# Changpeng Zhao **Changpeng "CZ" Zhao** (b. 1977, Jiangsu, China) founded [[Binance]] in July 2017 and built it into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. He holds Canadian and UAE citizenship. His family emigrated to Canada when he was a boy, and he studied computer science at McGill. ## The case - **The plea.** On November 21, 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program under the Bank Secrecy Act. This was part of Binance's roughly $4.3 billion settlement with the Justice Department. He stepped down as CEO and paid a $50 million personal fine. - **The sentence.** Prosecutors sought three years. On April 30, 2024, the judge imposed four months. He was released on September 27, 2024. ## The pardon On **October 23, 2025**, [[Donald Trump]] pardoned him, calling the prosecution a Biden "witch hunt." The context is what made it a marquee case: - **The USD1 connection.** Binance had helped build the code for USD1, the stablecoin of the Trump family's [[World Liberty Financial]]. In May 2025 the Abu Dhabi fund [[MGX]] used $2 billion in USD1 to pay for its investment in Binance. Days after the pardon, Binance began promoting USD1 on its U.S. platform. - **The interview.** On the November 2, 2025 *[[60 Minutes]]*, Trump told [[Norah O'Donnell]], "I don't know who he is." CBS cut her closing question about the appearance of corruption in the pardon, along with his answer, from both the broadcast and the extended online version. The exchange survives only in the posted transcript. - **The breadth.** Legal scholars noted that the pardon came unusually soon after he finished his sentence and was unusually broad. ## After Zhao said he would not return to running Binance. He has also served as a digital-asset adviser to Pakistan's Crypto Council (from April 2025, before the pardon) and to [[Kyrgyzstan]]'s president. He published a memoir, *Freedom of Money*, in April 2026. ## The New York Times profile, October 1, 2026 David Yaffe-Bellany profiled Zhao for the *New York Times* on **October 1, 2026**, reporting three things the vault had not recorded: - **[[World Liberty Financial]] produced $799 million for [[Donald Trump]] over the preceding year** — his single most profitable asset, ahead of both the real-estate portfolio and the social-media business. The pardon recipient's company helped build the code for the stablecoin behind it. - **He has relocated within the [[United Arab Emirates]]**, from Dubai to a nine-bedroom villa on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, nearer the country's political center and to [[MGX]]. - **He argued for dictatorship on the record.** Asked about governance, Zhao said: "If you get a benevolent dictator, it's actually extremely efficient." In the fuller passage he frames democracy as having been held up as the holy grail for the last couple hundred years while being inefficient — too much debate, too much time on frivolous matters. The last item is why this page carries it. The vault documents the [[Crypto-Political Machine]] as a favor loop, which is a transactional account — money for pardons, pardons for money. Zhao's remark supplies the part the transactional account leaves out: an explicit preference for the authoritarian form of government, stated by the beneficiary, in a newspaper. The man whose conviction was wiped clean thinks the problem with democracy is that it is slow. > [!warning] Quote wording > The sentence beginning "If you get a benevolent dictator" is reproduced identically in Heather Cox Richardson's letter of October 5, 2026 and in secondary reports of the Times piece. The surrounding clauses vary between renderings — one secondary republication is a translation round-trip — so only the quoted sentence should be treated as verbatim. Check the Times original before quoting more. ## Why he matters The CZ pardon is the cleanest example of the [[Crypto-Political Machine]]'s favor loop. A company that helped build the president's family's stablecoin, and whose sale to a Gulf fund was settled in that coin, had its founder's conviction wiped clean. The president then said on television that he did not know who the man was. See [[Pardon Power]]. ## See Also - [[Binance]] · [[World Liberty Financial]] · [[MGX]] - [[Crypto-Political Machine]] · [[Cryptocurrency Ecosystem]] · [[Pardon Power]] - [[Paramount Timeline]]: the *60 Minutes* edit