Changpeng Zhao is perched in front of a bookshelf at his apartment in Dubai, a place that—along with Paris—he currently calls home. Speaking over video, he is affable and mild-mannered, even self-deprecating. It's a persona that clashes with the Zhao that his rivals know best: a sharp-elbowed executive who built Binance into the biggest and most influential cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
He is used to appearing in different guises. “If Americans deal with me, they’ll feel I'm Asian—slightly more Asian than most Americans, but less Asian than all other Asians they know,” he tells Fortune. “If an Asian person deals with me, they will feel I'm very American … but less American than other Americans they deal with. So I’m kind of in-between.”
