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It's official CZ pleaded guilty to a felony charge of violating money laundering laws. CZ's on bail at $175M. He's replaced by Richard Teng after he resigned as CEO of Binance. The exchange's got to pay $4.3B to settle the case.

Did we consider Sam Bankman Fried & Changpeng Zhao would've been convicted criminals in 2023? They're going to be sentenced next year.


https://blogtienao.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/sam-vs-cz.jpg

Well we knew SBF was a criminal as soon as his claimed bankruptcy last November. But nobody would of expected CZ to actually be charged with all this.

His exchange was actually fairly honest and never scammed or defrauded individuals. This is why it was a shock to many and many are saying is was blackrock that claimed this needs to happen for the bitcoin etf to get approved. Binance just was way too big and they want the market share to separate.

He's still probably violated the AML policies so he should still be accountable. If Blackrock really is behind this and saying that it's necessary then that spells doom for us because that means that they are planning to dominate the cryptocurrency market and it does make sense that they are going to do it because they're almost getting approved for the bitcoin spot right? The least if not the best that they can do is to cripple the competition or at least slow down their growth even just a little.

Well, saying that nobody was expecting that is a bit wrong. There was a lot of FUD around Binance and CZ. People suggested that they don't have all BTC that they claim to have, and were suspecting some other shady stuff. I'm not saying that it's true, but there were some suspicions that's for sure.

As far as we know at this time, CZ does not appropriate users' money for personal purposes.

Although the fine figure makes many people afraid and makes it difficult to send unconvincing signals, I do not have much doubt about Binance's ability to operate, and honestly, after this incident, I still think they will step down, entering the new market cycle and continuing to bring the vibrant atmosphere of the altcoin environment.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_k0oombUAAlpKG?format=jpg&name=small
And this is the reason why Satoshi disappeared and never appeared..

Did you know the meaning of violating the anti money laundering law? CZ violated it and it may worth being jailed, but was not jailed. He was instead told that Binance should pay a settlement of $4.3 billion and he was granted bail which means he can still be arrested again.

Binance has been a good exchange though but there is nothing Blackrock has to do with this. If Binance is existing, Blackrock will still begin providing bitcoin spot ETF to their customers. Also not that Binance has stopped operation.

The exchanges cases are different but they've seen what happens if you're not 100% honest. FTX was so big it decided to commit fraud playing dangerous gambling with investors cash. Binance didn't defraud investors or steal but it tried to dominate the American market as fast as it could've so cut corners which's why they faced laundering allegations.

I guess that $4B settles everything and CZ won't be ending up behind the bars. Although we're not defending him as he admitted that he committed that he's part of the money laundering based on what I've read about this case.

While SBF, clearly spent and used people's fund and that's why he's convicted.

It's always like that for most projects that they end up being criticized for not having the actual back up for the amount that they're projecting to people.

I knew CZ was being accused of some serious crimes in the United States, but I would have never expected him to plead guilty on making easier laundering through Binance.
Binance is a very huge ecosystem so it is to be expected their staff won't have Information or everything under control at all times. In the end it does not matter because he as the former CEO was the biggest responsible of all those measures, in the eyes of the law.

I doubt CZ will see any time in prison, by the way, unlike SBF I do not think CZ had bad intentions or malice when conducting their exchange operations.

Whatever happens, hope for the best for Binance and the honest people who work there.

It's confirmed CZ didn't steal from Binance customers but he's the head of the company when laundering happened. The deal's going to let Binance continue trading. SBF's max sentence could be 115 years but we don't know about CZ.

We don't know why Satoshi disappeared it's a mystery. We're probably never going to learn the truth about who Satoshi was but I've discussed his writings Why did Satoshi use GB British English and international English ? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5348758.0)

There's nothing that cannot come over CZ or Sam Bankman Fried for every deeds they made in the past, that's all about hunting shadow, do we think the way US is disturbing Binance and CZ is just an ordinary attack, things like this are part of the reasons and we don't just have to wait and see the dooms day with them both before we know the necessary actions to take against using them for any reason.

Definitely, they found something that was not in regulation, but of course, it's the kind of news that we didn't expect. I was asking myself, probably propaganda starts to attack the crypto space. Binance is one of the biggest Bitcoin holders.

I doubt nobody think that CZ will be charged because he was being target by SEC and DoJ many times while the only thing he do was deny it using his troll follower without any evidence supporting his innocence.

I believe CZ is involved on shady things since he sold out FTX when he attack them without thinking the repercussions of user funds that will stuck in there. Allowing Luna foundation to still be trade despite the market is suffering a heavy attack. All the sign is  already but he is just can’t investigate because he keeps changing HQ to dodge the law.

CZ is the real culprit in all crypto shit happened in the past while he just being protected by his blind followers. Even if he is now plead guilty his follower think he is still a hero.

I rest my case about CZ, he is really guilty and he is going to be behind bars for 18month, this is not the final but the hearing of CZ fate will happen somewhere in January or February of 2024 max, I think he isn't the hero we think he is after all, he lied and he was caught, sorry I read dip about this news yesterday and I don't have the link to the website anymore, I think this man is going to prison.

There is nothing that the law will understand about trying to safe crypto by lying, when you aren't truthful the law will use that against you anyway, SBF sentence won't be like CZ for sure but this can't be overlook, and also remember that some people do what CZ to be dealt with, even those behind SBF.

If CZ came into this crypto space with his own DEX it would have worth it, all he have to do is stay hidden just like Satoshi, anyone running any business in this space using centralization is calling for trouble with the law, Bitcoin saved itself from all these controllers because it's fully decentralized and no one knows who Satoshi really his, developers should learn from Bitcoin and it's maker.

This is exactly what they are aiming for. Binance is too big and if it doesn't intervene soon, the entire market share will fall into the hands of CZ. This is something that Wall Street investors like Blackrock do not want.

I know many people here don't like CZ because he is the CEO of the largest centralized exchange in the market but it would be lame to compare CZ with SBF, a guy who intentionally scams people. Meanwhile, Binance and CZ are doing very well and everyone is satisfied with their services.

What is happening is just a redistribution of the market and Wall Street is gradually entering the market and manipulating it.

It's quite unfortunate when I hear the news about CZ, even though CZ is a good CEO of Binance in my opinion compared to SBF who is clearly a fraud.
Binance and CZ were quite problematic when joining and opening Binance US and many other issues.

We all know US how, they always want to control everything.
Gary Gensler After rising as SEC, The crypto market has always been a target and Binance is one of them.

Crypto idealism has been destroyed and the concept of crypto that was originally with the aim of decentralized has been mastered by capitalists,
and it turns out that it didn't take long to be able to master crypto.

CZ's mistake was why he had to open Binance US and this backfired which made him have to resign.
And the US is already profiting now by getting fresh funds from fines received from Binance.

What do you think he lied about, really? I mean, I'm not really a fan of the guy, but comparing him to SBF, who embezzled user funds, is off base, and I'm curious to know more about the details and what led you to believe he's guilty.

I think the comparison is wrong and erroneous between CZ as Binance CEO and SBF the CEO of FTX exchange, CZ have good reputation although SEC Commission due money laundering with Binance US. The exchange of CZ still operation well and not face problem with withdrawing fund and difference with cases happened to SBF who make FTX scam and run away much investors fund. CZ and Binance have reach deal agreement for paying $4.3B settlement to American regulators regarding his mistake with money laundering and leaves his position as Binance CEO.

I don't know what happen with SEC Commission always attack with all exchange cryptocurrency owner, I don't sure they will stop for hunting the next target and pressure them to pay more money as did by CZ.

That's why others should be alerted to this event because they will be the next target and they should prepare their statement and evidence that would make them innocent. Whatever it is, they shouldn't be slacking off even a small piece of evidence and loopholes in their exchanges because that's what the SEC needed from them in order to prove them guilty and make them pay with it. I hope Binance will continue its operation despite this kind of bad scenario in its crypto journey because lots of people are counting on it.

But wait, are you justifying reasons that CZ is better than SBF, I don't quite understand what you mean by one used customer money and the other did only money laundering.

A crime is a crime and if you are found guilty, you will definitely pay for the crime. No two ways about it, he has been the CEO for many years, there is no way he was going to deny that such activities has not be going on, he should have acted smartly to voice out and let the world knows instead he kept mum until US found out and now they are doing damage control, lmao.  ;D

He will do his time and the sentencing will come on February according to media, it will come before SBF prosecution day but he will last months because he will is not responsible for loss but he did accomplish a crime and that is what that fines will be settle for $4B


Satoshi is ahead of anyone in crypto and he did the best thing by not coming online and letting the people do what they want but I believe Satoshi intension were for good. The reason why I think he never come online again was to never allow any form of centralization through his influence and it's better that way.

It is a form of commitment and responsibility from Binance to solve the problem by paying the fine.
and also CZ is willing to take from his personal money to pay part of the fine of USD$50 million, of course this proves that CZ is the CEO who is responsible for the problems that are happening and does not leave it alone.

The SEC is always looking for profits on every major CEX and this is a warning for all CEXs to be careful if they want to enter the US Exchange.
It's better to find safe and not get involved with the US, especially Gary Gensler is famous for not being pro with crypto and always cornering crypto in all problems.

yeah i am thinking we in the USA are going to served by just coinbase.

Yes, this was my same thought I was reading about all this. It will be interesting how it all plays out with their holdings.

yeah, Hi grandpa @philipma1957

Coinbase still seems to be pretty safe right now from SEC attacks.
In early June, Coinbase also received its first lawsuit from the SEC along with Binance, but now Binance is the real target, making CZ have to resign.

Coinbase dismissed all such lawsuits in August and hopes that U.S. regulators set clear rules, so everyone can understand and follow.

The country essentially claims to have authority over all investment activities and thus has the right to determine the scope of its own regulations,
limited only by its own ambitions

Because of the seriousness of the accusation, CZ finally admitted to the mistake, he seemed to have no other defense so we were a little surprised to see the news that CZ pleaded guilty.

