By David Yaffe-Bellany, reporter for The New York Times
Compiled by: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher
I. Zhao Changpeng after his release from prison: wealth, power and political allies
One morning in June, cryptocurrency tycoon Changpeng Zhao drove a white Nissan SUV to the St. Regis Resort Hotel in Abu Dhabi. Changpeng Zhao is the richest man in the crypto industry, with an estimated net worth of $114 billion. He lives in a nearby villa with nine bedrooms, four bodyguards, a chef and a yacht called Da Moon. But he also likes to play what he often calls "normal people." That day, he offered to take me on a tour of the city himself. Outside the St. Regis Hotel, Zhao Changpeng was sitting in the driver's seat of his Nissan, with his iPhone fixed on the windshield, like the richest Uber driver in the world. When I got in the car, he joked, "My Lamborghini."
To be clear, Zhao Changpeng is not an ordinary person. Not long ago, U.S. authorities filed criminal charges against him over his management of Binance. Court documents describe the crypto exchange as a haven for Russian money launderers, Iranian sanctions evaders and Islamic State terrorists. Zhao Changpeng admitted his crime, but his wealth was preserved. After serving his four-month sentence, he returned to Abu Dhabi, still the controlling shareholder of Binance and still the most powerful person in the industry.
Today, 49-year-old Zhao Changpeng travels like a head of state, flying to and from Asia on private jets to provide crypto regulatory advice to governments. His stops in Islamabad or Manila are often followed by announcements of new regulatory breakthroughs. He has two dogs at home, one of which is a Tegan, an elegant Central Asian breed often compared to an antelope. This was a gift from the president of Kyrgyzstan, who is interested in cryptocurrency. In February this year, the two even skied together. "He actually wanted to give me a tent, a big tent," Zhao Changpeng said. "I didn't ask for a tent, but then he insisted on giving me the dog."
Zhao Changpeng's most influential allies are two powerful families. One is the family that rules the United Arab Emirates. They hope to use his power to build a technological powerhouse in the desert. The other is the Trump family. Last year, Binance established a commercial relationship with World Liberty Financial, a crypto startup founded by President Trump and his three sons. World Liberty brought in $799 million for Trump last year, making it his most profitable single asset, outpacing his real estate portfolio and social media business. In October last year, Trump pardoned Zhao Changpeng, a move that was widely criticized as an exchange of benefits.
Changpeng Zhao, known as "CZ" in the industry, often avoids reporters. But this year, he met with me several times, hoping that the outside world would view his experience at Binance in a more positive light, and Binance has still not blocked the flow of illegal funds. He is tall and thin, with short dark hair and a Binance tattoo on his forearm, and lacks the frat-boy flamboyance of many of his peers in the crypto community. He comes across as polite and attentive, but his interests are almost comically narrow. This year he self-published a memoir, "Freedom of Money," in which he wrote about receiving a private tour of the Louvre after it closed. The experience did not move him. He wrote that the tour guide was "playing the piano to an ox".
Over the years, what he has really excelled at is what scholars call "jurisdictional arbitrage": traveling to different countries in search of legal frameworks that are loose enough to satisfy his pursuit of risk and growth. In Abu Dhabi, he may have found his ideal home. As we drove into the city, Zhao Changpeng chatted friendly and asked the bodyguard for directions along the way. (“Yes, boss, keep to the right.”) We passed the imposing buildings and drove towards Qasr Al Watan, the presidential palace. Its striking white dome is reminiscent of the Taj Mahal.
Zhao Changpeng became more and more enthusiastic as he talked. Approaching the Presidential Palace, he said: "Democracy has been held up as some kind of ultimate ideal over the past few hundred years, but the efficiency of the democratic system is not very high. If there is a benevolent leader, the efficiency will actually be very high. There will be not many arguments, and there will be no waste of time on many irrelevant things."
