A Book Ignites a Decade-Long Feud: CZ and Star Clash Again
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A Book Ignites a Decade-Long Feud: CZ and Star Clash Again
The two big shots can keep throwing bombs at each other on X, but users remain stuck in the craters.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Xiao Bing, TechFlow
Lead: A $1 billion bet, an old contract-forgery case, and allegations of whistleblowing… The public feud between Binance’s and OKX’s founders has ripped open a long-buried wound in the crypto industry.
On April 8, 2026, Changpeng Zhao (CZ)’s memoir Freedom of Money was released globally. This 457-page autobiography traces his journey from childhood in a rural village in Jiangsu Province to four months in a U.S. federal prison. All proceeds from book sales were donated to charity, and it quickly topped Amazon’s cryptocurrency bestseller list.
Yet the book’s real explosive impact lies not in its inspirational narrative—but in whose names it names.
The most controversial passage recounts a dinner in 2025, where Huobi founder Li Lin allegedly told CZ he had seen a screenshot showing OKX founder Star Xu personally reporting CZ to Chinese police—an act Li Lin claimed led directly to his detention at the end of 2020.
Once this bomb dropped, Star fired back with a series of lengthy posts on X, calling CZ a “habitual liar” and resurrecting a decade-old dispute.
Thus began a multi-day public war of words.
Old Grudge: One Contract, Two Versions
To grasp the intensity of this feud, we must go back to 2014.
That year, CZ joined OKCoin—founded by Star—as CTO. He stayed for less than a year. According to CZ’s account in the book, early in 2015 Star attempted to renegotiate CZ’s 10% equity stake; talks collapsed, and CZ departed.
A departure itself isn’t remarkable—but what followed became a spectacle watched across the Chinese-speaking crypto community.
The crux of the dispute centered on a business deal CZ brokered while at OKCoin: he introduced early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver, leading to a cooperation agreement over the Bitcoin.com domain. After CZ left, the contract unraveled. Two versions surfaced—one containing a six-month termination clause, the other lacking it. OKCoin accused CZ of forging the contract; CZ countered by accusing OKCoin of manipulating trading volumes and fabricating proof-of-reserves. Roger Ver later sued OKCoin for $570,000, citing breach of contract.
Ten years have passed—and the “who forged the contract?” Roshomon remains unresolved.
This time, Star dug up and reposted a video of a QQ chat log that OKCoin had notarized back in 2014. He claimed it proved CZ sent two different versions of the agreement (v7 and v8) to OKCoin’s accountant in December 2014—a clear-cut case of evidence fabrication. CZ’s explanation in the book: he rarely used QQ, so someone else at OKCoin may have logged into his account and forged the chat record.
Each side holds firm to its version—and each claims irrefutable proof. And so it has remained, unchanged for a decade.
New Grievance: Whistleblowing Allegations and OKEx’s “Darkest Five Weeks”
What truly struck a nerve for Star in Freedom of Money was CZ’s account of the 2020 regulatory crackdown in China.
On October 16, 2020, OKEx (OKX’s predecessor) abruptly suspended all digital asset withdrawals, citing that “a private key holder is cooperating with public security authorities.” That private key holder was later confirmed by Caixin and other media outlets to be Star Xu himself. OKEx’s withdrawal freeze lasted exactly five weeks. Within 24 hours of the announcement, OKB plummeted over 15%. Users flooded Weibo with angry questions: “When can we withdraw our money?”
CZ described the incident in his book, implying OKEx’s wallet architecture suffered from a “single point of failure”—because one person’s detention brought the entire exchange to a halt. He contrasted OKEx with Huobi, noting that Li Lin had also been placed under de facto house arrest for roughly 90 days around the same time—but Huobi never paused withdrawals, thanks to “better wallet design.”
A month later, Li Lin was detained as well. CZ writes that, five years later—in 2025—Li Lin told him over dinner he’d seen a screenshot showing Star had reported him to Chinese police.
Star dismissed the allegation outright: “Pure nonsense.” On X, he wrote that in Asia’s crypto industry, every major platform and founder faces dozens—if not hundreds—of whistleblower reports annually. If mere reports dictated outcomes, the industry would have vanished long ago. He added: “A man who spent four months in jail then emerges to lie to the whole world proves that a habitual liar never changes.”
