When Donald Trump secured the 2025 US presidency on Tuesday night, some of the world’s richest men were celebrating their own, personal windfalls. No one made more money overnight than billionaire Elon Musk, for example, whose net worth popped from $264 to $290 billion within 24 hours of Trump’s victory. Shares of his automaker Tesla have soared 20% since Trump beat Kamala Harris.

However, the crypto industry also had its own, albeit slightly more modest, tale of newfound riches. According to an estimate by Bloomberg, the net worth of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) rallied an estimated $12 billion from US election day to the following morning.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg said CZ was worth $38 billion. Today, it estimates him at $52.7 billion.

Forbes has its own, more generous methodology for estimating the Binance executive’s wealth. Although it does not provide a history of its estimates, as of today, Forbes claims he is worth $60.6 billion.

CZ’s wealth derives predominantly from his 90% equity in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange with more than 150 million registered users. Although the company is private and does not file publicly accessible financials, Bloomberg estimates the company generates $9.8 billion in annualized revenue from spot and derivatives transactions. 

CZ has also said he owns bitcoin and BNB personally.

Read more: A complete career timeline of Binance’s billionaire chief Changpeng Zhao

Analysts attributed CZ’s overnight enrichment to a rally in crypto prices following Trump’s win. With bitcoin up 7% this week and hundreds of billions of dollars added to global crypto market capitalizations, there were understandable increases in Binance’s equity value as a crypto-holding entity that benefits from the fortunes of its crypto-holding customers.

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Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has moved to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) amended lawsuit, claiming that the regulator can’t differentiate between crypto securities and Beanie Babies.

Binance and Zhao filed the motion to dismiss yesterday while alleging the SEC’s new filing “refuses to articulate any standard for courts, litigants, or market participants to know which crypto-asset transactions qualify as investment contracts, and which do not.” 

The SEC filed the lawsuit in June 2023 and amended it last month. It names Binance, BAM Trading Services Inc., and BAM Management US Holdings, alongside Zhao, as defendants. 

According to the motion to dismiss, winners and losers are being chosen “arbitrarily” by the SEC and “its non-test cannot differentiate securities from Beanie Babies at the pleading stage.” The filing then singles out five types of transactions that it believes the SEC has misinterpreted within its fresh allegations.

Read more: Binance founder CZ made over $25 million per day while in prison, report

The filing also wants to dismiss the SEC’s disgorgement request, calling it “meritless” and suggesting it would streamline the case by “avoiding burdensome and irrelevant discovery into Defendants’ finances.”  

It also asks the court to class the SEC’s request to limit Zhao’s participation in securities markets via BAM or Binance entities as “Moot.” Zhao was already banned from managing the Binance business as a part of his plea agreement.

Finally, its conclusion stated that, after 89 pages of court guidance, a hundred new allegations, and 16 months of expedited discovery, “the SEC’s amended claims still fail as a matter of law.”

“The problem is with the SEC’s legal theories, not the facts at its disposal,” it claimed.  

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Disgraced Binance billionaire Changpeng Zhao (CZ) could be leaving prison two days earlier than expected due to a federal rule that allows for an early exit if a prisoner’s release date falls on the weekend.

CZ is scheduled to be released from the RRM Long Beach halfway house in California on September 29 according to his inmate tracker.

However, a release rule under the US Code Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 3624, states, “If the date for a prisoner’s release falls on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a legal holiday at the place of confinement, the prisoner may be released by the Bureau on the last preceding weekday.”

Because it states he “may” be released early, the widely reported Friday release date is not set in stone. Users online also thought he was free when he was moved last month.

Read more: The rise and fall of Binance’s CZ

Zhao pleaded guilty last year for failing to “maintain an effective anti-money laundering program” and paid a $4 billion resolution. He was sentenced to four months. If he is freed today he will have served 116 days in prison. 

However, this may not spell the end of CZ’s legal troubles altogether. When he is released, he will have to face another lawsuit from three crypto traders who are accusing him and Binance of losing their funds through lax money laundering regulations.

Protos has reached out to RRM Long Beach for clarification and will update if we hear back. 

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Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has been moved from his prison to the RRM Long Beach halfway house in California and has not been freed, despite claims from excited X (formerly Twitter) users.  

CZ was initially being held at FCI Lompoc II prison, also in California. However, the federal inmate tracker was updated this week to reveal he has been moved to Long Beach. 

RRM Long Beach is classed as a ‘residential reentry management (RRM) field office,’ otherwise known as a ‘halfway house.’ Federal inmate communications provider InmateAID says it is a housing unit that assists inmates nearing their release date.

InmateAID says, “There is no security level other than voluntary compliance but there is a strict adherence to the rules of the house.”

This means that while CZ will technically be out of prison — RRM Long Beach is a Bureau of Prisons-administered facility rather than a prison per se — he will still be serving his sentence.

X users and numerous crypto firms, however, mistakenly interpreted the news as an early release for CZ. 

There was previously confusion about CZ’s release date, with many believing he was due to be freed on August 30. This date did correlate with his sentencing on April 30, but he wasn’t actually imprisoned until late May. 

This means that CZ still has 38 days of his sentence to serve and will actually be released on September 29. However, while this sentence might be drawing to a close, he’s now got another lawsuit to worry about.

Read more: Ryan Salame gets longer prison sentence than CZ

CZ and Binance have been accused by three crypto traders of losing their funds through lax money laundering regulations.

The suit, which was filed on August 16, claims that Binance’s failure to implement and maintain effective anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rules allowed criminals to move stolen funds to Binance so it could be laundered covertly.

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A lawsuit brought against former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao by three crypto investors who accuse the exchange of losing their funds through lax money laundering regulations, may put the “efficacy of blockchain analytics itself,” on trial.

This is according to Bill Hughes, Senior Counsel and Director of Global Regulatory Matters at Consensys, who also branded the suit’s key allegations as “dubious.”

Read more: Has CZ followed a Solana news account while in prison?

The lawsuit, which was filed on August 16 in the Western District Court Of Washington, accuses Binance and Zhao of “offering bad actors a way to remove the connection between the ledger and their digital assets so the digital assets would no longer be traceable.” 

It also claims that Binance’s failure to implement and maintain effective anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rules allowed criminals to move stolen funds to Binance so it could be laundered covertly.

It said that a “core attribute” of cryptocurrency should entail, “a permanent record of those transactions on the public blockchain and the chain-of-title of cryptocurrency is permanently and accurately traceable on the blockchain.”

According to Hughes, if the lawsuit goes onto discovery, and even dispositive pre-trial motions, “then the efficacy of blockchain analytics itself and on-chain asset recovery will be on trial!”

Read more: When is Binance founder CZ coming out of prison?

Binance lawsuit lawyers smell “blood in the water”

Hughes also highlighted the impressive credentials of the lawyers backing the lawsuit. “They have represented classes suing Facebook over consumer privacy violations, opioid manufacturers over… well… opioids, and Wells Fargo over fraudulent accounts. Their pockets are deep and they smell the blood in the water,” he said.

The three plaintiffs are launching the suit on their own behalf and for any other person or entity who lost their stolen crypto before it was moved to Binance. Between the three of them, over $1.5 million was stolen and sent to an account on Binance. The suit seeks trial by jury. 

Zhao is scheduled to be released from jail on September 29. He pleaded guilty to charges relating to the violation of the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering laws and was given a four-month sentence. He has paid a $50 million fine while Binance paid $4.3 billion.

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The X account of Binance’s former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has apparently become active again and has followed a Solana news account, despite Zhao being in prison.

Federal inmates are prohibited from using mobile phones. Indeed, for the most part, he seems to have stuck by this and has not posted anything since May 22.

His X account following @solananew, however, brings this into question and raises questions about how it could’ve happened. To begin with, Zhao may have been able to acquire a mobile phone in prison and log into his account. 

Prisoners smuggling phones into prison is a commonly reported issue. According to Forbes, it’s easier to smuggle a phone into a minimum or low-security prison, such as the FCI Lompoc II prison where Zhao is currently being held. 

Alternatively, Zhao may have given someone else access to his X account — although he’s not notified his followers that this is the case. The Federal Bureau of Prisons proposed criminalizing this act and is considering making it a high-risk violation alongside fighting and damaging property. 

It proposed to ban ‘accessing, using, or maintaining social media, or directing others to establish or maintain social media accounts on the inmate’s behalf.’

Read more: Ryan Salame gets longer prison sentence than CZ

Someone may have even hacked into his account, an act that happens too often on X. There may even be an electronic device, such as a computer or tablet, already on-site that he could’ve logged onto.