Recently, this top-down, medieval yet modern business and political model has become increasingly popular in the United States. During a visit to Abu Dhabi last year, Trump called UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan "a very powerful man" and "a rare visionary." Zach Witkoff, the son of a senior adviser to Trump and himself a "princeling" figure in the MAGA camp, spoke more directly at an encryption conference in Dubai in May last year. “We should really look to His Highness and the UAE for lessons,” Witkov said. “They have set an incredible example of how to lead development with innovation while upholding family values.”
Zhao Changpeng has already lived the future life these people long for, and is in an elite circle where monarchs and billionaires get along well. As we drove away from the presidential palace, he told me about a private meeting he had attended at the nearby Mandarin Oriental Emirates Palace hotel. Hedge fund founder Ray Dalio, Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son and other business figures participated. As he sat in the audience, he noticed someone leaning over to talk to him. That man was Sheikh Mohammed. He wanted to know how Zhao Changpeng was doing and if there was anything he could do to help.
"This is the king," Zhao Changpeng said to me, "kneeling next to you like this."
II. The rise of Binance and compliance risks
Zhao Changpeng was lying on his back on the bed, typing on the laptop placed above his body.
Long-term back pain requires Zhao Changpeng to lie down to work. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
One day at the beginning of this year, Zhao Changpeng was working in bed when the window suddenly began to vibrate. Suffering from chronic pain, he often worked while lying on his back. He told me that at that time he got up and walked to the balcony and saw a smoke trail in the sky. Changpeng Zhao lives on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, across the Persian Gulf from Iran, which has just launched a missile towards the United Arab Emirates.
This is the beginning of a geopolitical crisis that will destabilize the region, but Zhao Changpeng is not too worried. He went back to bed and continued working. “More people died in traffic accidents than from missiles,” he later said. “The protection here is very good.”
Before settling in the United Arab Emirates, Zhao Changpeng had no fixed place to stay. He was born in China and moved to Canada with his family when he was 12 years old. After studying at McGill University, he held multiple technical jobs and traveled to New York, China and Japan. In July 2013, during a poker game in Shanghai, a colleague suggested that he learn about "this new thing called Bitcoin."
This technology, which is not restricted by national boundaries, is just right for his traveling life. After several months of research, Zhao Changpeng made a bold bet. He sold a three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai, where he and his wife raised their two children, and put all the $900,000 from the sale into Bitcoin. This is a risky decision, but Zhao Changpeng is not worried. He believes that even if Bitcoin plummets, he can easily find another high-paying job in the traditional financial industry.
Since then, Changpeng Zhao has worked for several crypto startups in Asia. The crypto industry grew rapidly in the 2010s, with hundreds of new tokens emerging, but the platforms that traded these tokens were poorly managed and vulnerable to hackers. In July 2017, Changpeng Zhao founded Binance. Within a few months, Binance became the largest exchange in the world and has maintained that position ever since.
Binance’s success is based on two key judgments. First, crypto investors are a group that is keen to take risks and will never be satisfied with just exchanging US dollars or Japanese yen for the equivalent value of cryptocurrencies. Binance has offered margin trading for years: traders can borrow funds to make high-risk, high-reward bets on the price of Bitcoin and other popular coins.
The second judgment is simpler, but the impact is more profound. Many crypto investors don’t want to disclose their identities, and Binance doesn’t require them to do so. In the first four years after the company was established, customers did not even have to provide the most basic KYC information when opening an account. KYC stands for "Know Your Customer" and refers to the identity and other information that traditional companies require customers to provide in order to prevent financial crimes.
Binance is not the only exchange offering such high-risk services, but Changpeng Zhao’s execution surpasses all competitors. “There was a lot of MySpace in the exchange industry at the time, and he built Facebook,” said Austin Campbell, founder of a crypto consulting firm. The result is an extremely profitable, virtually unfettered platform: unvetted investment products, open to unvetted traders. When the market is booming, Binance takes a fee from every trade. According to "Money Freedom", the company's profits soon reached 1 billion US dollars.
A pair of orange sneakers with the words "Trump, Crypto President" printed on the side.
