Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, was pardoned by President Donald Trump today, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move comes after months of lobbying by the company and Zhao’s own efforts to boost the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.
In April 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he and Binance had failed to adequately implement anti-money laundering protections. The company was also hit with a massive $4.3 billion fine as part of its settlement with the Department of Justice under the Biden administration. The department said that Binance had become a hub of criminal money laundering, facilitating “billions of dollars of unregulated cryptocurrency transactions,” including “nearly” $900 million in transactions between the US and Iran.
The Trump White House, however, has been much more sympathetic to Binance’s plight and that of the crypto industry in general. In May, the SEC dropped its lawsuit against the company. And now, with a pardon in hand, the way has been paved for Zhao and Binance to potentially return to business in the US. The pardon will also end the DOJ’s monitoring of Binance, though a separate Treasury program is still on the books for now.
In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump “exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency… The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over.”
When asked about the pardon later in the day, Trump seemed unsure of who Zhao was, saying, “I do pardon a lot of people,” before suggesting that “a lot of people said he wasn’t guilty of anything.” He followed that up by attacking the reporter who had asked why he chose to pardon Zhao, telling her, “You know nothing about nothing, you fake news.”
Zhao is just the latest in a long string of tech industry pardons from Trump. In January, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who ran the dark web marketplace Silk Road. He followed that in March by pardoning former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton, as well as BitMEX cofounders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed.
Update, October 23rd: Embedded a Bluesky post and added details about a statement from President Trump.