Binance

• 1. Introduction

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  Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, measured by how much money changes hands on its platform each day. On the 21st of November 2023, the company stood in a United States court and pled guilty to violating anti-money laundering rules. It agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, walked out of that plea deal still holding his ownership stake in the company. Two years later, an American president pardoned him outright. Where is a company like this actually based, and who runs it today? How does a felony conviction turn into a full pardon?

• 2. Founding And Early Growth

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  Changpeng Zhao started his career in Shanghai, founding a company called Fusion Systems in 2005 that built high-frequency trading software for stockbrokers. In 2013 he joined Blockchain.info as the third member of the cryptocurrency wallet's team. He then worked as CTO at OKCoin, a fiat-to-crypto trading platform, for less than a year. Yi He hired him into that OKCoin role in 2014, and the two of them would later found Binance together.

  Binance itself launched in 2017. The company raised roughly $15 million through an initial coin offering that year to fund the exchange's launch. Chinese regulators cracked down on cryptocurrency trading that same year, and Binance moved its operations out of mainland China. From there it based itself in Japan, then left Japan for Malta as regulations tightened further. Today it has no official company headquarters at all.

  By January 2018, Binance had already become the largest cryptocurrency exchange, with a market capitalization of $1.3 billion. It held that title as late as April 2021, despite rising competition from Coinbase and other exchanges. In March 2018, the company announced plans to open a Malta office. The following month it signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Bermuda, and months later a similar agreement with the Malta Stock Exchange, aimed at building a platform for trading security tokens. In 2019, Binance launched a Jersey-based exchange offering fiat pairs including the Euro and the British pound.

• 3. Deals And Acquisitions

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  In June 2018, Binance joined three other firms to raise $65 million for Chiliz, a sports blockchain company. The following month, Binance acquired Trust Wallet, a decentralized cryptocurrency wallet, paying an undisclosed sum in a mix of cash, Binance stock, and BNB tokens. In August 2018, Binance and three other large exchanges raised $32 million to fund Terra, a stablecoin project meant to make crypto transactions less volatile. In January 2019, Binance partnered with the Israel-based payment processor Simplex to let customers buy some cryptocurrencies with debit and credit cards.

  In November 2019, Binance announced it was acquiring the Indian bitcoin exchange WazirX. That deal turned into a dispute in August 2022, when Zhao claimed it had never actually been signed. WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty pushed back, insisting Binance had indeed acquired the company.

  In February 2022, Binance took a $200 million stake in Forbes, though it remains unclear whether that investment was ever completed. In May 2022, Forbes halted plans to go public through a merger with the Hong Kong-based Magnum Opus Acquisition Ltd. Zhao described the plan as having "changed a little bit, but I believe that's still in discussions." By February 2023, his tone had shifted; he tweeted that Forbes "continues to write baseless articles" about Binance.

  Binance put $500 million toward Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, which closed in October 2022, and afterward formed a team to explore blockchain uses for the platform. On the 8th of November 2022, Binance offered to buy rival exchange FTX's non-US operations to help cover a liquidity crunch. It backed out the very next day, citing concerns about FTX's business practices and looming investigations by US regulators. On the 30th of November 2022, Binance purchased Sakura Exchange, which let it re-enter the Japanese cryptocurrency market.

• 4. Tokens And A Breach

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  On the 7th of May 2019, Binance revealed it had suffered a "large scale security breach." Hackers stole 7,000 bitcoin worth around $40 million at the time. The exchange halted all transactions for a week while it investigated, and pledged to reimburse affected customers out of an emergency fund.

  Binance's own token launched in July 2017 under the name Binance Coin, meant for users to pay trading fees on the platform. It started out on the Ethereum network before moving to the BNB Smart Chain when that network launched in September 2020. By 2021, it had climbed to the third-highest market capitalization of any cryptocurrency. In February 2022, Binance renamed the token Build'N'Build and renamed Binance Smart Chain itself to BNB Chain. The chain had drawn criticism for being overly centralized, which had led to several exploits. It ran on just 44 validators.

  In 2019, Binance launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin called Binance USD, issued by Paxos on the company's behalf. In January 2023, Bloomberg reported that the token had often been undercollateralized between 2020 and 2021. On three separate occasions, the shortfall between its reserves and its outstanding supply topped $1 billion. A Binance spokesperson admitted the "process of maintaining the backing... has not always been flawless," but said it had "been much improved with enhanced discrepancy checks." By 2022, BUSD had grown into the third-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, trailing only Tether and USD Coin. In February 2023, New York's Department of Financial Services ordered Paxos to stop minting new BUSD tokens, and on the 1st of September 2023, Binance announced it would discontinue support for the token altogether.

