{"id":426883,"date":"2026-05-10T07:03:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T01:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/cz-says-crypto-exchange-rivals-opposed-his-pardon-bid-crypto-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T01:39:20","slug":"cz-says-crypto-exchange-rivals-opposed-his-pardon-bid-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/cz-says-crypto-exchange-rivals-opposed-his-pardon-bid-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"CZ Says Crypto Exchange Rivals Opposed His Pardon Bid – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Binance co-founder Changpeng \u201cCZ\u201d Zhao said he was not very confident he would be pardoned by US President Donald Trump after serving a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for violating US anti-money-laundering laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know because we actually had very strong anti-lobbying from some of our perceived competitors in the US,\u201d Zhao told Ran Neuner on the Crypto Banter podcast published<\/span><\/a> to YouTube on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other crypto exchanges in the US don’t want me to get a pardon,\u201d Zhao said, arguing they were concerned about Binance re-entering the US market after its exit in November 2023. The departure followed a $4.3 billion settlement<\/span><\/a> with Binance and the US government over violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), as well as failure to register as a money transmitting business.<\/p>\n

Binance.US resumed operations roughly four months after pardon<\/h2>\n

\u201cI’m pretty confident it happened to some extent. I don’t have concrete evidence of any of it, but I’m pretty confident there was push back,\u201d Zhao said, referring to crypto exchange competitors in the US.<\/p>\n

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Zhao spoke to Ran Neuner on the Crypto Banter podcast. Source:<\/em> Crypto Banter<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October 2025, just over a year after Zhao completed his four-month prison term in September 2024.<\/p>\n

During an interview<\/span><\/a> with 60 Minutes in November 2025, Trump said he had “no idea who he is” but was told that he was a victim of a “witch hunt” by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Binance.US resumed operations for eligible US users in February 2025, months before Zhao\u2019s pardon was granted.<\/p>\n

Zhao cleared of recent allegations<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Zhao’s comments came just months after a federal court in Alabama<\/span><\/a> granted a motion in March to dismiss a 2024 complaint filed against Binance, its separate US entity Binance.US, and Zhao over allegations that the crypto exchange facilitated transferring funds to terrorist groups.<\/p>\n

Related: <\/strong><\/em>US CLARITY Act sees \u2018big step forward\u2019 as markup set for May 14<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Zhao said in April that he hopes cryptocurrencies<\/span><\/a> and blockchain will simply become an invisible part of daily infrastructure by 2031, much like the internet today.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m hoping that we don’t talk about crypto as crypto in five years, just like we don’t talk about the internet anymore, we don’t talk about TCP\/IP, we don’t talk about HTML, JavaScript, etc,\u201d Zhao told Scott Melker on the Wolf of All Streets podcast.<\/p>\n

Magazine: <\/strong><\/em>XRP \u2018probably going to $12,\u2019 Bitcoin ETFs add $1B: Market Moves<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Binance co-founder Changpeng \u201cCZ\u201d Zhao said he was not very confident he would be pardoned by US President Donald Trump after serving a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for violating US anti-money-laundering laws. \u201cYou never know because we actually had very strong anti-lobbying from some of our perceived competitors in the US,\u201d Zhao told Ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[235,203,210,234,231,232,237,238,236,233],"class_list":["post-426883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain","tag-bitcoin","tag-crypto-currency","tag-elon-musk","tag-ethereum","tag-hyperledger","tag-ibm","tag-mining","tag-nodes","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426887,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426883\/revisions\/426887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}