CZ says the Binance rescue was never truly serious

In his new memoir, Changpeng Zhao says he never seriously intended to buy FTX during its November 2022 collapse. According to CoinDesk’s reporting on the book, Zhao describes Binance’s non-binding letter of intent as more of a formality than a real commitment to complete an acquisition.

That is a notable revision to how many people understood the moment at the time. Back in November 2022, Binance publicly said FTX had asked for help and that Binance had signed an LOI to explore a full acquisition while conducting due diligence. Zhao now says the document was never meant as a serious promise to take over the exchange.

Zhao says SBF asked for billions too casually

The sharpest line in the memoir is Zhao’s description of Sam Bankman-Fried asking for billions of dollars “like a Bologna sandwich,” a phrase CoinDesk highlighted from the book. The point of the anecdote is that Zhao viewed SBF’s request as strangely casual given the scale of the crisis and the size of the hole FTX was facing.

That framing matters because it reinforces Zhao’s long-running claim that the situation inside FTX was far worse and far less manageable than it appeared from the outside during those final hours.

Caroline Ellison’s $22 offer is described as a turning point

Zhao also reportedly calls Caroline Ellison’s public offer to buy FTT at $22 a “fatal mistake.” Coverage of the memoir says he believes that statement gave professional traders a clear signal and accelerated the market response against FTX and Alameda.

The logic is straightforward. By publicly anchoring FTT at a floor price, Alameda may have made it easier for the market to test that level aggressively. Zhao’s account suggests that instead of restoring confidence, the move worsened panic and invited traders to push even harder.

The memoir reopens one of crypto’s most disputed collapse stories

The FTX implosion has always had multiple competing narratives around who moved first, who made the crisis worse, and whether a rescue was ever realistic. Zhao’s version puts more emphasis on how unserious he viewed the rescue discussions and how quickly he concluded that the business could not be saved.

That does not settle every question around the collapse, but it does add a more direct first-person account from the other side of the failed Binance-FTX talks. Because Zhao was central to the attempted deal, his memoir is likely to shape how that episode is remembered across the industry.

Why this matters for the market

This matters because the FTX collapse remains one of the defining failures in crypto history, and fresh insider accounts still influence how people think about exchange risk, crisis management, and the credibility of corporate rescue narratives. Zhao’s version also supports a broader lesson that once confidence breaks, even huge funding requests and headline rescue talks may be mostly symbolic.

It also adds another layer to the long-running argument over whether FTX died because of a temporary liquidity crisis or because the balance sheet was already too broken to save. Zhao’s memoir clearly argues for the second view.