The release of Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao's memoir, Freedom of Money, has reignited a bitter, decade-old feud with OKX founder Star Xu. The core dispute centers on Xu's accusation that in 2014, while CZ was CTO at OKCoin (OKX's predecessor), he forged a contract related to a deal with Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver.
Xu has publicly called CZ "a habitual liar" and revived the claim that CZ altered a contract by adding a six-month termination clause without authorization. As evidence, Xu resurfaced a notarized video from 2015 showing an OKCoin accountant's QQ account being accessed, which purportedly displays CZ sending two versions of the Bitcoin.com agreement, with the controversial clause appearing only in the later version.
CZ's defense at the time was that he rarely used QQ and suggested another employee may have fabricated the chat history after hacking his account—an explanation Xu has repeatedly questioned. OKCoin's 2015 rebuttal went further, accusing CZ of forging Roger Ver's signature on the contract, overstating his technical contributions, and running personal trading bots.
In his memoir, CZ presents a counter-narrative, portraying himself as the target of coordinated "fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD)" campaigns from rival exchanges aiming to undermine Binance's rapid rise. The book also revisits the October 2020 incident when OKX paused withdrawals for five weeks while Xu was reportedly under "soft arrest" in China, contrasting it with Huobi's continued operations during its founder's detention.
The feud expanded with new allegations from CZ's book, claiming that Huobi founder Leon Li believed Xu had reported him to Chinese authorities years earlier—a claim Xu denies as "purely false information." Xu also disputes CZ's accounts of market manipulation and his role as an informant regarding Justin Sun.
As of publication, CZ had not publicly responded to Xu's latest series of posts challenging the memoir's claims. The public airing of this long-standing grievance highlights the intense personal rivalries that have shaped the cryptocurrency exchange landscape.