Indeed Binance is a large exchange they also have a popular ecosystem that is much in demand until now if I'm not mistaken the total wealth of Binance $64B they may still be able to survive any action, regarding staff and others I think they already know any information but they will still maintain integrity for Binance in the future with the new CEO.

It is clear that SBF is guilty of using public money for personal gain, but CZ only admitted that he facilitated money laundering with his platform, maybe this charge will not be as severe as SBF.

his admission will be used by a lot of governments to enforce kyc.

my fear is they may want to attack self custody in your own wallets.

which would be a logical step to making cbdc. the rule of the world 🌍

at tauifik123 I am 66 going on 67. but both my kids died as miscarriages. So I am not a grandpa.

My first lost kid would be 28 if nothing bad had happened.
My second lost kid would be 25.

I would have like to have been allowed by the universe to watch the kids be born and give my wife and I grandchildren but that was not the universe’s plan for me and my wife.

coinbase customer count: 98m
binance.com customer count: 120m
binance.us customer count: 0.67m

regulators and binance.com didnt want binance.com to be regulated by the US.
regulators and coinbase and institutions didnt want americans measuring bitcoin price based on binance.com

because institutions would not be treated as using a fair index if it wasnt using the biggest. (binance.com )
so they if preferring coinbase they wouldnt want binance.com regulated in the US
and binance.us just doesnt count as a fair index due to lack of customers

so ruling binance.com out, coinbase becomes defacto top index preference

in short. americans wont rely on binance.com for spot pricing anymore due to losing access to binance.com(or shortly will)
and no one wants to give validity to low volume of binance.us.. so win for coinbase.com

In my opinion, I don't think it will be proper or right to compare SBF and CZ in terms of criminality.
It is obvious that SBF is a fraud and scammed people of their funds when he declared bankruptcy. But the case of CZ is more a political witch-hunt just to step him aside.
Even though CZ admitted to those criminal charges, I doubt if they were intentional and if he personally have a hand in it.
But this battle is between an individual and the us government, trust me, the us government will always have their way.

Bro this story has been shared a hell lot of times here on BTT but I think you did not notice that, anyway, Sam Bankman and CZ should not be compared as equal convicted criminals because IMHO they are not that's why CZ was fined while SB is in custody. Overall they both were two different cases.

Besides their comparison, CZ did commit a crime that he should have prevented but we all know which who had the most power of which one, and this issue got hype due to the funding that goes into many Hamas, or other states as funds via Binance, and on confirmation those accounts used to send funds are seized even though DOJ get a chance to extract money out of Binance.

And according to the plea Binance has to give them back all the money that they earned via Fee from US citizens including all other earnings they made.

No I'm not saying that.
 
Satoshi won't come back to forum the world's going to speculate about what happened to the creator of bitcoin. Some ppl are going to say Satoshi's work changed finances for millions so he's cool but some ppl are going to say he's created a scam. We don't know anything about Satoshi but I'd say Satoshi was a pseudonym used by more than one person. 

Because this is a legal management issue in this market and it has never really been easy, when centralized organizations still want to easily force decentralized companies. If at the present time it is not CZ who is the subject of condemnation, there will be news strong enough to cause the reaction of the crowd in space.

But perhaps according to what I have observed, everything will go smoothly and money can solve the current problem and soon bring the market into a new bullish cycle.

That is a lot of money. I hope they won't go bankrupt

On one hand, I think CZ is a sociopath and I'm glad he's out as CEO. On the other hand, its impressive that Binance could absorb this fine and keep going. They've obviously been good at doing what any good business does: continue to make money no matter what, but the problem is they hold (held?) too much sway over the entire crypto industry and its good to see them taken down a peg.

Not only binance and bittrex have to close down, kraken is also being sued by the SEC while coinbase is safer than ever. Do you think this is clearly a war for the market and coinbase is becoming the choice of the US government? If I remember correctly, Coinbase was also sued at the same time as Binance.us but so far, coinbase has been very stable and their stock ticker has even doubled since the SEC sued them. Wall Street investors are eliminating market builders to take control of this crypto market.

But the SEC seems to be indiscriminate either, all given advance warnings, but it may depend on how well they respond and meet the SEC's demands and fix what is in question, or maybe the payout from Coinbase is larger.

All exchanges related to the US and SEC end up with fines and Coinbase still survives, of course there are privileges from Coinbase.
The US government really doesn't let CEX operate properly, they want to control everything.

I was marveled when I saw the news. Matter of fact, when I was told, I thought it was a lie and probably just some fake news for maybe market manipulation (At least we can agree that Binance news can cause market manipulation). But the truth is that just because you didn’t expect something doesn’t mean it can’t happen.  We all feel  empathy for him because we’ve always seen him as a simple and sincere person. However, he has man it up and agreed to face the consequences as he should. Life moves on.

Regarding Binance  and CZ have reached agreement deal with paying $4.3B to American regulator are there have district for CZ come back to his cryptocurrency exchange one day later? The cases between CZ and Sam Bankman Fried drastically difference due CZ not scam their investor of Binance user and SBF have run away all their investor fund. Regarding with Sam Bankman Fried have get under rest and wanted person by Unites State government and CZ have special thing after paying $4.3B to American regulator and his name not in the wanted list.

SEC have targeted many exchange regarding their operation in United Sate such as Binance US will make them easily how to find bit mistake, I think mistake did by ZC by opening Binance US exchange due they have Binance global and there are not large transaction than Binance global. After Binance who will be next target by SEC Commission are there exchange market or they will get new target as altcoin developer such as Ripple coin.

I think this investigation was ongoing for a while. I don’t know what the 4 fingers meant when he was holding it up but some are speculating it’s the $4B he will owe to the government.

The writing was on the wall when Binance all of a sudden started to lose banking partners for deposits and withdraws. Then the entire issue with the stable coin. And eventually all the problems that happened at Binance US.

We all knew something was up but didn’t think it would be this.

I'm not sure how you can put CZ and SBF on the same level: CZ didn't follow some money laundering laws, which is not something that uncommon, of course if you are the biggest exchange in the world and the US hate you, well, it's a serious problem. On the other hand we have SBF who created an exchange just to scam people, because that was his final goal. I would say that there is quite a big difference.

I completely support your point of view, I don't understand why many people compare CZ with SBF when they are completely different. Maybe CZ is not a good person and he also contributed to market manipulation for his own gain, but he never defrauded investors the way SBF did. So it wouldn't be fair to CZ if we compare the two. When it comes to bitcoin, CZ has made no significant contributions but when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry, he has created a large and fair playing field for all of us. SBF is not worthy or qualified to be compared to CZ.

Even though they change the CEO and paid the settlement, I don't think general perspective about Binance will still be the same after this case, especially for people whoa aren't crypto enthusiast general people who just enter crypto world. I doubt they can maintain their position of top exchange next year. 

I don't disagree, however, the parties that brought them down (a bit) didn't do it because of the goodness of their hearts. Their intentions aren't a more fair crypto economy with less manipulation. Their goal is to make themselves more important and have greater affect on prices and public opinion. It's just shifting the ability to influence or manipulate the market to a better-suited party. 

Of course there wouldn't had been a bridge of him being convicted but possibilities of paroles may have been considered.
But why don't we think otherwise too if maybe he pleaded the guilty not to prolong the agitations or rumours of the bad image upon the crypto companies exchange (Binance) all to eject himself out to avoiding any forms of contact of his existence still in the company maybe to bear the consequences while the company has to maintain a reliable stability roles to still hold reliances to its clients? Possibly in due time the reality truth may showcase because a trace of prove to the fraudulent accused/agreed guiltiness should had been made known on how goes about such of his journey to the activity.
What if we lives to say sorry to CZ and Binance at large in due time?

The US is still the largest financial market in the world and is home to a series of large organizations, investors and any business that wants to have a market share there. So it would be a big omission if Binance wasn't there. And one thing that's quite different from other markets is that if you want to do business in the US market, you need a company that caters specifically to them and that's why we have binance.us and just those only US citizens can use it.

I think this is no longer a battle between the SEC and companies or exchanges, but as I said, this is a battle for market share of financial giants because bitcoin and cryptocurrencies still have a lot of great potential.

its not though.. do you know how many other countries populations have never touched a dollar bank note
do you know how many countries (cumilatively adding up populations) have businesses that are not regulated by the SEC
americas finances, the dollar only services 330m american population

compare that to china that services a billion people+
compare that to india that services a billion people+
compare that to europe that has 750m

the reason america SOUNDS greater then it is. is publicity.
yes they trade with other countries.. but thats the same as suggesting bitcoin is the biggest market in the world because it trades with USD EURO YEN YUAN

america do trade deals internationally but that doesnt make them the biggest market. it means they have a long reach
when you find out that china produce products for 100 countries but US exports to only a few. you soon see "america is the greatest" is not real.. its just a publicity slogan

its much like the UK calls itself GREAT britain. but we brits know that our electric is supplied by power stations owned by france/china. we drive cars made by international brands. we go home and eat indian fast food sit on a scandanavian sofa and watch US tv shows on a asian flatscreen

did you know that the US only has 32m businesses
did you know that china has 52m businesses

americas number of 1 business per 10 citizens has a catch. many CEO's have more then one business so the US numbers are scewed/inflated as many american businesses dont actually sell real products/services but operate as shell companies

america play the slogans of highly invested in oil.. but lets dig deeper
america do import alot of oil but they are not the biggest importer.
what you then learn is who is the exporter. the area that makes money giving that oil to many countries. and its that area thats the biggest oil market

This will be a long case and we see a new drama starting to unfold, where CZ is forced to resign as CEO of Binance for proven reasons of money laundering crimes. It seems like this will never stop and the exchange will continue to be monitored by those in power and if something happens they will go after and force the CEO or whoever is at fault to resign or pay compensation. Is the harsh action they gave appropriate or commensurate with the perpetrator?

If the legal decision is binding then of course they are just waiting for their time, but have we ever thought about how this started and how the story will end?

