Changpeng Zhao is the founder and former chief executive of Binance, a service for trading digital assets. When you buy bitcoin through an exchange, you deal with a company; Bitcoin itself has no chief executive. Zhao’s story makes that distinction tangible. A guilty plea, a sentence, a corporate agreement and a later pardon concern particular people and companies, not changes to the Bitcoin network’s rules.
The US Department of Justice, or DOJ, identifies CZ as Binance’s founder and records his resignation as chief executive in November 2023. Yet a single brand does not mean a single legal person. The documents refer to Zhao individually, Binance Holdings and the US BAM companies. A report about a financial penalty makes the distinction practical: first ask who has to pay it. A corporate amount is not automatically a personal sentence imposed on the founder. [1] [2] [6]
On 21 November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to a violation of the US Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA, according to the DOJ. He caused Binance to fail to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program. Such a program is meant to help a company detect misuse, verify customers and report suspicious activity. This was a specific failure of duties in operating the exchange. The company also admitted other violations; its entire plea cannot be attributed to Zhao personally. [1] [2]
The DOJ register records the sentence of 30 April 2024: four months in prison and a USD 50 million fine. It concerned the failure of an effective anti-money-laundering, or AML, program. Those figures describe what the court imposed at that time. They do not say he is currently in prison or cover everything that happened later. The same register also records a subsequent presidential pardon. Both belong in his biography, each with its own date. [3]
The Binance resolution of November 2023 involved roughly USD 4.3 billion, remediation commitments and independent compliance monitoring. That corporate amount is not Zhao’s personal fine. Monitoring checks specified obligations; it is not a promise that a company can never fail again. The old announcement does not establish whether every commitment is fulfilled today or provide a complete current account of the exchange’s reserves. Those questions need further, up-to-date evidence. [2]
President Donald Trump granted Zhao a full and unconditional pardon for case 23CR00179RAJ-001. The number identifies a particular court case, not all proceedings involving Binance. The instrument is dated 21 October 2025, also confirmed by the DOJ register. We therefore use the date of the official act rather than the date of a news report. A pardon is a significant development in the personal criminal case; its scope becomes clearer when forgiveness is distinguished from erasing the record. [3] [4]
The DOJ’s frequently asked questions, or FAQ, explain that a presidential pardon is not judicial expungement of a conviction. Both the conviction and the pardon remain on record. A pardon does not signify innocence and does not itself end non-criminal civil proceedings. Readers do not have to choose between saying someone was convicted and saying they were pardoned. Both statements can be true; together they describe the sequence more accurately than either one alone. [5]
On 29 May 2025, the SEC, the US securities-market regulator, announced a joint stipulation to dismiss its civil case against Binance, the BAM companies and Zhao. It used with prejudice, meaning the same claims cannot be filed again. This was a separate regulatory-policy decision, not an effect of the later presidential pardon. Nor was it blanket approval of the exchange’s services. When comparing reports, check the authority, type of proceeding and date as well as the person’s name. [6] [8]
On 3 December 2025, Binance announced Yi He and Richard Teng as co-CEOs, meaning joint chief executives. An older article calling Zhao the chief executive therefore does not establish his current position. The more fundamental distinction is between company and network: exchange management decides about its services, not whether Bitcoin accepts a transaction as valid. Nodes check that against the rules they run. A founder’s reputation and a large customer base do not remove this distinction. [7]
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with Brian Armstrong, Custodial Exchange, KYC.