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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, alleged on April 8, 2026, that unnamed U.S. cryptocurrency companies spent millions of dollars trying to prevent President Donald Trump from pardoning him. Speaking during a live AMA session on Scott Melker's "The Wolf of All Streets" podcast, Zhao said friends had also told him those same firms funded negative press coverage aimed at blocking Binance's return to the American market. Trump granted Zhao a full pardon on October 23, 2025, clearing his felony conviction for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance.

Zhao offered no names and no documentary evidence to support the claims. The allegations remain unverified. His attorney, Teresa Goody Guillén of BakerHostetler, pushed back on related speculation about the pardon process in comments to DL News: "I just know that that would never happen, that's not who he is." She added that blockchain transactions are publicly traceable, which she argued made any secret payment arrangement implausible. Readers should note that Goody Guillén simultaneously represented World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto venture, while acting as Zhao's counsel. That dual role is relevant context when weighing the credibility of her denial.

The legal backdrop

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to one count of failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Binance settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for $4.3 billion, and Zhao paid a separate $50 million personal fine. He was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024, well below the 36 months federal prosecutors had sought. He served that sentence at a low-security California facility and was released in September 2024. The SEC separately dropped its 2023 lawsuit against Binance in May 2025, opening the path for the exchange to expand Binance.US to 46 states, with the remaining four targeted next.

The competitive stakes

The structural incentive for U.S. competitors to resist Binance's return is straightforward. Binance controls roughly 38.3% of global centralized exchange spot trading volume, according to CoinGecko data from December 2025. Coinbase, its most prominent American rival, holds about 4.5% of global spot volume but doubled its U.S. market share during 2025, a period when Binance operated under severe restrictions. A fully licensed Binance operating across all 50 states would directly challenge that position.

That competitive context gives Zhao's allegations some surface-level plausibility, but plausibility is not evidence. Critics of Zhao note he has a documented habit of framing hostile press coverage as coordinated attacks. He previously threatened to sue Bloomberg over a report on the Trump-linked stablecoin USD1, calling the piece a hit piece, and made similar accusations against the Wall Street Journal, specifically alleging that its employees were paid to smear him. That language directly mirrors his current claims about rivals funding negative coverage against Binance. Neither lawsuit has materialized.

The Trump connection

The pardon itself carried unusual financial entanglements that drew bipartisan criticism. In May 2025, UAE-based fund MGX closed a $2 billion investment into Binance using USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture operated by the Trump family. That single transaction represented approximately 70% of all USD1 in circulation at the time. According to reporting by the Citation Needed newsletter and DL News, the Trump family earned roughly $35 million from the deal. Binance also spent $800,000 lobbying for clemency and related policy issues. Goody Guillén, Zhao's attorney, also represented World Liberty Financial during this period, a dual role that raised conflict-of-interest concerns among outside observers.

Senator Elizabeth Warren responded to the pardon at the time by stating: "If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it." On the CBS program "60 Minutes," Trump said he did not know Zhao. In separate statements reported by Axios and CNBC, Trump noted that the pardon request had significant support behind it.

What this means outside the United States

For users in markets like India and Nigeria, the trajectory of Zhao's legal and regulatory rehabilitation has direct consequences. India counts roughly 93.5 million crypto users, the largest national base in the world by headcount. Binance returned to India in late 2024 after registering with the country's Financial Intelligence Unit and paying a $2 million penalty, though India's tax authority has since issued an approximately $86 million goods and services tax demand against the exchange. A stable, compliant Binance matters to Indian retail traders who rely on its peer-to-peer markets and broad token selection under one of the world's harshest crypto tax regimes: a 30% tax on profits and a 1% levy deducted at the source on every trade.

In Nigeria, the picture is more fraught. Binance has 22 million users there, but authorities have blocked the exchange's domains, suspended naira trading pairs, and filed suit against the company over alleged contributions to currency devaluation and tax evasion. Nigeria's new Investments and Securities Act, passed in 2025, formally classifies digital assets as securities and creates a licensing framework. Whether Zhao's improved standing in the United States translates into renewed negotiations in Abuja remains an open question.

What comes next

Zhao said during the podcast that he would be comfortable staying in the UAE indefinitely, citing his bitcoin holdings, but that he had voluntarily chosen to face U.S. charges rather than remain abroad. With the pardon in place and Binance.US expanding state by state, the more immediate question is whether the company's re-entry will prompt formal regulatory scrutiny of the lobbying and financial relationships that helped make it possible. Congressional critics have shown little appetite to let those connections go unexamined.