'The war against the crypto industry is over': Trump pardons Binance founder

US President Donald Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.

Trump signed the executive order granting the pardon on Oct. 22, the newspaper's interlocutors added. One of them noted that Trump had recently expressed sympathy to his advisers for arguments about the "political persecution" of Zhao and others involved in similar cases.

White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt confirmed the WSJ's information. According to her, Trump "used his constitutional authority to issue a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration as part of its war against cryptocurrencies."

"The Biden administration's war against the crypto industry is over," a White House spokeswoman said.

Binance did not respond to WSJ's request for comment.

Zhao, who lives in Abu Dhabi, founded Binance in 2017, growing it into the world's largest crypto trading platform with an estimated 300 million users worldwide. In 2024, he served four months in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws. The prosecution alleged that illegal transactions carried out by Binance under his supervision caused "significant damage to U.S. national security."

Zhao's pardon could open the way for Binance to return to the U.S. - the company, which pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws and paid a record $4.3 billion fine in 2023, lost its right to operate in the U.S. market, the WSJ notes.

Binance has been seeking Zhao's pardon for nearly a year. As recently as last year, the cryptocurrency exchange was offering Trump allies a deal as part of a plan to bring the company back to the US market. Since Trump's election to a second term, Binance has become a key partner in the president's family project World Liberty Financial, a business that has markedly increased the fortunes of Trump and his family and whose revenue over the past year has exceeded that of their traditional real estate business.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor