探访加密货币大佬赵长鹏：亿万富翁天堂里的前罪犯

I.

I.

One morning in June, the cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao pulled up to the St. Regis resort in Abu Dhabi in a white Nissan S.U.V. Mr. Zhao is the richest man in crypto, worth an estimated $114 billion, and he lives in a villa nearby, with nine bedrooms, four bodyguards, a chef and a yacht named Da Moon. But he also likes to play the part of a “normal dude,” as he often describes himself, and that day he had offered to give me a personal tour of the city. Outside the St. Regis, Mr. Zhao sat at the wheel of the Nissan, with his iPhone mounted on the windshield, like the world’s wealthiest Uber driver. “My Lamborghini,” he joked as I climbed in.

6月的一个早晨，加密货币大佬赵长鹏乘坐一辆白色日产SUV抵达阿布扎比的瑞吉酒店。赵长鹏是加密货币界首富，身家估计达1140亿美元。他住在附近一栋有九间卧室的别墅里，配有四名保镖、一名私人厨师和一艘名为“Da Moon”的游艇。但他也喜欢扮演“普通人”的角色——他经常这样形容自己——那天他主动提出亲自带我游览这座城市。在瑞吉酒店外，赵长鹏坐在日产车的方向盘后，iPhone固定在挡风玻璃上，活像世界上最富有的优步司机。“我的兰博基尼，”我上车时他开玩笑说。

Mr. Zhao, to be clear, isn’t a normal dude. Not long ago, the U.S. authorities brought a criminal case against him for his management of Binance, a crypto exchange depicted in court papers as a haven for Russian money launderers, Iranian sanctions evaders and Islamic State terrorists. Mr. Zhao pleaded guilty and escaped with his fortune intact. After serving a four-month prison sentence, he returned to Abu Dhabi, still Binance’s majority shareholder and still the most powerful figure in the industry.

需要明确的是，赵长鹏并不是普通人。不久前，美国当局因他管理币安而对他提起刑事案件。币安是一家加密交易所，在法庭文件中被描述为俄罗斯洗钱者、伊朗制裁逃避者和伊斯兰国恐怖分子的避风港。赵长鹏认罪，但保住了财富。在服完四个月刑期后，他回到阿布扎比，仍是币安多数股东，仍是这个行业最有权力的人物。

These days, Mr. Zhao, who is 49, moves through the world like a head of state, flying around Asia on his private jet to advise governments on crypto regulation; a stop in Islamabad or Manila is often followed by the announcement of a new regulatory breakthrough for Binance. At home, one of his two dogs is a Taigan, an elegant Central Asian breed, likened to the gazelle. It was a gift from the crypto-curious president of Kyrgyzstan, with whom he went skiing in February. “He actually wanted to give me a tent, like a full-sized tent,” Mr. Zhao said. “I said no to the tent, and then he insisted on the dog.”

如今，49岁的赵长鹏像国家元首一样在世界各地活动，乘坐私人飞机在亚洲各地飞行，就加密货币监管问题向各国政府提供建议；每当他造访伊斯兰堡或马尼拉，往往紧接着就会传出币安在监管方面取得新突破的消息。在家里，他的两只狗中有一只是泰干犬，一种优雅的中亚品种，常被比作瞪羚。这是对加密货币颇感兴趣的吉尔吉斯斯坦总统送给他的礼物，今年2月他还和这位总统一起滑雪。“他其实想送我一项帐篷，一顶全尺寸帐篷，”赵长鹏说。“我拒绝了帐篷，然后他坚持要送狗。”

Mr. Zhao’s most influential allies are a pair of powerful ruling families. One is the clan that runs the United Arab Emirates, which wants his help creating a technology powerhouse in the desert. The other is the Trumps. Last year, Binance forged a business relationship with World Liberty Financial, the crypto start-up founded by President Trump and his three sons. World Liberty generated $799 million for Mr. Trump last year — his single most lucrative asset, more remunerative than his real estate portfolio or his social media business. Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Zhao last October, a move widely criticized as a quid pro quo.

赵长鹏最有影响力的盟友是两个强大的统治家族。一个是管理阿拉伯联合酋长国的家族，他们希望赵长鹏帮助他们在沙漠中打造一个科技强国。另一个是特朗普家族。去年，币安与世界自由金融公司建立了商业关系，这家加密初创公司由特朗普总统和他的三个儿子创立。世界自由去年为特朗普带来了7.99亿美元——这是他最赚钱的单一资产，比他的房地产投资组合或社交媒体业务更赚钱。特朗普去年10月赦免了赵长鹏，此举被广泛批评为利益交换。

Known in the industry as “CZ,” Mr. Zhao often avoids reporters, but he met with me several times this year, eager to put a friendlier gloss on his career at Binance, which still hasn’t stanched the flow of dirty money. He is tall and thin, with short dark hair and a Binance tattoo on his forearm, and lacks the frat-bro swagger of many of his crypto peers. He comes across as polite and attentive, though his interests are almost comically narrow. This year, he self-published a memoir, “Freedom of Money,” in which he describes receiving an after-hours tour of the Louvre. The experience left him cold. The guide might as well have been “playing piano to a cow,” he wrote.

在业内被称为“CZ”的赵长鹏经常回避记者，但今年他多次与我会面，渴望为自己在币安的职业生涯增添一层更友好的光环——尽管币安至今仍未止住脏钱的流动。他身材高瘦，留着一头短黑发，前臂上有币安的纹身，身上没有许多加密货币同行那种兄弟会成员般的张扬气势。他看起来礼貌而专注，尽管他的兴趣范围狭窄得近乎滑稽。今年，他自行出版了回忆录《金钱的自由》(Freedom of Money)，书中描述了他曾获邀在闭馆后参观卢浮宫的经历。这次体验让他感到索然无味。他写道，导游简直是在“对牛弹琴”。

For years, his true calling has been what academics term “jurisdictional arbitrage” — moving from country to country in search of a legal framework pliable enough to accommodate his appetite for risk and growth. In Abu Dhabi, he may have found an ideal base of operations. As we drove into the city, Mr. Zhao chatted amiably, pausing to ask his bodyguard for help with directions. (“Yes, boss, stay right.”) We passed a string of impressive compounds and drove toward the presidential palace, Qasr Al Watan, whose striking white dome resembles the Taj Mahal.

多年来，他真正的志向是学者所称的“管辖套利”——辗转于各国之间，寻找一个足够灵活的法律框架，以满足他对风险和增长的渴望。在阿布扎比，他可能找到了理想的运营基地。当我们驱车进入市区时，赵长鹏友好地聊天，不时停下来让保镖帮忙指路。（“是的，老板，靠右。”）我们经过一连串气派的建筑群，驶向总统府卡斯尔·阿尔·瓦坦，其醒目的白色穹顶酷似泰姬陵。

Mr. Zhao was growing animated. “Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient,” he said as we approached the palace. “If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient. There’s very little debate going on. You don’t waste time on a lot of frivolous stuff.”

