Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao credited his Canadian roots for his success in building the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, praising his parents' decision to move to the country when he was age 12.
"(Canada) changed my life forever and opened up endless possibilities for me," Zhao wrote in a blog post. "I spent my best years as a teenager in Vancouver and then went to McGill in Montreal for college."
Zhao's parents, college professors at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, left the country for Canada in 1989, two months after Tiananmen Square.
Canada courted Chinese immigrants after the incident.
"I was lucky to have been able to leave (China) at that time," Zhao said. "It normally took four years to get a passport, and it would have taken another 2-3 years to get a Canadian visa if we were lucky. But due to the incident, the Canadian embassy opened up and gave us visas quickly."
"I remember the line outside the Canadian embassy was three days long. We had to take shifts at night to keep our position in the queue," he said.
Zhao's father got a job at the University of British Columbia.
After graduating from McGill with a degree in computer science, Zhao worked as a software developer for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and for Bloomberg, LP in New Jersey and London, building trading applications, before moving to Shanghai in 2005 to join a tech start-up.
He founded the company, which built high-frequency trading systems for brokers, "together with five other expats; two Americans, two Brits, one Japanese, and me, a Canadian."
Living in Shanghai during the tech boom, his Canadian citizenship proved a hindrance administratively.
"The company was designated as a “Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise” (WOFE), as none of us were Chinese nationals.," he wrote. "This point was a considerable business hurdle to overcome."
Zhao said it cost him billions.
"When I was financially stable enough to purchase a condo in Shanghai, I had to pay 25% more tax because I was a foreigner. Yes, the same apartment I sold to buy bitcoin in 2014," he said. "Without the fee, I could have 25% more bitcoin today."
Zhao first learned about Bitcoin in 2013, from a venture capitalist with whom he played poker. Later that year, he joined Blockchain.info, helping to develop the company's Bitcoin wallet.
He founded Binance in July 2017.