Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of a cryptocurrency exchange
who pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to negligence
control, was pardoned
“President Trump exercised his constitutional authority to pardon Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration for his war on cryptocurrency,” White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said.
“The Biden administration has pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” she added. “The Biden Administration's War on Cryptocurrency is Over.”
Zhao, known as CZ, joins a growing list of cryptocurrency executives pardoned by the president, 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, and Binance pleaded guilty to violating international financial sanctions and anti-money laundering regulations. The exchange agreed to pay about $4.3 billion in fines, the largest settlement of its kind with US authorities.
US regulators said Binance failed to stop sanctions evasion and transactions linked to criminals, hackers and terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and ISIS.
U.S. prosecutors had sought a three-year prison sentence for Zhao, who was ultimately sentenced to four months in 2024 and completed his sentence later that year.
Binance, founded by Zhao in 2017, has for years operated mostly offshore and refused to name its headquarters while clashing with regulators in dozens of countries over money laundering controls and consumer protection rules for risky cryptocurrency trading.
It has grown into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, bringing Zhao's net worth to about US$54 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.
Zhao's pardon could pave the way for the lifting of restrictions on his travel to the US and participation in US securities markets that were imposed as part of his dealings with the Justice Department and a tandem case brought by US securities regulators.
Trump began using cryptocurrencies during his second term in the White House. The administration reconsidered the US regulatory position, and the president's family launched a cryptography business.
Earlier this year, Binance received a $2 billion investment from the Abu Dhabi-based MGX fund, which was fully paid for with a $1 stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by the Trump family.
The Abu Dhabi group said it decided to use US$1 based on factors such as “history of compliance”.
Zhao's investment firm YZi Labs is one of the largest crypto funds in the world and last month poured millions of dollars into a small Nasdaq-listed stock that buys and accumulates Binance's BNB token. The token's price jumped as much as eight percent on Thursday following his pardon.
Zhao's pardon follows a decision by U.S. regulators in February to suspend fraud investigations into several companies run by crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who runs digital asset platform Tron. In May, Sun and the other 24 largest holders of the $Trump memecoin attended a banquet with the president at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.
Trump's companies earned more than $1 billion in pre-tax profits from cryptocurrency businesses over the past year, the Financial Times reported this month.
Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: “It is clear that the ties between the Trump administration and the crypto industry are very deep, and that the US government apparatus will be openly deployed to support this industry.”
© 2025 Financial Times Ltd.
