Despite Luna’s crash, Chanpeng Zhao has a net worth of around $14.9 billion
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, tweeted a few days ago that he was “poor again” after losing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency after a market crash that wiped out the fortunes of many investors. The exchange’s assets in the cryptocurrency Luna fell to just $2,200 from $1.6 billion at the token’s peak price a month earlier. In a tweet, Zhao claimed that Binance owns 15 million Luna tokens, which the exchange received in exchange for a $3 million investment in the Terra network on which Luna is founded. The Luna tokens were “never moved or sold,” he added.
Poor again. https://t.co/88v2U2vjfM
— Czech ???? Binance (@cz_binance) May 17, 2022
2/ Binance received 15,000,000 LUNA (worth $1.6B at peak, not much now) as part of the initial ($3M) investment. 560x return at peak. It’s still on the address we found at ???? have received. Never moved or sold.
Address: https://t.co/6HwTu6CCuB
— Czech ???? Binance (@cz_binance) May 16, 2022
Luna’s fall began when TerraUSD, its sister coin, lost its peg to the US dollar. The prices of the two tokens are linked. As the price of TerraUSD dropped, investors rushed to sell their holdings. Luna’s price was dragged down by the decline in TerraUSD.
Despite Luna’s crash and stock price fall, Zhao has a net worth of about $14.9 billion, according to Bloomberg Sunday. His estimated 70 percent stake in Binance accounts for the bulk of his wealth, according to a Forbes report.
In another tweet, Zhao urged the Terra team to make refunding its retail investors a top priority. He wrote: “In order to lead by example in protecting users, Binance will abandon this and ask the Terra project team to compensate retail users first, Binance last if ever.”
4/ Now the important part.
To lead by example in PROTECTING USERS, Binance will let this go and ask the Terra project team to compensate retail users first and Binance last, if at all.
Binance (after a 5-minute discussion) fully supports this proposal. ????https://t.co/QnMx8aZ09A
— Czech ???? Binance (@cz_binance) May 16, 2022
Terra Luna is down 99.15 percent over the past few days, according to Binance data. It has a market cap of $924.99 million.
Daniel Shin and Do Kwon founded Terra Luna, a blockchain technology using fiat-linked stablecoins, in January 2018. The token was first made available to investors in August 2018 in a private token sale, raising a whopping $32 million from investors like Binance. OKEx and Huobi.
Zhao founded Binance, which has grown into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume. Binance’s daily average volume is over two billion, with over 14 lakh transactions per second. It offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week cryptocurrency trading assistance.