The Binance founder said the pardon could be linked to President Trump’s crypto promises. “I didn’t do much,” Zhao replied. “I didn’t do anything.” “Without the pardon it’s quite hard for Binance to enter the US in a proper way,” he said. “If the US wants to become the capital of crypto in the world, you can not have US people not be able to access the largest liquidity pool.”
For months, critics have alleged the Binance founder made a deal with Trump in exchange for his presidential pardon. In November, a 60 Minutes investigation tied a $2 billion investment deal between Binance and Abu Dhabi’s MGX to Trump and his family. Critics say the deal, which was conducted with USD1, a stablecoin issued by Trump family crypto project World Liberty Financial, was done as a favour in exchange for the pardon. As of Tuesday, Binance custodies 89% of all USD1 in circulation, according to blockchain data platform Arkham Intel.
Binance CEO Richard Teng, and Zhao’s lawyer Teresa Goody Guillen, have both dismissed claims that the exchange helped boost USD1 before Zhao received the pardon. Zhao pleaded guilty to wilfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme at Binance. For the crime, he was sentenced to four months in prison, which he served between April and September 2024. Zhao has since made several critical statements about his treatment by the US Department of Justice under former President Biden’s administration, framing it as highly aggressive, politically motivated, and part of a broader “war on crypto.”
“The fact that nullTrumpnull went through the Biden DoJ probably helped me a lot to get the pardon, because he could sympathise,” Zhao said. “He knows how aggressive that DoJ was.” It’s this treatment by US authorities that Zhao said may have influenced Trump’s decision to grant him a pardon.
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