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Changpeng Zhao
Status
Born in 1977 (age –). Living in Dubai, UAE.
Criminal status: Pleaded guilty November 2023 to violating Bank Secrecy Act (anti-money-laundering failure); sentenced April 30, 2024 to 4 months in federal prison; released September 2024; presidential pardon October 23, 2025 (conviction nullified)
Summary
Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, is the founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, controlling roughly 38% of the global crypto market. He pleaded guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program at Binance, a violation that allowed the platform to process billions in transactions linked to terrorist groups and sanctioned countries.
After serving four months in federal prison and being released in September 2024, Zhao received a full presidential pardon from President Trump in October 2025, which nullified the conviction. The pardon drew immediate criticism given documented financial ties between Binance and the Trump family's crypto ventures.
Zhao no longer runs day-to-day operations at Binance but retains approximately 90% ownership of the company. As Binance is valued at approximately $100 billion, this stake accounts for his Forbes-estimated $110 billion net worth, placing him 17th globally.
Business Relationships
Yi He co-founded Binance with Zhao in 2017 and remains his closest business partner. She co-manages YZi Labs, the family office spun out of Binance Labs in January 2025, which oversees more than $10 billion in investments across blockchain, biotech, and AI projects.
Richard Teng succeeded Zhao as Binance CEO in November 2023 as part of the DOJ settlement agreement. Teng leads day-to-day operations at the exchange while Zhao retains dominant ownership.
Ownership
Zhao retains an approximately 90% ownership stake in Binance, as confirmed by legal filings from the DOJ investigation, despite his guilty plea requiring him to sever operational ties. Binance has no public shareholders and no formal board structure; Zhao's majority ownership gives him ultimate control over the company.
YZi Labs, rebranded from Binance Labs in January 2025, manages over $10 billion across a portfolio of 250+ companies. It operates as Zhao and He's personal investment vehicle, separate from Binance's exchange operations.
Family & Heirs
Zhao has spoken publicly about prioritizing family time following his prison sentence, describing it as an unexpected period of personal growth and family bonding.
Evidence
2024-03-19 - 😇 - Launched Giggle Academy, a free gamified AI-powered education platform for grades 1-12 targeting underprivileged children globally, with no revenue model
2026-06-16 - 😇 - Donated $2M to Prison Professors nonprofit over four installments, funding free education for federal prison inmates, inspired by his own incarceration
Analysis
Zhao built his fortune through deliberate regulatory arbitrage. By deprioritizing compliance, Binance was able to grow faster than regulated exchanges — at the cost of enabling terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, and money laundering on a massive scale. His $4.3 billion settlement with the DOJ was the largest corporate penalty in US Treasury history.
The post-conviction record does not reflect genuine accountability. The Trump pardon was obtained through $800K in lobbying and a $2 billion financial arrangement between Binance and the Trump family's crypto business. After the pardon, Binance began promoting the Trump-family stablecoin on its US platform.
Former DOJ officials called the pardon corruption. It cleared the legal record but did not address the underlying conduct.
The FTX bankruptcy estate separately sued Binance and Zhao personally for $1.76 billion, alleging a fraudulent transfer scheme and a deliberate campaign to destroy FTX as a competitor; Zhao has moved to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds. Two months after his pardon, Binance also launched a 20% yield promotion on the Trump family's USD1 stablecoin, adding $150M to its market cap in a single day and further deepening the financial relationship between Binance and the Trump family.
Congressional scrutiny of Binance intensified in 2026. Senator Richard Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened a formal inquiry in February into $1.7 billion in transactions Binance allegedly routed to Iran-linked entities and Russian sanctions-evasion networks through two Hong Kong partners, after compliance staff who flagged the activity were suspended or terminated.
In April, Blumenthal accused Binance of providing misrepresentations to the Subcommittee and withholding requested records, after the company had publicly denied the underlying reporting. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by 535 people who accused Binance and Zhao of enabling terrorist attacks, ruling the plaintiffs failed to show Zhao or Binance were directly linked to the violence.
Meanwhile, Zhao's philanthropic projects — Giggle Academy, the $10M biotech donation to Vitalik Buterin's open-source initiatives, the $2M military scholarship, and a $2M donation to Prison Professors funding free education for federal inmates — demonstrate real investment in education and public health. These are substantive and not trivial. But they run alongside ongoing sanctions violations, a EU-wide service ban rooted in his personal criminal history, and a $150M UK retail investor lawsuit naming him personally.
Questions
Does a presidential pardon obtained through financial dealings restore moral credibility? Zhao's conviction was nullified, but the pardon came through what critics including former DOJ officials characterized as a transactional arrangement between Binance and the Trump administration.
Binance continued allowing over $1 billion in sanctions violations to Iranian entities after the 2023 settlement — and then fired the investigators who discovered it. Is Zhao responsible for this as the dominant owner, even without operational control? Does 90% ownership carry accountability when the company's conduct continues to harm the public?
Zhao's philanthropy is expanding — education, biotech, military families. Can giving at this scale meaningfully offset enabling terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, and regulatory failure? Or does the nature of the underlying harm place it beyond what philanthropy can repair?
Blumenthal's subcommittee has since accused Binance of providing misrepresentations to Congress and withholding requested records. Does that pattern undercut the compliance-culture narrative Zhao and Binance have offered publicly since the 2023 settlement?
Redemption Arc
Ahead of his 2024 sentencing, Zhao wrote a formal apology letter to the presiding judge, admitting there was "no excuse" for his failure to establish compliance controls at Binance — an early, specific acknowledgment of personal fault that preceded the philanthropic activity that followed his release.
Zhao's post-prison trajectory shows genuine philanthropic engagement that is substantive by any measure. The Giggle Academy project, the biotech science donation, the military scholarship program, and the Prison Professors donation funding education for federal inmates represent real commitments of capital and attention.
However, the structural problems are unresolved. Binance remains under regulatory pressure in the EU and UK, faces ongoing government scrutiny over sanctions compliance, and continues to bear the consequences of his leadership's choices. So long as Zhao owns 90% of Binance and the company's compliance culture remains contested, the philanthropic pivot cannot be read as a clean turn.