Since neither of them have yet been sentenced, then probation would be the most appropriate consideration of possible ways of a reduced sentence (rather than your use of the term parole).  So if the judge is giving out a sentence, s/he may  include prison time and/or probation, or in some cases no prison time is required, and the judge would hand out some probationary terms that may end up lasting many years with various terms of being able to NOT stay in prison during the period on probation, or merely a short period of time.

Parole is a slightly different concept, but they are surely similar.  Accordingly, I am pretty sure that you already have to be in prison in order to thereafter be eligible for parole, which usually would be some kind of an early release, and perhaps following terms of parole for a period of time that would be established by the parole board that agrees to the early release, and maybe if the terms of parole are breached, then the person could easily end back up in custody and perhaps having to serve the remainder of the sentence.  I get the sense that you may have been referring to probation rather than parole since the parole eligibility comes after already in prison for a while, from my understanding.


It is quite likely that CZ has been consulting with attorneys for many years about these kinds of topics regarding if he were to ever be accused of a crime, and surely the consideration of the matter becomes more serious when actual criminal charges are filed.  Even his pleading to the charge constituted several risks, including that he had to appear in person in a US court, which I am sure that his attorneys went back and forth a lot regarding whether he would be taken into custody, and maybe they cannot 100% guarantee that the USA government might end up taking him into custody, even if he seemed to have had gotten pre-agreement to their not taking him into custody.  

Surely several of the details of the settlement are not exactly clear, and the interim between the announcement of the guilty plea and the actual sentencing will include more negotiations but also the providing of evidence and arguments in order for each side to iron out some of the potential terms and to attempt to remove some of the elements of surprise - while at the same time, it seems that even CZ's counsel has conceded that they may well be willing to agree to sentencing of 6 months of jail time. and surely those are not necessarily locked in stone, but sometimes it will show a certain amount of good faith negotiations and willingness to accept that some jail time is appropriate in CZ's case.

There are many hypothesis suggesting that CZ pleaded guilty just to avoid further quizzing and scrutiny. Even this seems plausible, if you juxtapose the advantage of such decision and the disadvantages, you will see that the later outweighs the former. Why will someone deliberately damage such an enviable image he has built for himself in the cryptocurrency space? It does not make any sense to me. If he actually intentionally pleaded guilty to avoid further digging, it means he has more shits to cover than we can imagine.

From someone of the articles I read, his major offense was Binance romance with Iran that have been in the black book of the powers that be. This seems to me like the borne of contention.

At the end of the day I like CZ, I like Binance, and I own some BNB, but I'm sure that CZ is not "a good person" just like many other millionaires/billionaires out there: if you want to get to that level, you have to do some unethical stuff. Or does any of you think that all those people made money following every single rule and being kind with everyone? Of course not. But CZ is not SBF at all.

CZ is a very sincere man and he is a very good man, from what I know about him he will never compromise on injustice that is why I have enough trust and faith in him. At first when I heard such news, I thought that such a complaint could be made against the CEO of such an exchange, so I did not give much importance to the matter, but when the matter was proved, I felt the matter was a little different. CZ has been sued and the case has gone against CZ but I still trust CZ. New CEO of Binance Exchange appointed but new CEO is appointed only to clear legal complications, once legal complications are over CZ can take over as CEO again.

CZ and SBF cannot be compared together. SBF has done one of the biggest scams and cheated its users but CZ has not done that at all.  Both are criminals in the eyes of law but the crime committed by SBF can be considered as lesser crime.

A ) we will never know what he did or did not do.
B ) he fell on the sword over his dealings with Iran 🇮🇷
C ) Some one backed Hamas with money weapons and good planning
D) The Hamas attack has lead to more than 16500 people killed
E ) Iran was the supposed backer of Hamas

I would not want to be in the shoes of CZ

Does it mean I think
Hamas
 Isreal
Iran
USA

are right or wrong no.

They are merely feeding the military industrial complex.

It looks like CZ got has hand bitten by that machine in his search for profits.

It also means more kyc for all of us.

F2pool recently censured txs when asked to do so by America 🇺🇸 which means they would censure for any country that has some weight.

They have agreed to pay the fine so the exchange is not going to shut down. Rest of the services there are working same as before and they are already the biggest exchange in the world in terms of number of users.

Rules are meant to be broken and even challenged and even questions regarding their fairness if they are retroactively applied.

CZ could have had pled guilty because he new that he violated laws that were clearly applicable to him and/or his company, or he may have plead guilty based on the practicality of the whole matter and being able to reach some kind of an acceptable settlement agreement that helps him and Binance to move on but also they have an agreement that surely the US Government likes too, which is to both send a signal but also to be able to spend some time monitoring CZ and/or the company.. perhaps for the next 5 years, perhaps longer.

Whether something is ethical or not does not necessarily make it illegal, and there can be draconian laws and/or draconian applications of the law, so for sure the US Govt (and the various agencies that were involved in various investigations) had a sufficient amount of evidence that would either muddy the waters or it might even be able to convict CZ and/or the company in a trial process.   Frequently the pleas are going to require some level of admission of wrongdoing, so CZ and the company already went over those grounds by agreeing that they both did some wrongdoing (that is likely described in the plea agreement), but they also agreed that the amount of punishment is suitable, too.. even though they might not like it, they might have had conceded in their own internal discussions that it is likely close to the best that they would be able to get and to also have some certainty of having entered into the plea agreement versus the various uncertainties of potentially fighting the matter for a considerable amount of time, and maybe CZ might have felt also that he is too well known, so that he would end up getting arrested sooner or later if they had not worked out a deal... which again looks better for him to enter into a deal instead of being potentially perceived as a fugitive of the law and then maybe getting harsher sentencing based on fighting the matter rather than settling.. so whether he is actually wrong or not might be another question, even though for practical purposes, he has admitted to being wrong on behalf of himself and his company.

The case of the CEO of Binance will be resolved as soon as the exchange pays the $4.3 billion in fees charged against its owner. It is already known that SBF will go to prison for bankruptcy of public funds before the end of the next year.

The danger that I perceive in this is that it has damaged the reputation of the CEO of Binance and its exchange. People would no longer have the same level of faith in them or their ability to keep their funds on the Binance exchange as a result. People will start withdrawing their money from the Binance exchange.

Binance's going make part payments so they'll cope.

The new CEO's going to make changes but Binance isn't going to get smaller. It's a successful business they'll keep getting bigger but I'm glad Binance's lost some shine because it's been dominating crypto.

I don't know if it's true CZ's the reason FTX couldn't become regulated in Europe because he didn't comply to govt requests for info. If he's played his hand ppl will consider it's justice.

CZ's taken Binance from ICO to tech giant but he's going to jail. It's been said he's worth $24B so there's going to be rivers of cash waiting for him after he's paroled until it happens he could be sharing a cell with SBF for part of his sentence.

That is ridiculous to even be making that kind of a suggestion in regards to if something like that would be very likely to happen... it is probably pretty damned close to zero odds, so why say it?, except to make phoney-baloney comparisons...

or are you that uninformed regarding how the world actually works?
 
Or were you just trying to have some funzies at the expense of the truth (and reality)?

Finally another guy who was running the world's no.1 crypto exchange got sued with many allegations and the exchange has to $4.3B to settle the case. That's not the first attack to stop the growth of the Binance exchange I believe low-intensity attacks on that exchange took place some time ago as well but those attacks weren't enough to sue CZ however this time they got him and the chapter of CZ is closed now.

I believe that the regulators will do anything in order to wipe out those centralized exchanges at least exchanges like Binance that are known to on top for most of traders. I hope that Binance will continue to operate even with CZ as I still think that the guy was evil like SBF. Let's see which exchange in going to be the next target before approval of those spot ETFs.

Legal or government agencies regulate us through those centralized exchanges. If we destroy them all, what will they use to control us? This is simply a war for market share, they will destroy those who do not follow their orders and bring the exchanges they manipulate into the market to gain market share. I believe nothing would have happened to CZ if he had saved SBF and FTX from collapse last year. But things didn't work out that way.

Regarding Binance's future prediction, it will still exist but its top position will definitely be replaced by someone else soon, IMO.

Agreed and it only appears that there are many people in bitcointalk.org that are giving their opinions, however, they are ignorant on what is really happening in the cryptospace.

On CZ stepping down, I am very disappointed that it was Richard Teng that replaced him. I wanted this to be He Yi hehe. She would be a very good follow on social media if she is CEO ehehehhe.

On what it might imply for Binance under Richard Teng, we need to look at his education background and his career. He graduated in Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a degree in accounting. After this, he went to University of Pennsylvania for an executive leadership course.

His first job was with Singapore's regulator similar to the SEC and worked for 13 years. His next job was with the Singapore stock exchange as a compliance officer. According to some artcles, Richard Teng was someone who helped create important regulatory frameworks and rules for the Singapore exchange.

He also worked in Abu Dhabi where he became the CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority where he also created important regulatory frameworks and rules.

On August 2021, Richard Teng became the CEO of Binance Singapore, on November 2021 he became Binance's head of regional markets.

I reckon his background implies that he can make Binance the biggest fully regulated exchange in the cryptospace. However, nothing is certain.

Sam was not savable.   He was (and likely still is) a degenerate gambler (who may not have learned his lesson, yet), and probably CZ and/or the Binance team saw that putting money into attempting to save Sam and/or FTX and/or Alameda would be like putting money into a never ending black hole.

At least CZ had some dignity and faced responsibility like a man. SBF on the contrary, did not admit he was guilty until the bitter end. He used customer's funds to build his little crypto empire. What CZ did, was honorable in my opinion. He paid the $4.3B settlement to the US government and declared himself guilty. This should increase investors'/traders' confidence on Binance exchange.

