CZ生命中最重要的10个人The 10 Most Important People in CZ’s Life

编辑| Wu Blockchain本文已获得相关人士许可编辑和引用。鼓励读者在亚马逊上购买正版，支持慈善事业。如果按照《金钱自由》正文中直接提及的次数排序，最常出现在长泽身边、对他的人生叙事结构最强烈的10个人，大致是：父亲（62次）、何一（54次）、妹妹（49次）、母亲（32次）、SBF（23次）、周伟（23次）、Vitalik（20次）、Ted (14)、海娜 (13) 和特朗普 (12)。这些计数是仅基于文本中直接引用的粗略估计，并使用不同的人工智能工具进行了交叉检查，因此可能存在一定的误差范围。还应该强调的是，本文是根据《Freedom of Money》编译和解释的。所描述的关系和事件细节反映了 CZ 的个人观点。读者在判断其准确性和完整性时应将其与其他公开信息进行比较。 父亲 在书中，CZ的父亲首先出现在家庭背景部分。他来自农村，是周边村庄第一个考上大学的人。山口恢复后

通过高考，他后来进入中国科学技术大学攻读研究生。由于长期在外地学习、工作，张长鹏的成长过程很少见，通常只有在寒暑假的时候。全家搬到合肥后，父亲第一次带着他和妹妹参观了中科大的机房。他打开了一个简单的两人赛车程序，当按下按键时，白点会在屏幕上移动。书中明确描述这是 CZ 第一次见到计算机。全家搬到加拿大后，钱仍然很紧张，但他的父亲仍然带他去电脑商店，花了 7,000 加元买了一台 x286 电脑——大约是他七个月的工资。 CZ在书中写道：“没有t

Editor | Wu Blockchain

This article has been edited and quoted with permission from relevant parties. Readers are encouraged to purchase the official edition on Amazon and support charity.

If ranked by the frequency of direct mentions in the main text of 《Freedom of Money》, the 10 people who appear most often around CZ — and who most strongly structure the narrative of his life — are roughly: his father (62 times), He Yi (54), his sister (49), his mother (32), SBF (23), Zhou Wei (23), Vitalik (20), Ted (14), Heina (13), and Trump (12). These counts are rough estimates based only on direct references in the text, and were cross-checked using different AI tools, so some margin of error may remain.

It should also be emphasized that this article is compiled and paraphrased from 《Freedom of Money》. The relationships and event details described reflect CZ’s personal perspective. Readers should compare them with other public information when judging their accuracy and completeness.

Father

In the book, CZ’s father first appears in the family background section. He came from a rural area and was the first person in the surrounding villages to get into university. After the restoration of the college entrance examination, he later entered the University of Science and Technology of China for graduate studies. Because he spent long periods away studying and working in other cities, CZ saw little of him growing up, usually only during winter and summer breaks.

After the family moved to Hefei, his father took him and his sister to visit the computer room at USTC for the first time. He opened a simple two-player racing program in which white dots moved across the screen as keys were pressed. This is explicitly described in the book as the first time CZ ever saw a computer. After the family moved to Canada, money remained tight, but his father still took him to a computer store and spent CAD 7,000 on an x286 computer — roughly seven months of his salary. CZ wrote in the book: “Without that computer, there might be no me today.”

During the Hefei period, his father was already working at USTC. He later became a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto and then pursued a PhD at the University of British Columbia. From Zhonghu Village to Hefei, and then to Vancouver, every major family move was directly tied to his father’s study or work arrangements.

In those Canadian years, his father kept all household expenses in a small notebook, clipped newspaper coupons, and drove the family around early on weekends to compare prices store by store. He calculated every household expense carefully. The book also notes that his father was always carrying a camera and taking photos; that camera stayed with the family for many years. CZ later traced his own love of photography equipment back to that influence. Another detail in the book is that CZ’s mother told him his father only truly “clicked” academically in high school. So when CZ’s grades were mediocre as a child, he kept waiting for his own turning point. By high school, his academic performance did improve significantly, and the book explicitly draws that parallel.

In 2020, his father told CZ and his sister that he had been diagnosed with leukemia, though he did not explain the stage in detail and only said he would need frequent blood transfusions. In the spring of 2021, he disclosed that the illness had worsened and that doctors believed he might have only 12 to 18 months left. At the time, his father was in Toronto and CZ was in Singapore. CZ immediately proposed bringing him to Singapore, partly because his father had not yet met his two youngest children. At the height of pandemic restrictions, Singapore had closed its borders to non-citizens, but CZ obtained a humanitarian special permit through friends. He also contacted one of Singapore’s top leukemia specialists for remote consultation and arranged quarantine hospital and treatment plans in advance.

