Changpeng Zhaos memoir is key to understanding the future of crypto

Changpeng Zhao, the controversial crypto mogul better known as CZ, has published a new book called “Freedom of Money” — a narrative of his life and career that’s key for anyone who wants to understand the business of digital assets.What makes this 366-page memoir sing isn’t the riveting prose — English is the 49-year-old bitcoin billionaire’s second language.Instead, the book shines as it tells the inside story of the rise of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.CZ lays it out with seeming candor, both about himself and other big players including his famous nemesis, the jailed crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

By the time you’ve finished “Freedom of Money,” you will understand how a heterodox speculative investment play turned into a $3 trillion industry embraced by Wall Street’s biggest players.CZ found himself in the middle of the crypto maelstrom almost by accident.He was a techie in traditional finance who heard about bitcoin from a friend during a poker game.

He did his research and was sold on its value and the potential of the blockchain technology — a seamless “decentralized” way of buying and selling stuff — that is at the core of crypto.That’s when he sold his apartment and went all in on the coin.After several crypto winters, the bet eventually made him a billionaire.

It was the launching pad for Binance.But it also made him a target of the Biden administration, whose crypto crackdown landed him in federal prison for four months.(He was forced to resign from Binance even as he remains its largest shareholder.)Jail was a horrible experience — his writing consisted of a “brain dump” during the 15-minute intervals when prisoners have access to a computer, he told me last week in an interview.But it gave him time to reflect on crypto’s maturation from a backwater into something that is now a chunk of many mainstream investor portfolios.

The underlying technology, the blockchain, continues to be innovati...