Trump spoke with 60 Minutes shortly after returning from a trip to Asia that included a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and an easing of the two countries’ trade conflict.
Earlier in October, Trump issued a pardon to the founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, lifting restrictions that had prevented Zhao from running financial ventures.“President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency. The war on crypto is over,” a White House statement.
Who is Changpeng Zhao?
Changpeng Zhao, also known as ‘CZ’, is the founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. Born in 1977 in Jiangsu province, China, Zhao immigrated to Canada with his family in 1989 and later, after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.He went back to China in 2005 to launch an IT startup after stepping down as the head of the Bloomberg Tradebook Futures Research & Development team.
Later in 2017, he entered the crypto space and launched Binance. The Chinese government banned cryptocurrency exchanges in the same year, and Zhao was again compelled to leave China.
As Binance’s CEO, Zhao played a significant role in shaping the crypto industry. However, in November 2023, he stepped down as CEO and pleaded guilty to ‘wilful violations’ of US laws, BBC reported.
After pleading guilty to violating US money laundering laws, he was sentenced to four months in prison and served his time from April 2024.
After serving four months in prison for violating anti-money-laundering laws, Zhao’s representatives approached Trump’s allies around the time of the election, seeking a solution to Binance’s legal troubles in the US.
Following Trump’s win, Binance formed a task force to strike a deal with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.
Binance’s actions helped boost the credibility of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin product, increasing its market capitalisation from $127 million to over $2.1 billion.
