Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s new memoir has reignited a long-standing feud with OKX founder Star Xu, who accused the Binance founder and former chief of lying about their shared history and past disputes.
In Freedom of Money, released April 8, CZ revisits a contract dispute at OKCoin and claims rivals sought to undermine him with “fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD)”, portraying him as an inept chief technical officer.
CZ also claimed that Huobi founder Leon Li told him in 2025 that he believed Xu had reported him to authorities years earlier. Xu has denied allegations of reporting Li and, in a series of posts on X on Wednesday, called CZ “a habitual liar,” disputing multiple claims in the book and reviving earlier accusations that CZ forged contract documents.
The book further revisits October 2020, when OKX (then OKEx) paused customer withdrawals for five weeks while Xu was reportedly under “soft arrest” in China, suggesting that “Xu alone held the keys” to exchange wallets, and contrasting it with Huobi’s decision not to halt withdrawals during Li’s detention a month later, saying the exchange “had a better wallet setup.”
Xu disputes memoir’s account
Xu said the memoir misrepresents key parts of the story, including CZ’s tenure at OKCoin, the contract dispute with Roger Ver, allegations about market manipulation, informant activity involving Justin Sun, and even his “current marital status.”
Xu resurfaced OKCoin’s 2015 rebuttal of CZ’s earlier allegations and a notarized chat video the exchange released at the time. The video, still publicly available, shows an OKCoin accountant’s QQ account being accessed in front of a notary and purports to display CZ sending two versions of the Bitcoin.com agreement (v7 and v8) on Dec. 16, 2014, with the controversial six-month termination clause appearing in v8.
He said CZ’s explanation at the time was that he rarely used QQ and that another OKCoin employee might have logged into his account and fabricated the chat history, a defense Xu questioned: “Do you believe such an explanation?”
Related: Roger Ver reaches tentative agreement with US DOJ over tax charges: Report
OKCoin’s accompanying Reddit statement accused CZ of forging Roger Ver’s signature on the v8 contract, overstating his technical contributions as chief technical officer, running his own trading bots, and waging a public campaign of “lies and desperate nonsense” after leaving the company.
Memoir revives older allegations
CZ’s memoir presents a sharply different narrative, portraying himself as the target of coordinated attacks from rival exchanges seeking to slow Binance’s rise, including last-minute funding withdrawals during its 2017 initial coin offering.
The new chapters extend the rivalry to the 2020 custody incidents, with CZ claiming that Li believed Xu had reported him to authorities.
Related: DeFi lender Aave launches on OKX’s Ethereum L2, X Layer
Xu called the claim “purely false information,” arguing that complaints against large exchanges are common and do not determine enforcement outcomes. He added that Li “shouldn’t believe this kind of nonsense that defies common sense.”
Xu also accused CZ of lying about whether he “personally manipulated the market” and whether he “acted as a tainted witness to report Justin Sun,” but has so far relied on previously released OKCoin materials rather than new evidence.
CZ had not publicly responded by publication time to Xu’s latest posts challenging the memoir. Cointelegraph reached out to CZ and Xu for comment, but had not received responses from either by publication.
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