赵长鹏变得兴奋起来。“几百年来，民主一直被奉为圣杯，但民主效率低下，”我们在接近总统府时他说。“如果你有一个仁慈的独裁者，那实际上极其高效。几乎没有争论。你不会把时间浪费在许多无聊的事情上。”

Lately, this top-down model of business and politics, simultaneously medieval and ultramodern, has gained traction in the United States. On a trip to Abu Dhabi last year, Mr. Trump called the nation’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, “a very strong man” and “a man of vision like few others.” Zach Witkoff, the son of one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers and himself a kind of MAGA princeling, put it more bluntly at a crypto conference in Dubai in May last year. “We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book,” Mr. Witkoff said. “They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.”

最近，这种自上而下、同时兼具中世纪和超现代色彩的商业和政治模式在美国获得了越来越多的支持。去年访问阿布扎比时，特朗普称该国统治者谢赫·穆罕默德·本·扎耶德·阿勒纳哈扬是“一个非常强大的人”和“少有的有远见的人”。扎克·威特科夫是特朗普一位高级顾问的儿子，本身也算得上是“让美国再次伟大”阵营的王子之一，去年5月，他在迪拜的一次加密会议上说得更直白。“我们真的需要借鉴殿下和阿联酋的经验，”威特科夫说。“他们是一个了不起的榜样，展示了如何在保持家庭价值观的同时，通过创新来引领发展。”

Mr. Zhao is already living in the future these men crave, nestled in an elite enclave where monarchs and billionaires operate in harmony. As he drove away from Qasr Al Watan, he told me about a private conference he had attended nearby, at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental hotel, a gathering of executives like the hedge fund founder Ray Dalio and the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son. While he sat in the audience, Mr. Zhao noticed someone stooping down to speak with him. It was Sheikh Mohammed. He wanted to know how Mr. Zhao was getting along and whether he could do anything to help.

赵长鹏已经生活在这些人梦寐以求的未来中，他栖身在一个精英聚居区，君主和亿万富翁和谐共处。当他驱车离开卡斯尔·阿尔·瓦坦时，他告诉我，他曾在附近酋长宫文华东方酒店参加一个私人会议，与会者包括对冲基金创始人雷·达里奥和日本亿万富翁孙正义等高管。坐在观众席时，赵长鹏注意到有人弯下腰来和他说话，正是谢赫·穆罕默德。他想知道赵长鹏过得怎么样，以及他是否能帮上什么忙。

“This is the king,” Mr. Zhao told me, “kneeling down beside you.”

“这是国王，”赵长鹏告诉我，“他跪在你旁边。”

II.

II.

One day early this year, Mr. Zhao was working from bed — he often does business lying on his back after a long struggle with chronic pain — when the windows began to shake. He got up, he told me, and walked onto his balcony, where he saw a trail of smoke in the sky. Mr. Zhao lives on Saadiyat Island, an enclave of Abu Dhabi across the Persian Gulf from Iran, which had just fired a missile at the Emirates.

今年年初的一天，赵长鹏正躺在床上工作——在与慢性疼痛长期斗争后，他经常躺着处理公务——这时窗户开始震动。他告诉我，他起身走到阳台上，看到天空中有一道烟雾。赵长鹏住在萨迪亚特岛，这是阿布扎比的一块飞地，与伊朗隔波斯湾相望，伊朗刚刚向阿联酋发射了一枚导弹。

It was the start of a geopolitical crisis that has destabilized the region, but Mr. Zhao was not overly concerned. He went back to bed and kept working. “More people die from traffic accidents than from the missiles,” he said later. “Very protected here.”

这是一场地缘政治危机的开始，这场危机已使该地区局势稳，但赵长鹏并不过分担心。他回到床上继续工作。“死于交通事故的人比死于导弹的人多，”他后来说。“这里非常受保护。”

Until he settled in the Emirates, Mr. Zhao was a man without a country. He was born in China, then moved to Canada with his family at the age of 12. After attending McGill, he worked a series of technology jobs, bouncing among New York, China and Japan. In July 2013, over a poker game in Shanghai, a colleague suggested he check out “this new thing called Bitcoin.”

在定居阿联酋之前，赵长鹏是一个没有国家的人。他出生在中国，12岁时随家人移居加拿大。在麦吉尔大学毕业后，他在纽约、中国和日本从事了一系列技术工作。2013年7月，在上海的一场扑克牌局中，一位同事建议他看看“这个叫比特币的新东西”。

It was the perfect borderless technology for his borderless lifestyle. After a few months of study, Mr. Zhao made a radical bet. He sold the family home — a three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai where he and his wife were raising two children — and plowed the $900,000 proceeds into Bitcoin. It was a risky move, but Mr. Zhao wasn’t worried. Even if Bitcoin plunged, he figured, he could easily land another high-paying job in traditional finance.

这正是与他这种无国界生活方式完美契合的无国界技术。经过几个月的研究，赵长鹏下了一个激进的赌注。他卖掉了家庭住宅——上海一套三居室公寓，他和妻子在那里抚养两个孩子——将约合90万美元的收益投入比特币。这是一个冒险的举动，但赵长鹏并不担心。他想，即使比特币暴跌，他也能轻松在传统金融业找到另一份高薪工作。 

Mr. Zhao went on to work at a succession of crypto start-ups in Asia. The industry grew rapidly in the 2010s, with hundreds of new tokens, but the platforms for trading these coins were poorly run and vulnerable to hacks. In July 2017, Mr. Zhao founded Binance. Within a few months it was the largest exchange in the world, a title it has never relinquished.

他随后在亚洲一系列加密币初创公司工作。该行业在2010年代迅速发展，出现了数百种新代币，但交易这些代币的平台运营不善，容易受到黑客攻击。2017年7月，赵长鹏创立了币安。几个月内，它就成为全球最大的交易所，并一直保持这个地位。

Binance’s success rested on two pivotal insights. The first was that crypto investors, as a species, were drunk on risk and would never be satisfied swapping dollars or yen merely for an equivalent amount of crypto. For years, Binance has operated as a margin exchange: Traders can borrow money to place high-risk, high-reward bets on the prices of Bitcoin and other popular tokens.

币安的成功基于两个关键洞察。第一，加密币投资者作为一个物种，沉醉于风险，永远不会满足于仅仅用美元或日元换取等量的加密货币。多年来，币安一直作为保证金交易所运营：交易者可以借钱对比特币和其他热门代币的价格进行高风险、高回报的押注。

The second insight was simpler yet more consequential. Many crypto investors didn’t want to identify themselves, and Binance didn’t ask them to. For its first four years, the company allowed customers to open accounts without providing even the most basic K.Y.C. — the “know your customer” information that traditional companies require to prevent financial crime.

