U.S. President Donald Trump has granted Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao a pardon, months after the former exchange CEO confirmed he’d asked for a presidential pardon.
Zhao served 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 deal, he stepped down from running Binance, the exchange he’d founded and helmed since 2017, and agreed to a $50 million fine. Binance also pleaded guilty to charges and agreed to a court-appointed monitor, as well as a record-breaking $4.3 billion fine paid to the U.S. Department of Justice, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Treasury Department.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the 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 alleged that Binance employees knew they were violating the Bank Secrecy Act, citing chat logs between different staffers. The exchange was serving users in sanctioned countries, as well as “facilitating transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned countries,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
With a pardon, Zhao can conduct more business operations in the U.S. If Binance also receives a pardon, as BitMEX did earlier this year, it may find it easier to grow operations in the U.S.
Zhao said he had asked for a pardon in May 2025, after reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal indicated his team had sought a pardon for him.
Binance previously received a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi firm MGX, which used the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin to make the investment.
BNB , originally created as the native token of CZ’s Binance exchange and now the native currency for BNB Chain, added about 3% in the minutes following the news.
In a statement, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the leading Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said, “First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge. Then he boosted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon. Today, Donald Trump did his part and pardoned him. If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption in pending market structure legislation, it owns this lawlessness.”
UPDATE (Oct. 23, 2025, 15:58 UTC): Adds additional detail.
UPDATE (Oct. 23, 2025, 16:20 UTC): Adds Warren statement.
UPDATE (Oct. 23, 2025, 17:07 UTC): Adds Zhao tweet.