Ex-Binance CEO sold his apartment in 2014 to buy 1,500 Bitcoin and his mom called him 'stupid', now it's worth huge amount

Changpeng Zhao, ex-CEO of Binance, made a financial decision involving Bitcoin that looked crazy at the time even though now, with hindsight, we know it clearly wasn’t.

Back in 2014, when Bitcoin was still a new thing and people had no idea what it was for, Zhao sold his apartment in Shanghai to buy BTC.

What made his decision even more difficult to comprehend back then was the fact that Bitcoin wasn’t actually that cheap in 2014.

Zhao ended up spending $900,000 to buy BTC, which is a huge amount of cash even today.

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Zhao’s investment paid off big time

Changpeng Zhao – or CZ as most people call him – founded Binance in 2017 and acted as the company’s CEO for a few years.

But CZ’s experience with crypto dates even further in the past than that.

In 2014, when Bitcoin was still a baby, Changpeng Zhao sold his apartment in Shanghai for about $900,000, and immediately reinvested that cash to buy 1,500 BTC at $600 per coin.

The Binance site reported that his mom called him a ‘stupid kid’ for trading real estate for ‘magical internet money’.

It must’ve sounded like an irrational decision back then, but it clearly wasn’t.

His investment is now worth around $130 million.

Some people made a fortune with Bitcoin, but others didn’t

For every person that made a fortune with crypto, there’s always someone else who lost everything.

James Howells is probably the most famous example.

He somehow misplaced a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC (worth nearly $800 million today), and then attempted to buy an entire landfill site because he believed that’s where the hard drive was lying.

Unfortunately for him, the local council told him that would be impossible.

Howells’ story isn’t unique.

Other people lost even more either because they were careless, or because they were impatient and sold too soon.

And then there’s the famous case of Laszlo Hanyecz.

Back in 2010, Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.

In today’s money, that’s $900 million for two pizzas.

Ouch.