This pair of Trump brand sneakers was a gift to Changpeng Zhao from Gabe Abed, a businessman who once served as the ambassador of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
Changpeng Zhao became a celebrity in the crypto circle. But even as he joins a handful of ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs with astonishing political clout, few outside the industry truly understand him. Looking back on his most controversial experiences, Changpeng Zhao paints himself as a man caught up in the situation: a crypto-tech nerd blinded by success, an inexperienced outsider who somehow became a Bond villain.
This performance is not always convincing. Sitting in his kitchen in late June, Changpeng Zhao told me that during Binance’s early years of explosive growth, he “never really thought” about breaking the law. At that time, the company's lax controls allowed groups of criminals to launder money. "It's just that I lack experience in this area," he said. "I'm a technician and I used to live in China."
This image does not fit with the evidence gathered by U.S. prosecutors in their investigation of Binance. In court, prosecutors quoted Changpeng Zhao as saying to his subordinates: "It is better to ask for forgiveness afterwards than to ask for permission beforehand." According to legal documents, although Binance was not licensed in the United States, Changpeng Zhao had privately discussed how to conceal the fact that the platform provided services to American users. “Leave no paper trail,” he told a subordinate.
In Abu Dhabi, Zhao Changpeng described himself as a "rule-abiding person." However, it seems clear that he strategically chose to test the boundaries of the law at a critical time when the habits of a new generation of investors were forming and the rules themselves were elastic.
I was reminded of this again as he walked me through the door. Boxes of Binance merchandise are stacked at the entrance. He urged me to pick out a gift, like a Binance backpack or a yellow and black Binance sweater fashioned into a baseball jacket.
Changpeng Zhao stood next to the cream-colored sofa, holding up a black and yellow Binance brand jacket.
I told him that journalists have rules about this sort of thing and that I couldn't accept gifts worth more than $20. He laughed and said the dress cost "like $19."
III. Settled in the United Arab Emirates: Make friends with the royal family and compete with FTX
After traveling around Asia for many years, Zhao Changpeng visited the United Arab Emirates in 2021. In 2017, when the Chinese government was preparing to announce a ban on crypto exchange operations, he and his Binance colleagues were forced to leave China overnight. An attempt in Japan also failed; Singapore also failed to retain him because a work visa was difficult to obtain. Later, Zhao Changpeng's friend Gabriel Abed made a suggestion. The businessman once served as the ambassador of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates, and he asked Changpeng Zhao to visit Dubai.
Changpeng Zhao quickly saw how the Emiratis treated the rich and powerful. He arrived in Dubai on a Saturday morning in October. Within hours, government minister Omar Sultan Al Olama paid him a visit and offered him a so-called golden visa, which gives holders a convenient ten-year stay. A doctor was called in to do a blood test that all visa holders are required to undergo. Applications usually take weeks to process, but Zhao Changpeng's application was approved in less than 12 hours.
Such warm reception left a deep impression on Zhao Changpeng. “On my fourth day in Dubai, I looked at two properties,” he told me, “and I bought the second one.” By the end of the year, Binance signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government to jointly develop crypto business rules; the company sent three employees to help build the regulatory framework. The draft was completed in January 2022 and signed into law a few weeks later. "If the ship you're steering is heading in the right direction, the UAE wants you to be on their team," Abed said. "That's how they treat CZ. They've been by his side and supporting him from day one."
Not everyone in the UAE receives such favorable treatment. For years, the country’s leadership has implemented mass surveillance and banned even the mildest expressions of dissent. In the labor market under their rule, foreign workers are often exploited and abused.
But for Zhao Changpeng, this is the beginning of a comfortable new life. Before founding Binance, he had separated from his wife, who moved to Tokyo with their children. He started dating his colleague He Yi. He Yi is a marketing executive best known in China as the host of the travel show "Beautiful Destinations." While Zhao Changpeng's older child attended college in the United States, he and He Yize raised several younger children in the United Arab Emirates.
He Yi was wearing a beige top and trousers, sitting in a small office surrounded by glass walls, with a small white table in front of him.
