When Forbes tells you you’re worth $47 billion more than last year, most people would pop champagne. Changpeng Zhao decided to publicly call the math into question.

The Binance founder, known universally as CZ, pushed back on Forbes’ March 2026 estimate that placed his net worth between $110 billion and $111 billion. That figure represented a $47 billion jump from the prior year, landing him 17th on the World’s Billionaires list, ahead of Bill Gates at roughly $108 billion. The problem, as CZ pointed out on X: major cryptocurrencies had fallen over 50% from their all-time highs during the same period.

The math doesn’t math

CZ dismissed billionaire rankings as “guess a number” lists. The vast majority of…