Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said he is not very confident that US President Donald Trump will pardon him after serving a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for violating US anti-money laundering laws.
“You never know because we’ve actually had very strong anti-lobbying from some of our supposed competitors in the US,” Zhao Ran told Neuner on the Crypto Banter podcast published on YouTube on Saturday.
“Other crypto exchanges in the US don’t want me to get a pardon,” Zhao said, claiming they were worried about Binance re-entering the US market after its exit in November 2023. The exit came after $4.3 billion. settlement with Binance and the US government for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), as well as failing to register as a money transmission company.
Binance.US resumed operations approximately four months after the pardon
“I’m pretty confident that it happened to some extent. I don’t have concrete evidence of any of that, but I’m pretty confident that there was pushback,” Zhao said, referring to the crypto exchange’s competitors in the US.
Zhao spoke with Ran Neuner on the Crypto Banter podcast. Source: A crypto joke
US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October 2025, just over a year after Zhao completed his four-month prison sentence in September 2024.
During interview on 60 Minutes in November 2025, Trump said he had “no idea who he is” but was told he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by former US President Joe Biden’s administration.
Binance.US resumed operations for eligible US users in February 2025, several months before Zhao was pardoned.
Zhao has been cleared of the recent charges
Zhao’s comments came just months after a federal court in Alabama granted a request in March to dismiss a 2024 lawsuit filed against Binance, its separate U.S. entity Binance.US and Zhao over allegations that the crypto exchange facilitated the transfer of funds to terrorist groups.
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Looking ahead, Zhao said in April that he the hope of cryptocurrencies and blockchain will simply become an invisible part of daily infrastructure by 2031, much like the internet today.
“I hope that in five years we won’t be talking about crypto as crypto, just like we’re not talking about the Internet anymore, we’re not talking about TCP/IP, we’re not talking about HTML, JavaScript, etc.,” Zhao told Scott Melker on the Wolf of All Streets podcast.
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