A background note is essential here: In November 2023, CZ pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws. He paid a $150 million personal fine; Binance paid $4.3 billion; and CZ served four months in prison, being released in September 2024.
Escalation: The $1 Billion Bet and the “Divorce” Enigma
Up to this point, the feud remained within the realm of “business history.” What truly escalated matters was Star dragging CZ’s personal life into the fray.
Star added one item to his list of accusations: CZ’s marital status. He challenged CZ’s claim—repeated in the book and in media interviews—that he is “already divorced,” demanding CZ produce a divorce agreement signed by both parties.
Here’s some publicly available information: Ahead of CZ’s sentencing in 2024, 161 letters of support were submitted to the court. One came from Yang Weiqing, who wrote: “My name is Yang Weiqing. I met Mr. Zhao Changpeng in 1999 and married him in 2003. Together, we raised two children.” Another letter was authored by He Yi, identifying herself as “a business partner and mother of three children.” In other words, as of the court documents made public in April 2024, CZ’s marriage to Yang Weiqing remained legally intact—even as he and He Yi already had three children together.
Star seized on this timing gap. If CZ now says he’s “already divorced,” when exactly did the divorce conclude? More critically: Has Binance’s equity been lawfully divided from his ex-wife?
Star cited Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ divorces as benchmarks. When Gates divorced Melinda, they pre-signed a separation agreement—and Microsoft’s SEC filings promptly updated its ownership disclosures. After Bezos’ divorce, his ex-wife MacKenzie received roughly 4% of Amazon’s shares—valued at approximately $38 billion—everything fully transparent and public.
Star’s implication was unmistakable: As a company supervised by multiple regulators, shouldn’t Binance’s founder’s equity changes be as traceable and transparent as those of any publicly listed corporation?
CZ responded swiftly on X: “You can apologize now. I am officially divorced. Out of respect for my ex-wife’s privacy, I will not post any legal documents online. I’ll wager $1 billion that I was formally divorced before today. If you accept the bet, we can engage lawyers to verify it.”
He gave Star a 24-hour ultimatum: Refuse the bet, and you’re misleading the public.
Star’s reply was equally sharp: “For the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) of a regulated company to publicly propose a $1 billion bet is hardly professional. I wonder whether Binance’s regulators consider such conduct acceptable.”
He declined the bet—and redirected the question elsewhere: “Has your Binance shareholding been legally separated from your ex-wife? Proving that alone would suffice.”
The Governance Baseline of an Industry
Setting aside the personal animosity between these two titans, this feud exposes a long-ignored systemic issue.
In traditional finance, any institution managing tens or hundreds of billions in client assets must disclose major developments—including shifts in founders’ marital status or equity structures—to regulators (and, if publicly listed, to the public). Every detail of Bezos’ divorce appears in Amazon’s proxy statement. Gates and Melinda’s separation agreement was filed with Washington State courts.
But in the world of crypto exchanges, founders’ shareholdings, equity distribution, nominee arrangements, or trust structures remain almost entirely opaque. Binance has never published its full equity structure. OKX, though it emphasizes compliance across multiple jurisdictions, likewise operates under a parent company—OK Group—with an equally tangled ownership history.
The FTX collapse already demonstrated that fundamental corporate governance failures ultimately cost users. How SBF’s personal relationship with Caroline Ellison influenced Alameda Research’s fund usage was a central question repeatedly probed during the FTX trial.
OKEx’s “darkest five weeks” in 2020 delivered the same lesson: When a single founder is detained, an entire exchange halts withdrawals—and locks up assets belonging to hundreds of thousands of users. Such a scenario is unimaginable in traditional finance.
The personal grievances between CZ and Star belong to them alone; outsiders cannot adjudicate who tells the truth. But the underlying issue unintentionally exposed by this spat is far more urgent than either party’s credibility: As crypto exchanges now rival traditional financial institutions in scale, their governance transparency remains stuck in startup mode.
The two titans may keep lobbing bombs at each other on X—but hiding in the craters are always the users.
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