Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has spent the past year rebuilding influence after serving four months in prison for violating US Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules.
Binance paid a $4.3-billion penalty fine; Zhao himself paid a $50-million criminal fine. He also received a lifetime ban from holding an executive position at the exchange.
Over the year that followed his release in September 2024, Zhao resurfaced with government advisory roles. He moved memecoins with his X posts and fended off claims by The Wall Street Journal that he was courting influence through the Trump family and the World Liberty Foundation.
In mid-September 2025, Zhao updated his X profile introduction from “ex-@binance” to “@binance.” Then on Oct. 23, he received a pardon from US President Donald Trump.
These are the moves that kept him relevant in the year leading up to his pardon.
Binance Labs rebrands and YZi Labs expands
Even without an executive role, Zhao continues to benefit from Binance’s performance. He reportedly still owns about 90% of the company.
In February, he posted a screenshot suggesting that 98% of his personal crypto investments are in BNB (BNB). Forbes pegs his net worth at roughly $87.2 billion, though Zhao insists, “I don’t have that much.”
Zhao said in November 2024 that he did not intend to return to the exchange’s leadership. But following his pardon, the circumstances around his potential involvement with the exchange have changed. Binance did not respond to Cointelegraph by press time.
Richard Teng now leads the centralized exchange, while Zhao has shifted his focus to YZi Labs — the venture arm formerly known as Binance Labs — where he took on a mentoring role after its rebrand in January.
YZi Labs has been actively deploying capital in crypto, AI and biotechnology. It led the November 2024 seed round in Astherus, which would later become the derivatives platform Aster, and it recently increased its exposure to Ethena, the issuer of the synthetic dollar USDe, which has climbed into the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization with more than $10 billion in circulation.
The firm has also backed projects across the infrastructure stack, such as Digital Asset and its Canton Network and US-based 10X Capital’s BNB Treasury initiative and Aspecta. Its most recent big splash is a $1-billion commitment to support builders on the BNB Chain.
Beloved pet becomes memecoin cash cow
Solana was the undisputed leader in memecoins in 2024. In 2025, however, BNB Chain has been giving Solana a run for its SOL (SOL).
That shift started on Feb. 11, when BNB Chain’s roadmap reaffirmed its backing for the meme ecosystem. Two days later, Zhao shared a long X post about reuniting with his dog, Broccoli, after his legal issues in the US, adding at the end that he isn’t launching a memecoin but the BNB Foundation might reward top tokens.
The post triggered a wave of BNB memecoin speculation and briefly pushed PancakeSwap’s volume ahead of Solana’s main meme trading venues.
Related: BNB wins ‘Uptober’ amid Binance market crash scrutiny
By October, BNB Chain’s meme momentum hadn’t slowed. Network fees topped the industry at points, and the chain climbed to second place in several core activity metrics. Its Four.meme launchpad even outpaced Solana’s Pump.fun in new token creation for a few days.
Zhao’s beef with WSJ and the pardon question
One of the early public signs that Zhao was open to clemency came in December 2024, when he posted that he “wouldn’t mind a pardon” from Trump.
In March 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that members of the Trump family had held discussions with Binance about acquiring a stake in its US arm and suggested a connection with Zhao’s pursuit of a pardon. Zhao rejected the report, claiming that he had no conversations with anyone about a Binance.US deal. The dispute was widely covered and intensified scrutiny over whether business interests and legal relief were being intertwined. Zhao then called the article “motivated as an attack on the President and crypto.”
The tension escalated in May when The Wall Street Journal published another story alleging Zhao had acted as a “fixer” by introducing activist Bilal Bin Saqib to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture associated with the Trump family. Zhao called it “another hit piece,” saying he met Saqib for the first time on the same trip and had no role in any introductions.
Around that time, Democrats in the US Senate asked federal officials for information about reports that Zhao was seeking a pardon while Binance engaged in high-profile political and business interactions.
In a podcast appearance that month, Zhao admitted that his lawyers were preparing a formal pardon application, claiming he moved forward with the process after the media reports surfaced.
Zhao becomes a crypto statesman
Despite his felony conviction in the US, Zhao has continued to act as a global crypto statesman. Several governments have brought him into discussions as they design digital asset strategies.
Malaysia was one of the first in 2025 to seek his input. After talks involving officials from Kuala Lumpur and the United Arab Emirates, Malaysian authorities said that they were considering updates to their crypto regulatory approach, informed in part by discussions with Zhao and his team.
Pakistan went further. In April, the government formally appointed Zhao as a crypto adviser. The country explored the modernization of its financial sector and sought insights from major industry players, rather than relying entirely on restrictive oversight.
Related: Countries across Africa approve new crypto laws as adoption grows
Soon after, Kyrgyzstan appointed him as a strategic adviser as it expanded its involvement in state-backed digital assets. By October, the country had launched a stablecoin on BNB Chain and confirmed that BNB would join Bitcoin in its national crypto reserves.
FTX and US law are Zhao’s two recurring headaches
In June 2025, Zhao asked a Delaware bankruptcy court to dismiss FTX’s lawsuit. The complaint sought to recover almost $1.8 billion from Binance’s 2021 share-buyback deal. The FTX estate alleges the transaction was a fraudulent transfer funded with customer assets.
Zhao said the claims stretch US law too far. He argued “every pertinent part” of the deal took place offshore. His filing calls FTX’s theory “nonsensical” and accuses the company of trying to blame him for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crimes.
FTX also cites Zhao’s November 2022 X posts about selling Binance’s FTX Token (FTT) holdings as a trigger for the bank run that exposed its insolvency. Zhao counters that the posts only revealed a “fraudulent enterprise” already collapsing under its own weight.
Hyperliquid competitor Aster booms
Aster exploded onto the scene in September 2025, rapidly challenging Hyperliquid’s dominance in onchain derivatives. The platform claimed about $2 billion in total value locked (TVL) by Sept. 18-19, instantly positioning itself as a Binance-aligned rival to Hyperliquid.
But momentum came with controversy. DefiLlama publicly delisted Aster’s data in early October, citing concerns about data integrity. The data platform quietly relisted the exchange but said the issues haven’t been resolved.
The tension between Hyperliquid and Binance intensified during the recent $19-billion liquidation event, when Hyperliquid’s Jeff Yan accused exchanges of under-reporting liquidation data to soften how bad things looked. His post specifically named Binance and implied that centralized platforms weren’t being honest about risk.
Zhao fired back on X, saying, “While others tried to ignore, hide, shift blame, or attack competitors, the key BNB Chain ecosystem players (Binance, Venus, and more) took hundreds of millions out of their own pockets to PROTECT USERS.”
With a presidential pardon in hand, Zhao is no longer defined by a conviction or a sentence. His detractors argue that a pardon does not erase the actions that led to it. His supporters argue the case against him was political overreach rather than criminal misconduct.
He has already recentered himself in the ecosystem by backing fast-rising BNB Chain projects and advising governments on crypto strategy. Zhao’s newfound freedom will signal whether he and Binance deepen their presence in the US or continue focusing on the broader BNB DeFi ecosystem.
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