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|6 min ReadThe 180 Days Before Zhao Changpeng’s Pardon
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
In the middle of the night on October 23, 2025, Chinese crypto billionaire Zhao Changpeng — better known as CZ — was granted a presidential pardon by Donald Trump.
Trump, according to aides, viewed Zhao as a victim of “political persecution by the Biden administration.”
A year earlier, on April 30, 2024, Zhao’s life had collapsed. Stripped naked and searched in a Seattle jail, he was locked in a freezing cell among tattooed, muscle-bound inmates. In court, wearing prison orange, the man once called the richest Chinese in crypto pleaded guilty, surrendered $4.3 billion in fines, and said: “This is a political payment I choose to make.”
If anyone had told him then that one year later he would be pardoned by the U.S. President and return to Chinese soil — that the cold cell and that $4.3 billion would all vanish — he might have called it dark comedy.
The first hint came on September 17, 2025, when CZ quietly changed his X bio from “ex-@binance” back to “@binance.” A few weeks later, Coinbase and Robinhood both opened BNB trading — the first time Zhao’s Binance token was admitted into the U.S. financial mainstream.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the pardon with fanfare: “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over.”
Rebuilding legitimacy in Hong Kong
By spring 2025, CZ was back in the public eye. A group photo from Victoria Harbor went viral — Huobi founder Li Lin, CZ, Tron’s Justin Sun, and entrepreneur Kong Jianping stood together.
To insiders, it was more than a reunion. It was a signal. Eight years after China banned ICOs and exchanges, the man who fled Shanghai was again in a picture tied to local capital and regulators.
Kong Jianping, once co-chair of mining-rig maker Canaan Creative, now heads Nano Labs and serves on Hong Kong’s Web3 task force. Two months after the photo, he announced a $1 billion BNB treasury plan — aiming to hold 5 to 10 percent of BNB’s circulating supply through a listed Hong Kong vehicle.
CZ reposted it on X. BNB’s market price exploded, doubling intraday. CZ insisted neither he nor Binance took part in the fundraising, “but we fully support it.”
Since then, Kong’s face has appeared behind most of CZ’s Hong Kong events.
Four months later, CZ returned to Hong Kong with a clearer mission. Before one event he announced a partnership with China Renaissance, a once-powerful investment bank whose founder Bao Fan had vanished in 2023. Days after Bao’s release in August 2025, the firm invested $100 million in BNB and launched a compliance fund with CZ’s family office YZi Labs.
Twelve days after that, licensed exchange OSL listed BNB, making it the fifth crypto asset approved for trading under Hong Kong’s new rules.
Through these alliances — with Kong, China Renaissance, OSL — CZ was building a legal bridge home, piece by piece. The moves looked scattered, but they served one purpose: to rebuild his right to belong.
The long exile
At a Hong Kong University forum, CZ said quietly: “Four years ago I thought I’d never return to the Chinese-speaking world. Today I know the journey was just the prelude.”
He meant it. In 2017, Binance was born in Shanghai, then forced offshore within months. CZ moved his 30-person team to Tokyo, riding the Bitcoin bull from 19,000. Binance became the world’s biggest exchange in five months — then Japan’s FSA cracked down, forcing another exit.
From Japan to Malta, the pattern repeated. In 2018, Malta’s prime minister hailed “Blockchain Island.” CZ moved in, hired from 39 countries, and declared it Binance’s global HQ — until Malta’s regulator later denied Binance was ever registered.
So CZ declared: “Binance has no headquarters.” That became both his shield and his curse. In 2021, when U.S. lawyers tried to sue Binance, they couldn’t find an address. A private investigator scoured flight logs and shell companies across three continents, finally reporting: “Zhao Changpeng’s location is almost impossible to determine.”
It worked — for a while.
Politics, identity, and a pardon
Then came FTX’s collapse in 2022 and the Biden administration’s crackdown. The SEC sued Binance for operating illegally and violating sanctions. The $4.3 billion fine that followed was staggering — but the bigger blow was racial. Democrats cast CZ as a Chinese threat. Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett said flatly, “He may be Canadian, but he is Chinese.”
In Forbes, CZ responded: “My Chinese heritage keeps getting mentioned, as if it matters.” He had learned that for a Chinese entrepreneur under U.S. scrutiny, identity is a weapon you can’t disarm.
The pardon changed the game. Trump’s return to power brought a wave of crypto amnesty. CZ’s fine became a political sacrifice to the old order.
In March 2025, Binance secured a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, settled not in dollars but in USD1 stablecoins — a Trump-linked project backed by the Witkoff family. Weeks later, USD1 launched on Binance’s BNB Chain under the banner “America’s Digital Dollar.” Nearly 90 percent of its supply now moves through CZ’s network.
Five months after filing his petition, CZ received the White House seal of approval. His tweet read simply: “Thank you, President Trump. I will do everything I can to help America become the crypto capital of the world.”
The Chinese entrepreneur’s dilemma
For CZ, the ordeal was personal redemption. For Chinese entrepreneurs worldwide, it was a warning.
A passport can change. Identity cannot. TikTok’s Singaporean CEO still faces U.S. hearings. Shein’s founder holds foreign citizenship but can’t escape Congressional suspicion. Temu moved its headquarters to Ireland but not its political shadow.
For this generation, “compliance” means more than law. It means redemption — proving innocence again and again in a world where a Chinese face invites doubt. They can master markets, move trillions, employ thousands. But they must always prove they are harmless.
CZ walked out of prison a free man, pardoned by Trump and embraced by Washington’s new crypto order. Yet his journey — from Shanghai coder to global pariah to political survivor — is also a mirror. It shows that for Chinese entrepreneurs playing on the world stage, the real battle is never just over markets. It is over identity itself.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.