Liv McMahonTechnology reporter
Reuters
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 US money laundering laws.
Binance also pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $4.3bn (£3.4bn) after a US investigation found it helped users bypass sanctions.
The pardon reignited debate over the White House embrace of cryptocurrency as the Trump family’s own investments in the industry have deepened.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Zhao’s prosecution under the Biden administration part of a “war on cryptocurrency”, pushing back on critics who said the pardon appeared motivated by Trump’s personal financial interests.
“This was an overly prosecuted case by the Biden administration,” she said, adding that the case had been “thoroughly reviewed”. “So the president wants to correct this overreach of the Biden administration’s misjustice and he exercised his constitutional authority to do so.”
Binance had spent nearly a year pursuing a pardon for its former boss, who completed his four-month prison sentence in September 2024, the WSJ reported on Thursday.
Its campaign came as Trump, who released his own coin shortly ahead of his inauguration in January, promised to take a friendlier approach to the industry than his predecessor.
Since then, he has loosened regulations, sought to establish a national cryptocurrency reserve and push
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