After all preparations were completed in July, his father said he wanted to stay in Toronto for two more weeks. Just one week later, he died after developing a fever. The book says that the night before, he had still gone for a walk with his partner and seemed completely normal. But that night he developed a fever, did not want to go to the emergency room late at night and wait in line, and decided to go the next morning instead. In the end, weakened by chemotherapy and a compromised immune system, he did not survive.

He Yi

He Yi occupies a very special place in the book because she is both a figure in the story and the author of the foreword. Before the main text even begins, it is her foreword that opens the book. She recalls first meeting CZ in the spring of 2014, when the crypto market was in decline and Bitcoin was constantly being declared “dead” by the media. She herself had just given up her career as a TV host to enter the industry, while CZ was already speaking on stage about blockchain. She writes that what she saw then was “someone standing on stage talking about blockchain technology, with light in his eyes.”

However, her connection with CZ had actually started before that in-person meeting. The book says that several months earlier, when He Yi had just entered the crypto space, she joined a large cryptocurrency group chat that they were both in, and the two were already online acquaintances. In March 2014, OKCoin held an industry summit at Hangzhou University. CZ caught a ride there with a friend, and the organizers asked him at the last minute to “say a few words” on stage. He improvised for a few minutes. It was there on stage that he noticed a woman in the front row listening very attentively — that woman was He Yi. That was their first offline meeting.

They met again two months later. In May 2014, CZ attended another crypto summit in Beijing and ran into He Yi again. This time, they quickly agreed on an advertising cooperation deal. Right after the deal was settled, He Yi directly tried to recruit him. She told him that with his real exchange experience, there was no need to stay at a wallet company, and that he should move into the exchange sector. At that time CZ was still at Blockchain.info, but already preparing to leave. Once she learned he had resigned, she quickly contacted him and offered him 5% equity to join OKCoin. Almost at the same time, BTC China also offered him 10% equity. OKCoin then matched the 10%, with investors even giving up part of their own stake to make the recruitment happen. In the end, CZ chose Beijing and joined OKCoin.

After CZ left OKCoin, Roger Ver and Xu Mingxing publicly fell out over the usage fee for the bitcoin.com domain, and Xu also directed accusations of “forging contracts” at CZ. At the same time, pressure was put on He Yi to publicly denounce him. She did not do so and instead chose to resign.

By 2017, when CZ decided to build an exchange and move ahead with an ICO, he quickly realized he needed someone who could simultaneously handle brand, marketing, community, media, and external communication. He Yi was the first person he thought of. But at that time she was already CMO of Yixia Technology, which had just completed a USD 500 million Series E round and was planning to go public on Nasdaq the following year. The book notes that, if everything had gone smoothly, her options could have been worth tens of millions of dollars.

The origin of the name Binance is also tied to that early period. The team initially discussed exchange names, and CZ’s own ideas were more literal, something closer to “B exchange.” Later, through repeated discussion, with He Yi also involved, they ultimately settled on Binance. Once the decision was made to launch an ICO, time was extremely tight. Three days later, on June 17, the team completed the first Chinese and English drafts of the white paper. CZ sent the draft to several friends for feedback and invited them to serve as project advisers. The book says that among all those advisers, only He Yi actually proposed revisions to the white paper — and she proposed a lot of them, so many that CZ felt the time he spent clicking “accept changes” exceeded the time he had spent writing the first draft. It was also during this period that He Yi became more deeply involved in Binance’s earliest external narrative and messaging.

After Binance launched, BNB’s price fell sharply at one point, and community sentiment turned ugly. CZ was livestreaming constantly to respond. The book says this situation lasted three weeks, until the announcement that He Yi was joining.

During the emergency evacuation from Shanghai in September 2017, He Yi and her mother had only moved to Shanghai less than a month earlier. Just days before, her mother had injured her tailbone and was unable to walk. But after the late-night confirmation of the crackdown rumors, He Yi still woke her mother from sleep and said she had to leave for Tokyo immediately and did not know when she would be back. She arrived at 4 a.m. and went to the airport with CZ. On the way there, it was also He Yi who suggested pulling out the SIM cards and shutting off their phones to avoid being tracked.

Sister

CZ’s sister runs through the book from his childhood to university and then into the early stage of his career. One of the earliest details is that, because there was no kindergarten nearby, their mother first tried sending his five-year-old sister to primary school early. It worked well, and when CZ turned five, she let him enroll two years early as well. That is the starting point where the siblings first appear together in the book.