  A separate technical standard, BEP-20, runs on the Binance Smart Chain and borrows its structure from Ethereum's ERC-20, setting the rules for how tokens transfer, who owns them, and how approvals work.

• 5. Following The Dirty Money

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  In January 2022, Reuters found that Binance had withheld information from government investigators and business partners. The exchange had ignored its own compliance team's warnings about money laundering risks. Binance disputed the accuracy of that report. Reuters reported in June that Binance had served as a conduit for laundering at least $2.35 billion tied to hacks. That included $780 million from the Russian darknet market Hydra and €800 million from investment scams. The same report found the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group had used Binance to launder funds supporting the country's weapons program. Binance disputed those findings too. In April, Reuters separately reported that Binance had shared information with the Russian agency Rosfinmonitoring. The information concerned funds raised by the network of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

  The Wall Street Journal reported in 2024 that Binance's own internal investigators had flagged DWF Labs, a VIP trading client. The client had advertised its ability to generate "believable" fake volume to move token prices. Those same investigators found DWF Labs selling tokens its founder had promoted, crashing their price in a pattern consistent with a pump-and-dump scheme. Binance fired the investigators, kept DWF Labs as a client, and said the trading "could have been accidental." The company has denied any wrongdoing.

  John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, published a 2024 study on pig butchering scams. It found Binance was the most popular exchange those scammers used. Binance has occasionally worked with US law enforcement to return money lost in those schemes.

  Binance has pledged zero tolerance for illicit activity on its platform since 2023. Investigative journalists have nonetheless found the exchange continuing to profit from money laundering tied to organized crime groups and sanctioned entities. Internal investigators found that Russia and Iran, both under sanctions, kept using Binance accounts to move money. When they reported the suspicious transactions upward, they were fired or suspended. In March 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice was investigating Binance. Investigators allege Binance helped Iran-backed groups evade sanctions, including foreign terrorist organizations such as the Houthis. Law enforcement had traced transactions through Binance to networks financing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as recently as May 2026.

• 6. Banned Around The World

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  Regulators moved fastest in the United Kingdom. In June 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority ordered Binance to stop all regulated activity in the country. Two years later, in June 2023, it canceled the unused permissions still held by Binance Markets Limited.

  The Netherlands fined Binance €3.3 million in April 2022 for offering services without registering, after issuing a formal warning the previous August. Binance left the Dutch market in June 2023 after failing to win regulatory approval there. Belgium's Financial Services and Markets Authority went further on the 23rd of June 2023. It ordered Binance to cease all virtual currency services immediately. The regulator said Binance had been operating from outside the European Economic Area.

  France, by contrast, approved Binance to operate in May 2022, the first European country to do so. That approval did not shield the company from later scrutiny. In June 2023, the Paris prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation into illegal client canvassing and money laundering. By January 2025, French authorities had opened a full judicial investigation covering money laundering, drug trafficking, and tax fraud dating back to 2019.

  Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority warned in April 2021 that Binance risked fines for failing to publish an investor prospectus for its stock tokens. Italy's Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa ordered Binance blocked from operating in July 2021. The regulator reversed course and approved the company in May 2022. Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission filed a criminal complaint against Binance on the 2nd of July 2021 for operating without a license. Two years later, in May 2023, Thailand's finance ministry issued a license to Gulf Binance. That joint venture paired Binance with a subsidiary of Thai billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi.

  Canada's Ontario Securities Commission got Binance to agree, in March 2022, to stop opening new accounts in the province. Binance withdrew from the Canadian market entirely in May 2023. The following year, in May 2024, Canada's financial intelligence agency FINTRAC fined the company $4.32 million for violating money laundering and terrorist financing laws. Australia's Securities and Investments Commission cancelled the financial services license held by Oztures Trading, which operated as Binance Australia Derivatives, in April 2023. The following month, Binance lost access to Australia's PayID payment system. Westpac bank also banned its customers from transacting with the exchange.

  Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission declared Binance's activities illegal in June 2023. On the 28th of February 2024, Nigerian authorities detained two Binance executives, Nadeem Anjarwalla and Tigran Gambaryan, alleging illegal operations and forex manipulation. Anjarwalla escaped custody the following month. Binance disabled its Naira currency services on the 8th of March 2024. Nigeria also filed a criminal tax evasion charge against the company, plus a separate $81.5 billion lawsuit over alleged economic losses and back taxes. Gambaryan was released in October 2024 after Nigeria dropped its charges against him.