Hopefully, the new CEO (Richard Teng) will guide the company towards the right direction. By working closely with regulators, Binance will survive for a very long time. This could be the beginning of a new era for both Binance and BNB.u Crypto land is often full of surprises, so expect the unexpected. Just my thoughts ;D

I don't use Binance I'm stacking sig campaign sats on Electrum wallet so don't need it. There's ppl out there who like CZ or hate him equally it isn't about him being rich so he's a target for American regulators. SBF said CZ purchased 20% of FTX because he wanted to bankrupt it. How would you feel about CZ if it's true?

"SBF said"

It should be pretty obvious that CZ is much more credible than SBF.. so it seems pretty crazy to believe anything that SBF says about CZ's supposed motives, when SBF is already a proven liar and a repeated liar... over and over and over.. like a deluded child.. it is not only in his own words from the press but you have a lot of instances of SBF saying stupid, contradictory, self-serving, misleading and even evasive things, which ultimately should establish pretty clearly how evil SBF is in terms of his deserving time in prison.  

That's not the case with CZ... I am not saying CZ is Mr. Goodie two shoes, but I am saying there is plenty of evidence of his making reasonable statements and then sometimes backing off of some of his earlier statements, but also seeming to intend to cooperate with authorities in a variety of ways and even to make sure things in his business are not stealing customer funds.. and even if there may be some instances in which CZ might have had some bad business practices, they were no where near the level of SBF's use and abuse of customer funds while saying that he was doing the exact opposite.. so fuck SBF as anything close to any kind of a credible witness in regards what might or might not be the character of CZ..

Sam Bankman Fried of FTX  and  Changpeng Zhao of Binance cases are of different ones. Though they are all criminal cases but Sam Bankrman project collapsed while Cz project is still active. Therefore if they will have punishment they will not have it in an equal way. Binance former CEO was fined to pay $4.3B for the crime committed. This money laundering issues that are coming up rampantly this days in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is the new method the government is using to shot down some projects and companies. Though it is good because it will make the cryptocurrency ecosystem free from money laundering.

We just thank God that Binance did not shot down the company because if they did, people would have lost money more than FTX.

It does appear that CZ learned from SBF's actions seeing the result publicly online and all over the news. Its clear that regulators are cracking down to pave the way for the Bitcoin ETF, and now with Binance's new figurehead Richard Teng we will see them have a much smaller impact on the exchance crypto industry as a whole. I for one am just now waiting for the equivalent of Trump mugshot for CZ, now just someone need's to make his bail lol. Poor guy can't flee to Saudi and the US isn't going to let him return to see his family to even chance him doing that.

I could not find the thread, however, there was someone in the forum who asked if CZ is being treated unfairly by the department of justice. The replies of some people saying that he was treated fairly were head shaking and it appears that they do not follow the news more closely.

CZ is certainly not being treated fairly compared to the penalties that were given to the executives of traditional finance who were complicit in moneylaundering, stealing and scamming. What they were given was a slap on the wrist and a fine. No one was criminally indicted and no one was held legally responsible. The justice system is not fair, this is reality.

Also, the cryptocurrency ecosystem will not be free from moneylaundering because CZ stepped down hehehe. It will continue.

Correct they (money laundering people) will find another way.

In the 90's and early 00's. Many towns in the USA had Chinese all you can eat buffets. Most close when btc and other coins did well.

So here in the USA you can bet more Chinese buffets will open back up.

AFAIK, that deal was publicly published but later on didnt proceed. I think it would have been a different story of CZ managed to acquire FTX. But I guess during that time, he has already foreseen what was about to come and he can no longer fix it.

Anyway, whether we like it or not. There is always the good, bad and unknown sides of these prominent people in the crypto scene.

I think the FEDs are trying to get the big wigs out of the game to just create a safe passage for regulations and centralised systems, at the same time, also extorting money from Binance.


Much earlier when the space started, a few years back, there were no regulatory policies and no place in the law restraining these institutions from operating in a kinda way. Fast forward to 2023, they are now been said to have committed felony.

I consider it shameful for SEC and others to be after a tech that they know is the evolution we all craved for, and in which they are now benefiting from behind the scene while, at the same time, extorting money from.

The FTX doc on Bloomberg had ppl say SBF tried to get FTX regulated but he was being asked for full disclosure. Binance owned 20% so each time he asked for credentials CZ refused he didn't give them to SBF so he couldn't get FTX regulated. They paid Binance $2.1B to buy back their shares but it was too late it didn't save FTX.

Bloomberg doc question's why did CZ purchased 20% ownership in FTX if didn't want it to collapse. 

Are missing some kind of a link when you are referring to the "Bloomberg doc" because I am unclear about the reference, and the way you are describing the matter of Binance's/CZ's stake in FTX seems strange too.  My understanding is that Binance/CZ helped to get FTX started, so it was a kind of loan that FTX paid back by using some real assets, but also by partially paying Binance/CZ with their FTT tokens. which was part of the reason that Binance/CZ had so many FTT tokens.

There is likely nothing that conspiratorial about one exchange investing in another exchange, and then once the newer exchange becomes successful to thereafter pay back the loan that they received... so Binance's 20% ownership in FTX was ONLY for a period of time, and yeah, when FTX had gotten into trouble, Binance/CZ said that they would look at the possibility of rescuing them or buying the company.. but only after a few days Binance/CZ determined that FTX was too messed up to even consider getting involved in buying it or bailing them out.

Even though Sam was continuously seeming to court favors from various kinds of regulators, it really must be questionable the extent to which they were trying to get regulated - except in kinds of scammy and scummy backdoor ways that would likely blow up sooner or later, which surely should cause many of us to pause in our thinking regarding how much we don't really know about the various back room relations that FTX had and whether politicians (and regulators) were merely involved in any kinds of ways with FTX/SBF based on their own use of FTX as ways to launder money and/or to potentially attack bitcoin and/or crypto... I am surely not claiming to understand very much, even though surely there are a lot of folks who have lost money through FTX, so they may be more motivated to look into what matters that they are able to attempt to figure out from various sources already out there, including maybe trying to figure out various kind of relationships that are still not known and/or potentially being covered up... which maybe part of the reason that some folks might be wanting the second trials against sam and maybe some others to go forward... which may or may not end up helping to bring some more of the facts to light in terms of what kinds political influence behaviors were taking place.. which truly Sam's parents and maybe even some of his family have way more culpability in their various behaviors than what is being investigated into (at least from what we know about any investigations into Sam's parents and/or relatives).

Whether you use binana or not, it does not mean anything and people that are using it could still continue because it is still the most safest centralized exchange in the market right now. There had been many news to make the exchange to go bankrupt or lose value but I don't think people are interested in that. Binance had built a name and that name can not tremble because he was accused of money laundering in the United States. Many people had been looking for ways to make sure that the company crash nothing will happen.

There isn't conspiracy when Binance invests $80M to buy in 20% FTX stake. The Bloomberg doc's show ppl saying FTX paid $1.5B cash to CZ to get him out of the way because he blocked their regulation attempts. Binance received $2.1B for selling 20% back to FTX.

The doc's available on Bloomberg TV it's about the collapse of FTX. It's called RUIN (https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-ruin-ftx-documentary/). I don't like FTX or Binance. I'm not a fan of SBF or CZ because they're linked in FTX's collapse.

My argument is not about how moneylaunderers would try to find another method of laundering their funds. The argument is how those people behind HSBC or Goldman Sachs are not treated in a similar way as CZ. Have we witnessed a CEO of a big bank go to prison? No, however, if it is a CEO from the cryptospace they would put him to prison.

Why did this Goldman Sachs CEO did not go to prison after a guilty plea?



An ex-Goldman Sachs banker who pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal money from Malaysia’s state investment fund said Goldman’s “culture” encouraged executives to work around the legal team to score business.

It was “very much in line of its culture of Goldman Sachs to conceal facts from certain compliance and legal employees,” said Tim Leissner, Goldman’s former Southeast Asia chairman, in his guilty plea from August, which was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn Friday.

Leissner admitted that he hid from Goldman the fact that Malaysian financier Jho Low secured business for the bank by bribing officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi. The US government alleges Low played a central role in a scheme to launder billions of dollars from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad.

Source https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/09/business/lloyd-blankfein-goldman-sachs-1mdb/index.html



@arabspaceship123. I am not quite certain if you are updated on the news, however, FTX was a scam from the beginning. It was going to die with or without CZ's dump on FTT. Also, if you were CZ and knew Sam was scamming and you hold Binance's billions in FTT, would you dump it or not? The answer would certainly be yes.

Ok.  I watched the documentary, and their portion about CZ contributing to the downfall of FTX is quasi-looney… and yeah, there are some smart people who contributed to the documentary, but they also have some dumb ideas too..

Thus, you are crazy if you believe that anything except for Sam and the other various FTX agents were responsible for the level of fraud and corruption that took place at and through FTX and Alameda. 

That was not CZ's or Binance's doing, even though there ongoing forced comparisons, and it is quite misinformative to be putting CZ/Binance as if it were engaged in the same (or similar) to FTX.. .There have been other documentaries doing the same thing, but the mere fact that they come out with several documentaries saying similar things and making similar dumb comparisons does not make them true. Merely because they are in well-presented televised formats..

  I think that in this case with Binance, other countries are taking advantage of it; they seem to want to take Binance to their countries as well. They will harass Binance until Binance itself settles with them, depending on the amount that can be agreed upon.

  Something is not good; it seems that the only thing that will happen there is that Binance will be milked because they know that this exchange platform has a lot of funds. And I don't like that because it seems that Binance has been abused by other money-hungry governments. This is just my opinion.

The mere fact that a business like FTX that is rotten in their foundation only waits for time to collapse.

If not Binance took that action and triggered the collapse of FTX exchange, will that exchange become better and avoid its crash months or years later?
It will very possibly no, they will fail to change themselves because after a long time of doing something wrong in management, they will get familiar with it and consider a risky management (that they aware initially) to be a normal, not too risky management.

This will only make the collapse of FTX becomes more dramatic and worse than what actually happened in 2022.

Binance and CZ can not be innocent but the cryptocurrency market and communities must admit a fact that their actions from Binance actually helped the market avoid bigger collapse and bigger market effects from FTX.

