Changpeng Zhao wants you to know he has enemies, and they wear suits now.
The Binance co-founder, who completed a four-month prison sentence last year after pleading guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws, claims that rival cryptocurrency exchanges actively opposed his bid for a presidential pardon. Their concern, according to Zhao: that a pardon would clear the path for Binance to re-enter the American market it was effectively forced to abandon.
The accusation is unverified, and Zhao—who goes by CZ—did not name the exchanges he believes worked against him. But the claim itself is revealing. It suggests that the post-FTX scramble for legitimacy has entered a new, more cutthroat phase, one where regulatory favor is a zero-sum commodity and competitors are willing to play politics to protect their turf.
The pardon that wasn't
Zhao's pardon bid gained traction earlier this year amid a broader wave of crypto-friendly signals from Washington. The Trump administration has moved to soften enforcement postures at the SEC and has floated the idea of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Several figures adjacent to the industry have received clemency or had cases dropped.
But Zhao's situation is more complicated. His guilty plea was not to securities violations or regulatory technicalities—it was to willfully failing to implement an effective anti-money-laundering program at the world's largest exchange. Binance paid $4.3 billion in fines. A pardon would not merely restore his reputation; it could, in theory, remove a significant barrier to Binance's operational return to U.S. soil.
That prospect, Zhao now suggests, was enough to mobilize opposition from competitors who have spent the past two years positioning themselves as the compliant alternatives.
The new Washington playbook
The crypto industry's relationship with American regulators has always been adversarial, but the current moment is different. With enforcement under review and legislation potentially on the horizon, firms are no longer just defending themselves—they are actively shaping the rules. Coinbase, Kraken, and others have built lobbying operations, funded PACs, and cultivated relationships on Capitol Hill.
In this environment, a rival's legal troubles are not just someone else's problem. They are a competitive advantage. If Zhao's claims are accurate, it would represent a notable escalation: from passive benefit to active sabotage.
None of the major U.S. exchanges have commented on the accusation. Coinbase and Kraken did not respond to requests for comment from other outlets. The silence is predictable—no firm wants to be seen as petitioning against a pardon—but it does nothing to dispel the impression that Washington has become the industry's most important battleground.
Our take
Whether or not CZ's rivals actually lobbied against him matters less than the fact that he believes they did—and that the accusation is entirely plausible. The crypto industry spent years insisting it was a band of rebels united against legacy finance. Now it behaves like any other maturing sector: fractious, territorial, and deeply invested in regulatory capture. Zhao's complaint is not a scandal. It is a sign that crypto has finally grown up, and growing up means learning to fight dirty in Washington.
