The pardoned ex-CEO called prison a character-building "plus" as he's pursued a venture-capital career, despite his majority stake in the world's biggest crypto exchange.

  • Explaining his prison sentence hasn't been a business challenge for Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, he said in a CoinDesk interview, because people seem to understand that the Trump-pardoned former CEO wasn't involved in fraud.
  • The billionaire said he learned from his earlier ignorance about U.S. compliance, though he said he has no plans to be a CEO at the moment and is instead focused on advising firms he's investing in.

How does a high-profile crypto founder recover his reputation after serving prison time? Changpeng "CZ" Zhao's answer: He doesn't have to.

The founder of the Binance crypto exchange represents the rarest of statistics — a billionaire who has been imprisoned, and the only person to ever serve time solely for Bank Secrecy Act violations. But he said that he's never lost a prospective business partner because of his guilty plea.

"Once we can explain, 'Look, this is the Bank Secrecy Act, this is the violation; there's no fraud.' Many people confuse that, right?" he told CoinDesk in an interview. "But once they understand … they actually trust you more."

CZ, 49, is looking now toward his post-prison, post-CEO working life, and the millions of crypto fans he'd cultivated are keenly interested in his next steps. They might be disappointed in the short term, though, because he insists he doesn't want to return to Binance at this stage and has no interest in running its separate U.S. operation. That leaves him as a pure investor and adviser, searching for startup adventures.

The 17th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes billionaires tally, said he has little interest in making money for the sake of money. As the Canadian minds the slower-paced operation of his investment interests and keeps close tabs on the bulk of his wealth at Binance, his forward motion is colored by his complex relationship with the U.S., where so much of the crypto sector's energy is focused.

He said he's learned from his earlier compliance missteps and doesn't hold any grudges for his U.S. prison experience. But there's no doubt it blew up the crypto giant's earlier trajectory.

The blind spot

The trouble started years ago, when the younger digital assets entrepreneur started Binance, and its instant growth catapulted it into position as the leading global platform. He said he had little idea how to manage the legal side of his business, and he had a fatal blind spot about U.S. money-laundering and sanctions rules.

"I should have spent more time to learn about it much earlier on, but I was not living in the U.S. We started this platform in Shanghai, and then we moved to Malta, Singapore, etc.," he said. "So I didn't realize at the time that U.S. laws actually apply globally."

The U.S. Justice Department's accusations in 2023 were severe, saying he and his company failed to take basic steps to guard against money laundering and sanctions violations and offered an unfettered conduit for criminals to stash proceeds from "ransomware variants, darknet transactions, and various internet-related scams."

"Changpeng Zhao made Binance, the company he founded and ran as CEO, into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by targeting U.S. customers, but refused to comply with U.S. law,” said then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri. “Binance’s and Zhao’s willful violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws threatened the U.S. financial system and our national security, and each of them has now pleaded guilty.

He made the plea deal and was sentenced to serve four months in federal prison — an unusual punishment for a pure BSA rap, for which a similar conviction earned former BitMex CEO Arthur Hayes only home confinement. Fellow high-profile founder Sam Bankman-Fried of the failed FTX exchange is also serving time, but his sentence was rooted in fraudulent activity.

"You ask anybody who went to prison, they always say like the sentence was too harsh, right?" CZ said. "I think the judge is a really good person, whether he was under any perceived or indirect or just atmospheric pressure at the time, we don't know, but you know he had the right to do it, and I respect it, so this is water under the bridge."

The guilty plea included a highly consequential agreement to sever ties with the global Binance exchange.

His stint at a low-security prison in Lompoc, California, was difficult, he said, but he was seen by fellow inmates — and even guards — as a financial authority. They asked him for crypto wisdom, he recalled.

"Look, I don't have access to any internet," he said he told people. "I don't know what happened today; I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow."

He spent 15 minutes at a clip writing his memoir, "Freedom of Money," and he said he struggled with its early angry tone, later cutting much of that out as a "very therapeutic" exercise. Even after he left, he said he's continued to donate money to a group he was impressed by, Prison Professors. He's given about $2 million by now, he said.

Out of sight

After CZ served the sentence, he said he tried to get clear of the U.S. for a while.

"I basically wanted to stay away from the U.S. as far as possible," he said. "I just wanted to stay out of mind, stay out of sight, just as far as possible."

When he attended his first post-prison crypto event in October of 2024, the crowd at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai greeted him with a standing ovation. But by then, his vocation was about to shift toward investment work (with the former Binance VC arm switching to a $10 billion family office, YZi Labs) and the oversight of the nonprofit, free-education platform known as Giggle Academy.

A year later, the same U.S. government that had punished him reached out to embrace him. President Donald Trump had returned to the White House with a full head of steam about championing crypto in the U.S.

CZ "had a lot of support," Trump said in an October 2025 press conference. "They said that what he did is not even a crime, it wasn't a crime, that he was prosecuted by the Biden administration, and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people."

The presidential pardon freed CZ from any legal overhang from his plea agreement.

"The country can actually self-correct," CZ noted. "And that made me realize, okay, that's why the U.S. is the economic leader in the world, the military leader in the world, and its policies are influencing global policies.

"I don't hold grudges or anything, right? I just want to help to grow crypto anywhere in the world, and to do that, we need to help grow crypto in America."

The Canadian national said he won't participate at any level in U.S. politics, despite his industry's growing reputation for political campaigning and influence. But he supports the U.S. aim to be the world's crypto capital, and he sat for the interview during a trip to Washington.

In the meantime, he's focused on the early backing of "highly impactful companies that may not be highly profitable companies." So far, his criminal-justice experience hasn't been a drag on those relationships.

"I had guys who apologized to me that they had a misunderstanding before," CZ recalled. "They said, 'Well, I thought there was some financial fraud.'"

If anything, he said, it's been helpful.

"Sometimes it actually works as a plus," he said. "It kind of builds your character that you went through this really difficult time and this unfair time, and you were tested and you were scrutinized, but they didn't find any real issues, really. Well, there was the violation of the BSA, which I do not dispute, but there's no fraud."

While he hasn't entirely dismissed a dramatic reappearance at Binance one day, he said the CEO life doesn't appeal to him as much now.

"Being a CEO is a very, very time-consuming, very tough kind of job," he said. "I'm kind of taking a breather. I kind of enjoy that, and also I think my best contribution is really helping other founders to build.

CZ said he still has time to figure out his future.

"I'm not young, but I'm not super old, so at this age I can still do a lot of stuff," he said. "I still have energy."


Read More: CZ, Binance founder, wants to clear up 'misunderstandings' about who he is

In May, combined exchange volumes fell 3.45% to $4.41T; the lowest since September 2024. RWA perpetual futures volumes rose 10.4% against the trend, hitting a new all-time high.