Trump Pardons Binance Boss CZ – Crypto Markets Go Wild
Trump’s Binance Pardon and Its Implications On Oct. 23, Trump used his pardon power to free CZ Zhao, the once-powerful CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange straitstimes.com. Zhao’s 2023 guilty plea stemmed from lapses in Binance’s anti-money-laundering controls; he was fined ~$4.3 billion and briefly jailed straitstimes.com. The White House statement highlighted that Zhao was prosecuted under the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency,” framing the pardon as correcting a political crusade straitstimes.com. Zhao himself thanked Trump and clarified that no fraud charges were ever filed, saying “I pleaded to a single violation of [the] Banking Secrecy Act” foxbusiness.com. Crypto