Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has been pardoned by US President Donald Trump.
Zhao, also known as “CZ,” was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to violating U.S. money laundering laws.
Binance was ordered to pay $4.3 billion (£3.4 billion) after a US investigation found it helped users circumvent sanctions.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the prosecution of Zhao under the Biden administration a “war on cryptocurrency.”
She claimed Zhao was targeted “despite no allegation of fraud or identifiable victim” and said prosecutors’ efforts to secure a three-year prison sentence had “severely damaged the reputation of the United States.”
“The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over,” she said.
The decision to pardon Zhao comes as the Trump administration has taken a friendlier stance toward cryptocurrency than its predecessors.
The president has pledged to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” and left his own mark on the digital currency landscape by launching his own coin shortly before his inauguration in January.
Since then, he has sought to establish a national cryptocurrency reserve and pushed to make it easier for Americans to use their retirement savings to invest in it.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that representatives of the Trump family – which owns its own crypto company World Liberty Financial – had recently held talks with Binance.
The company spent nearly a year seeking clemency for its former boss, who completed his four-month prison sentence in September 2024, the WSJ reported Thursday.
Binance has been contacted for comment.
The exchange, registered in the Cayman Islands, remains the world’s most popular platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
Zhao left the company in November 2023.
He wrote in an article on X that it was “not easy to let go emotionally” but “the right thing to do.”
“I made mistakes and I have to take responsibility for them,” he said.
US officials then accused Binance and Zhao of “willful violations” of its laws, saying they had threatened the US financial system and national security.
“Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit,” said then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“His deliberate failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals and pedophiles through his platform.”
