Changpeng Zhao (CZ): the Binance founder convicted in 2024 and pardoned in 2025

Changpeng Zhao, known across the crypto industry simply as CZ, founded the crypto exchange Binance in 2017 and turned it into the world's largest trading platform within a few months. In November 2023 he pleaded guilty in the United States to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, the country's anti-money-laundering law, stepped down as chief executive and spent four months in prison in 2024. In October 2025 US President Donald Trump pardoned him. According to Forbes estimates, Zhao is now one of the richest people in the world. He no longer runs Binance day to day, but he continues to shape the industry as an investor, author and voice on X.

For investors, the man is more than a biography. Anyone who keeps coins on Binance or owns the exchange's own token, BNB, depends on a company whose history is inseparable from its founder. This profile sets out the key stages of his career with sources and shows which of them matter for your own exchange account. As with our profile of Vitalik Buterin, the focus is on evidence rather than legend.

Who is Changpeng Zhao? The Binance founder at a glance

Changpeng Zhao is a Canadian entrepreneur of Chinese origin, born in 1977. He co-founded the crypto exchange Binance and ran it as CEO until November 2023. A crypto exchange is a trading platform where customers swap cryptocurrencies for euros, dollars or other coins, and where they usually also leave them in custody. Since his resignation, Richard Teng has led the company.

Zhao now lives in Abu Dhabi and holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates in addition to his Canadian passport. Millions of people follow him on X, and his posts regularly move the prices of smaller coins. The nickname CZ has long since become a brand of its own: it appears in his profile name next to the ticker BNB.

Changpeng Zhao's early life: childhood in Jiangsu, youth in Vancouver

Zhao was born in 1977 in Ganyu, in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu; both of his parents worked as teachers. At the end of 1989, after the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, the family emigrated to Canada and settled in Vancouver. As a teenager, Zhao worked at a fast-food restaurant and a petrol station to help support the family. He still likes to tell this story, and it is part of the self-made entrepreneur image he cultivates himself.

He studied computer science at McGill University in Montreal. Those studies laid the foundation for everything that followed: Zhao did not become a finance executive who buys in technology; he wrote the trading software himself. That background later explains the speed at which Binance brought new features to market.

Trading software before crypto: Tokyo, Bloomberg Tradebook and Shanghai

After university, Zhao worked in Tokyo for a supplier to the Tokyo Stock Exchange on software that matches buy and sell orders. Specialists call this a matching engine: the core of every exchange, which decides which order is executed at which price. He then spent four years at Bloomberg Tradebook developing software for futures trading.

In 2005 he moved to Shanghai and founded Fusion Systems, a company building high-frequency trading systems. In 2013, during a poker game with the entrepreneur Bobby Lee, he heard about Bitcoin in detail for the first time. By his own account, he soon sold his flat in Shanghai and put his savings into the cryptocurrency. He joined the wallet provider Blockchain.info as head of development and then spent less than a year as chief technology officer of the Chinese exchange OKCoin.

Binance founded in 2017: a $15 million ICO and the BNB token

Binance launched in July 2017. The capital came from an ICO, an initial coin offering. In an ICO, a project sells its own tokens to investors and raises money that way, much like a stock market listing but without a prospectus and without supervision. Binance raised $15 million this way, and trading went live eleven days later.

The token it sold was called Binance Coin, today BNB. Originally it mainly gave discounts on trading fees. Since the launch of Binance Smart Chain in 2019, now BNB Chain, BNB has also been the gas token of its own blockchain with smart contracts, programmable contracts that execute without an intermediary. For investors, this means the value of BNB is closely tied to the exchange's business and to the use of that blockchain. If confidence in Binance falls, the token takes a direct hit.

CZ as Binance CEO: trading volume, changing locations and growth

Binance grew at a pace the industry had never seen. By April 2018 it was the world's largest exchange by trading volume. In February 2018 Forbes ranked Zhao third on its list of the richest crypto entrepreneurs, with an estimated fortune of $1.1 billion to $2 billion.

Binance had no fixed headquarters during this period. After China banned crypto exchanges in autumn 2017, the team left the country. Zhao liked to describe Binance as a decentralised company without a traditional head office. For regulators, that was precisely the problem: without a registered seat, there is no competent authority to examine the business. In 2019 the separate US offshoot Binance.US launched. In 2022 Binance put $500 million into Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.

In Europe, the situation has since changed. Since the end of 2024, the EU's MiCA regulation (Markets in Crypto-Assets) has required every provider that holds or exchanges crypto assets for customers in the Union to be authorised. As we reported on November 8, Binance does not hold this authorisation in the EU and is closing the accounts of customers in France, Spain, Italy and Poland on December 31, 2026; for Germany there was no evidence of this at that point. The details are in our article on the Binance account closures. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which platforms hold a MiCA licence, and our overview of MiCA obligations explains exactly what the licence means for providers.

