| One of cryptocurrency’s most prominent figures, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, was offered legal forgiveness today from President Donald Trump. Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Max Chafkin, who co-wrote a cover story on Zhao in 2022, is here to explain his connections to the first family. Plus: Trump’s return brought SPACs back too, and the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. is pitching a supplement line. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Today the White House announced the latest in what has become a fairly predictable line of presidential relief for well-connected criminals. After commuting the sentence of former US Representative George Santos last week, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of the Binance crypto exchange and one of the wealthiest men in digital currencies. Zhao, known as CZ, served four months in prison after pleading guilty to failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering protocol. Binance paid a $4 billion fine and admitted to funneling almost $900 million to Iranians from 2017 to 2022, as well as illegal payments to people in Cuba, Syria and other sanctioned countries. The government said some of this money found its way to the terrorist organization Hamas, and a group of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel sued the company, alleging it had played a role in financing the attacks. Zhao has said the suit is bogus, and he’s fighting it. One other detail to his case that’s probably worth mentioning: Zhao’s company appears to be in business with President Trump’s family via their crypto business, World Liberty Financial. Binance and World Liberty have denied any impropriety. As with Santos—who, according to one of Trump’s Truth Social posts, was released from prison in part because he had “the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”—Zhao’s case is tied to politics. In a statement, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao had been pardoned because his prosecution was unjust. It was, she said, part of the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency.”  Zhao outside federal court in Seattle in April 2024. Photographer: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images Leavitt claimed Zhao’s conviction contains “no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.” This is either a deliberately misleading claim or an incredibly narrow one. In fact, according to court records, Binance executives joked about Hamas operatives using the service to buy weapons. “Like come on,” a Binance executive wrote in an internal chat, referring to some of the company’s customers. “They are here for crime.” Leaving aside the question of whether Zhao deserved a pardon, Trump’s action is a huge gift to the crypto industry as a whole, which has spent heavily to relax securities laws and rewrite history to remove its long association with criminality. Industry lobbyists spent hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Trump and other candidates during the 2024 election cycle, advocating for an end to enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission and pardons for a number of its most notorious figures. Trump obliged almost immediately after his inauguration, pardoning Ross Ulbricht, a crypto entrepreneur who was convicted of running a marketplace that was used to buy and sell illegal drugs. Trump explained that he’d done so as part of a promise to the “Libertarian Movement” and because “the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.” Trump’s SEC also paused a fraud suit against another prominent crypto mogul, Justin Sun, who just so happens to have bought $75 million worth of tokens from World Liberty Financial and $15 million worth of Trump memecoins. (Both the White House and Sun have denied impropriety.) Zhao’s exact relationship with Trump is unclear. A Bloomberg News article, published in July, reported that his company wrote the code for World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin and that $2 billion worth of the company’s tokens were held in Binance wallets. Binance denied giving Trump’s company special treatment and said Zhao’s pardon was a personal matter. That may be true, but Zhao has a controlling stake in Binance and is worth more than $50 billion. He stepped down as CEO as part of his plea agreement, though the pardon would seem to clear the way for his return to a formal role in the company. Trump, meanwhile, has made clear that, in addition to whatever financial reforms his administration pursues, he intends to personally profit from his connections to crypto. Given that, and Zhao’s prominence within the industry, it’s hard to imagine World Liberty’s deal with Binance will be its last. Listen to Everybody’s Business: Max Chafkin and his co-host, Stacey Vanek Smith, take a look at the week’s business news and break down what you need to know, with the help of Bloomberg Businessweek journalists, experts and the people and businesses trying to navigate the economy every day. Sign up here for new episodes of the podcast, available on Fridays. | 
