Former U.S. President Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who was convicted in 2023 on money laundering charges. The White House confirmed the decision on Thursday, describing it as part of Trump’s effort to correct what his administration views as the Biden-era “war on cryptocurrency.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an official statement that President Trump had “exercised his constitutional authority” to pardon Zhao, widely known in the crypto world as CZ. Leavitt argued that the Biden administration had imposed an unnecessarily harsh sentence on Zhao, who had received four months in prison in May 2024 after pleading guilty to failing to maintain proper anti-money-laundering controls at Binance.
“The president and his advisers determined that Mr Zhao’s case had been overly prosecuted by an administration hostile to the cryptocurrency industry,” Leavitt said.
The decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, could mark a major turning point for Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which may now be allowed to resume operations within the United States.
Trump’s stance on digital currencies has shifted dramatically in recent years. Once a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies, he has since embraced them, vowing to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.” His family’s financial interests are now deeply intertwined with the sector through World Liberty Financial, a crypto enterprise hosted on Binance.
According to The Wall Street Journal, World Liberty Financial has boosted the Trump family’s wealth by more than $5 billion in paper value, surpassing the value of the former president’s real estate holdings. The platform’s proprietary tokens have reportedly generated hundreds of millions in transaction fees.
In early 2025, the Emirati-backed firm MGX agreed to use World Liberty’s stablecoin, USD1, for a $2 billion investment in Binance — a deal finalised as Binance lobbied heavily for Zhao’s pardon.
Critics from the Democratic Party have condemned the move as a conflict of interest and an abuse of presidential power. However, Leavitt defended the decision, stating that “every pardon undergoes a thorough legal review.”
This is not the first time Trump has shown leniency toward figures from the crypto world. Earlier in his term, he pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and the co-founders of BitMEX, while civil charges against Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun were dropped earlier this year.
Zhao, who founded Binance in 2017, had resigned as CEO as part of a settlement with U.S. authorities in 2023. The company paid over $4 billion in fines for anti-money-laundering, unlicensed money transmission, and sanctions violations.
Trump’s pardon of Zhao underscores his administration’s close ties to the cryptocurrency industry and signals a significant policy reversal from the previous government’s tougher regulatory stance.