During the Hefei and Canada years, her role becomes more concrete. After the whole family moved into a townhouse at UBC, the parents had one room, the sister had another, while CZ slept in a small storage room without a window. The book says that every few weeks, his sister would suggest switching rooms with him for a while so he could “get some air.” After their mother started working in a garment factory, the fourteen-year-old sister was responsible for cooking dinner for the family, while CZ washed dishes. Later, when she turned fifteen, she started working at McDonald’s. A year later, once CZ reached the legal minimum working age, he followed her there. Later, during university, his father gave him CAD 6,000 in his first year, and in the second year it was his sister who gave him CAD 3,000 to help him out.

In his junior year, his sister introduced CZ to the Japanese IT company where she was working. The interview went smoothly, and he ultimately received a summer internship in Tokyo. He then stayed in Tokyo to work and did not return to McGill to complete his final year in person, later transferring credits remotely to finish his degree.

Another major detail comes after CZ completed his prison sentence. The book says that when he walked out of the U.S. prison, his family and Michael Santos were there waiting. Only after getting into the car did he really begin to relax. Between leaving prison and reporting to the halfway house, he had only a few hours of freedom, and the first place he went was his sister’s home. There, he had a proper lunch and took a “real shower,” without worrying about brushing against walls or needing slippers to avoid the dirty floor. After he arrived at the halfway house, his sister also bought him a new phone so it could pass inspection.

Mother

During the Zhonghu Village period, his mother taught math and history at the local middle school. Because his father was away most of the time, she raised the two children largely on her own, with their grandmother often helping. The book says there was no running water at home, and the nearest well was 300 meters away. Every day she carried shoulder poles back and forth many times, pouring the water into the family’s storage jar. Later, when they installed a hand pump, the children thought it felt like “magic.” She was also the one who prepared separate desks for both siblings; under rural conditions at the time, that was already quite rare.

Because there was no kindergarten, she spoke with primary school teachers and arranged for the sister to enter school early, then repeated the process with CZ. After 1987, the family began applying for passports to visit Canada. In the summer of 1989, it was again the mother who took CZ and his sister to Beijing to apply for Canadian visas, waiting in long lines outside the embassy and preparing recommendation letters and guarantee documents. In August 1989, she flew with the two children from Shanghai to Vancouver. Their father was already in Canada by then, but the person who actually brought the two children through that migration journey was their mother.

On the third day after arriving in Canada, she found sewing work in a garment factory. She had been a teacher in China, but because her English was poor, she could only take a minimum-wage job. She left early every morning and often did not return home until after 7 p.m. The book does not dwell on this emotionally; it simply records that she entered factory work very quickly after arriving in Canada and remained on a long schedule of early departures and late returns.

SBF

The first time CZ met Sam Bankman-Fried was at Binance Blockchain Week in January 2019. At that time SBF was still the CEO of Alameda, and FTX had not yet been founded.

Later, after FTX had been online for about a month, the person handling communication on Binance’s side was CFO Zhou Wei. Zhou thought highly of SBF and considered him aggressive and ambitious. SBF flew over specifically to meet CZ, and CZ’s first impression was that he had “high EQ and said different things to different people — very humble in front of me.” At first CZ did not invest, because FTX was too new and Binance was also close to launching its own futures platform. Later, under Zhou Wei’s push, FTX adjusted its proposal, lowered its valuation, and even proposed exchanging FTT for BNB. Binance eventually did invest. But after the investment, cracks in the relationship quickly began to appear.

SBF poached one of Binance’s junior VIP account managers with a five-times compensation package. That employee had access to Binance’s full VIP client list. Soon after, Binance VIP users began receiving direct offers from FTX, and some even came back asking whether Binance could match FTX’s unpublished special fee rates.

The book goes into considerable detail about the request for help and the negotiations. In her foreword, He Yi already notes that before FTX collapsed, CZ had said in an internal management meeting: “If we save FTX, we save the industry, and we also help ourselves.” The main text then goes further. It says that when SBF called CZ for help, he did not explain the full problem at first. Only after a long conversation did he finally state clearly that he needed several billion dollars and was willing to sell the whole of FTX to Binance. CZ’s response was to sign a non-binding LOI first and then review the data. What happened next is described very directly in the book: the market was deteriorating rapidly, the team could not obtain a complete balance sheet, SBF’s team itself was leaving, and within 24 hours they still could not piece together even the basic full picture. Regulators were also preparing to intervene. Binance ultimately abandoned the deal.

Zhou Wei

When writing about Zhou Wei joining Binance, CZ gives him very high marks. He says Zhou had a U.S. educational background, prior CFO experience, and a strong understanding of the U.S. market, so he quickly became Binance’s finance chief, holding core authority over M&A, investments, legal, and compliance.