He Yi is Zhao Changpeng's friend and the mother of his three children. After Zhao Changpeng was forced to withdraw from the company's operations, He Yi became one of the two co-chief executives appointed by the company. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
Zhao Changpeng thus entered the top social circle of billionaires. He became acquainted with a group of Emirati leaders interested in technology, calling them "crypto sheikhs." Later, he gradually came into contact with Sheikh Mohammed's younger brother, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Tahnon loved jujitsu and entertained powerful business people at his palace. At these royal dinners, Zhao Changpeng was treated as a distinguished guest. "We would ask, how to arrange the seats?" he said, "They said, just sit wherever you want."
In the first few meetings, these sheikhs introduced Zhao Changpeng to the advantages of the UAE and asked what help they could provide him. Soon, Changpeng Zhao began to promote the benefits of this country to more billionaires. He encouraged artificial intelligence tycoon Sam Altman to set up operations in the UAE, warning him that other countries might treat him with hostility. “You’re going to run into a lot of regulatory issues,” Zhao Changpeng told him over coffee.
Changpeng Zhao is no stranger to the risks of emerging industries. When he arrived in the UAE, he was in intense competition with a young entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the rival FTX exchange. The son of a professor at Stanford Law School, Bankman-Fried is in many ways the opposite of Changpeng Zhao: He understands the rules of the industry and has successfully climbed to the top of the industry by relying on personal connections and close ties to the U.S. political elite. "He has means that I don't have," Zhao Changpeng wrote in his memoirs. Bankman-Fried would poach Binance employees at three to five times their salary. Zhao Changpeng also heard that he spoke ill of himself in Washington.
In November 2022, a report from crypto media CoinDesk raised questions about FTX’s financial soundness. Changpeng Zhao was in Dubai at the time and was about to go have a drink with Abed. On the way, he decided to speak out on Twitter and issued a brief but merciless statement. He is selling $500 million worth of FTT, a digital token considered an alternative to FTX stock. The tweet sparked panic, with anxious investors withdrawing funds from FTX.
But the money was no longer there, and Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion of his clients' money. He had no choice but to seek bailout, and there was only one person in the crypto industry who could save him. Two days after Changpeng Zhao sent out his tweet, he announced that he would acquire FTX; a day later, he withdrew from the deal, plunging FTX into a deeper crisis. It all looks like a masterful piece of corporate warfare. As one observer put it, it was a "bloody fight." Within six weeks, Bankman-Fried was arrested at his apartment in the Bahamas and later extradited to the United States, where he was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.
Changpeng Zhao told me that he never wanted to destroy FTX. He put on his usual shrug of innocence and explained that he had hoped to gradually sell off FTT over several months. "I didn't intend for them to collapse," he said. "We lost $500 million."
But his defeated opponent saw things differently. “He played me,” Bankman-Fried said at the time, “and he played it brilliantly.”
IV. From Plea to Release: Four Months in Prison
Billionaires are attracted to the UAE for their own reasons. The country has no personal income tax and is considered extremely safe, at a time when crypto investors in Europe and the United States are being targeted by kidnappers. But for Zhao Changpeng, who had just witnessed his old enemy being escorted across the border, the UAE had another important advantage: It had no extradition treaty with the United States.
He recalled that at the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023, a member of the UAE royal family asked him at dinner if he wanted to naturalize. Changpeng Zhao submitted some documents and waited. A few months later, a government emissary arrived at his home with a box containing his and his family's passports. Zhao Changpeng told me that the Emiratis "will never extradite their own citizens" and "this is very guaranteed."
He has reason to be wary: The investigation into Binance is intensifying. U.S. prosecutors are gathering evidence that exchanges' lax governance rules allow scammers, hackers and sanctions-evaders to move money around. In private messages obtained by the government, Binance employees were surprisingly candid about the exchange’s questionable customers. One employee wrote: "Is it too difficult to launder drug money now? Come to Binance, we have cake for you."
