Trump pardons Canadian crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao
Zhao, known as CZ, joins a growing list of crypto executives the president has pardoned, including Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht and employees of the BitMex crypto exchange.
In 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of failing to protect against money laundering, while Binance pleaded guilty to a breach of international financial sanctions and anti-money laundering regulations. The exchange agreed to pay about US$4.3 billion in penalties — the largest settlement of its kind with U.S. authorities.
U.S. regulators claimed Binance failed to stop sanctions evasion and transactions linked to criminals, hackers and terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and ISIS.
U.S. prosecutors sought a three-year prison term for Zhao, who was eventually sentenced to four months in 2024 and finished his term later that year.
Binance, founded by Zhao in 2017, for years operated largely offshore and refused to name a headquarters, clashing with regulators in dozens of countries over anti-money laundering controls and consumer protection rules around risky crypto trading.
It has grown to become the world’s largest crypto exchange, propelling Zhao’s net worth to about US$54 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Zhao’s pardon could clear the way to lifting limitations on his travel to the U.S. and involvement in U.S. securities markets that were imposed as part of his deals with the Department of Justice and a tandem case by U.S. securities regulators.
Trump has embraced cryptocurrencies during his second term in the White House. The administration has overhauled the U.S.’s regulatory stance, while the president’s family have launched crypto businesses.
Earlier this year, Binance received a US$2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi fund MGX that was paid entirely with a stablecoin, USD1, issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by Trump’s family.
The Abu Dhabi group said it chose to use USD1 based on factors including its “compliance history.”
Zhao’s investment firm YZi Labs is one of the biggest crypto funds in the world and has in recent month ploughed millions of dollars into a small Nasdaq-listed stock that buys and hoards Binance’s BNB token. The price of the token jumped as much as eight per cent on Thursday following his pardon.