Bank Secrecy Act: Changpeng Zhao's guilty plea of November 2023

On November 21, 2023, Binance and Zhao reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice, the Treasury and the derivatives regulator CFTC. Binance pleaded guilty and, according to the Justice Department, paid more than $4 billion, around $4.3 billion in total. Zhao himself pleaded guilty to a single count: he had failed to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme. That is required by the Bank Secrecy Act, the US law that obliges financial service providers to vet their customers and report suspicious payments.

An important point of context: Zhao was not charged with fraud or misappropriation of customer funds in this case. The issue was a lack of controls. Zhao resigned as CEO the same day and accepted a personal fine of $50 million. The Securities and Exchange Commission had filed its own civil lawsuit against Binance and Zhao in 2023, but dropped it for good in May 2025.

CZ's prison sentence in Seattle: four months instead of the three years sought

On April 30, 2024, federal judge Richard A. Jones in Seattle sentenced Zhao to four months in prison. Prosecutors had asked for 36 months, nine times as much. According to the AP news agency, this made Zhao the first person to go to prison for this kind of Bank Secrecy Act violation. The statement from the responsible US Attorney's Office summarises the ruling and its background.

Zhao served his sentence at the federal correctional institution in Lompoc, California, and according to the Bureau of Prisons was released on September 27, 2024. By his own account, he wrote most of his memoir while in prison.

Changpeng Zhao pardoned by President Trump in October 2025

In October 2025 Donald Trump granted Changpeng Zhao a full and unconditional pardon. The Justice Department lists the pardon in its list of clemency grants under October 21, 2025, and the White House made it public on October 23. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt justified the move by saying the previous administration had prosecuted Zhao even though there had been no allegations of fraud and no identifiable victims.

The pardon applies to Zhao personally, not to the company Binance. It was politically contested: Democratic lawmakers pointed out that Binance had been involved in a $2 billion investment that ran through the stablecoin of World Liberty Financial, a project close to Trump. The White House said such questions were reviewed by the White House Counsel's Office. Trump himself later said in a television interview that he did not know Zhao.

Changpeng Zhao's net worth and new projects: YZi Labs, Giggle Academy and a memoir

Even without the top job, Zhao remains by far the largest shareholder in Binance. Almost all of his wealth rests on that stake. In March 2026 Forbes put it at around $110 billion, placing him ahead of Bill Gates. Zhao objected on X: crypto prices had fallen by more than half in 2026, so how could his fortune have grown? The figure is therefore an outside estimate, not an audited value.

In January 2025 Binance Labs, the exchange's investment arm, became YZi Labs. The name combines the initials of Zhao and Binance co-founder Yi He. According to Bloomberg, it managed around $10 billion at the time and now also invests in artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Zhao also runs the education initiative Giggle Academy, which aims to offer free learning content for children. In April 2026 his memoir was published under the title "Freedom of Money"; according to Zhao, all author royalties will go to Giggle Academy.

Zhao also works as an adviser to governments. In April 2025 Pakistan's finance ministry appointed him adviser to the new Pakistan Crypto Council, and in May 2025 he became adviser on digital assets to Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov.

Changpeng Zhao and the Binance hack of October 2026

On October 29, 2026, according to Binance, around $6.3 billion flowed out of the exchange's hot wallets, the wallets kept online for day-to-day operations. The FBI attributed the attack to a group from North Korea. On November 12, Binance reported that it had replaced all affected customer holdings, worth $6.34 billion, from its own funds; the details are in our report on the completed reimbursement.

Zhao spoke about the attack in several interviews in early November. He warned that artificial intelligence was accelerating attacks on crypto firms and called on the industry to form a joint security alliance. Attackers, he said, only need to find a single crack in the defences. As far as is publicly known, he has no operational role in dealing with the aftermath of the hack.

The case shows the limit of every exchange, however large: anyone who leaves coins on a platform relies on the provider's security and balance sheet. A reimbursement like Binance's is possible, but it is not a legal entitlement, and it depends on the exchange having the money to pay for it.

CZ and Binance: for your account, the licence matters more than the founder

Changpeng Zhao has shaped the crypto industry like few others, through all its highs and breaks. For your own decision about where to buy and store cryptocurrencies, however, his biography is only background. Three steps help more:

1. Check the authorisation: Use only exchanges listed in the MiCA register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges provides an overview.
2. Compare costs and offering: Fees, spreads and the range of coins differ significantly. Our crypto exchange comparison puts the providers side by side.
3. Keep larger holdings in self-custody: Anything you are not actively trading belongs in a wallet of your own. Our hardware wallet comparison shows which devices are suitable.

(As of November 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)