To payback $4.3B isn't more of a problem for an exchange like Binance that's if not the biggest crypto exchange and with enough capital index gotten from or raked in from unknown charges and deals we the customers know absolutely nothing about.

This settlement is more to serve as a deterrent to other exchanges and crypto decentralized services that are springing up with newer ideas that is uncontrollable by the government regulations and financial regulators. Cz resignation is also in good faith no matter how it is perceived because, it has stamped the trust of doing business with Binance on the hearts of its customers. It is a good marketing and advertising move.

No one anticipated the collapse of FTX, hence why the regulators had to be up and doing in finding dirt about criminal undertones that the exchanges may be involved in, as well as chunck down the power and size of its current market, so as to allow for other exchanges and programs as may include the introduction and approval of ETF projects and the introduction of new centralized network that is controlled and regulated and taxed without the monotonous power of the exchanges themselves.

Did the $4.3B was paid by Binance or CZ? Since it was an accused on CZ I think he was the one paid it not by Binance. It seems that amount have nothing from CZ and has more deeper funds. Imagine how rich he is that can bail out with that kind of figures. Im sure CZ will claim it back through investing on defi or alts in the future aside from Binance. Hence he will never leave thar company for sure still part of it till the end though its being handled by other people now.

SBF should've behaved different when he knew CZ wasn't going to let FTX get regulated. FTX would've survived if SBF was smart enough to get around the 20% stake Binance owned. The blame's with SBF because he used FTX funds for fraud. There's talk about the new FTX team asking regulators to get the $2.1B back because CZ used it to bring FTX down.

You seem to be buying into dumb ideas.

It was not up to CZ/Binance about whether FTX got regulated or not. The claims that CZ/Binance was controlling FTX because CZ/Binance had a 20% ownership in FTX is looney. FTX paid that loan back to CZ/Binance, in part with their crappy FTT tokens.. and also FTX had gotten themselves into shitty circumstances because their growth was based on marketing and hype, while the same time they were gambling with client money in a variety of ways, and they were setting up scammy and dishonest systems to convolute their scams right from the start.


FTX survived based on Gambling, and they were running a ponzie scheme.. with SBF acting like a socially awkward honest person when he was scamming and calculating the whole time to sell his image in order that more and more people would throw money at FTX.


Yeah of course, CZ and Binance are favorite punching bags, and sure the FTX trustees can try to claw back that money from Binance/CZ, but they still need a legal basis beyond the argument that CZ is a BIG Meanie.

I don't care about what SBF said, especially after during his court trial he pretty much replied to every single question with "I don't remember", so it's interesting to see that he can actually remember something all of a sudden. Anyway it's not CZ the one who decided to setup and exchange with the final goal to scam people, it was SBF, he is the villain in this situation. Or were you hoping that he could scam even more people?

Exactly. No form of ill-intent, not a sliver in sight for us to actually second-guess Binance's credibility, and as a matter of fact we're even given guarantees in the past courtesy of the bank runs that the public did to test whether Binance is really safe. CZ himself became a beacon of safety (albeit as a meme) years prior thanks to the funds are safu joke but what the hell. Months ago I was a devout advocate that he's never going to do anything wrong as I've done my business with binance for quite some time now without any problems, turns out he's just yet another person willing to game the system for his benefit, he just made sure to leave his enterprise out of his dirty work unlike SBF who actively leveraged his own business to make illegal profit.

do take note that CZ just stepped out from his position. it is not that he will be in jail already because of his wrongdoing. i won't compare CZ with SBF. they have very different approach in leadership. i strongly believe that binance won't file their bankruptcy because their previous leader didn't misapproriate their funds. it is just because of technicality issues with authorities. whereas, SBF lived a luxury life and i am on the side that he did get addicted in gambling as per rumours.

@AmoreJaz. Also, it appears that there are many people in the forum who underestimate Binance's revenues and cashflows. These rumors of insolvency are only either fud or they are being supported by people who are hoping or wanting that Binance become insolvent hehehe.

In any case, people have the right to hate CZ. However, if he did not leave Binance and plead guilty, it would have been worse for the users of Binance, the exchange and the cryptospace.

CZ's last sacrifice was himself.

https://i.ibb.co/drVjwd9/B5-DDF8-FE-C454-4235-9943-971-BB909-B6-AD.jpg

My concerned here is the faith of the Binance exchange user.
Binance is a reputable exchange so if they could please guilty and accepted to pay the money, it is either of two reasons either they are simply obeying government or the jurisdiction orders to subdue the rumours or they are really guilty of the accusations.
Such occurances could yield about doing about Bitcoin especially to those who are yet to embrace Bitcoin.
Hence I expected Binance to come render some apologies and also the government to come tender some prof of the Binance illegal indulgences.

We know SBF is a fraudster but CZ didn't help FTX investors when he controlled 20% stake in FTX. Binance received $2.1B for shares they paid $80M to buy. Is CZ better than SBF? CZ wouldn't plead guilty to money laundering if he's innocent. SEC said CZ engaged in calculated evasion of the law. His bail allowed him to travel to his home in Dubai but a judge blocked his travel until his sentencing in Feb 24.

CZ isn't going home to fly home he's staying in America until his sentencing. He'll face max 18 months jail but SBF's max is 100 years how's that fair? When they get sentenced next year it's going to be the end of SBF & CZ chapters of biggest crypto exchange crimes.

he plead guilty to not being a regulated exchange in the US. there were not charges to suspect him of co-mingling users funds(fraud)
he plead guilty to not following the regulations of sanctioned countries(laundering). which he admits he didnt prrevent


his plea's come with a 18 month possible sentence, but he has until february to pay the fines(his fines not binance company fines) which can reduce further/remove the sentence if paid before february

Money laundering isn't a small crime. If CZ didn't prevent money laundering it means he's allowed it on Binance. He didn't steal money from customer like SBF so CZ isn't a thief but he did admit crimes of laundering money.

I don't know what's going to happen to his shares in Binance. Is he going to keep ownership?

We're expecting him to pay his dues before it's time to go to court so if he pays the fines he'll be expecting 18 months. If CZ doesn't pay before he's in court he's going to get more than 18 months.

In US law intent carries more weight then stupidity.

Ie you know you are money laundering
or you thought you were not money laundering.


Both could be the case for CZ but the government could easily prove the laundering not the intent.

So both CZ and the Gov settled on a plea deal.

Just for the non intended laundering

You seem to continue to want to argue backwards in terms of trying to equate CZ as if he were even close to as bad as SBF, and so in that regard, you fail/refuse to recognize and appreciate that there are variations in kinds of crimes that are charged, levels of intent (as mentioned by Philip), and even differences between cooperation versus contesting charges (including working out some kind of a settlement agreement that also surely differentiates CZ from SBF (as also referred to by Philip).  It is quite a bit a BIGGER deal when anyone has breached fiduciary duties to clients as compared to some of the more amorphous charges of money laundering - but still some of the amorphous charges can also have large punishments, but they are likely not going to be considered as egregious by juries, if any one ends up getting a jury and going that far in the process... which an overwhelming majority of cases do not make it to trial (whether the trial includes a jury or not), so it is fairly typical to work out some kind of a plea, and surely people with more money are going to be in a better place to hire attorneys that are able to help them to work out plea deals, to the extent that they are not so arrogant as to not be able to work with attorneys, which publicly also seemed to be one of the difficulties that SBF was having both in terms of his going out on a dumbass public campaign to try to market his way out of his problem, but also likely problematic in terms of his belief that he would be able to testify in convincing ways when he likely had not really been very good at following coaching from attorneys, not that they are suppose to coach witnesses to lie but they can coach witnesses in terms of better ways to present answers.


From my understanding there are no terms in which CZ has to give up any ownership in Binance, and he is still able to stay on the Board of directors during the time period (isn't it 3 years?) in which he is not allowed to serve as CEO.  I am not sure if any of those terms might end up getting changed, because if some matters come into dispute (including the fact that he was not able to return to Dubai and that the govt may well be pushing for jail time longer than 18 months), other terms of the plea (settlement) could then come into question regarding if they had been entered into with sufficient levels of information on both sides (rather than possible deception that might have been at issue - or could be argued from CZ's side, if he wants to go there).


I am not sure if the matter ONLY boils down to if they can get CZ to pay the fines (remember there is a personal fine component and a company fine component) prior to the sentencing date, because surely they can work out those kinds of payment timelines that may or may not necessarily be determinative regarding whether the government pushes for more than 18 months in prison, and it is my understanding that CZ had said that he would not appeal any sentence that was 18 months or less, but he is not agreeing to any prison time that is higher than 6 months...

and sure maybe CZ's position could change on some of these matters, especially if all of the terms of the sentence are not agreed in advance in terms of what he had pled to which is admitting guilt on some of the charges in order that other charges would be dropped... so there are several advantages to both sides if there is a plea of guilt because then the govt does not have to try to prove either the  intent element (as phil mentioned) or even having to prove the underlying facts because CZ plead to the underlying facts, but if CZ (and his legal team) get the sense that he is not getting the benefit of his side of the bargain, then they might end up wanting to suggest that the plea was done under false pretenses.. which still most criminal defendants are not going to want to go down that kind of a path.. so it is unlikely that he is going to attempt to substantially argue that he was deceived into pleaing guilty.

By the way, Phil's mentioning a kind of crime that is a plea to not-intending the money laundering, which surely the facts surrounding such a crime would need to be sufficient within the plea, so there would either still be intentions to certain acts or even levels of negligence or gross recklessness that would rise to the level of criminality.  There are also kinds of crimes that are called "strict liability" in which performing the restricted act is enough to constitute a crime, and intention is not required to be proven for those kinds of acts that are constituted as strict liability crimes.. Many times strict liability comes into civil kinds of cases, and many times there are certain levels of intent that are needed to be proven (or plead to) in criminal cases... but not always, as Phil mentioned which would be part of the justification for lighter sentencing (or the kinds of crimes that have lower levels of punishment) - which also shows that all crimes are not the same.. They have levels and sometimes nuance.

