Changpeng Zhao (CZ) Refutes Rumors of Negotiating Binance. US Share Deal with Trump

Ex-Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, “CZ”, has published several posts on the X social media network, denying the recent claims about him taking part in negotiating a deal with the US president’s administration about selling a stake in Binance.US.

Zhao tweeted that he has not been negotiating this with Trump or with anyone else (meaning his the crypto fund World Liberty Financial (WLF) associated with the president). CZ referred to those claims as totally false and misleading for the crypto community.

CZ trashes Bloomberg and WSJ for Spreading Fake News

The controversy surged with a reputable source on X, Bloomberg Terminal, tweeted that CZ had been actively pushing Trump’s administration for legal pardon, along with the hit pieces published by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

Both insisted that Binance and CZ personally were negotiating a deal of selling a stake in Binance to Donald Trump’s WLF and Zhao, allegedly, also sought a chance to be pardoned by the new US president completely after his issues with the SEC in 2023-2024 when it was still run by the crypto hater Gary Gensler.

CZ dismissed that news as false, saying it was misleading. He said that around twenty people had contacted him to ask if he had made any deal to receive a pardon. And to reach those twenty people, the former Binance CEO said, the WSJ journalists probably had to talk to a hundred people.

As for the WSJ story inself, he said: “They tried hard to make a story to report.” As for his personal request to receive a pardon, his comment was: “I have had no discussions of a Binance US deal with … well, anyone.” He admitted that he would not mind a pardon after doing a prison term for a single BSA charge. Overall, CZ labeled that WSJ article as “an attack on the President and crypto,” adding that “the residual forces of the “war on crypto” from the last administration are still at work.”

In that post, he also mentioned Bloomberg, referring to it as “another media.” However, their article did not contain any outright statements or have any substance to it. Instead, as pointed out by CZ, Bloomberg published “a baseless hit piece after WSJ.”

CZ quoted that article to prove it did not have any substance to it or actual facts: “It’s not clear what stage the discussions have reached or whether they’ll result in any transactions or ventures.”

“The substance of the meeting with Zhao isn’t clear.”

CZ’s Legal Troubles and Prison Term

Chanpeng Zhao’s legal troubles with the US authorities escalated tremendously in November 2023. He pleaded guilty to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act. Besides, Binance.US was accused of allowing non-US citizens to trade on that platform and failing to implement proper anti-money laundering procedures. The crypto community then was buzzing that this crackdown on Binance and CZ was part of the war that US regulators declared on the crypto industry.

Part of the deal he struck with the authorities was that he had to resign from his CEO position at Binance. Besides, the exchange had to pay $4.3 billion in settlements to the US Department of Justice. That payment included a forfeiture of $2.5 billion and a fine of $1.8 billion.

Besides, a prison term loomed for CZ but his lawyers eventually succeeded in reducing it from a year to just four months to be spent behind bars. As Zhao stepped down, leaving Binance without a CEO, the company appointed Richard Teng as the new chief executive in November 2023. Before that promotion to the top, Teng worked as Global Head of Regional Markets at Binance. His task was to restore Binance’s reputation, increasing its compliance efforts to come to “piece” with regulators not only in the US but around the world as well. What Teng did later was to ban CZ from running Binance for a lifetime.

CZ’s Current Role at Binance

Now, after leaving the federal US prison at the end of September last year, CZ remains an active figure in the crypto space and on Binance as well. He continues to be the largest stakeholder of the company and remains in an advisory role both with Binance and Binance Labs, the investment arm of the crypto exchange.

He is actively posting on X, assuring that he has no plans to start a new exchange or be involved with any other cryptocurrency project. However, he is building an online education platform The Giggle Academy to teach English and blockchain to children from poor countries and, according to his recent tweets, he is writing a book which is likely to be a mix of memoirs, the history of Binance, and key events in the cryptocurrency space, such as the crash of Terraform Labs’ LUNA and UST coins, as well as the collapse of the FTX exchange.

He has recently published an X post, saying that the current paper draft of his book comprises 114,000 words so far but he still needs time to rewrite it.