Binance founder CZ made $12B overnight when Donald Trump won
When Donald Trump secured the 2025 US presidency on Tuesday night, some of the world’s richest men were celebrating their own, personal windfalls. No one made more money overnight than billionaire Elon Musk, for example, whose net worth popped from $264 to $290 billion within 24 hours of Trump’s victory. Shares of his automaker Tesla have soared 20% since Trump beat Kamala Harris.
However, the crypto industry also had its own, albeit slightly more modest, tale of newfound riches. According to an estimate by Bloomberg, the net worth of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) rallied an estimated $12 billion from US election day to the following morning.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg said CZ was worth $38 billion. Today, it estimates him at $52.7 billion.
Forbes has its own, more generous methodology for estimating the Binance executive’s wealth. Although it does not provide a history of its estimates, as of today, Forbes claims he is worth $60.6 billion.
CZ’s wealth derives predominantly from his 90% equity in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange with more than 150 million registered users. Although the company is private and does not file publicly accessible financials, Bloomberg estimates the company generates $9.8 billion in annualized revenue from spot and derivatives transactions.
CZ has also said he owns bitcoin and BNB personally.
Read more: A complete career timeline of Binance’s billionaire chief Changpeng Zhao
Analysts attributed CZ’s overnight enrichment to a rally in crypto prices following Trump’s win. With bitcoin up 7% this week and hundreds of billions of dollars added to global crypto market capitalizations, there were understandable increases in Binance’s equity value as a crypto-holding entity that benefits from the fortunes of its crypto-holding customers.
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