Changpeng Zhao hired a team of lawyers to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. His new passport gave him considerable negotiating leverage. After living in Dubai for several years, he moved south to Abu Dhabi, an hour and a half away, to be closer to the country's center of political power. During the negotiations, Changpeng Zhao seriously considered living as a fugitive: He would have to limit his travels, but at least in theory it would be safe to stay in the UAE.
Eventually, his legal team reached a deal with the U.S. government. Changpeng Zhao will admit to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money laundering law, and resign as CEO. (The company will pay a $4.3 billion fine.) Despite the loose terms of the agreement, he was unhappy with his lawyers and didn't think he deserved a day in jail. “I was sent to jail because we had a platform that didn’t do a good job of KYC,” he told me. “You don’t even need an ID to vote for the president of the United States. I don’t know how this system came about. Based on what I experienced, I think someone should go to jail for this.”
However, this is already an excellent result for Binance. At the sentencing hearing in the spring of 2024, Zhao Changpeng made a statement of remorse: "I deeply regret and am deeply sorry for my dereliction of duty." The judge sentenced Zhao Changpeng to four months in prison and called him "a person who is dedicated to taking care of his family and is willing to give." When the verdict was read out in court, Zhao Changpeng's son, who was in college, quietly pumped his fist in celebration.
As a rare felon with almost unlimited resources, Zhao Changpeng has the best conditions to allow himself to suffer as little as possible. He was booked into Lompoc II, a low-security prison in California, the same prison campus where Bankman-Fried was later incarcerated. Before reporting to prison, Zhao Changpeng formed a team of consultants to teach him how to deal with the delicate interpersonal relationships in the prison area. One of the counselors, Michael Santos, corresponded with other inmates who promised to help Zhao adapt to prison life. "CZ, you know how to deal with people and have managed thousands of employees," Santos told him. "Just walking here doesn't make you lose these abilities."
On the morning of May 30, 2024, Zhao Changpeng arrived in Lompoc. He soon joined an informal social group called a car, which is often organized along ethnic lines. Other Asian prisoners sat with Zhao Changpeng during meals and exercised with him on the playground during exercise breaks. They were excited to be in the company of a billionaire. "Everyone moved out of his way," said Jaden Agong, who is also serving a sentence in Lompoc. "It was like a king walking down the aisle."
Zhao Changpeng became familiar with a Vietnamese bank robber who had worked as an engineer. They chatted at length about the robberies, only to discover they weren't as elaborately planned as one might imagine from Ocean's Eleven. Changpeng Zhao told me that he was "very gentle" and a "super easy-going person." "He just walked in, asked for money and left. He did this 11 times and never got caught."
The bank robber was one of the few prisoners with an interest in the business world. He read Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, and asked Changpeng Zhao about Elon Musk’s sky-high compensation package at Tesla. Other prisoners also have business problems, and one of them wants to figure out the mysteries of the crypto market. “He asked, why did Bitcoin go up?” Changpeng Zhao recalled, “I said, wow, I can’t tell.” Changpeng Zhao organized a study group to track stock prices, and a TV in the prison was tuned to CNBC.
Not everything he said was acceptable. In Lompoc, Changpeng Zhao found it difficult to convince people of his deeply held belief that there were essentially no victims in the Binance case, “no fraud, nothing.” When he explained the details of the case, he received an unimpressed response. "They said, yeah, that's what everyone said," Zhao Changpeng recalled.
In August 2024, Changpeng Zhao left Lompoc and moved to a transitional residence that helps prisoners reintegrate into society. But issues with his immigration status forced him to spend his final two weeks in a local jail. He passed the time in his cell doing push-ups and crunches. On the day of his release, a police officer sent him outside where his mother, sister and assistant were waiting for him. They drove to a nearby airport and put him on a private plane bound for Abu Dhabi.
Only 26 minutes passed from the time Zhao Changpeng left the detention center to the time his plane took off.
V. Behind the $2 Billion Investment: Binance, USD1 and Trump’s Pardon
Zhao Changpeng was sitting in the driver's seat of the car, with his mobile phone fixed on the inside of the windshield.
