On Saturday morning Beijing time, Zhao Changpeng, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, posted a message on the social media platform to greet his fans "gm" (good morning), marking his official freedom and return to the Internet.
Judging from the timeline, the last time Zhao Changpeng spoke publicly was at the end of May - because he has been in prison since June. The founder of Binance admitted to the US court in November last year that he violated the Bank Secrecy Act and violated a series of crimes such as anti-money laundering. As part of the settlement, Zhao Changpeng personally paid a $50 million fine, agreed to resign as CEO of Binance and was not allowed to hold any senior executive position in the company. Binance also paid a fine of $4.3 billion to settle a series of charges. In April this year, a federal judge ruled that Zhao Changpeng must serve a four-month sentence. Although the sentence is far less than the three years proposed by prosecutors, he is still the richest prisoner in American history - when he reported to prison in early June, his net worth was around $36 billion. So for the past four months, Zhao Changpeng has been staying in the Lompac II low-security prison in California, serving his sentence as "Prisoner 88087-510."
According to the introduction, in this reform facility, prisoners will work on nearby farms, including farming, raising cattle and horses, etc. Zhao Changpeng's treatment is in stark contrast to that of another "cryptocurrency prisoner" Sam Bankman-Freed, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year and is currently being held in a facility with the highest security level in New York.
A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the media that Zhao Changpeng was released on Friday local time. Affected by the sharp fluctuations in the prices of Bitcoin and Binance Coin, Zhao Changpeng's net worth has also been on a "roller coaster" in prison. In early July this year, his net worth once reached 45 billion US dollars, and then fell to 22 billion US dollars in early September. As of press time, his latest net worth is 30.8 billion US dollars, ranking 61st in the Bloomberg "Billionaire Index", on par with veteran tycoon Li Ka-shing.
Of course, he is no longer the so-called "richest Chinese" today. From the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022, Zhao Changpeng's net worth briefly exceeded US$90 billion, and he once squeezed into the top ten richest people in the world. However, the cryptocurrency circle was immediately hit by a series of thunderstorms, and that round of value destruction continued until the end of last year, when the "regular army" of Wall Street began to accept alternative assets such as cryptocurrencies and then reversed.
What will happen next? For Binance and Zhao Changpeng, it is a "good deal" to use a fine of billions of dollars and a four-month prison sentence to unload the legal burden of the past seven years of barbaric development. Today, when the cryptocurrency market has entered a different historical cycle, they can also "look forward" with their tens of billions of dollars. Due to the terms of the plea negotiation, Zhao Changpeng can no longer serve as a senior executive of Binance. But both he and He Yi, the mother of his three children, still have a huge influence on the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance Holdings announced the establishment of its first board of directors in April this year, which is mainly composed of company insiders. However, as in the Zhao Changpeng period, Binance still has not officially announced the establishment of a global headquarters. After Zhao Changpeng was sued and resigned, the company promoted Richard Teng, who has a rich regulatory background, to CEO in November last year. As for Zhao Changpeng himself, he may become "Teacher Zhao" in the future. After announcing his retirement from the CEO position in November last year, Zhao Changpeng repeatedly expressed his desire to "be a teacher", including being willing to be a coach or mentor to a few emerging entrepreneurs in private, because he "can at least tell them what not to do". In March of this year, Zhao Changpeng announced the launch of a K12 project called Giggle Academy, which aims to provide "free basic education programs for everyone through gamification" and recruit teams to work directly with him.
Of course, each of us hopes that after my cousin comes out, bnb will continue to rise and Binance will do better!
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