Binance CFO Departs to Pursue Real-World Asset Tokenization Venture

Binance's chief financial officer has left the exchange to build a startup focused on bringing real-world assets onto blockchains, according to his own Nov. 8 announcement and public replies from Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and CEO Richard Teng.

The CFO, Ng, confirmed the departure in a reply posted on Nov. 8, in which he said he had informed Binance management of his decision months earlier and that the transition itself took months to complete. The exit, in other words, was planned and managed rather than sudden, and the company's leadership has publicly framed it as an amicable parting.

What did Binance's leadership say?

Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, described having advance knowledge of the plans in his Nov. 8 response to Ng's announcement. CZ said Ng had shared his intention to build a startup months earlier, praised his work at Binance and wished him success in the new venture.

CZ went further on the investment side. He expressed YZiLabs' general interest in backing ventures founded by current or former colleagues, signaling a potential capital route for alumni of the exchange — though he attached no commitment to any specific project.

Richard Teng, Binance's CEO, added a supportive reply on Nov. 9. He said he had enjoyed working alongside Ng and expected excitement ahead.

The sequence of public messages leaves little ambiguity about the tone of the departure: three senior figures, posting across two days, each treated the move as expected and welcomed.

What comes next for Ng?

Ng's next chapter centers on tokenization. In his original post, he described several projects he is passionate about, and the list is unusually broad. His interests ranged from basketball and music to GPUs, robotics, gold and collectibles, all of which he discussed in connection with tokenization.

The common thread across sports, entertainment, computing hardware and physical assets is real-world asset tokenization — the issuance of blockchain-based representations of off-chain property. It is a segment that has drawn sustained institutional attention, but Ng has not yet anchored his plans to a single vertical.

He presented a range of possible directions without announcing a company name, a product launch or a timetable. He also did not set out funding terms for the projects. That omission matters: CZ's stated willingness to back colleague-founded ventures supplies no commitment to any particular one of Ng's listed ideas.

How did Ng frame his tenure?

Ng also reflected on the finance operation he helped build at Binance. He credited the team with developing ideas and revenue opportunities beyond a back-office function, describing a broader contribution to the exchange's business — a claim that positions the finance unit as a commercial engine rather than purely a compliance and accounting cost center.

He closed his account by thanking colleagues, regulators, business partners, advisers and auditors, a list that spans both the company's internal apparatus and the external stakeholders any exchange CFO must manage.

What happens now?

The immediate operational question for Binance is finance leadership succession, which the public posts did not address. For Ng, the next visible milestone will be the naming of his company, its first funding round or its first tokenized asset class — none of which had been announced as of his Nov. 8 statement.