He tours Abu Dhabi in a Nissan SUV. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
Changpeng Zhao returned to a world that was changing in his favor. A crypto-industry-friendly administration is about to take power in Washington. Shortly before the election, Trump co-founded World Liberty with Steve Witkoff’s family. Witkoff was a real estate tycoon who was preparing to serve as the White House's special envoy to the Middle East. Soon, these Americans who were newly in power and engaged in both business and diplomacy began to visit the UAE frequently.
While driving me around the city, Zhao Changpeng stopped and pointed at the ADNEC Center. This convention and exhibition center hosted a large gathering of crypto enthusiasts in December 2024. “This is where I met Eric Trump,” he said. He recalled that a Trump supporter named David Bailey introduced him to the president’s second son. Eric is also one of the principals of World Liberty. It was a casual chat with no formal agenda. “He just said he was looking at a real estate project here,” Zhao Changpeng told me.
Their interests are about to come together. The UAE has been trying to transform itself from a petro-state into an emerging technology powerhouse, a plan spearheaded by Sheikh Tahnoun, who oversees the UAE's $1.5 trillion in sovereign wealth. Before being imprisoned, Changpeng Zhao negotiated with Xiao Peng, one of Takhnon’s important assistants, to sell part of Binance’s shares to the UAE. This would give his company the closest possible alignment with the people who provide him with political asylum.
Sheikh Tahnoun almost always wears sunglasses. He serves as chairman of a venture capital fund called MGX, which focuses on artificial intelligence. According to a person familiar with the matter, early last year, MGX agreed to invest $2 billion in Binance, a transaction that valued Binance at $75 billion. MGX believes that Binance is an ideal bridge between cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence: a high-tech fund transfer platform that one day, autonomous AI Agents may be able to use it to complete payments for real people.
Changpeng Zhao told me that he wanted to settle the transaction in Bitcoin. The UAE is concerned that Bitcoin prices are prone to large fluctuations, which will complicate transactions. They prefer to pay Changpeng Zhao in stablecoins. This type of cryptocurrency aims to maintain the price at $1.
What happened next is widely disputed. If Democrats win control of Congress in November, the matter is likely to be the subject of congressional investigation. MGX said that after evaluating a variety of stablecoins, the fund selected USD1 issued by World Liberty due to "commercial suitability" considerations. This choice is shocking because USD1 is completely untested by the market and has no historical performance to refer to. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had explicitly required MGX to use USD1 for payment; Changpeng Zhao said that this was a decision made by MGX. “As long as the stablecoin is reputable and doesn’t disappear overnight, I don’t really care,” he told me. “There are no other considerations.”
But all parties have reasons for including World Liberty in the deal. In January 2025, just days before Trump was inaugurated, an investment firm backed by UAE capital bought 49% of the startup; Sheikh Tahnoun received a board seat at World Liberty. At about the same time, the UAE was in talks with the White House to obtain export licenses for high-end computing chips that power artificial intelligence. Binance also has matters for the Trump administration to deal with. As the legal troubles recede, the company hopes to shed some of the restrictions imposed by the 2023 settlement.
In May 2025, Witkoff’s son Zach announced the deal and thanked Binance and MGX for their “trust in us.” Congressional Democrats denounced it as “stablecoin corruption.” Issuers like World Liberty make money by taking cash from crypto traders, providing them with stablecoins, and then investing the cash they receive to earn income. With the help of this $2 billion deal between MGX and Binance, World Liberty immediately became one of the largest stablecoin companies in the world, bringing benefits to both Trump and Witkov. “This was such a bottomless act of ingratiation,” said Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has investigated Changpeng Zhao and Binance. “The scope and scale of the corruption are unprecedented.”