第二个洞察更简单但更为重大。许多加密币投资者不想透露身份，而币安也不要求他们这样做。在最初的四年里，该公司允许客户甚至不提供最基本的KYC——传统公司为防止金融犯罪而要求的“了解你的客户”信息——就开设账户。

Binance was not the only exchange to offer these types of risky services, but Mr. Zhao executed better than any of his competitors. “There was a lot of MySpace in the exchange world, and he built Facebook,” said Austin Campbell, the founder of a crypto consulting firm. The result was an extremely lucrative free-for-all: a platform where unvetted investment products were available to unvetted traders. As the market boomed, Binance took a cut of each transaction; the company quickly reached $1 billion in profits, according to “Freedom of Money.”

币安并不是唯一提供这类风险服务的交易所，但赵长鹏执行得比任何竞争对手都执行得更好。“交易所世界有很多MySpace，而他建造了Facebook，”加密币咨询公司创始人奥斯汀·坎贝尔说。结果是一个利润极其丰厚的自由竞争场所：一个未经审查的投资产品可供未经审查的交易者使用的平台。随着市场繁荣，币安从每笔交易中抽成；根据《金钱的自由》，公司的利润很快达到10亿美元。

Mr. Zhao was suddenly a crypto celebrity. But he has never been widely understood outside the industry, even as he has joined a small cohort of ultrawealthy executives who wield astonishing political influence. When he recounts his most contentious moments, Mr. Zhao portrays himself as a kind of passenger — a crypto nerd overwhelmed by success, a naïve outsider who somehow stumbled into Bond villain status.

他突然成了加密币名人。但他在行业外从未被广泛理解，即使他已加入一小群拥有惊人政治影响力的超富高管行列。当讲述自己最具争议的时刻时，赵长鹏把自己描绘成某种乘客——一个被成功淹没的加密币书呆子，一个不知何故跌入007系列大反派地位的幼稚局外人。

It is not always a convincing performance. Sitting in his kitchen in late June, Mr. Zhao told me that he had “never really wanted” to break the law in Binance’s explosive early years, when the company’s lax controls allowed a procession of bad actors to launder money. “It’s just my lack of experience in that area,” he said. “I’m a tech guy. I lived in China.”

他的表现并不总是令人信服。6月底，赵长鹏坐在他的厨房里告诉我，在币安爆炸性的早期岁月里，他“从未真正想要”违法，当时公司宽松的控制纵容了一连串不良行为者洗钱。“这只是我在那个领域缺乏经验，”他说。“我是个技术人。我住在中国。”

That image isn’t compatible with the evidence U.S. prosecutors collected in their investigation into Binance. In court, they quoted an admonition that Mr. Zhao had given his underlings: “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Privately, Mr. Zhao had discussed ways to obfuscate that Binance served American users even though it wasn’t licensed in the United States, according to legal filings. “Don’t leave anything in writing,” he told a subordinate.

这一形象与美国检察官在调查币安时收集的证据不符。在法庭上，他们引用了赵长鹏对下属的告诫：“请求原谅比请求许可更好。”根据法律文件，他私下里谈论如何掩盖币安为美国用户服务的事实，尽管公司并未在美国获得许可。“不要留下任何书面东西，”他告诉一名下属。

In Abu Dhabi, Mr. Zhao described himself as a “rule follower.” It seems obvious, however, that he made a strategic choice to push the legal limits at a crucial time, when the habits of a new generation of investors were forming and the rules themselves were rather elastic.

在阿布扎比，赵长鹏称自己是一个“循规蹈矩的人”。然而，显而易见的是，他在一个关键时刻做出了挑战法律极限的战略决定，当时新一代投资者的习惯正在形成，而规则本身也相当有弹性。

I was reminded of this when he showed me into the entrance of his house, which was stocked with boxes of Binance swag. He urged me to pick out a gift, perhaps a Binance backpack or a yellow-and-black Binance sweater, styled to look like a varsity jacket.

当他带着我走进他家时，我想起了这一点。家里堆满了成箱的币安周边商品。他要我挑一件礼物，也许是币安背包或黄黑相间的币安毛衣，款式像校队夹克。

I told him that reporters have protocols about these sorts of things, and that I had to decline any gift over $20. He laughed, and said the price was “probably 19 bucks.”

我告诉他，记者对这类事情有规定，我必须拒绝任何超过20美元的礼物。他笑了，说价格“大概19美元”。

III.

III.

Mr. Zhao paid a visit to the Emirates in 2021, after years of roaming around Asia. In 2017, he and his Binance colleagues had been forced to flee China in the middle of the night, as the government prepared to announce a ban on crypto exchanges. A stint in Japan hadn’t worked out, either; nor had Singapore, where it was difficult to get a work visa. Then Mr. Zhao’s friend Gabriel Abed, a businessman who served as the ambassador to the Emirates for Barbados, made a suggestion. He told Mr. Zhao to check out Dubai.

在亚洲各地漫游多年后，赵长鹏于2021年去了阿联酋。2017年，他和币安同事被迫半夜逃离中国，因为政府准备宣布禁止加密币交易所。在日本的一段经历也没有成功；新加坡也是如此，那里很难获得工作签证。然后他的朋友加布里埃尔·阿贝德——一位担任过巴巴多斯驻阿联酋大使的商人——提出了一个建议。他让赵长鹏去看看迪拜。

Immediately, Mr. Zhao saw how the Emiratis treated the rich and powerful. He arrived in Dubai on a Saturday morning in October, and within hours, a government minister, Omar Sultan Al Olama, came to visit. He offered Mr. Zhao a so-called golden visa, which grants 10 years of hassle-free residency. A doctor was summoned to conduct the blood test required of all visa holders. Applications often take weeks to process. Mr. Zhao was approved in less than 12 hours.

他立刻看到了阿联酋人给有钱有势的人提供的待遇。他于10月一个周六上午抵达迪拜，几小时内，政府部长奥马尔·苏丹·阿尔·奥拉马就来拜访。他向赵长鹏提供了一种所谓的黄金签证，授予10年无忧居留权。一名医生被召来进行所有签证持有者所需的血液检测。申请通常需要数周处理。他在不到12小时内就获批了。

The friendly reception impressed Mr. Zhao. “On my fourth day in Dubai, I saw two properties,” he told me. “I bought the second one.” By the end of the year, Binance had signed a memorandum of understanding with the local authorities to develop rules for crypto operations; the company dispatched three staff members to help put together a framework. A draft was completed in January 2022 and signed into law a few weeks later. “When you’re the captain of a ship that’s sailing true north, the U.A.E. wants you on their team,” Mr. Abed said. “They did that with CZ. They rallied around him from Day 1.”

友好的接待给赵长鹏留下了深刻印象。“在迪拜的第四天，我看了两处房产，”他告诉我。“我买了第二处。”到年底，币安已与地方当局签署谅解备忘录，制定加密币运营规则；该公司派出三名员工帮助制定框架。草案于2022年1月完成，几周后签署成为法律。“当你是一艘驶向正北的船的船长时，阿联酋希望你加入他们的团队，”阿贝德说。“他们对赵长鹏就是这样。从第一天起，他们就簇拥着他。”

Not everyone in the Emirates is treated so generously. Over the years, the nation’s leaders have conducted mass surveillance, outlawed even the mildest forms of dissent and overseen a labor market where foreign workers are frequently exploited and abused.