  On the 25th of March 2024, the Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission moved to block Binance's website, citing risks to investors' funds. The regulator had warned Binance since November of the previous year and enlisted the National Telecommunications Commission to carry out the block. SEC Chair Emilio Aquino stressed the threat continued access posed to investors. The commission also worked with Google and Meta to halt Binance's advertising to Filipino users, even though the Binance app remained available for download.

  India's Enforcement Directorate froze the assets of WazirX in August 2022 as part of a money laundering investigation. The Binance app was pulled from Indian app stores on the 12th of January 2024. In June that year, India's Financial Intelligence Unit fined the company $2.25 million for violating local anti-money laundering rules. The following month, WazirX reported a cyberattack in which roughly $234.9 million in digital assets was stolen from a multi-signature wallet. Investigators later linked the attack to the North Korea-associated Lazarus Group.

• 7. The US Reckoning

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  The US Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service opened an investigation into Binance in 2021, examining allegations of money laundering and tax offenses. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed in June 2022, opening an enquiry into whether Binance's 2017 token sale amounted to an illegal securities offering.

  In December 2022, Binance.US announced a $1.02 billion deal to acquire the assets of Voyager Digital. The deal collapsed in April 2023; Binance.US blamed what it called a "hostile and uncertain regulatory climate."

  Arkham Intelligence data from January 2023 traced $15 million in crypto that had moved over several years. The money passed from the smaller exchange Bitzlato through intermediary wallets into Binance. The following month, Reuters reported that Binance had transferred more than $404 million in early 2021. The money moved from a Binance.US account at Silvergate Bank to Merit Peak Ltd, a company managed by Zhao. Then-Binance.US CEO Catherine Coley had written to another executive that "no one mentioned" the transfers, calling them "unexpected." Coley left the company shortly afterward.

  On the 1st of March 2023, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Roger Marshall wrote a letter to Binance. They called the exchange "a hotbed of illegal financial activity that has facilitated over $10 billion in payments to criminals and sanctions evaders." Later that year, in October, Senator Cynthia Lummis and Representative French Hill described Binance as a source of terrorist funding and called for a Justice Department crackdown.

  On the 27th of March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and Zhao in Illinois federal court. The complaint pointed to internal messages about transactions by the militant group Hamas. The company's money laundering reporting officer allegedly said, "we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes." The following month, three previously unnamed VIP clients were revealed to be Radix Trading, Jane Street Capital, and Tower Research Capital. In June 2023, the SEC sued Binance and Zhao on 13 separate charges.

  Binance saw $790 million in outflows in June 2023 alone, after the SEC announced its lawsuit. Forbes reported the company had 120 million users globally around that time. In September, Binance.US lost CEO Brian Shroder and cut around 100 jobs, roughly a third of its workforce. The company called the suit "an unfortunate example" of the agency's "aggressive attempts to cripple our industry."

  That same conviction listed multiple charges: violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations. Zhao stepped down as CEO, paid a personal $50 million fine, and was succeeded by Richard Teng. In April 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison for violating US money laundering laws; he was released that September.

  Victims of Hamas's attack on Israel sued Binance in Manhattan federal court in January 2024. They alleged the exchange had provided a funding mechanism for the group. In November 2025, 306 more American victims filed a separate suit in North Dakota. The filing said the venue was chosen because "at least two suspicious transactions went through online addresses in Kindred, North Dakota."

• 8. Political Entanglement And The Pardon

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  The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2025 that the family of Donald Trump had entered talks to acquire a stake in Binance's US business. The talks ran through a venture called World Liberty Financial. The timing lined up with a parallel push from Zhao for a presidential pardon of his felony conviction. Unnamed sources told the Journal that Trump advisor Steve Witkoff was involved, though his office denied it. A pardon, the Journal noted, would simplify any revival of Binance's presence in the United States.

  On the 12th of March 2025, the Abu Dhabi-backed MGX Fund Management Limited made a minority $2 billion investment in Binance. Separately that year, the UAE's sovereign wealth fund Mubadala bought its own $2 billion stake in the company. By August 2025, the Journal had found that Binance was quietly running a trading platform for World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's venture. Lobbyists were paid $800,000 to push for a presidential pardon for Zhao.

  On the 23rd of October 2025, Trump pardoned Zhao. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao had been the victim of persecution by the Biden administration. Weeks later, in November 2025, families of victims of the 7th of October attacks filed a lawsuit against Binance. They alleged the company had helped transfer funds for Hamas and Hezbollah. On the 3rd of December 2025, Yi He, Zhao's original co-founder, was named the company's co-CEO. That same month, Abu Dhabi's financial regulator cleared Binance to operate from the emirate.