Why should Binance file for bankruptcy? The American Department of Justice had access to all the documents, they checked the whole exchange, and trust me, if they would have found something bad, FTX style, Binance would already be dead. If the best they managed to get was CZ stepping down as CEO and a fine, huge fine but still a fine, then it means that despite all the FUD Binance is a solid exchange. If they had no funds of course the DoJ would do something about it, but it looks like this is not the case.

Say CZ's team ends up wanting to suggest that the plea was done under false pretenses as you said. Though he has no intent to commit the crime, will he be able to settle a deal still after this and no more than 6 months in prison?  No intent to commit a crime seems very hard to prove since he is well advised being a big exchange with legal team.

And if proven there is a crime though with no intention, will the authorities also get hold of binance.com? As many have said ts the main Binance.com is the target of all these.

SBF's did fraud on unbelievable scale so he's going to be made example by the American govt. He's going to spend many years of his life away from society. He's going suffer when he's released because he won't have money. CZ getting max 18 months looks light because of the plea deal. At least when CZ's going to be released to society his billionaire status won't be altered.

He's resigned from Binance but what's going to happen to his Binance shares. In America are convicted money launderers allowed to keep shares in companies they've used to launder?

Please, in the US not a single banker who was part of the 2008 crash, that had consequences pretty much for the whole world, got arrested. Just some fines, and that's it. Do we want to talk about Bernie Madoff, one of the biggest scammer of the US history (together with SBF at this point)? There were a ton of red flags about his activity and they arrested him when he had already ruined a ton of people and was an old guy. And now, for some reason, you are here chasing down CZ like he's the only one in the world who ever got money he wasn't supposed to accept. I don't understand, it looks like you have something personal against CZ ::)

I don't have personal feelings against SBF or CZ I haven't met them I don't know them. I didn't like FTX or Binance being too big that's it. I know their crimes aren't the same so their sentencing's going to be different but it doesn't look fair when one's facing over 100 years but the other's looking at 18 months max.

I don't claim to know enough about the facts of the terms of the pleadings nor the exact dynamics of the negotiations (except conjecturing that there is a bit of extra political animosity and perhaps even xenophobia built in) in order to conjecture with too many details, but if CZ were to attempt to get out of his plea (or the settlement agreement), then the justice department and the various other agencies would likely want to either play hard ball or to create the impressions of playing hardball, so they might suggest that everything all of the previous charges are back on the table and that they are even throwing in some extra charges that were not previously charged.. (even though that might end up constituting retaliatory prosecution).  I am not even claiming to know exactly what the charges were in terms of which ones had intent and which ones did not have intent (or the level of intent) and the elements of the various crimes that would have had to have been proven in order to convict (absent un plea), so when someone pleas to various charges, he has to admit to the various facts that support the elements of the crime, and even have to admit to the conclusions that their actions and the facts constitute crimes as alleged... So in other words, there is kind of an outline facts and specifics that they would have to proclaim are not necessarily true, even though previously they had sworn under oath that they were true.  It is a kind of complicated position to take.


Intent to commit a crime is harder to prove than no intent... because it is a lower barrier of merely just showing various actions and certain responsibilities that CZ had, and then he is responsible for his actions and even various neglecting to do certain things (such as putting rules and practices into place that would prevent or lessen the crimes from happening).


Part of the settlement (plea) involves agreeing that certain agencies are able to detailedly monitor Binance for 5 years, and many of those terms should already be outlined, but having the terms outlined and putting them into practice can end up being quite onerous for any company to have comply with intense monitoring... and maybe de facto Binance would end up becoming more burdened than regulated exchanges, and perhaps even having to provide way more documentations and insights into the operations of the exchange than already existing regulated exchanges.


Those are pretty BIG assumptions that: 1) Sam is ever going to get released in his lifetime.. sure it is possible, but it is not a given, and 2) he does not have money squirreled away.  Sure the various legal defenses are likely costing a lot of money, but I doubt that Sam is broke - even though he is a bit of a degenerate gambler, so it may well be that he is not very good with his personal finances.


That is true that CZ seems to have a lot of financial resource, yet even the last year, it is quite amazing how much trade volume that Binance has lost.. but they do keep going so presumptively they are still profitable, even though many 10s of billions of dollars of value were removed from their platform.


You keep asking seemingly dumb questions that have been asked and answered several times. It is like you are purposefully playing dumb and it is getting more and more difficult to even close to take you seriously.

Yes.. the plea involves CZ stepping down as Binance CEO for three years, but he does not have to sell any shares and he does not have to give up his board seat.


It's becoming more and more apparent that arabspaceship123 is not even trying to engage with genuine facts and arguments... just repeatedly exaggerating and perhaps reframing the same dumb-ass unsupported talking points.


Yes, you supposedly recognize that there is a difference, but you don't know why there is a difference in the sentencing, and you keep stating that SBF is the one who is being treated unfairly, when the facts and logic are likely the opposite.. but you state the opposite of reality because you are persistent in your desire to put out disingenuine bullshit... poor widdo SBF... it sucks that CZ is being favored.. whine, whine, whine....

CZ did nothing compared to SBF. We could say CZ did a minor offense (misdemeanor?) while SBF did all of the contrary. By paying the $4B fine, CZ will be facing minimal jail time. He won't lose his fortune, as well as his reputation. Whenever he gets to keep his shares on Binance or lose it all, is yet to be seen. The court will ultimately decide CZ's sentence.

I see the current series of events as a new beginning for Binance exchange and the crypto industry as a whole. Confidence will be restored, while industry players will work closely with regulators in the long run. CZ can still have an influence over Binance without the need to be a CEO. He will be more of an advisor to the company than anything else. Who knows if BNB is bound to return to its former glory soon? ;D

CZ's going to be involved inside Binance because it's his company he won't let go or be pushed outside. BNB won't lose value because it'll gain when bull season makes ppl buy bitcoin so the market's going to be steady.

A fully regulated Binance with new CEO could help ETF approval so it could be a new beginning for crypto in America. I don't know how a new start for Binance's going to affect other countries but if exchanges scandals & allegations end it's good for crypto.

I'd wait and see the outcome of Binance battle with the SEC which is still a work in progress. SEC recently confirmed that they're still going after binance and that the DOJ settlement will only serve as fuel for its battle with Binance. Till all the legal battles that Binance has settles down, I won't be too involved with using that exchange as much as I used to. Binance is already losing its market share to the likes of Bybit, OKX amd Kucoin but I don't think any of these exchanges have what it takes to completely dethrone Binance — so best play imo, it's to wait and see how it plays out.

If Binance survives the legal hurdles, then definitely; BNB will see another all time high.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-08/sec-says-its-binance-case-should-advance-despite-doj-settlement

They've run a profitable business from 0 to billions in a few years. Now Binance's holding billions in banks so they'll pay the fines. It's going to be a profitable company after they've paid court fines because it's effective. It's the busiest exchange in the world.

It isn't over for CZ he's got a big lawsuit against him. Investors said they didn't know Binance was doing criminal things so they'll sue. Sizemore vs Zhao it's going to be $1B civil case. One more $1B lawsuit's against Cristiano Ronaldo's because ppl say they've invested in BNB tokens & traded after his ads hit headlines.

The SEC wants to take down Binance at all costs. It seems like Gary Gensler hates crypto more than anything else. If this keeps going, it's likely the crypto industry will move away from the US into countries with a friendly-regulatory stance. I see both HK and the UAE becoming the next epicenters of the crypto industry. Without money pouring into the US market, the country will lose the opportunity of staying at the forefront of innovation. In other words, the US will be left behind in the dust.

CZ was smart enough to pay the fine and face responsibility for his actions (unlike SBF). This is good for the long-term image/reputation of Binance. I'm pretty sure BNB will rise from the ground up after a prolonged fiasco with the SEC. As for Bitcoin, I believe it will only grow bigger and stronger in the future. If the crypto industry works hand-in-hand with the government, it will be able to grow towards unprecedented heights. Just keep buying, holding, and forget about the rest. ;D

While CZ seemed to save Binance and it will continue to operate without having troubles, he's got his own battle to face on the next one.
Anyway, he's got a lot of money that's in the form of crypto just as he said before that he don't hold that much fiat. So, I guess that he'll be force to sell large sums of holdings that he's got so that he can have funds to defend himself with these lawsuits that are filed personally against him.

Do you have links for those civil cases?


If CZ was working in his business capacity, then there might not be an ability to "pierce the corporate veil" and to go after CZ personally, but even if they do, it is likely still going to be a company expense to cover their officers who are carrying out their official duties.

Why do you think crypto industry needs to "work hand-in-hand" with the government? For one, I believe it defeats the purpose of Bitcoin because the only way that government will agree to work alongside Crypto industry is if they have control of important affairs of crypto. For instance, see how US government will heavily engage with Binance over the next couple of years simply because of that settlement. From what I've seen so far from Coinbase and the XRP lawsuit, it's clear that the US government makes its crypto regulations to be as vague as possible in order for convict most of crypto-centric firms when they have enough evidence to mount a solid case.

In the end, Crypto and government should not me. It wasn't meant to be, at any point.

If you are correct the governments of the world would all side against crypto.

and crypto would die.

The reality is:
some governments will be neutral.
some will attack it 
some will help it.

this is the way with most things on earth.

So here is hoping a good balance settles out in the next 12-16 years.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67120699/sizemore-v-zhao/
https://thenewscrypto.com/crypto-news-cz-binance-sued-over-ftx-downfall/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/cristiano-ronaldo-binance-lawsuit/index.html

I didn't bookmark but these links weren't difficult to find. In one case CZ's getting sued for bringing FTX down. In the other case CZ's getting sued for selling BNB tokens & BUSD to customers who didn't know they weren't allowed in America. Cristiano Ronaldo's being sued for selling NFT's in partnership with Binance.

