Zhao says he expects Binance to have profits of $800 million to $1 billion this year, up from about $570 million last year, as market uncertainty pushes traders into digital coins. Changpeng Zhao, who goes by CZ, started his business in 2017. By that point, the world was littered with failed exchanges— see Mt. Gox, 2014. But Zhao had experience engineering high-frequency trading systems and working for other crypto startups. (From 2002 to 2005, he worked at Bloomberg LP.) Binance offered lower trading fees and rolled out a coin, BNB, that doubles as a loyalty program: If you hold it in your digital wallet, you pay lower fees, no matter what coins you trade. The company has come to dominate the market for crypto derivatives—Bitcoin futures, for example—thanks partly to issues at competitors. In April it acquired CoinMarketCap, the No. 1 place for crypto investors to check thousands of coin prices and see which exchanges have the highest trading volume. (The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.) To prove his company’s staying power, Zhao must now remain on the right side of regulators. In July the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hired the same company Binance uses to glean insights from its blockchain, which runs BNB, to keep its own tabs on the blockchain and to deter bad actors. “We’re always working closely with regulators and law enforcement worldwide,” Zhao says.