Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao

President Donald Trump this week pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted Binance founder whose company provides infrastructure for the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures, prompting questions about potential conflicts of interest given the president’s substantial digital asset holdings.

About Zhao: Zhao, who also goes by “CZ,” admitted guilt in 2023 to failing to maintain adequate anti-money laundering safeguards at Binance. He completed a four-month prison sentence and paid a $200 million fine, while Binance itself paid more than $4 billion in penalties.

At the time of the settlement, then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the company’s compliance failures had permitted illicit transactions involving “terrorists, cybercriminals and child abusers,” while former Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland noted that Binance had become “the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed,” making its penalty one of the largest corporate settlements in U.S. history.

What the administration is saying: The White House framed the pardon as a correction of what it described as excessive prosecution. “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,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”

Meanwhile, Trump told CNN he acted “at the request of a lot of very good people” who claimed that Zhao’s conduct “wasn’t a crime.”

What this means: The pardon carries direct financial implications for the president amid a web of overlapping business interests. The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial platform relies on Binance’s technical infrastructure, including a cryptocurrency exchange that Binance operates behind the scenes. According to Wall Street Journal estimates, the platform has added more than $5 billion in paper value to the Trump family’s wealth, surpassing the president’s real estate holdings. In March, while Binance actively lobbied for Zhao’s pardon, MGX, an investment firm backed by the United Arab Emirates, announced it would utilize World Liberty’s dollar-pegged stablecoin for a $2 billion investment in Binance, providing significant financial benefit to the Trump family venture.

The pardon also follows a pattern of favorable treatment for cryptocurrency figures with Trump family financial ties. Justin Sun, a Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire, invested $75 million in World Liberty Financial and accumulated a $21.9 million position in Trump’s meme coin. Sun had faced civil fraud allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which dropped its case in February. In September, Binance retained Charles McDowell, an associate of Donald Trump Jr., compensating his lobbying firm $450,000 to discuss “executive relief” and cryptocurrency regulations with White House officials.

The pardon enables Zhao, who ranks as the 31st-wealthiest individual globally with a fortune of nearly $55 billion, to potentially resume operational leadership of Binance.