并非阿联酋每个人都受到如此慷慨的对待。多年来，该国领导人进行了大规模监视，将哪怕最轻微的异见定为非法，并监管着一个外国工人经常被剥削和虐待的劳动力市场。

But for Mr. Zhao, it was the beginning of a comfortable new life. Before founding Binance, he had separated from his wife, who moved to Tokyo with their children. He started a relationship with one of his colleagues, He Yi, a marketing executive known in China as the former host of a travel program called “Beautiful Destinations.” While his older children attended college in the United States, Mr. Zhao and Ms. He raised a young family in the Emirates.

但对赵长鹏来说，这是舒适新生活的开始。在创立币安之前，他已与妻子分居，妻子带着孩子搬到了东京。他开始与同事何一交往，何一是一位营销高管，曾在中国因主持一档名为《美丽目的地》的旅游节目而闻名。他的几个年龄较长的子女在美国上大学，赵长鹏和何一则在阿联酋抚养年幼的孩子。

Mr. Zhao was ushered into a rarefied world of billionaire networking. He got to know a group of Emirati leaders who were curious about technology — the “crypto sheikhs,” as he calls them. Eventually he worked his way up to the brother of Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a jujitsu enthusiast who would host high-powered businessmen at his palace. On the royal dinner circuit, Mr. Zhao was treated as a valued guest. “We’re like, what’s the seating arrangement?’” he said. “Just sit anywhere, it’s fine.”

赵长鹏被引入亿万富翁社交圈的精英世界。他结识了一群对技术好奇的阿联酋领导人——他称之为“加密币酋长”。最终，他一路结识了谢赫·穆罕默德的兄弟谢赫·塔赫农·本·扎耶德·阿勒纳哈扬，一位柔术爱好者，会在自己的宫殿接待有权势的商人。在皇家晚宴圈中，赵长鹏被视为贵宾。“我们就问啊，‘座位怎么安排的呢？’”他说。“随便坐，无所谓。”

During these early encounters, the sheikhs would pitch Mr. Zhao on the Emirates, asking what they could do to help him. Soon Mr. Zhao was preaching the nation’s virtues to the broader billionaire community. He encouraged the artificial intelligence mogul Sam Altman to set up a corporate presence in the Emirates, warning that other countries would treat him with hostility. “You’re going to face a lot of regulatory issues,” Mr. Zhao told him over coffee.

在这些早期接触中，酋长们会向赵长鹏推销阿联酋，询问他们能做什么来帮助他。很快，赵长鹏就开始向更广泛的亿万富翁群体宣扬这个国家的优点。他鼓励人工智能巨头萨姆·奥尔特曼在阿联酋设立公司，警告其他国家会对他怀有敌意。“你会面临很多监管问题，”赵长鹏在一次喝咖啡时告诉奥尔特曼。

Mr. Zhao had more than a passing familiarity with the perils of emerging industries. As he arrived in the Emirates, Mr. Zhao was locked in a vicious competition with a young entrepreneur named Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of a rival exchange, FTX. The son of Stanford Law School professors, Mr. Bankman-Fried was in many ways the polar opposite of Mr. Zhao: a consummate insider whose personal connections and proximity to the U.S. political elite greased his path to the top of the industry. “He had tricks I didn’t have,” Mr. Zhao wrote in his memoir. Mr. Bankman-Fried would poach Binance employees, offering salaries three to five times as high. Mr. Zhao also heard rumors that Mr. Bankman-Fried was bad-mouthing him in Washington.

赵长鹏对新兴产业的风险绝非一知半解。当他抵达阿联酋时，正与一位名叫萨姆·班克曼-弗里德的年轻企业家陷入激烈竞争，后者是竞争对手交易所FTX的创始人。班克曼-弗里德是斯坦福法学院教授的儿子，在许多方面与赵长鹏截然相反，是一个彻头彻尾的圈内人，其个人人脉和与美国政治精英的密切关系为他铺平了通往行业顶峰的道路。“他有我没有的手段，”赵长鹏在回忆录中写道。班克曼-弗里德会挖走币安员工，提供三到五倍的薪水。赵长鹏还听到传言，班克曼-弗里德在华盛顿说他坏话。

In November 2022, a report in the crypto publication CoinDesk raised doubts about the stability of FTX’s finances. Mr. Zhao was in Dubai, on his way to have drinks with Mr. Abed, when he decided to weigh in on Twitter, posting a short but ruthless announcement. He was selling a stash of $500 million in FTT, a digital coin that was a proxy for FTX stock. The post set off a panic, as anxious investors rushed to pull money out of FTX.

2022年11月，加密货币媒体CoinDesk的一份报告对FTX财务的稳定性提出质疑。赵长鹏当时在迪拜，正要去和阿贝德喝酒，他决定在Twitter上表态，发布了一条简短但无情的声明。他要出售5亿美元的FTT，这是一种代表FTX股票的数码代币。这条帖子引发恐慌，焦虑的投资者纷纷从FTX撤资。

The money wasn’t there — Mr. Bankman-Fried had stolen $8 billion from his customers. He had no choice but to seek a bailout, and only one man in crypto had the resources to save him. Two days after his tweet, Mr. Zhao announced that he was buying FTX; a day later, he pulled out of the deal, sending FTX deeper into crisis. It all had the feel of a masterful bit of corporate warfare — an act of “blood sport,” as one observer put it. Within six weeks, Mr. Bankman-Fried was arrested at his apartment in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.

但资金早已不复存在——班克曼-弗里德从客户那里偷了80亿美元。他别无选择，只能寻求救助，而加密货币界只有一个人拥有拯救他的资源。发推两天后，赵长鹏宣布收购FTX；一天后，他退出交易，使FTX进一步陷入危机。这一切感觉像一场高超的企业战争——一位观察者称之为“血腥运动”。六周内，班克曼-弗里德在巴哈马的公寓被捕，并被引渡到美国。他最终因欺诈被判处25年监禁。

Mr. Zhao told me that he had never meant to destroy FTX. Slipping into his usual mode of shrugging naïveté, he explained that he had hoped to gradually sell his FTT over a few months. “I had no intention to crash them,” he said. “We lost $500 million.”

赵长鹏告诉我，他从未打算摧毁FTX。他一如既往地耸耸肩，做出一副天真的样子解释说，他原本希望在几个月内逐步抛售自己的FTT。“我无意搞垮他们，”他说。“我们损失了5亿美元。”

His vanquished rival sees it differently. “He played me,” Mr. Bankman-Fried said at the time. “He played it well.”

那位被他击败的对手并不这么看。“他耍了我，”班克曼-弗里德当时说。“他干得很绝。”

IV.

IV.

Billionaires gravitate to the Emirates for billionaire reasons. The country doesn’t levy an income tax, and it’s considered extremely safe, at a time when crypto investors have been targeted by kidnappers in Europe and the United States. But for Mr. Zhao, who had just seen his nemesis dragged across borders, the Emirates held another important advantage: It had no extradition treaty with the United States.

