Recently, rumors about Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) possibly making a “significant return” have sparked heated discussions throughout the encryption community. Accompanying this rumor is the unstoppable momentum of Binance's platform token BNB - its price broke through the $1000 mark for the first time on September 18, setting a new historical high.
The frenzy of the market, the surge in prices, and the political games are intertwined, making this event perplexing. Is CZ really returning to Binance? Behind BNB's breakthrough of a thousand yuan, is it merely driven by market sentiment, or is there deeper fundamental support?
Rumors of a return are rampant.
The trigger of the event originated from an extremely small detail. Observant community members noticed that Zhao Changpeng (CZ) quietly changed his personal X (formerly Twitter) account bio from “ex-@binance” (former Binance member) back to “@binance.”
In the context of the encryption community, such seemingly casual changes are often interpreted as strong signals. For a time, speculation about “CZ's imminent return” ran rampant. It is worth noting that since Binance reached a historic settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2023, where CZ acknowledged violations of U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) regulations and resigned from his position as CEO, he has remained active in the public eye as a “former CEO” and has dedicated himself to a children's education project called “Giggle Academy.”
Although the current CEO Richard Teng has explicitly stated that CZ is “permanently banned” from operating or managing Binance, and CZ himself has also expressed “zero interest” in returning to the CEO position after his release, this change in the profile is still enough to ignite the community's imagination. People are starting to speculate whether this means CZ will re-engage in Binance's strategic decision-making in some new, non-executive director or advisory role.
BNB breaks new high
The rumors of CZ's return undoubtedly add fuel to BNB's already strong upward momentum. However, attributing BNB's breakthrough of the $1000 milestone solely to this would clearly be one-sided. In fact, it is the result of a combination of a series of macro, regulatory, and fundamental positive factors.
First, the regulatory clouds are dissipating. The biggest piece of good news recently is that Binance is negotiating with the U.S. Department of Justice to try to lift a key provision in the $4.3 billion settlement agreement from 2023, which is the three-year external independent compliance monitoring. If the negotiations are successful, it means that Binance will be able to shake off this heavy regulatory shackles and regain more operational autonomy. This development is seen by the market as a significant victory in Binance's “compliance” process, greatly boosting investor confidence in BNB.
However, this move also drew strong opposition from Democratic lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren wrote to the Department of Justice expressing concerns about potential connections between Binance and the Trump administration, and requested clarification from the DOJ on Binance's compliance status, whether CZ might possibly receive a presidential pardon, among other issues. This regulatory and political game, instead, highlights the importance of Binance's position.
Secondly, the macro environment is warming up. The Federal Reserve announced its first interest rate cut for 2025 on September 17, officially starting a cycle of shifting monetary policy from tight to loose. The interest rate cut reduces the cost of capital and enhances the market's preference for risk assets. Against the backdrop of the three major U.S. stock indices reaching all-time highs, abundant liquidity begins to overflow, seeking new investment niches. “Altcoins” represented by BNB and Solana have become the main beneficiaries of this round of capital rotation, and the “Altcoin Season Index” has also crossed the 75 threshold, indicating a significant increase in the market's risk appetite.
Finally, strong fundamentals and a deflationary model. BNB is no longer a simple “exchange discount token.” It has evolved into the native asset of a large multi-chain ecosystem, powering BNB Smart Chain (BSC), opBNB, Greenfield, and more.
On-chain ecosystem prosperity: The BNB chain has over 5,886 decentralized applications (dApps), with a cumulative dApp transaction volume exceeding 13.2 trillion dollars and a daily on-chain transaction volume close to 10 million. Its total value locked (TVL) has also risen to 7.8 billion dollars. Continuous deflation: The quarterly destruction mechanism of BNB continually reduces its circulating supply. For example, in the third quarter of 2025, 1.6 million BNB were permanently removed during the burn, reducing its circulating supply to about 139 million. Institutional adoption: VanEck submitted the first application for a BNB spot ETF in the United States, which is seen as an important signal for institutional capital entry. At the same time, the Nasdaq-listed BNB Network Company (BNC), known as the “BNB version of MicroStrategy”, is also actively acquiring and holding BNB, providing a compliant channel for traditional capital markets to invest in BNB.
CZ's vision
As BNB hits a historic high, CZ had an in-depth conversation with BNC's CEO David Namdar, which may reveal the future direction of BNB and CZ's true thoughts after leaving the CEO position.
CZ candidly stated in the conversation that he never anticipated BNB would grow into such a large ecosystem today, and he believes that BNB Chain is still “underdeveloped,” which means there are huge growth opportunities within it. He emphasized the need to distinguish between BNB (as an asset) and BNB Chain (as an ecosystem), the latter of which has flourished independently of any single company.
When asked about the future, CZ's answer went beyond a focus on price. He presented a grander vision: to help and empower the next billion users. He believes that the measure of success should not be whether the price of BNB surpasses that of Bitcoin, but rather how many people the community can provide financial services to, especially those in underdeveloped areas like Africa and Southeast Asia who have been overlooked by traditional financial systems.
He believes that the future of decentralized exchanges (DEX) will definitely surpass centralized exchanges (CEX), and that being forced to leave the operations of CEX now gives him more time to contribute to the decentralized ecosystem. In addition, he is full of expectations for the combination of AI and blockchain, believing that AI will increase human trading volume by several orders of magnitude, and only blockchain can support such ultra-high frequency and ultra-low cost trading demands.
The next stop for BNB
Returning to the original question: Will CZ really return to Binance? From the current information, the likelihood of him directly returning to the CEO position is extremely low. It is more likely that as his personal legal issues are resolved and the regulatory environment becomes clearer, he will continue to provide guidance and influence for the development of Binance and the entire BNB ecosystem in a more transcendent and strategic role. His changes to the X profile may be a subtle hint of this role transition.
The breakthrough of BNB above $1000 represents a concentrated pricing of the market's favorable factors of “regulatory certainty,” “macro liquidity,” and “strong fundamentals.” It signifies that BNB has successfully transformed from a utility token strongly tied to a single exchange into a blue-chip encryption asset with independent vitality, institutional recognition, and bearing the future vision of Web3.
As CZ said, the journey of BNB is not about the stars and the sea, but about serving billions of users worldwide. The breakthrough in price is just a result, a milestone. The real challenge and opportunity lie in how to build this massive decentralized ecosystem to be more user-friendly, safer, and more inclusive, thereby truly realizing its ultimate vision of “empowering the next billion users.” For the “diamond hands” holding BNB, an eight-year thousandfold return may just be the prologue, as a grander story is slowly unfolding.
#BNB breaks 1000
