The remote staff of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance numbers around 4,000, though the figure is constantly evolving. Zhao spoke about this in an interview with Foresight.
According to him, new people join the company every day. Most employees prefer fiat salaries, but there are those who receive bonuses in Binance Coin (BNB).
“After receiving Binance Coin, they decide for themselves whether to sell the tokens,” Zhao added.
According to CoinGecko, in early January 2021 BNB traded around $40. On May 1, the token price reached a historic high of $645, and on May 3 it surpassed $650.
At the time of writing, Binance Coin was trading near $463.
According to the publication, after the ICO in July 2017, each employee received an additional payout in Binance Coin as a reward. The amount for Zhao, according to the media, was 50,000 BNB — more than $23 million at the time of writing. The head of the company did not rule out that in the future he would donate 99% of his fortune to charity.
Earlier, Bloomberg valued Zhao’s personal fortune at $96 billion. The valuation did not account for his digital assets, but even so the Binance CEO was richer than Indian magnate Mukesh Ambani and approached the co-founders of tech giants, including Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The firm disputed the agency’s findings at the time.
In the autumn of 2021, journalists from China Caijing valued Zhao’s fortune at $90 billion, based on the assumption that he owned a 30% stake in Binance.
In March, the Chinese Hurun Institute presented its crypto billionaire ranking for 2020. Zhao’s wealth was valued at $8 billion — he trailed only FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried ($10 billion) and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong ($11.5 billion).
As reported, in 2021 financial regulators in several countries, including United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa and a number of others, issued warnings to investors about the exchange’s activities.
In September, Zhao linked regulators’ concerns to the company’s business model and stated that Binance would transform into a licensed, centrally run enterprise.
Against the backdrop of regulatory warnings, the founder also published an open letter in which he outlined Binance’s plans for regulatory compliance and customer protection.
In November, Zhao announced plans to open a headquarters in France.
In the same month it emerged that the Binance CEO had become the owner of property in Dubai. The media saw this as a signal of the forthcoming opening of the exchange’s main office in Dubai.
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