US President Donald Trump has granted clemency to Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, months after the former exchange CEO confirmed that he had sought pardon from the president.
Zhao spent four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty in November 2023 to charges of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. As part of his plea, he resigned from running Binance, the exchange he founded and operated since 2017, and agreed to a $50 million fine. Binance also pleaded guilty to charges and agreed to court-appointed monitors, as well as pay a record-breaking $4.3 billion fine to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department.
The Wall Street Journal first reported this news on Thursday.
In a post on X, Zhao said he was “deeply grateful” for the pardon.
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At the time, federal prosecutors cited chat logs between various employees to allege that Binance employees knew they were violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the exchange was serving users in sanctioned countries, as well as “facilitating transactions between US users and users in sanctioned countries.”
With the pardon, Zhao can conduct more business operations in the US. If Binance also receives the pardon, as Bitmex did earlier this year, it may find it easier to expand operations in the US.
Zhao said he had apologized in May 2025, after reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal indicated that his team had apologized for him.
Binance previously received a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi firm MGX, which used Trump-linked World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin to make the investment.
bnb CZ, originally created as the native token of the Binance exchange and now the native currency for the BNB chain, added nearly 3% in minutes following the news.
In a statement, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the lead Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said, “First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal money laundering charges. Then he promoted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon. Today, Donald Trump did his part and pardoned him if Congress votes on this kind of corruption pending market structure legislation.” If he doesn’t stop it, he owns it. Anarchy.”
UPDATE (October 23, 2025, 15:58 UTC): Adds additional details.
UPDATE (October 23, 2025, 16:20 UTC): Warren’s statement adds.
UPDATE (October 23, 2025, 17:07 UTC): Zhao adds the tweet.