“I am happy to bet $1 billion USD,” Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told OKX founder Star Xu, “that: I am officially divorced.”
That escalated quickly.
With one of the largest peer-to-peer bets ever publicly offered, the Binance-OKX feud went nuclear this week.
As if the bet wasn’t interesting enough on its face, according to Xu’s responses, gambling isn’t legal for United Arab Emirates residents, yet polygamy is.
For context, CZ worked at Xu’s crypto exchange, OKCoin, but left under contested circumstances before creating Binance. The two exchanges have been fierce competitors ever since, with periodic public spats over listings and various market practices.
CZ left OKCoin in early 2015 after Xu attempted to renegotiate his equity stake. OKCoin’s 2015 Reddit statement accused CZ of contributing no code, running his own trading bots on company systems, and mounting a campaign of “lies and desperate nonsense” after his departure.
CZ’s memoir characterizes his departure more vaguely, as a clash of vision.
Anyway, what happened that escalated their disagreement to $1 billion?
CZ’s memoir airs years of dirty laundry
When CZ published his book Freedom of Money on April 8, Xu called him a “habitual liar.” Among many accusations, Xu claimed CZ lied about his marital status.
CZ doubled-down, calling Xu’s bet and pushing in $1 billion in chips.
Xu also claimed CZ published falsehoods about his career at OKCoin, his contract dispute with Roger Ver, his alleged manipulation of crypto markets, and whether he was a government informant against Justin Sun.
Fed up, CZ demanded of Xu, “You can apologize now.” He offered “$1 billion USD (or any number you choose),” giving Xu 24 hours to accept.
A refusal, according to CZ’s characterization, would “clearly show who has been mis-representing to the public.”
Xu declined, citing not only the illegality of gambling in his country of residence, but also his professional obligations.
“As the ultimate beneficial owner of a regulated company, publicly offering a $1 billion bet is hardly professional conduct,” he said.
Yi He backs up CZ
Xu demanded details about the largest source of CZ’s personal wealth. “Has your Binance stake been legally separated with your ex-wife or not?”
Yi He, the mother of CZ’s children and obviously implicated in the debate, didn’t stay quiet on social media. In 2014, after meeting CZ at a blockchain event, Yi helped CZ join OKCoin as chief technology officer.
Soon, they were romantically involved.
Yesterday, she promoted a Binance on-chain prediction market asking users to wager on whether Xu would publicly apologize to CZ.
She taunted Xu to engage.
CZ claimed Star Xu got Leon Li arrested
The memoir’s most explosive new allegation concerns Huobi (now HTX) founder Leon Li.
In his book, CZ wrote that Xu (using Star Xu’s real name, Mingxing) reported Li to Chinese police, leading to Li’s November 2020 detention.
Xu called that claim “purely false information.”
The disagreement is yet another example of the CZ versus Xu battle.
Contested details of an OKCoin agreement
This week, Xu resurfaced a 2015 video showing an OKCoin accountant’s QQ account, allegedly accessed in the presence of a notary.
Within that QQ account, a video shows CZ apparently sending two versions of a Bitcoin.com domain agreement. The video shows Version 7 first, then a modified Version 8 with a six-month termination clause absent from Version 7.
CZ had previously attributed the chat records to an unauthorized account intrusion.
“Do you believe such an explanation?” Xu asked rhetorically.
Roger Ver sued OKCoin’s Hong Kong entity for approximately $570,000 over the contract dispute.
In other words, CZ and Xu are essentially arguing this week about that contract via a decade-old QQ video.
Read more: CZ cries FUD as anti-Binance posts flood X
More feuds
Xu had spent months previewing his arguments in public before CZ’s book arrived.
Following the 2025 flash crash, Xu blamed Binance for the de-peg of Ethena’s USDE stablecoin.
“October 10 was caused by irresponsible marketing campaigns by certain companies,” Xu wrote. “No complexity. No accident.”
He also accused Binance of repeatedly launching what he called Ponzi-like schemes and using influencer campaigns to suppress dissent.
CZ said he’d “try not to comment on this topic further” and retweeted rebuttals from allies.
In 2023, CZ pleaded guilty to failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering programs, paid a $50 million criminal fine, and watched the company he founded pay over $4.3 billion in penalties.
After serving a four-month prison sentence, he received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump last year.
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