Changpeng Zhao, Brawling Titan of Binance, Meets a Sudden Defeat

Changpeng Zhao had long cultivated the image of the rugged pugilist of the cryptocurrencies world.

When his rival Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed a year ago, Zhao, or “CZ” as his fans call him, was in the middle of it all, yanking his money in a very public way and helping trigger the ultimately fatal run on the firms. Years earlier he claimed the company’s headquarters was wherever he happened to be, a thinly veiled salvo against regulators trying to nail down jurisdiction. And this March, when US regulators charged Zhao and his firm, Binance Holdings, with violating US ...