President Trump granted a pardon on Thursday to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime.
Mr. Zhao had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and served four months in federal prison, after a yearslong investigation by financial regulators and U.S. prosecutors.
“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,” said White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over.”
The pardon is the latest example of how high-profile business partners of Mr. Trump and his family have benefited from his rollback of the wide-ranging crypto crackdown orchestrated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. To seek the pardon, Mr. Zhao hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, while Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up.
That deal alone is poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser.
Mr. Trump has granted clemency to several other prominent crypto executives, including Ross Ulbricht, who ran the Bitcoin-fueled drug marketplace Silk Road. And since Mr. Trump took office, regulators have dropped lawsuits against Coinbase and several other large crypto firms.
But even in the context of Mr. Trump’s broader dismantlement of crypto enforcement, the pardon for Mr. Zhao is extraordinary.
Long considered the crypto industry’s richest man, Mr. Zhao — a Chinese-born executive who now lives in the United Arab Emirates — admitted that he had violated the law by failing to install rigorous compliance systems at Binance. That allowed people in sanctioned countries and terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to move money on his platform.
When he pleaded guilty, Mr. Zhao, who goes by CZ, stepped down as chief executive of Binance, though he remained its majority owner and held onto virtually all of his wealth.
Now he could have an opportunity to retake direct control of the exchange.
Founded in 2017, Binance is by far the largest and most influential crypto exchange in the world — at times, it has processed as much as two-thirds of all digital currency transactions. On its platform, customers can buy, sell and hold popular cryptocurrencies like Binance and Ether, as well as hundreds of more obscure coins.
Mr. Zhao is the most powerful executive in the crypto industry. Worth an estimated $90 billion, he commands a vast social media following of worshipful investors who view him as something of a crypto oracle. With a few well-timed posts in 2022, he helped prompt a market panic that resulted in the demise of FTX, one of Binance’s top rivals.
But even as FTX crumbled, Binance faced mounting pressure from U.S. law enforcement officials.
In November 2023, Mr. Zhao and Binance both pleaded guilty to violating rules aimed at preventing money laundering. Janet Yellen, who served as treasury secretary at the time, said Binance had allowed “illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism.”
Mr. Zhao received a four-month sentence, a relatively light punishment compared with the penalties doled out to some of his colleagues in the crypto world. Even before he reported to prison, he was laying the groundwork for his next act, networking with tech executives in the United States and weighing investments in artificial intelligence.
Mr. Zhao was released in September. Since then, he has become a fixture on the crypto podcast circuit, making flattering comments about Mr. Trump. In one interview, he said that he had read books by Marc Rich and Michael Milken, two business tycoons who went to prison and later received pardons.
To spearhead his clemency push, Mr. Zhao hired Teresa Goody Guillén, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who also represents Zach Witkoff, the son of Mr. Trump’s Middle East adviser. Working alongside Ms. Goody Guillén was Ches McDowell, a lawyer and lobbyist who is a longtime hunting companion of Donald Trump Jr.
At the same time, Binance forged a partnership with World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the Trump and Witkoff families. In May, Zach Witkoff announced that Binance would receive a $2 billion investment in the form of a cryptocurrency called USD1 that World Liberty had developed.
At a recent conference in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Zhao mingled with Zach Witkoff and other founders of World Liberty, posing for photographs. On social media, Mr. Witkoff hailed Mr. Zhao as a “wise man.”
Other figures in Mr. Trump’s orbit were more skeptical. Laura Loomer, the conservative influencer who holds significant sway with Mr. Trump, wrote on X in October that Mr. Zhao should not be pardoned because he had become a citizen of the U.A.E.
“You know who gets Emirati citizenship when they weren’t born in the U.A.E.?” Ms. Loomer wrote. “People who are trying to evade punishment for crimes.”
Mr. Zhao shot back. “Many top U.S. entrepreneurs get U.A.E. citizenships,” he wrote. “I implore you to visit some time.
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from New York. He can be reached at [email protected].
Kenneth P. Vogel is based in Washington and investigates the intersection of money, politics and influence.
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