Binance's going to survive bad coverage. It's going to take until next year for it's cases to be settled but it's going to stay as biggest crypto exchange.

Great, they finally got the way out with the attorneys by paying them money under the table. It was just about the value that is under consideration for which we were waiting, that's 4.3B. I am not sure how they came to this conclusion but something must have triggered in the minds of CZ. They must have plans otherwise they wouldn't go this far to pay such a high amount to bail out of the country where they had halted their business.

Overseas they are anyway doing great business. However, they might be seeing another future within the USA that can trigger even bigger business soon. The best way to tackle this is to get bail, file for guilty operations, and restart the business USA-wide. This can again bring them the huge number of investors onboard with newer investments. Plus, we are closing towards the Halving, I am seeing some patterns here with the timeline they are going.

Beside CZ leaves his position as Binance CEO I doubt he don't behind on Binance operation right now, not problem with how much money pay for American regulator because Binance earn more profitable and keep their exchange trusted without loss costumer. Balance feedback between reaches deal to pay $4.3B settlement to American regulators and Binance operation not close yet by America regulator exactly by SEC Commission.
Seems without one month, Binance will get return with how much payment to American regulator trough profitable earn with their exchange allowed for operation without restrict yet.

Just warning never make the same mistake in the future by new Binance CEO, they have protect well exactly small mistake will be space for SEC Commission keep pressure Binance operation and ask bigger payment than before with $4.3B.

You have strange ideas regarding "under the table," and it is no minor thing to agree to allowing the USA government (through some auditing and invasive procedures) to monitor and help fix you for the next 5-ish years.  that is hardly under the table, either.


It is a strange agreement, but Binance makes a lot of money, and they (under CZ's direction, and likely advice of counsel) likely considered it worth it to pay that amount - including the other terms of the plea agreement.


I doubt that matters move as rapidly as you imagine to be possible.  there is a fairly long row to hoe with the extent of the monitoring that Binance is going to go through - in a very much growing industry.. and there are going to be look back provisions in which the govt is verifying past compliance and even perhaps catching new criminals.. while at the same time, making sure that there are abilities for future compliance, and the SEC was not included in the global settlement agreement... which surely could add some additional complications if the SEC is wanting to prosecute Binance.. and whether there would be any success in that direction.. and how should we define success?

Yeah, seems like that's what will happen.
I doubt it that CZ's connection with Binance has entirely been gone after his resignation but that's not how it goes. There's the succession process and period of it.
And with that, I still believe that he's got a lot of his own fund to face this but he's a wise man and probably will still use most of his shares from the company.

I believe this will end up with paying an amount to settle all the cases against CZ.  SEC is after the mone after all, if they are not they won't agree for 4.3B settlement.


This is no doubt will happen if Binance fixed their legal hurdles.  Just like what happens when XRP survives theirs.  So I guess it is somehow good to take some gamble and buy some BNB in the market.  But obviously we should only invest what we can afford to lose because cryptocurrency market is always unpredictable.

I am pretty sure that CZ is a majority owner of the company, and he did not have to give up his shares.  Furthermore, even if CZ were an Ex-executive, if he is being sued for his acts or his lack of acts while he was the CEO, then the company would still most likely end up paying for his legal bills.  Many times the behavior would have to be so far outside of the scope of expected and/or normal duties before a company would not defend their CEOs and/or their ex CEOs - and that is even if we were to presume that CZ has been abandoned by the company, which the company could not even abandon him if they want, if he is the main owner.  Sure, his going to jail and also being isolated from his ability to be able to move outside of the USA, might be causing a decent amount of burdens on CZ's abilities to communicate and move as easily as he would like to be able to do, but maybe he is already used to working in such a way, and if there are are already various dedicated executives in place, they are still able to largely carry out CZ's wishes, even though likely there does need to be a decent amount of severance of his actually day to day running of the company which would done through the new CEO, who is presumptively a person who CZ hand-picked. .. but yeah, I am not going to proclaim that CZ's various legal burdens are not also potentially causing various strains on Binance, which likely is part of the intent of the US government to cause such burdens while acting like they are not intending to cause such burdens and strains upon Binance and CZ.

The thing about these charges is that they may sound different than it actually is. He pleaded guilty to breaking the Money Laundering Act, it may not necessarily mean he did money laundering. He could have broken a law or two. Regulators want to make an example of him, they said that themselves.



Does it mean CZ is being charged separately from Binance? If Binance has been fined, why is CZ being charged differently?

And that thought of mine was wrong. I thought that everything was settle with that money but it's not at least for CZ, for Binance it is.

All of these money are going to the government and we might see a lot of continuation of this case against CZ now since the attention is already gone for Binance.

IMHO, there's not that much difference at all whether they chase Binance or CZ since he's part of the company, owner of it when all of the acts had done. But then, I am not a lawyer, I am not the government so let it all be to them.

You're making false claims. It isn't true so it isn't right ppl can say there's under the table deals when the stakes are high for them.

CZ's rich. He'll have $Bs when his sentence's over so it wasn't like he couldn't afford to pay fines. He's accepted money laundering so the plea deal means CZ won't have investigators chasing him. Paying fines worked for CZ & regulators so they've agreed a plea deal. He didn't bribe govt lawyers.

Filthy rich! I think almost any human being in the world would agree to the hypothetical scenario that they can found a business today, build it into a multi-billion dollars empire within just six years, become a multi-billionaire, go to prison for 18 months and pay $50 million and then get released, be a free man and enjoy life. I am sure that part of the deal was CZ can go to the US whenever he wants and does not get recjected at the boarder.

But what is a bit weird are the different reports about the sentence he could be facing. Most reports say 18 months whereas there are sources stating that he could be facing up to 10 years. I assume that there was a deal about that at some point?

CZ has been a smart guy and I doubt that he kept most of his fortune in the form of BNB. I guess he is swimming in BTC and businesses and real estate all over the world. Does anyone understand how these $50 million were chosen as the fine? Is that based on his income or is that all about negotiation or some catalog?

I asked that because, from my little understanding of business law, there's something called "the entity concept". This means that the person/people who own the company are different entities from the company.
Elon Musk might have a charge against him but none of his companies would be in court. Likewise, his company might have a court case, but it doesn't mean he's the person standing trial.

I may be wrong, but if Binance was committing fraud and the company was involved in it, then the whole company would be sued or at least the board that was involved, but if CZ alone was committing fraud, either through Binance or other means and the company was not involved then he'll be sued alone.
The company won't be going to court, but it's still bad news for the company because it taints their image.

I think that you are right with that because with my understanding as well, either Binance or CZ have been on the track and eyes of the regulators. But since then the bail has been made, it was for Binance so, the company is already safe at all.

Now that the litigation goes to CZ and it was for the admission of fraud that has been done during his leadership. I guess on how the company bailed out, he can also do it on his case. Otherwise, people are thinking about the same fate or close to SBF.

Perhaps the two men will be judged next year. The year 2023 was full of major events, at the end of which is the largest condemnation event of Beans and CZ.

It was clear from the start that CZ manipulated the Crypto market and extended its arms like octopus everywhere in Crypo, so I think it is good that this central octopus has been eliminated.

Sounds like you are just making shit up both in terms of your desire to compare CZ and SBF, and also in terms of your proclaiming that CZ was some kind of a master controller, which truly was not the case, even though a lot of value did end up gravitating into Binance (which shows a lot of demand), and sure there are claims that Binance was getting those customers through unfairly competing and being too much part of the wild, wild west, but that is no longer the case, since they have entered into a settlement agreement (plea) that involves ongoing monitoring of their business for 5 years.. whether all of that was deserved or not, it seems to be the current status of that exchange, and we still have to see how it is going to play out with likely behind the scenes discussions await CZ's currently scheduled sentencing in February. .and sure there may or may not be further news in regards to those kinds of developments, and sure it currently seems that both CZ and Binance has been handicapped in some kinds of ways, but it may not be enough to stop them from growing, continuing to offer services and resuming to receive deposits from customers.. even while the situation remains ongoingly fluid..

Do you know whether that $4.3 billion settlement is a penalty that was negotiated in order to ensure Binance won't go bankrupt upon paying it? I ask because what would regulators do if they know they'd put tens of thousands of customers at risk if they choose a fine that is too high? If this is based on financial information that the regulators gathered during their investigation, it could actually be a good sign showing how healthy Binance is financially. It would be interesting to know what this amount is based on.

As for CZ manipulating the crypto market, I have no opinion on that, but I can say that Binance was way more popular than any other exchange for a variety of reasons. Coinbase couldn't even come close in terms of popularity. I am not sure how much manipulation was really needed to grow Binance (if there was any), but since liquidity attracts liquidity, Binance turned into this ever-growing business that put tons of money into marketing to then constantly reinforce their growth in popularity.

@Trawda since you claim to know that CZ manipulated the market, this is from his X account:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/12/16/EjvF9.png

Since this is his final statement after the settlement with US regulators, I doubt he would have posted that if it wasn't true ;)

I am not sure exactly how they arrived at the number.  I am pretty sure it is related to the allegations regarding how much money was supposedly trafficked through the site, and so it might amount to the profits and also penalties on top of profits from what information might be available in the evidence that the Govt. was planning to present in their case against Binance/CZ. 

I doubt that they give very many shits about the well-being of customers, even though they give lip service to those kinds of things.  They were trying to bring Binance/CZ down a peg or two, and surely they likely feel that they had some level of success in that direction, and partly the settlement agreement helps them to accomplish quite a bit that they would not have had been able to accomplish by litigating, including getting a surveillance agreement in place.


That's true.. liquidity does attract liquidity, and Binance did not have bad business practices, and they also frequently talked the talk and walked the walk in terms of trying to be outside of any jurisdiction and trying to promote ideas of free exchange, and sure there are contradictions in terms of messaging, but they did provide a service that worked and it was in a lot of places that Coinbase and other exchanges were not present.