亿万富翁青睐阿联酋自有亿万富翁的原因。该国不征收所得税，而且被认为极其安全，尤其是在加密投资者在欧洲和美国成为绑架目标的时候。但对于刚刚目睹宿敌被跨国缉捕的赵长鹏而言，阿联酋还拥有另一项重要优势：它与美国没有引渡条约。

In either late 2022 or early 2023, he recalled, an Emirati royal asked him over dinner whether he wanted citizenship. Mr. Zhao sent in some documents and waited. Months later, a government emissary arrived at his house, holding a box with passports for Mr. Zhao and his family. The Emiratis “would never extradite citizens,” Mr. Zhao told me. “That was a very strong thing.”

他回忆说，在2022年底或2023年初，一位阿联酋皇室成员在晚宴上问他，是否想要公民身份。赵长鹏提交了一些文件，等待结果。几个月后，一名政府使者来到他家，拿着一个盒子，里面是赵长鹏及其家人的护照。阿联酋人“永远不会引渡公民，”赵长鹏告诉我。“这分量很重。”

He had reason to be wary: The noose around Binance was tightening. U.S. prosecutors were collecting evidence that the exchange’s lax protocols had allowed scammers, hackers and sanctions evaders to move money. In private messages obtained by the government, Binance employees spoke with astonishing candor about the exchange’s shady clientele. “Is washing drug money too hard these days,” one employee wrote. “Come to Binance we got cake for you.”

他有理由警惕：围绕币安周围的绞索正在收紧。美国检察官正在收集证据，证明该交易所宽松的协议允许骗子、黑客和制裁逃避者转移资金。在政府获得的私人信息中，币安员工以惊人的坦率谈论交易所的可疑客户。“现在给毒品洗钱太难了吗，”一名员工写道。“来币安，我们为你准备了蛋糕。”

Mr. Zhao hired a team of lawyers to broker a deal with the Justice Department. His new passport gave him considerable leverage. After a couple of years in Dubai, he moved an hour and a half south to Abu Dhabi, closer to the nation’s center of political power. While the negotiations unfolded, Mr. Zhao gave serious thought to life as a fugitive; he would have to limit his traveling, but he would be safe in the Emirates, at least in theory.

赵长鹏聘请了一个律师团队与司法部斡旋达成协议。他的新护照给了他相当大的筹码。在迪拜生活了几年后，他向南迁移了一个半小时车程到达阿布扎比，更接近国家政治权力中心。谈判进行期间，赵长鹏认真考虑过逃亡生活；他必须限制旅行，但在阿联酋他很安全，至少在理论上如此。

Eventually, his legal team struck a bargain with the U.S. government. Mr. Zhao would plead guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering statute, and step down as chief executive. (The company would pay a $4.3 billion penalty.) Despite the generous terms, he was frustrated with his lawyers and didn’t think he deserved any prison time at all. “I got put in jail because we had a platform that didn’t have proper K.Y.C.,” he told me. “You can vote for the president of the United States government without having an ID. I don’t know how that system came about. I would imagine someone should be put in jail for that, given what I went through.”

最终，他的法律团队与美国政府达成协议。赵长鹏将对违反反洗钱法规《银行保密法》认罪，并辞去首席执行官职务。（公司将支付43亿美元罚款。）尽管协议条件相当宽松，但他对律师们感到不满，并认为自己根本不应该坐牢。“我坐牢是因为我们的平台没有实施适当的‘了解你的客户’(KYC)措施，”他告诉我。“在美国，你甚至不需要身份证就能投票选举总统。我不知道那个系统是怎么来的。考虑到我的经历，我觉得应该有人为此坐牢。”

Still, it was an excellent outcome for Binance. At the sentencing hearing in the spring of 2024, Mr. Zhao delivered a contrite statement: “I deeply regret my failure, and I’m sorry.” The judge gave Mr. Zhao a four-month sentence, calling him “a dedicated family man and a giving person.” When the sentence was read aloud in the courtroom, Mr. Zhao’s college-age son quietly pumped his fist.

尽管如此，这对币安来说是一个极好的结果。在2024年春季的量刑听证会上，赵长鹏发表了悔过声明：“我深深后悔我的失败，我很抱歉。”法官判处赵长鹏四个月监禁，称他为“尽职的家庭男人和慷慨的人”。当判决在法庭上宣读时，赵长鹏上大学的儿子悄悄握拳庆祝。

As the rare felon with virtually unlimited resources, Mr. Zhao was ideally positioned to suffer as little as possible. He was assigned to Lompoc II, a low-security facility in California, the same complex where Mr. Bankman-Fried was later housed. Before he reported to prison, Mr. Zhao assembled a team of advisers, who schooled him in the subtleties of cellblock politics. One of them, Michael Santos, exchanged letters with other inmates, who agreed to help Mr. Zhao get his bearings inside. “CZ, you’re a guy who’s understood people and had thousands of employees,” Mr. Santos told him. “You’re not going to lose those skills when you walk in here.”

作为少有的几乎拥有无限资源的重罪犯，赵长鹏处境理想，可以尽量少受点苦。他被分配到加利福尼亚州低安全级别的洛姆波克II监狱，班克曼-弗里德后来也被关押在同一监狱园区。在报到入狱前，赵长鹏组建了一个顾问团队，向他传授了监狱内部政治的种种门道。其中一位顾问迈克尔·桑托斯与其他囚犯通信，他们同意帮助赵长鹏在狱中熟悉情况。“CZ，你是一个理解别人、拥有数千名员工的人，”桑托斯告诉他。“你走进这里，也不会失去这些技能。”

Mr. Zhao arrived at Lompoc on the morning of May 30, 2024. He quickly settled into what’s known as a “car” — an informal social group, often established along ethnic lines. The other Asian inmates sat with Mr. Zhao during meals and worked out with him in the yard at recess. They were thrilled to be in the presence of a multibillionaire. “Everybody gave way for him,” said Jaton Aguon, a fellow inmate at Lompoc. “It was like a king walking down the aisle.”

赵长鹏于2024年5月30日上午抵达洛姆波克。他很快融入了一个被称为“车”的非正式社交团体，这类团体通常按族裔建立。其他亚裔囚犯在用餐时与赵长鹏坐在一起，在放风时和他在院子里锻炼。他们为能接近一位亿万富翁而兴奋。“每个人都给他让路，”洛姆波克的同狱犯贾顿·阿古昂说。“就像国王来了一样。”

Mr. Zhao grew close with a Vietnamese bank robber who had once worked as an engineer. They talked in detail about the robberies, which didn’t involve any of the “Ocean’s Eleven”-style preparation one might expect. He was “very mellow” and “a super-chill dude,” Mr. Zhao told me. “He just walks in, asks for the money and leaves. And he got away with it 11 times.”

