Zhao Changpeng, 41, built the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume in about 165 days by sticking to a simple strategy: expand anywhere but China. The meteoric rise of Binance, which was founded in Hong Kong in July last year, was helped in part by China’s decision to crack down on domestic cryptocurrency trading, Zhao said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore last month. When China shut down all domestic cryptocurrency exchanges in September last year, Zhao quickly moved the headquarters and servers of Binance to Tokyo, outside the reach of Hong Kong and mainland regulators, and then to other markets, including Singapore and Taiwan. Chinese operators of cryptocurrency exchanges scrambled to keep up with new regulations, which provided Binance with precious time to build up its business.

Binance claims to have made a profit of USD350 million, mostly from transaction fees, in the six months ended June 30, as it hosted trades of digital tokens from its 10 million users around the world. Although they do not serve Chinese clients, cryptocurrency exchange operators OKCoin and Huobi, both of which are based in Beijing, currently operate the next two largest trading platforms in the world for bitcoin and other digital currencies. Zhao has been more mobile than his peers. During the past month alone, Zhao said he has visited eight countries – including Switzerland and South Korea – to hire new staff, attend industry events and forge deals. He has not travelled back to mainland China since the cryptocurrency crackdown a year ago, he said. While the Chinese government is ratcheting up its adoption of blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, Beijing has made clear it does not want people in the country to get involved with cryptocurrency trades amid concerns of financial chaos.

As part of its international business expansion, Binance will launch new trading platforms in 10 markets, including Uganda, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Malta and Singapore, where users can buy digital tokens with their local currencies. At present, Binance’s main platform only supports trades between different cryptocurrencies. Binance stays out of China, banning users with Chinese internet protocol (IP) addresses. “Zhao is like the Jack Ma of cryptocurrency: he came out of nowhere and scaled very fast,” said Timothy Tam, who co-founded Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency intelligence platform CoinFi.