Judging from the timeline, Zhao Changpeng last spoke publicly at the end of May - because he has been in prison since June.
The founder of Binance admitted to a U.S. court in November last year that he had violated the Bank Secrecy Act and committed a series of crimes including anti-money laundering. As part of the settlement, Zhao Changpeng personally paid a $50 million fine, agreed to resign as Binance CEO and was not allowed to hold any executive position in the company. Binance also paid a $4.3 billion fine to settle a series of charges.
A spokesperson for the U.S. 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.
In April, a federal judge ruled that Zhao Changpeng must serve four months in prison. Although the sentence was 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.
For Binance and Zhao Changpeng, using a fine of several billion dollars and a four-month prison sentence to get rid of the legal burden of the past seven years of barbaric development is a "cost-effective" legal transaction. Today, when the cryptocurrency market has entered a different historical cycle, they can also "look forward" with their tens of billions of dollars in assets.
Due to the terms of the plea agreement, Zhao Changpeng can no longer serve as a senior executive at Binance. But both he and He Yi, the mother of his three children, still have enormous influence over the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance Holdings announced in April this year that it would set up its first board of directors, which is mainly composed of company insiders.
However, as with Zhao Changpeng’s time, 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 be the CEO in November last year.
As for Zhao Changpeng himself, it is possible that he will become "Teacher Zhao" in the future.
After announcing his retirement from the CEO position in November last year, Zhao Changpeng has repeatedly expressed his desire to "be a teacher", including being willing to privately become a coach or mentor to a small number of emerging entrepreneurs 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 gamified basic education programs for everyone" and recruit a team to work directly with him.#非农就业数据即将公布 #币安上线CATI #美联储11月降息预期升温 #BTC #ETH 