赵长鹏与一名曾是工程师的越南银行劫匪关系密切。他们详细谈论了抢劫案，这些抢劫并不涉及人们可能想象的《十一罗汉》式准备。他“非常温和”，“一个很平静的家伙，”赵长鹏告诉我。“他就直接走进去，要钱，然后离开。他干成了11票。”

The bank robber was one of a handful of inmates who were interested in the business world. He read Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal and asked Mr. Zhao about Elon Musk’s astronomical compensation package at Tesla. Other inmates also had questions about business, including one who wanted to understand the mysteries of the crypto market. “He’s like, well, Bitcoin — why did it go up?” Mr. Zhao recalled. “I’m like, wow, I don’t know for sure, either.” Mr. Zhao started a study group that tracked stock prices; one of the prison TVs was tuned to CNBC.

这名银行劫匪是少数对商业世界感兴趣的囚犯之一。他读彭博社和《华尔街日报》，问赵长鹏关于埃隆·马斯克在特斯拉的天价薪酬方案。其他囚犯也有商业问题，其中一人想了解加密币市场的奥秘。“他说，好吧，比特币——为什么会涨？”赵长鹏回忆说。“我说，哇，我也不确定。”赵长鹏成立了一个追踪股价的学习小组；监狱的一台电视调到了CNBC。

Not every one of his messages landed. At Lompoc, Mr. Zhao had a hard time conveying his deeply held belief that the Binance case was essentially victimless, with “no fraud, no nothing.” When he explained the details, the response was dismissive. “They’re like, yeah, that’s what everybody says,” Mr. Zhao recalled.

并非他所有的信息都被人接受。在洛姆波克，赵长鹏很难传达他深信的币安案本质上没有受害者，“没有欺诈，什么都没有。”当他解释细节时，回应是轻蔑的。“他们说，是啊，每个人都这么说，”赵长鹏回忆说。

In August 2024, Mr. Zhao left Lompoc for a halfway house. But a complication with his immigration status meant he had to spend his last two weeks at a local jail, passing the time doing push-ups and crunches in his cell. On the day of his release, an officer escorted him outside, where his mother, sister and assistant were waiting. They drove to a nearby airport and deposited him onto a private plane bound for Abu Dhabi.

2024年8月，赵长鹏离开洛姆波克前往过渡教习所。但由于他的移民身份造成的复杂情况，他必须在当地监狱度过最后两周，在牢房里做俯卧撑和仰卧起坐打发时间。获释那天，一名警官护送他出去，他的母亲、妹妹和助手在那里等候。他们驱车前往附近机场，将他送上飞往阿布扎比的私人飞机。

Between the moment Mr. Zhao left custody and the moment his jet took off, only 26 minutes elapsed.

从他离开拘留所到飞机起飞只用了26分钟。

V.

V.

Mr. Zhao returned to a world that was shifting in his favor. A crypto-friendly administration was poised to take power in Washington. Shortly before the election, Mr. Trump had founded World Liberty as a joint enterprise with the family of Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul who was preparing to serve as White House envoy to the Middle East. Soon America’s newly empowered dealmaker-diplomats were spending lots of time in the Emirates.

赵长鹏回到了一个正朝着有利于他的方向转变的世界。一个对加密币友好的政府即将在华盛顿掌权。选举前不久，特朗普与房地产巨头史蒂夫·威特科夫的家族共同创立了World Liberty，威特科夫正准备担任白宫中东特使。很快，美国新近掌权的交易掮客兼外交官们开始花大量时间在阿联酋。

As he drove me around the city, Mr. Zhao paused to point out the ADNEC Center, a conference hall that hosted a giant gathering of crypto enthusiasts in December 2024. “This is where I met Eric Trump,” he said. At the venue, he recalled, a Trump booster named David Bailey had introduced him to the president’s middle son, a leader of World Liberty. It was a casual conversation, with no official agenda. “He was just saying that he was looking at some real estate deal here,” Mr. Zhao told me.

当他开车带我游览城市时，赵长鹏停下来指着ADNEC中心，这是一个会议厅，2024年12月曾举办大型加密币爱好者聚会。“这是我见到埃里克·特朗普的地方，”他说。他回忆说，在会场，一位名叫戴维·贝利的特朗普支持者将他介绍给总统的次子、World Liberty的领导人。这是一次随意交谈，没有正式议程。“他只是说他在看这里的一些房地产交易，”赵长鹏告诉我。

Their interests were about to align. The Emirates had been working to transform from a petrostate into a powerhouse in emerging technologies, a project spearheaded by Sheikh Tahnoon, who oversees $1.5 trillion in Emirati sovereign wealth. Before he went to prison, Mr. Zhao had held talks with Peng Xiao, one of the sheikh’s top lieutenants, about selling the Emiratis a stake in Binance, the ultimate union between his company and his political guardians.

他们即将在利益上捆绑起来。阿联酋一直在努力从石油国家转型为新兴技术强国，这一项目由谢赫·塔赫农牵头，他监管着1.5万亿美元的阿联酋主权财富。入狱前，赵长鹏与谢赫的一位高级副手肖鹏谈过向阿联酋出售币安股份的事，这是他的公司与他的政治保护人的终极结合。

Rarely seen without dark glasses, Sheikh Tahnoon is chairman of a venture capital fund called MGX, which specializes in A.I. Early last year, MGX agreed to invest $2 billion in Binance, a deal that valued the company at $75 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. MGX viewed Binance as the perfect bridge between crypto and A.I. — a high-tech money-transmission service that could someday enable automated A.I. “agents” to make payments on behalf of real people.

露面必戴墨镜的谢赫·塔赫农是一家名为MGX的风险投资基金主席，该基金专注于人工智能。去年年初，MGX同意向币安投资20亿美元，据一位知情人士称，这笔交易对公司的估值为750亿美元。MGX将币安视为加密币与人工智能之间的完美桥梁——一种高科技资金传输服务，有朝一日可能使自动化AI“智能体”代表真人付款。

Mr. Zhao told me that he wanted to settle the deal in Bitcoin. The Emiratis worried that it was prone to drastic price swings that would complicate the transaction. They preferred to pay Mr. Zhao in stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a price of $1.

赵长鹏告诉我，他想用比特币结算这笔交易。阿联酋人担心比特币容易出现剧烈价格波动，使交易复杂化。他们更愿意用稳定币支付赵长鹏，这是一种维持在1美元价格的加密货币。

What happened next is widely disputed — and likely to become the subject of a congressional investigation if the Democrats win control of Congress in November. According to MGX, the fund evaluated several stablecoins before selecting USD1, a coin created by World Liberty, citing “business suitability.” It was a stunning choice, given that USD1 was completely untested, with no track record. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had specifically asked MGX to pay in USD1; Mr. Zhao said MGX had made the decision. “I didn’t care too much as long as the stablecoin is reputable and is not going to disappear overnight,” he told me. “There wasn’t any other consideration.”