Changpeng Zhao insisted that no wrongdoing occurred. He said that he no longer holds those USD1, but uses it to invest in Bitcoin and other assets. “I think President Trump has very good lawyers and the arrangement of his sons running businesses and their father being president is completely legal and compliant,” he told me. He believes some of the anger may stem from cultural differences. “In Kazakhstan, we can eat horse meat,” he explains. “In some other countries, people say, ‘This is crazy.’” Isn’t it a good thing that the ruling families of two countries have struck a business deal? Zhao Changpeng used the medieval practice as an example. "If you marry a princess from one country to a prince from another country," he said, "they can maintain peace for 50 years."
Two weeks after the $2 billion deal closed, the White House agreed to give the UAE access to the chips, overriding the concerns of some U.S. national security officials. Last spring, Steve Witkoff traveled with Trump to Abu Dhabi. They celebrated the agreement with the UAE side at the Presidential Palace.
Witkov also privately told an acquaintance that Zhao Changpeng should be pardoned, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Zhao Changpeng has submitted relevant application materials and is waiting for the president’s decision. The results will have significant implications for Binance. After Changpeng Zhao's guilty plea, the exchange's stalled U.S. operations lost their state licenses. A pardon could help companies win approval from regulators. (A White House spokeswoman said Witkoff was not involved in the pardon process.)
Changpeng Zhao was careful to describe the process to me, calling it a "black box" handled by a handful of lawyers who regularly reported developments from Washington. He said he was occasionally approached by shady middlemen at social events and offered to arrange meetings with Trump for the right price. "There is a small group of people who specialize in making money from this," Zhao Changpeng said.
Zhao Changpeng ignored them. He told me that he only began to seriously consider applying for pardon in March 2025. At the time, other crypto industry executives were granted pardons, and the Wall Street Journal reported that he was also seeking one. "I figured since the newspaper thought I should apply for a pardon, then maybe I should," he said.
But according to two people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times, as early as December 2024, Zhao Changpeng’s legal team had been working with well-known pardon lawyer Brett Tolman to explore the possibility of obtaining a pardon. Public filings show that Binance ultimately paid $2.1 million to a lobbying firm run by Chase McDowell, and the purchased services included “administrative relief.” McDowell is close to the president's two older sons. (A spokesperson for World Liberty told me the company had “no involvement at all in any pardon decision.”)
In October last year, when news of the pardon was announced, Zhao Changpeng had just arrived in Kyrgyzstan and was preparing to meet with President Sadr Zhaparov. Zhaparov is interested in launching a digital token pegged to Kyrgyzstan’s national currency. When the host welcomed Zhao Changpeng in the capital Bishkek, he posted a brief message of thanks on social media. That night, he and the president were in a restaurant talking about stablecoins.
VI. Beyond luxury life, Binance’s controversy remains
A grand piano sits in a white children's playroom, toys are scattered on the floor and colorful paintings hang on the walls. Zhao Changpeng stood in the center of the room.
A Steinway piano sits in the children's playroom. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
On a sweltering morning this summer, Zhao Changpeng drove into the driveway of his $5 million villa. He and He Yihui receive their grandparents, brothers and sisters who come to stay here in turn. His two dogs greeted him at the door. In addition to the Tegan hound, Zhao Changpeng also raised a Belgian Malinois named Broccoli (Broccoli) because he thought the name sounded a bit like "blockchain".
With the photographer behind him, Zhao Changpeng walked quickly from room to room, pointing out photos of himself and his young children. An imposing cream piano sits in the center of the children's playroom, surrounded by toys. The tuner who came for maintenance was distressed to see the piano in such neglect. Zhao Changpeng told me that it was a Steinway, "a pretty expensive one" and "but I can't play it." Walking to his home gym, he stopped to do a few sets of bench presses.
Zhao Changpeng wants to explain that he does not live like an ordinary billionaire. While Forbes estimates his wealth to be over $100 billion, Zhao insists the actual figure is much lower, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion. He said that he only needed a small part of it, a mere $10 million, to live comfortably.
While participating in crypto podcasts, Changpeng Zhao was occasionally asked about his house. He often mentioned a leak upstairs that had never been repaired. Sure enough, in the living room, he pointed to a water stain on the floor and then toward the ceiling. "That's it," he said. "I wonder if you can see the difference in color."