Zhou joined Binance in May 2018. Binance’s first legal head, Jared Grossman, and its earliest compliance head, Samuel Lim, both reported to him.

In 2019, Zhou proposed proprietary trading, arguing that because the company had access to full data, “trading would be easy.” CZ rejected the idea on the spot, believing it would create a fundamental conflict of interest. Later Zhou suggested that they could avoid using user private data and rely only on public information, but CZ still rejected it.

Then in 2021, another incident occurred involving altered investment materials. One hour before an investment decision meeting, Zhou deleted key investor information, leading CZ to approve the investment without full materials. The book says that after that incident, the relationship between them had become very difficult to repair. Zhou then made a “graceful exit,” and the company bought back his employee equity for USD 10 million. After leaving Binance, Zhou created a “Binance Avengers” chat group and years later testified in the U.S. Department of Justice case.

Vitalik

CZ first met the then-19-year-old Vitalik at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in December 2013. At that time Vitalik was still at Bitcoin Magazine, while already speaking publicly about the idea of Ethereum. The two later met again several times in Beijing and Chicago.

In 2015, Vitalik came to Tokyo and stayed at CZ’s home. He slept in a bunk bed with CZ’s eight-year-old son and even taught the child what infinity meant. Another specific moment came when CZ was preparing the BNB white paper and sent it to Vitalik for comments. CZ admits in the book that he did not invest in ETH at the time and only later realized that it had been a major missed opportunity.

Ted

Ted was CZ’s best friend in high school. He came from a well-off family: his father was a doctor in Taiwan, his mother took care of the family in Vancouver, and they lived in a big house and drove their children to school. CZ writes in the book that he often forgot to prepare lunch, while Ted’s mother would always make two lunch boxes — one for Ted and one for CZ. It was also Ted’s mother who suggested that CZ become a doctor, which is why he applied to McGill for biology. Later, after discovering that he did not actually like biology, he switched to computer science.

After the 2017 ICO, CZ wrote blog posts about the real process as it unfolded. Ted saw them and called him directly to congratulate him, then asked, “Can I join?” CZ asked what he wanted to do, and Ted replied, “Anything.” He quit his job the next day, joined Binance, and later handled business development and early listings.

Heina

CZ met Heina in Shanghai in 2005, and they continued working together for many years afterward. Although Heina does not appear in 《Freedom of Money》 as frequently or as publicly as He Yi, whenever she does appear, it is usually in the most critical internal operational roles.

The book says that before a key system upgrade, some team members tried to cause trouble collectively, demanding raises and even threatening during the upgrade window that “if we don’t get paid, we won’t work.” CZ immediately removed the ringleaders and the uncooperative people from the group, leaving only a few people to finish the system. Later, those who remained became part of Binance’s founding team, and Heina was among them.

During the Bijie Tech period, Heina mainly handled back-office matters: HR, finance, legal, administration, tax, business registration, and government coordination were almost all on her shoulders. Front-end business and market expansion were more often handled by CZ, but when it came to how the company actually kept running internally, the book repeatedly places that burden on Heina.

The book also mentions that the intensity of the work nearly erased the boundary between her life and her job, placing heavy strain on her marriage. About one month after Binance began operations, Heina once brought a laptop to the office that had been smashed by her husband and asked for help. CZ writes that the laptop actually contained Binance’s hot wallet. The team later removed the hard drive and recovered all the funds stored inside.

When China’s 2017 ban triggered Binance’s emergency exit, Heina was one of the people designated to leave first along with He Yi and CZ after a late-night conference call. He Yi went to Tokyo. Heina, because she did not have a Japanese visa, went first to Thailand. The book says that at 2 a.m. she woke her husband and told him she had a 6 a.m. flight to Thailand and needed him to drive her to the airport. When he asked how long she would be gone, she answered only: “Not sure.”

Trump

The Trump thread is concentrated almost entirely in the final part of the book. It first notes Trump’s pledge to “make America the world’s crypto capital.” It then says that in early 2025, Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road, Arthur Hayes, and others were pardoned one after another, while the SEC began successively dropping cases or investigations involving Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, OpenSea, Uniswap, and others. By May 2025, the SEC had formally dismissed all litigation against Binance Global, Binance US, and CZ personally.

The book’s fullest discussion of Trump concerns the pardon process itself. In April 2025, CZ’s lawyers submitted a pardon application to the White House. In June, they communicated with the White House counsel’s team. On October 21, Trump approved a full and unconditional pardon for CZ. He Yi also writes in the foreword that on the day the news came out, everyone was trying to find CZ, but he was actually on the way to a meeting with the Kyrgyz government and was not even among the first to learn that he had been pardoned.

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