U.S. President Donald Trump has granted Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao a pardon, months after the former exchange CEO confirmed he’d asked for a presidential pardon, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Zhao served four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty in November 2023 to charges of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. As part of his plea deal, he stepped down from running Binance, the exchange he’d founded and helmed since 2017, and agreed to a $50 million fine. Binance also pled guilty to charges and agreed to a court-appointed monitor, as well as a record-breaking $4.3 billion fine paid to the U.S. Department of Justice, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Treasury Department.
At the time, federal prosecutors alleged that Binance employees knew they were violating the Bank Secrecy Act, citing chat logs between different staffers. The exchange was serving users in sanctioned countries, as well as “facilitating transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned countries,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
With a pardon, Zhao can conduct more business operations in the U.S. If Binance also receives a pardon, as BitMEX did earlier this year, it may find it easier to grow operations in the U.S.
Zhao said he had asked for a pardon in May 2025, after reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal that his team had sought a pardon for him.
BNB , originally created as the native token of CZ’s Binance exchange and now the native currency for BNB Chain, added about 3% in the minutes following the news.
UPDATE (Oct. 23, 2025, 15:58 UTC): Adds additional detail.