Zhao Changpeng stood in the restaurant and pointed at the ceiling. Behind him is a long dining table.
Zhao Changpeng pointed to a leak that had never been repaired. Photograph: Laura Boushnak, The New York Times.
By the standards of billionaires, Zhao Changpeng’s villa is indeed not considered luxurious. He told me that a house nearby was listed for $150 million. But his studied humility hardly squares with the world of power and privilege in which he now finds himself. At a group dinner, Zhao Changpeng listened to Altman's introduction to an emerging field of biotechnology research. “They could get sperm and eggs from the same person,” Zhao recalled. “Basically, you could have a baby by yourself.” Zhao himself had ambitions to push the limits of biology: He invested in a start-up company working on artificial wombs.
Since his release from prison, Changpeng Zhao has divided his time among a number of undertakings, including technology investments and traveling abroad as a sort of "crypto diplomat." In many countries, he is often treated like a member of the royal family and helps promote the crypto industry. “They always send a guy with two cars and drive directly to the plane,” he told me. “There’s also a girl who brings local specialties. You have to try them.”
Changpeng Zhao downplayed his involvement in Binance. The company's plea agreement prohibits him from "operating or managing" the business. He specifically expressed his dissatisfaction with Binance’s recent lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper previously reported on personnel changes in Binance’s compliance department, and he called the lawsuit an “extreme waste of time.” He told me that even if Binance won, “it wouldn’t get much.” (The company withdrew its lawsuit last month.)
Clearly, Binance is still an important part of his life. One of the two co-CEOs who succeeded him was He Yi, the mother of his three young children. Two years ago, in a move toward traditional corporate governance, Binance established a board of directors with three so-called independent directors. One of them also serves as chairman: Gabe Abed, the friend who originally persuaded Changpeng Zhao to come to the UAE. They rode jet skis together, and Abed gave Zhao Changpeng a pair of orange high-top sneakers with the words "Trump, Crypto President" printed on them.
Recently, Binance has faced new allegations of misconduct. Four compliance officers were fired or suspended last year after they reported that nearly $2 billion flowed from client accounts to a group of Iran-linked entities. This could mean a return to sanctions evasion that led to U.S. criminal prosecutions in 2023. The company disputes the employees' findings and denies that anyone was disciplined for raising concerns. The U.S. Department of Justice later said two Chinese companies had used Binance to launder proceeds from Iranian oil sales, but did not bring any charges against the exchanges.
There are also some cracks in Binance’s relationship with the UAE. In December last year, the company obtained a license to operate in Abu Dhabi, which soon came under a barrage of Iranian missile attacks. The exchange's new regulator hailed the company as a benchmark for "regulatory progress." However, this summer, two Binance employees were briefly detained in the United Arab Emirates. Local police were investigating possible financial crimes on the platform, an unusually tough move.
The detentions have upset local Binance employees. Changpeng Zhao told me that he messaged a contact in the UAE police and also contacted Sheikh Tahnoun’s assistant. “I just said, ‘Listen, let’s find a way not to let this happen again,’” Changpeng Zhao recalled. “‘It’s not good for the country’s image, and it’s not good for us.’” He insisted that the UAE remained a friendly place for Binance. "No one is in danger," he said.
Zhao Changpeng's confidence comes from the experience of successfully escaping again and again. In an age where flagrant rule-breaking often pays off, he's a clear winner. In his memoirs, he devotes about a page and a half to explaining his belief in "simulation theory." This theory holds that we could all be living in a reality constructed by someone else. He was exposed to this idea early in his crypto career and now believes that it is mathematically certain. "In another 20 years, we should be able to insert a rod into the brain and enter a completely simulated world like in The Matrix," he wrote. "Billions of people will do this, and there will be billions of simulated worlds."
This belief allows Changpeng Zhao to maintain a certain distance from the pressures of daily life. He writes that we may all be some version of Super Mario, running around in an artificial world. He tries to live by a simple mantra: "It's just a game."