On October 23, the US President Donald Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to the legendary founder and former CEO of the Binance exchange, Changpeng Zhao (CZ). This pardon was issued a year after CZ finished serving a four-month sentence in a US federal prison.
The global crypto community’s reaction to this remarkable event was mixed, with some criticizing Trump for this move. Besides, CZ was not the first crypto celebrity President Trump pardoned this year.
A few days after this, the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, regained momentum, contrary to Standard Chartered’s bearish prediction, which suggested that BTC was going to dive under $100,000.
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The story behind Zhao’s charges and his recent pardon
CZ was charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act and money-laundering obligations in 2023. CZ admitted guilt to all of these charges.
As part of this regulation, CZ stepped down from the position of Binance chief executive officer, with Richard Teng taking his place. Binance also agreed to pay a huge fine of approximately $4.3 billion and banned Zhao from running the platform for a lifetime. However, he remains the largest shareholder of Binance, owning roughly 90% of its stock.
Besides, Zhao was sentenced to four months in federal prison. He served the sentence in 2024, between late May and early October.
Trump pardoned CZ as part of his attempts to remedy the aftermath of Joe Biden’s administration in his war against the crypto space. He referred to Zhao’s case as “egregious oversentencing.” On October 23, CZ thanked the US president for this generous move, for “upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.” CZ added that he will do his best “to help make America the Capital of Crypto and advance web3 worldwide.”
This move by Trump marks the second important figure in the crypto space to receive a presidential pardon this year. The first one was Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the darknet marketplace, the Silk Road, where Bitcoin was accepted for illegal goods and services. Trump promised to pardon the dubious crypto pioneer during his election campaign in 2024, where he clearly demonstrated his pivot towards crypto as he began accepting donations in various coins – from Bitcoin and Ethereum to SHIB, DOGE, Tron, etc. Eventually, Ulbricht was released from prison this January after spending roughly eleven years behind bars.
Overall, this year, Trump’s administration has been displaying a friendly attitude towards the crypto industry. He even signed executive orders to set up a National Crypto Stockpile and a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which already contained 200,000 BTC confiscated from illicit activities linked to the Silk Road in 2020-2021.
Some even believe that since CZ was banned from running Binance only as part of the plea agreement, he may now have a chance to return to the CEO position he was forced to step down from. Overall, the pardon is being viewed by experts as a broad signal of the US government shifting in favor of the cryptocurrency sector.
As for the crypto community, many celebrated CZ’s pardon on the social network X, with Arthur Hayes among them. However, crypto investor Adam Cochran publicly reproached Trump for this move, saying that CZ had openly pleaded guilty to all the charges. Besides, he pointed out that CZ has multiple business connections to Trump’s family – World Liberty Financial in particular.
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Bitcoin rejects Standard Chartered’s bearish prediction as CZ gets pardoned
An important analytics forecast was issued earlier this week by the team of the Standard Chartered banking giant regarding Bitcoin. The analysts announced that by the weekend, the price of the bellwether crypto was likely to dive under the $100,000 level, continuing the correction caused by global economic tensions between the US and China and the concerns of a trade war between these countries.
However, instead of dropping as predicted, Bitcoin rallied from around $110,000 to slightly above $113,000 right after Trump officially announced CZ’s pardon. Some analysts link the BTC price surge to this bullish development. Besides, the market is currently going through the last days of so-called “Uptober” – the month when crypto markets historically go significantly upwards.
Last year, Bitcoin also started rallying in early October after CZ was released from federal prison after spending four months there.
The Bitcoin rebound came after a 6% price crash earlier in the week, when digital gold collapsed from $113,000 to the $107,200 mark.
Besides, over the past week, spot Bitcoin ETFs have continued to see large inflows. On Monday, they scooped up nearly a billion US dollars. On Friday, BlackRock’s IBIT saw 976 Bitcoins sent in. Institutional adoption and positive ETF inflows, together with CZ’s pardon and other bullish drivers, make Bitcoin’s further rally this year likely, many experts believe. In particular, Tim Draper and Robert Kiyosaki expect BTC to surpass $200,000 by the end of 2025.