接下来发生的事情广受争议——如果民主党在11月赢得国会控制权，这件事很可能成为国会调查的主题。据MGX称，该基金在选择了World Liberty创建的USD1之前评估了几种稳定币，最终选择USD1的理由是“商业适用性”。考虑到USD1完全未经测试、没有业绩记录，这是一个令人震惊的选择。去年，《华尔街日报》报道称，币安特别要求MGX用USD1支付；赵长鹏说MGX做出了决定。“我不太在意，只要稳定币信誉良好，不会一夜消失，”他告诉我。“没有任何其他考虑。”

But all the parties had an incentive to cut World Liberty into the transaction. An Emirati-backed investment firm had taken a 49 percent stake in the start-up in January 2025, days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; Sheikh Tahnoon got a seat on World Liberty’s board. Around the same time, the Emiratis were negotiating with the White House to secure the export of the valuable computer chips that power A.I. Binance also had business in front of the Trump administration. With its legal troubles receding, the company wanted to escape some of the restrictions imposed in the 2023 settlement.

但各方都有动机让World Liberty参与交易。一家阿联酋支持的投资公司于2025年1月——特朗普就职前几天——收购了这家初创公司49%的股份；谢赫·塔赫农获得了World Liberty董事会席位。大约同时，阿联酋人正在与白宫谈判，以确保驱动人工智能的宝贵计算机芯片的出口。币安也有业务摆在特朗普政府面前。随着法律麻烦消退，公司希望摆脱2023年和解中施加的一些限制。

Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the deal in May 2025, thanking Binance and MGX “for their trust in us.” Democrats in Congress condemned it as “stablecoin corruption.” An issuer like World Liberty makes money by accepting cash deposits from crypto traders, giving them stablecoins in return and then investing the deposits to generate a yield. With the $2 billion from MGX and Binance, World Liberty instantly became one of the world’s largest stablecoin companies, a boon to the Trump and Witkoff families. “It’s just such a craven effort to curry favor,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who has investigated Mr. Zhao and Binance. “Unprecedented in its scope and scale of corruption.”

威特科夫的儿子扎克于2025年5月宣布了这笔交易，感谢币安和MGX“对我们的信任”。国会民主党人谴责这是“稳定币腐败”。像World Liberty这样的发行商通过接受加密币交易者的现金存款、给他们稳定币、然后投资存款产生收益来赚钱。凭借MGX和币安的20亿美元，World Liberty立即成为世界最大的稳定币公司之一，这对特朗普和威特科夫家族是一大福音。“这根本是赤裸裸的讨好，”曾调查赵长鹏和币安的康涅狄格州民主党参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔说。“其腐败的范围和规模前所未有。”

Mr. Zhao is adamant that nothing untoward occurred. He said he no longer held the USD1, which he used to invest in Bitcoin and other assets. “I assume that President Trump has very good lawyers, and the setup where the sons run businesses and the father is the president is completely kosher,” he told me. He suggested that some of the outrage might reflect cultural differences. “In Kazakhstan, we can eat horse meat,” he explained. “In some other countries, we’ll be like, ‘Well, that’s crazy.’” The ruling families of two governments had struck a business deal — couldn’t that be a good thing? Mr. Zhao reached for a medieval comparison. “If you marry the daughter of one country to the prince of another country,” he said, “they maintain peace for 50 years.”

赵长鹏坚称不存在任何不当行为。他说他不再持有USD1，已用它投资比特币和其他资产。“我认为特朗普总统有非常好的律师，儿子经营企业、父亲是总统的安排完全合规，”他告诉我。他暗示，一些愤怒可能反映了文化差异。“在哈萨克斯坦，我们可以吃马肉，”他解释说。“在其他一些国家，我们会说，‘嗯，那太疯狂了。’”两个政府的统治家族达成了一项商业协议——这难道不是好事吗？他打了一个中世纪的比方。“如果你把一个国家的女儿嫁给另一个国家的王子，”他说，“他们能维持50年和平。”

Two weeks after the $2 billion transaction, the White House agreed to share access to the chips, overcoming concerns from some U.S. national security officials. Steve Witkoff joined Mr. Trump last spring on a trip to Abu Dhabi, where they celebrated the deal with the Emiratis at Qasr Al Watan.

20亿美元交易两周后，白宫同意分享芯片使用权，克服了一些美国国家安全官员的担忧。史蒂夫·威特科夫去年春天与特朗普一起访问阿布扎比，他们在国家宫与阿联酋人庆祝了这笔交易。

Privately, Mr. Witkoff also told an acquaintance that Mr. Zhao deserved a pardon, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Mr. Zhao had filed the relevant paperwork and was waiting for the president’s verdict. The outcome would have enormous implications for Binance. After Mr. Zhao pleaded guilty, the exchange’s dormant U.S. operation lost state-level licenses. A pardon could help the company pitch itself to regulators. (A White House spokeswoman said Mr. Witkoff does not play a role in the pardon process.)

据一位知情人士称，私下里，威特科夫还告诉一位熟人，赵长鹏应该获得赦免。赵长鹏已提交相关文件，正在等待总统裁决。结果将对币安产生巨大影响。认罪后，该交易所暂时停止的美国业务失去了州级许可证。赦免可能有助于公司向监管机构推销自己。（白宫发言人表示，威特科夫没有在赦免程序中发挥作用。）

When he described the process to me, Mr. Zhao spoke carefully, calling it a “black box” overseen by a couple of lawyers who gave periodic updates from Washington. Once in a while, he said, he would be approached at social events by shady middlemen who said they could arrange a meeting with Mr. Trump — for the right price. “It’s a mini industry of people who want to make a buck,” Mr. Zhao said.

当向我描述这个过程时，赵长鹏措辞谨慎，称其为一个“黑箱”，由几位律师监督，他们定期从华盛顿提供最新情况。他说，偶尔在社交活动中，会有可疑中间人接近他，说只要价格合适，他们可以安排与特朗普会面。“这是一个图利之人组成的迷你产业，”他说。

Mr. Zhao ignored them. He told me that he started thinking seriously about a pardon in March 2025, after other crypto executives received clemency and The Journal reported that he, too, was seeking it. “I was like, if the newspapers think I should be asking for a pardon, maybe I should,” he said.

他没理他们。他告诉我，在一些加密币高管获得宽恕后，他于2025年3月开始认真考虑这一路径，《华尔街日报》报道他也在寻求赦免。“我想，如果报纸认为我应该申请赦免，也许我应该，”他说。

In reality, as early as December 2024, Mr. Zhao’s legal team had been working with Brett Tolman, a prominent pardon attorney, to explore the possibility of clemency, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times. Ultimately, Binance paid $2.1 million to a lobbying firm run by Ches McDowell, who is close to the president’s elder sons, for services including “executive relief,” according to public filings. (A World Liberty spokesman told me the company had “zero involvement in any decisions on pardons.”)

实际上，据两位知情人士和《纽约时报》审阅的文件，早在2024年12月，赵长鹏的法律团队就一直在与著名赦免律师布雷特·托尔曼合作，探讨获得特赦的可能性。最终，根据公开文件，币安向切斯·麦克道尔运营的游说公司支付了210万美元，麦克道尔与总统的长子们关系密切，服务包括“行政救济”。（World Liberty发言人对我说，公司“在任何赦免决定中零参与”。）

When the pardon was announced last October, Mr. Zhao had just landed in Kyrgyzstan for a meeting with President Sadyr Japarov, who was interested in creating a digital coin pegged to the Kyrgyz national currency. Mr. Zhao posted a brief thank-you message on social media as his hosts greeted him in the capital city, Bishkek. He spent the evening at a restaurant with the president, talking about stablecoins.

去年10月赦免宣布时，赵长鹏刚抵达吉尔吉斯斯坦，准备与总统萨德尔·贾帕罗夫会面，后者有兴趣创建一种与吉尔吉斯本国货币挂钩的数字货币。赵长鹏在社交媒体上发布了一条简短感谢信息，当时东道主在首都比什凯克迎接他。他与总统在一家餐厅共度夜晚，谈论稳定币。

VI.

VI.

On a blistering morning this summer, Mr. Zhao pulled into the driveway of his $5 million villa, where he and Ms. He host a rotating cast of grandparents and siblings. He was greeted at the door by his two dogs. In addition to the Taigan, Mr. Zhao has a Belgian Malinois that he named Broccoli, which he thought sounded a little like “blockchain.”

今年夏天一个酷热的早晨，赵长鹏的车停在了他价值500万美元的宅邸门前，他和何一在这里接待陆续前来的祖父母和兄弟姐妹们。两只狗在门口迎接他。除了泰干犬，赵长鹏还有一只比利时马犬，他给它取名“西兰花”(Broccoli)，因为他觉得这词听起来有点像“区块链”(blockchain)。

With a photographer trailing behind him, Mr. Zhao bounded from room to room, pointing out pictures of his young family. A stately cream-colored piano sits in the center of his children’s playroom, surrounded by toys — a scene of neglect that dismayed the tuner who came to service it. It was a Steinway, “one of the expensive ones,” Mr. Zhao told me, “but I don’t know how to use it.” In his home gym, he paused to do some bench presses.

赵长鹏身后跟着一名摄影师，他走过一个个房间，把年幼的孩子的照片指给人看。一架庄严的奶油色钢琴摆在孩子的游戏室中央，周围是玩具——这乱糟糟的环境让前来调音的调音师十分不满。那是一架施坦威，“很贵的那种，”赵长鹏告诉我，“但我不会弹。”在家庭健身房，他停下来做了几组卧推。

Mr. Zhao wanted to make clear that he doesn’t live like a normal billionaire. While Forbes estimates his wealth at over $100 billion, Mr. Zhao insists that the actual figure is much lower, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion. He could live comfortably on a tiny fraction of that, he said — a mere $10 million.

赵长鹏想明确表示，他不像普通亿万富翁那样生活。虽然《福布斯》估计他的财富超过1000亿美元，但赵长鹏坚称实际数字要低得多，大约在100亿到300亿美元之间。他说，只需要其中的一小部分——区区1000万美元——就能过得很舒服了。

On the crypto podcast circuit, Mr. Zhao is occasionally asked about his house, and he often mentions an upstairs leak that he has never managed to fix. Sure enough, in the living room, he pointed to a patch of water damage on the floor, then gestured to the ceiling. “That’s the spot,” he said. “I don’t know if you see the difference in color.”

在加密币播客圈，赵长鹏偶尔会被问及他的房子，他经常提到楼上有一处漏水，他一直没能修好。果然，在客厅里，他指着地板上的一块水渍，然后指了指天花板。“就是那个地方，”他说。“我不知道你是否看得出颜色差异。”

It’s true that Mr. Zhao’s villa is modest by billionaire standards; a house nearby is on sale for $150 million, he told me. But it’s hard to square his affectations of humility with the world of power and privilege that he has settled into. Once, at a group dinner, Mr. Zhao listened as Mr. Altman described an emerging field of biotech research. “They can take from one single person a sperm and an egg,” Mr. Zhao recalled. “Basically, you can have a kid yourself.” Mr. Zhao has his own ambitions to defy biology; he has invested in a start-up that works with artificial wombs.

以亿万富翁标准来说，赵长鹏的宅邸的确不算奢华。他告诉我，附近一栋房子售价1.5亿美元。但他故作谦逊的姿态很难与他已融入的权势世界相协调。有一次在集体晚宴上，赵长鹏听奥尔特曼描述一个新兴的生物技术研究领域。“他们可以从一个人身上取出精子和卵子，”赵长鹏回忆说。“基本上，你可以自己生孩子。”赵长鹏自己有挑战生物学的雄心，他投资了一家研究人造子宫的初创公司。

Since prison, Mr. Zhao has split his time among a range of ventures, including his tech investments and his travels as a kind of crypto diplomat, helping promote the industry in countries where he’s often treated like royalty. “They always send a guy with two cars to drive right up to the plane,” he told me. “There’s a girl holding the local delicacy, like you’re supposed to try one of them.”

自出狱以来，赵长鹏将时间分配在一系列事业上，包括他的科技投资和作为某种加密币外交官的旅行，在那些常把他当王公贵族般对待的国家推广该行业。“他们总是派一个人开两辆车直接开到飞机旁，”他告诉我。“有个女孩拿着当地美食，那意思是你需要尝一尝。”

Mr. Zhao downplayed his involvement in Binance; the company’s plea deal prohibited him from “operating or managing” the business. He made a point to express frustration with Binance’s recent decision to sue The Journal, after the paper reported on turnover in the compliance division, calling the case “a gigantic waste of time.” Even if Binance wins, “they won’t get very much,” he told me. (The company dropped the lawsuit last month.)

赵长鹏淡化了他在币安的参与；公司的认罪协议禁止他“运营或管理”业务。他特意对币安最近决定起诉《华尔街日报》表示不满，称这“完全是在浪费时间”，此前该报报道了币安合规部门的离职潮。他告诉我，即使币安赢了，“他们也拿不到多少。”（公司已于上月撤诉。）

It’s obvious that Binance remains a major part of his life. One of the two co-chief executives appointed to replace him was Ms. He — the mother of his three young children. Two years ago, in a gesture toward traditional governance, Binance established a board of directors with three supposedly independent trustees. One of them is also the board’s chairman — Gabe Abed, the friend who first recruited Mr. Zhao to the Emirates. They have gone jet-skiing together, and Mr. Abed gave Mr. Zhao a pair of orange high-top sneakers, emblazoned with the words “TRUMP CRYPTO PRESIDENT.”

显然，币安仍是他生活的主要部分。被任命接替他的两位联席首席执行官之一是何一——他三个年幼孩子的母亲。两年前，为了体现向传统治理的转型，币安成立了一个董事会，由三名据称独立的受托人组成。其中一人是董事会主席加布·阿贝德，最初招募赵长鹏来阿联酋的朋友。他们一起玩过水上摩托，阿贝德送给赵长鹏一双橙色高帮运动鞋，上面印着“特朗普加密币总...