself and many of our friends. We all thought that we were going to go so much higher in Q4 and even in in going to 2026. What is your thoughts for Bitcoin's price action and cryptocurrency prices in general? And then I will close off with any words you would like to give from your book to remind people and why they should check your book out. Sure, sure. Well, number one, I share the same sentiment with you on the Bitcoin price. I thought it was going to be a lot higher by by now. Yes.

[00:07:57]Bitcoin has a way to move slowly. It's mass psychology. I think also now it's recovering a bit from the low. So, I think quite a lot of the hard money went to AI, which is bad and good, but it's bad in the short term, but long term it actually makes crypto more stable. All right. So, it's more solid growth right now. So, I still think that we are still early in the adoption phase. Only like less than 1% of wealth is in easy crypto. All right. So, just still there's still a lot of room to grow. And then as for the book, I think it's you know, it's just important for people to check >> Kenji. So, this is the book for everybody. I was delighted to read it.

[00:08:28]>> Yeah.

[00:08:28]>> And I think everybody who's a teenager, who's a aspiring entrepreneur, needs to check it out. What is one topic from the book that you love the most and that people should read? I don't know, actually. I from it's like a random pieces that that I experienced through.

[00:08:43]Different people read it differently.

[00:08:45]I've I've heard so many different feedback. But for me it's a if you understand my journey, which actually reflects the over the last 13 years, covers quite a bit of the crypto journey. I'm not early earliest starter.

[00:08:55]I started 2013. But if you want to understand crypto how the crypto industry evolve, this is one perspective. Well, CZ, thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate it. I'm a massive fan. Thank you for all you've done. Thank you.