As they always say, "money talks". You can see why the wealthy (the elite) has a huge advantage over the poor. They can buy politicians and/or government officials for their own favor. I believe CZ will be facing minimal jail time as he paid a hefty fine of $4B. It's all a matter of keeping the government happy.

SBF was not so lucky because he lost everything in an instant. If he still had money left, he would've probably used his "get out of jail free card". Bankruptcy is what killed SBF and his little empire. CZ, on the other hand, lost money but his empire was still afloat. What happened recently is only a mirage as Binance will emerge bigger and stronger than ever. It will work more closely with the regulators to prevent such thing from happening again. With Binance out of the picture, I wonder which exchange CEO will be targeted next? Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, maybe?  ::)

Correct me if I am wrong, but CZ has broken some laws without hurting people in the same way as SBF did. Trading is risky in general, so my point is not to say that nobody ever lost money using CZ's services. But SBF lied and harmed a lot of people, he destroyed an unbelievable amount of wealth with his construct of lies and infinite stupidity + ruthlessness. But it was especially the ruthlessness how he decided to embezzle customer funds knowing that it might not work out well for him. It is mostly about the harm done. If you drive a little bit too fast in real life, you get a small fine, pay it and can go on. If you hit a person at the same speed and somebody gets harmed, you might be done in a worst case scenario. CZ was the Ferrari driver in the business, faster than anyone else, authorities included. But his actions weren't of existential consequences for so many people/victims. Those two cases will be the most interesting in the coming year I guess. SBF is wrecked. CZ has lots of things to look forward to in life.

Its mean CZ have polite attitude than SBF broken some law without make costumer of Binance user losses their fund and difference with SBF how many people loss their money in FTX exchange without get refund yet. I don't think about who are lucky between CZ or SBF because rule broken by CZ as indicate with money laundering his Binance US exchange operation, by paying $4.3B settlement to American regulators Binance US allow for operating and not give drastically impact for the user not worry their fund keep secure for depositing or withdrawing.

CZ leaves his position as Binance CEO and seems still be important part for Binance but working behind the scene because he is most important person for building Binance as top global exchange reputation.

this is also the reason why seems to be other countries are trying to have this piece
of cake , since binance can settle for this high amount so what more that other small countries can
sue them and have even small amount?good for US users but not in some asian users that is now
suing Binance to have also settlement.

It seems there has been a new change in the charges against Binance, as the announcement yesterday showed a friendly reduced amount that they are required to pay, and this has been approved by the US court.


 US court approves order for Binance to pay $2.7 bln to CFTC  (https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-court-enters-order-against-binance-which-will-pay-27-billion-cftc-2023-12-18/)

This is really an intriguing question about this whole case and one thing I have been wondering about is how much money or wealth CZ kept as shares in the Binance empire in the form of tokens or coins. Or did he do it smartly and cashed out a lot over those years? I am quite sure that he is very rich anyway, but the numbers that were thrown around in the media ranged from a few billion USD to 60 billion USD or something like that, but if that is all on paper like it was in the case of SBF, it would mean that if CZ decides to liquidate a lot of his holdings, it would be selling pressure for BNB.

After he becomes a free man he'll be able to visit America it's got to be part of the deal he's made with govt lawyers. He'll be rich when he's put of prison. It's complicated because CZ's being sued by investors so if he settles the cases he'll worry less but it shouldn't affect his sentence. Yes he is smart guy he's got a good deal but judges have the sentence to pass.

In fact, the only thing that caught my attention in the case is that “Binance must pay $4.3 billion to settle the case”!!!!

I wonder how much income Binance has to be able to pay this very high fine to the US government?

It's been said Binance isn't registered as a legal company so the don't follow tax registration rules. Unless they announce their income we won't know about how much income they have but they're paying the fine after gaps it isn't in single payment. CZ's going to pay fines separate from Binance.

I have some difficulties understanding why you presume that CZ would not have wealth in places other than BNB, and it is quite likely that someone like CZ holds quite a bit of bitcoin.. 

I would imagine that calculations of CZ's wealth is connected to his ownership of Binance, and I would also imagine that if someone only recently got to be a billionaire, and maybe a few years ago he was not even a millionaire, then it might not make a whole lot of difference between having 1-2 billion versus having 60 Billion or more.. Sure there are differences, but in the whole scheme of things, someone who is newly in the filthy rich category might not have really gotten used to how to be filthy rich.  So, I am having some difficulties understanding why it would be so dire to preserve that level of wealth - especially if even the value of the company is within an industry that is so volatile. 

There are likely a lot of OG's in bitcoin who have seen a lot of fluctuation in their wealth, and you can even imagine scenarios of fairly well to do bitcoiners who may have accumulated anywhere between 100 and 1,000 BTC over the past 10-13 years or so, and maybe I am going to start using early 2012 as my starting place for making these kinds of analysis, since the BTC price and the 200-week moving average were both at $4 at that time, and it seems like a decent place to start bitcoin's price history, even though bitcoin's 2013 price performance did end up bringing in a lot more abilities for normies to access bitcoin when its price went from around $10 in the beginning to 2013 to $1,1163 in the end of 2013 and then ended up spending a lot of time in the mid-$200s in 2015, but if we imagine bitcoiners who were both able to accumulate and to hold their gbitcoin through these earlier times, they have already gone through quite a bit of volatility, and let's pick the middle of my earlier range of 100-1,000 bitcoin, and if someone had not really had a lot of wealth but was able to accumulate more than 500 bitcoin in those first 4 years into bitcoin between 2012 and 2015, then maybe he would have an average price per bitcoin of less than $400.. so that would be $200k invested, and so the wealth of such person holding 500 or more bitcoin would have gone up to around $10million (in late 2017) and then back down to around $2 million (in 2018 when BTC prices were around $3k-$4k) and then back up to more than $30 million a couple of times in 2021, and then back down to around $8 million in 2022, and then currently bouncing around $20 million, so whether we are talking $millions or $billions there are likely some already built in ways of dealing with such volatility in the BTC space, and sure maybe there could be some decent increases in the ways of spending the wealth and the ways of living, but the preservation of wealth in terms of dollars might not be as BIG of a deal as you (Dump3er) seem to be making it out to be... and there also can be a certain expectation that the value is not going down to zero, even if there might have been some (or perhaps inadequate) actions to greatly diversify out of various assets that are moving around a lot in price.


Rich people are frequently being sued, and they have attorneys dealing with those matters.  Maybe they settle and maybe not.. Frequently various kinds of lawsuits like that will end up getting dismissed, and yeah, if they end up being something that may end up going to court there is a pretty large incentive set to settle those kinds of matters, if they are starting to seem as if they are potentially going to be problematic in some kind of a meaningful way (which many times they are not and the mere fact that various civil lawsuits exist is not usually detrimental in itself).

I will not blame CZ as he is not involved in any kind of scam with investors. However, various allegations have been brought against him in recent times. And these allegations are definitely conspiracy. Binance is definitely safer than others for investors. They have proof of reserve in 1:1 ratio with customer deposits. But the main problem is that a company with a large ($9.42 trillion) investment like BlackRock can't lose to Binance. So they are filed various scam allegations against Binance.

CZ's a genius. He's taken a startup company to become the most famous crypto exchange today. He's made his money from business trading he hasn't scammed investors so he's ahead of exchanges which scammed ppl. Binance's going to dominate crypto so it shows CZ's influence because without his skill it wouldn't have happened.

I find it hard to anticipate where Binance could be going from here. Since they haven't been shut down and seem to have worked out a deal in the US, maybe their next step is to obtain the required licenses. I haven't been digging deeply into how they plan to operate in the near future, but I am sure they will try to preserve their US operations by abiding by the law. This $4.3 billion fine was the last warning shot, so something will change now for certain. But since this no KYC policy they seem to have been pursuing gave them the edge over other exchanges, how would such a change impact their business if they now go for full compliance like Coinbase and become some data kraken for the government?

It isn't hard to anticipate where Binance's going from here. You're right they've worked a deal so they'll get regulated approval to trade in America. They'll give licences to Binance for fiats so they'll bring in full KYC before taking customers from Coinbase. When cases involving Binance & CZ are settled they'll sell shares in NASDAQ. CZ's going to have $100B wealth soon.

The recent developments with CZ and Binance are surprising. Do you think BlackRock's influence is connected to Bitcoin ETF approval?

Not surprising anymore because it's been so long since the government has been hitting Binance with all of their strict regulations.

Well, this is far from the topic about Binance's settlement with the government. It's possible that financial institutions like BlackRock has the influence for the potential Bitcoin ETF approval, why?
Check this out: Spot Bitcoin ETFs Discussed In Meeting Between BlackRock And SEC  (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/spot-bitcoin-etfs-discussed-in-meeting-between-blackrock-and-sec)

Just enjoy the development and don't be surprised if there are many things we will see during this journey, for example intense lobbying to approach the SEC to get approval for a Bitcoin ETF. However, there are many crypto market players out there who have hopes that the SEC will quickly give approval. Bitcoin ETF early next year to increase Bitcoin's legitimacy as an investment asset.

When I was making another post, I decided to mention Binance, which caused me to do a quick search in regards to CZ's sentencing that was supposed to happen this month, but it appears that right around 5 days ago (which would have been Tuesday, perhaps) the sentencing (which was supposed to take place on 2/23) was put off by a couple of months until April 30.

https://www.ccn.com/news/binance-founder-czs-sentencing-pushed-back-reasons-unknown/

Also, apparently on Friday (yesterday) there was some kind of sentencing memo that was issued in which prosecutors were making some requests regarding CZ's and perhaps Binance's sentencing, but I could not find any link to the sentencing memo.   
 
https://cryptoslate.com/us-prosecutors-ask-judge-to-approve-binance-plea-deal/

I also did a quick search to see if the SBF's sentencing had been delayed, and apparently SBF is still on schedule and there is ongoing speculation that he might be able to get a reduced sentence based on recovery of funds.. .. and  yeah, that is truly speculation at this point.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/02/16/sam-bankman-frieds-sentence-might-be-lighter-than-youd-expect/