The recent news about the founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has been making headlines. He has been sentenced to four months in US prison after pleading guilty to money laundering charges. This is one of the most high-profile crypto cases since the imprisonment of Sam Bankman-Fried.
According to investigations by two Treasury agencies, Binance failed to prevent transactions by movements such as the Islamic State group, al-Qaeda or the armed wing of Hamas. Zhao made a deal with US authorities, and as part of it, resigned from his post as CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange platform last year. Zhao pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws, and Binance agreed in February to pay $4.3 billion to settle charges.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose a sentence of three years behind bars, however, Zhao was sentenced to four months. Binance was created in 2017 and cornered much of the crypto-trading market, turning its founder and chief executive Zhao into a billionaire.
While Binance was founded in China, Zhao moved its operations to other locations internationally after a crackdown on the crypto sector by Beijing.
The crypto industry has been through a series of scandals, including the November 2022 collapse of Binance's main rival exchange, FTX, and criminal charges for several industry executives, which caused public confidence to evaporate and investors to pull their money out of crypto.
However, the industry has bounced back in recent months, thanks in large part to US regulators giving the go-ahead for exchange traded funds (ETFs) in bitcoin which allow investors to trade the asset without actually opening a crypto account.
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