Democrats and one Republican say the pardon is inappropriate given business links between Binance and Trump family crypto interests.
Trump pardons Binance founder convicted of financial crimes
President Donald Trump has pardoned convicted Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a move anti-corruption advocates are criticizing.
WASHINGTON – Five days after President Donald Trump pardoned the founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange the company helped boost Trump’s fortunes by promoting his family’s own crypto product, a digital coin known as USD1.
“Deposits for $USD1 are now open on @BinanceUS!” the firm’s U.S. subsidiary said in an Oct. 28 post on X, in reference to the Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency.
Binance also posted promotions saying it would now accept Trump’s separate World Liberty Financial token on its U.S.-based site. Both USD1 and $WLFI were already available on Binance’s international platform, which is not available in the United States. Making both tokens more easily accessible for American investors is likely to increase their value by enlarging the pool of potential buyers.
Trump and his three sons launched World Liberty Financial with Trump’s diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff and his sons Zach and Alex in September 2024, and the firm soared in visibility and profit once Trump was elected in November 2024 and began deregulating the crypto industry.
A stablecoin like USD1 is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset, in this case the U.S. dollar. Trump’s $WLFI token has no inherent value on its own, and its worth is based on whatever his supporters and investors spend on it. Binance’s Oct. 28 announcement noted that trading would begin Oct 29, giving USD1 its official seal of approval as “a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin … fully backed by regulated reserves including U.S. Treasuries.”
Binance’s founder, Chinese-born Canadian tech tycoon Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Zhao pleaded guilty to money-laundering in 2023 and served four months in federal prison before being pardoned by Trump on Oct. 23.
Binance does more than host and promote World Liberty Financial: As Zhao was seeking a pardon earlier this year, Binance asked an Abu Dhabi government-backed investment fund, MGX, to use Trump’s USD1 coin when investing $2 billion in Binance, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
By steering the $2 billion transaction through World Liberty − a fledgling startup run by Trump family members with no crypto experience − the deal effectively increased demand for the family’s cryptocurrency, generating fresh revenue from interest on the growing reserves that back it.
“The opportunity for corruption is not hypothetical. Trump has already given us a staggering example,” the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said in a May 5 Senate floor speech. MGX’s use of Trump’s USD1 stablecoin to finance its $2 billion investment in Binance, she said, is “essentially giving Trump a cut of the deal.”
‘Persecuted by the Biden administration’
Binance agreed to pay over $4 billion in 2023, to settle a yearslong investigation by the Justice Department and U.S. financial regulators. And it agreed to plug gaps in its financial protocols that prosecutors said had allowed criminals and terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to move illicit money on Binance’s crypto platform.
“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Trump family earns $5B from World Liberty crypto venture
Trump and family made about $5 billion from World Liberty Financial’s $WLFI token, sparking ethical concerns.
The White House and Trump himself have parried questions about the ethics of Zhao’s pardon, which allows the crypto mogul to return to the business he helped found in 2017. They say it’s just Trump making good on his campaign promise to relax overly strict Biden-era regulations that crypto executives opposed.
At an Oct. 23 White House event, Trump told reporters he pardoned Zhao “at the request of a lot of good people” who said the financier “was persecuted by the Biden administration” and that “what he did is not even a crime.”
“The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added in a statement.
Binance did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Zhao’s pardon and its promotion of the Trump coins days later.
But in a X post in response to criticism of the sequence of events by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., it said, “Dear Senator, We conduct comprehensive due diligence and legal review before listing any asset on @BinanceUS, whether it’s a stablecoin, a new ecosystem project, or a meme token.”
Binance said both of the Trump coins, USD1 and $WLFI, are already listed on more than 20 other major crypto exchanges, which are used to buy, sell, store and use cryptocurrencies. “To be clear, this was a business decision on the part of @BinanceUS and nothing more,” the company said. “It’s unfortunate that even routine business decisions are now unfairly politicized by our elected officials.”
The White House also denied any quid pro quo.
In an Oct. 30 statement to USA TODAY, Leavitt said: “The media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read. Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”
Trump initially ‘not a fan’ of cryptocurrency
When a reporter pressed Trump for answers about why he pardoned Zhao and whether it had to do with his family’s crypto investments at the Oct. 23 White House event, he shot back, “You don’t know much about crypto. You know nothing about nothing.”
Trump, for his part, has become a cryptocurrency enthusiast since saying in July 2019 that he was “not a fan of Bitcoin” and that crypto was used to facilitate crime and was “not money.”
Since then, he and his family have made as much as $5 billion in paper gains from their various cryptocurrency holdings, including $864 million in reported actual cash profits in the first six months of this year alone.
They’ve launched their own companies and coins. And they’ve developed ties to industry leaders here and overseas, obtaining investments and donations while granting access to Trump. On May 22, Trump dined with 220 investors who plowed a combined $148 million into his crypto venture, inviting a torrent of criticism about the ethical implications.
By that month, World Liberty had already raised more than $500 million from selling a separate digital token.
Trump signs Genius Act, first major U.S. crypto law, into effect
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The top bidder for a seat at that dinner and a separate VIP meet-and-greet was Justin Sun, a Hong Kong crypto entrepreneur who pumped $75 million into World Liberty Financial soon after it launched. Sun, who reportedly had avoided setting foot on U.S. soil for fear of being arrested, had been facing civil fraud charges under the Biden administration. But Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission stayed the case against him in February.
Another so-called “crypto bro” that Trump pardoned was Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison for founding and operating what the U.S. government said was “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet,” which used bitcoin for transactions, which aided in protecting user identities.
‘A full time, 24/7 corruption machine’
Democrats and even one Republican have criticized the Zhao pardon as especially inappropriate given the business links between Binance and the Trump family’s crypto interests.
“I don’t like it,” retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said about the pardon, saying it sends “a bad signal.”
“He was convicted,” Tillis told reporters on Oct. 23. “He’s not innocent.”
Democrats suggest the pardon could undermine a fraught effort on Capitol Hill to overhaul crypto regulations, which requires bipartisan support.
Murphy, the Democratic senator, posted on X that Binance began promoting Trump’s USD1 crypto coin “one week after Trump pardoned Binance’s owner (for a stunning array of crimes related to terrorist and sex predator financing).”
“The White House,” Murphy added, “is a full time, 24/7 corruption machine.”
The largest US crypto firm also paying Trump lots of money
Binance isn’t the only crypto firm showering money on Trump in the hopes of preferential treatment.
Earlier this year, Trump’s SEC dropped a lawsuit against Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange for buying, selling, storing and using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Trump’s USD1 stablecoin. That happened soon after the company gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Coinbase has also reportedly confirmed that it is one of many crypto firms funding the new $300 million ballroom that Trump tore down the White House’s East Wing to build.
Coinbase is facing a separate SEC investigation started under former President Joe Biden, and is now seeking SEC approval to offer blockchain-based stocks.
Trump crypto ventures ‘a whopping success’
Since Trump’s election last November, his sons Don Jr. and Eric have embarked on a globetrotting investment roadshow to drum up more crypto investment deals that critics say pose conflicts of interest for the president and national security threats.
“The Trump brothers’ efforts have been a whopping success,” Reuters said in an Oct. 28 special report, “Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine.”
In the first half of 2025, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations, which it said were based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources.
“These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen,” Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University, told Reuters. “They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.”