Changpeng Zhao Disputes Forbes Valuation After Forbes Pegs CZ at $110 Billion

Forbes pegs Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, at $110 billion on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, placing him 17th with a $47 billion jump from the previous year, while Bill Gates sits at $108 billion and 19th place.

“Crypto's next frontier isn't crypto, it's financing AI and robotics, Framework's Anderson says Blockchain is becoming the financial layer for capital-intensive industries rather than just crypto-native speculation, Michael Anderson, the crypto venture firm's cofounder, said”

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The Crypto Briefing says CZ’s paper wealth is tied to his approximately 90% ownership stake in Binance, which Forbes values at around $100 billion, and it adds that Binance commands roughly 38% of global crypto trading market share.

@coindesk

After Forbes published its list on March 10, 2026, CZ took to X to dispute the valuation, arguing that major cryptocurrency prices have dropped more than 50% throughout 2026.

As of late June 2026, the same article says Forbes adjusted its estimate down to approximately $107 billion, while Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index records a significantly lower figure of around $78 billion.

The Crypto Briefing frames the $29 billion discrepancy as a problem of valuing privately held crypto businesses, noting that “nobody really agrees on what they’re worth.”

Framework Ventures announced Friday a new $400 million fund, saying tokenization and stablecoins are evolving from crypto-native products into financial infrastructure for sectors that need new ways to raise capital.

In an interview with CoinDesk, co-founder Michael Anderson said, “The industry has moved in the direction of bringing these technologies — tokenization, blockchain itself, decentralized networks — to other markets that can utilize the technology in a new and novel way,” tying the shift to financing capital-intensive industries.

Crypto Briefing

CoinDesk reports Framework believes tokenization could unlock cheaper financing for GPUs and other computing hardware by turning those assets into blockchain-based collateral, while stablecoins create a new source of capital for asset-backed lending.

CoinDesk adds that stablecoins have more than $300 billion circulating onchain, and Anderson said, “We have the capital onchain to finance this industry.”

The CoinDesk report also links the strategy to energy investments, including Daylight financing residential solar projects through a distributed energy network and Uranium Digital building a tokenized marketplace for physical uranium.

CoinDesk and CryptoRank both describe Framework Ventures’ fourth fund, FVIV, launched on June 26, raising $400 million to expand beyond crypto into AI, robotics, energy and fintech while keeping conviction in blockchain and DeFi investments.

“Binance founder CZ surpasses Bill Gates in net worth, then questions the math Forbes pegs Changpeng Zhao at $110 billion, but the Binance founder says crypto's 2026 crash makes that number fiction”

Crypto Briefing

CryptoRank says the firm reported about $1.28 billion assets under management at end-2025 and notes that a $25 billion 2025 crypto funding surge occurred even as deal counts fell to around 1,200.

CryptoRank says the fund will be managed by co-founders Vance Spencer and Michael Anderson, and it says Framework led a $60 million round in Mecka AI, which it projects at ~$100 million annual run rate.

In the CoinDesk interview, Anderson contrasts the 2020-21 cycle—when “we were building crypto products to serve crypto users”—with today’s approach of using blockchain to solve financing problems outside crypto.

CryptoRank also says Framework’s recent investments include TVL Capital, founded by former members of Morgan Stanley's digital assets team, and it describes Mecka AI as a robotics-adjacent startup supplying training data to frontier AI companies.