Zhao’s last tweet congratulated Binance’s current CEO Richard Teng on a pizza he made for Bitcoin Pizza Day. He’s scheduled to be released on September 29.

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This week, some Binance fans took to X (formerly Twitter) to share their excitement that the exchange’s founder, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), was scheduled to complete his prison sentence on August 30. Unfortunately for them — and CZ — a quick fact-check reveals that he won’t actually be freed by that date.

On April 30, US District Judge Richard Jones sentenced CZ to four months in a Seattle prison, recommending Seatac, a prison and administrative security federal detention center.

Many observers apparently believed that CZ entered Seatac that same day, which would indeed have made August 30 his release date. However, CZ’s lawyers from prestigious law firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Davis Wright Tremaine, and Latham & Watkins worked diligently to ensure that he earned a few extra weeks of freedom. 

Read more: No, Changpeng Zhao isn’t in prison yet — here’s why

As of May 16, CZ still hadn’t entered the custody of the Bureau of Prisons and it wasn’t until a few days later that CZ, his lawyers, probation, and pretrial services offices settled on a late-May entry date.

A current check of the Bureau of Prisons database also shows that CZ isn’t at Seatac but is instead incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution Lompoc II, a low-security federal prison three hours north of Los Angeles.

When will CZ (actually) leave prison?

Unless CZ’s situation changes, he won’t be leaving FCI Lompoc II on August 30. Rather, his current release date is scheduled for September 29.

Read more: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison

As Protos covered last month, the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantees due process to all persons within the US, including non-citizens like CZ. This suite of guarantees includes all of the idiosyncrasies of CZ’s prison sentence, including his entry date almost one month after sentencing, his lower-security, non-Seatac facility, and earlier delays amid court proceedings.

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Ryan Salame, the former co-chief exec of FTX Digital Markets, has been sentenced to 90 months in prison for conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter. Salame has also been ordered to make $6 million in forfeiture and $5 million in restitution.

Salame was directly involved in the usage of the ‘North Dimension’ entity to aid in maintaining access to bank accounts for FTX, despite it not being appropriately licensed to serve as a money transmitter.

He was also instrumental in FTX’s political influence scheme, working with Sam Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh to make hundreds of unlawful political donations. Additionally, FTX Digital Markets made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of payments to Michelle Bond, a failed congressional candidate and romantic partner to Salame. Bond additionally received donations to her campaign from FTX US.

Salame’s sentence weighs in at significantly less than that of his colleague Bankman-Fried, who was recently sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Read more: We read the 230-page investigation into FTX so you don’t have to

However, Salame’s sentence is more than 20 times longer than the recent punishment handed to former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was sentenced to just four months in prison for failure to register as a money services business and failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Zhao had agreed to a plea deal and cooperated with the prosecution.

Salame may be able to benefit from the 2018 First Step Act, which allows for non-violent felony offenders to potentially be released after serving half of their sentence.

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Due to some formalities in the criminal justice system, a world-class team of lawyers, and Fifth Amendment protections of due process, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao isn’t yet in prison despite receiving a four-month sentence.

On April 30, 2024, a US district judge in Seattle sentenced Zhao to four months at Seatac, an administrative security federal detention center and prison. According to the judge’s signed judgment, Zhao “shall surrender for service of sentence as notified by the Probation or Pretrial Services Office.” Those offices have not yet notified Zhao that he must enter that California prison.

Possibilities for sentenced criminals who don’t immediately go to prison

According to federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 3585(a), a criminal’s sentence begins when that person is ‘received in custody awaiting transportation to, or voluntarily surrenders to, the official detention facility at which her sentence is to be served.’ Although that sentence can begin immediately on the day of sentencing, there are three possibilities for delay.

1. A judge might force a defendant to first surrender to the US Marshalls, who may then escort or later notify the criminal of when to physically go to prison.
2. A judge might authorize the Probation or Pretrial Services Office to notify the defendant of their prison entry date.
3. The judge might allow a defendant to voluntarily go to prison. Judges usually reserve this option for defendants with the shortest sentence or the lowest likelihood of fleeing.

Zhao received the second judgment type. Because he wasn’t sentenced to a multi-year prison sentence, US Marshalls didn’t immediately take him into custody. Instead, the judge gave Zhao the second-most lenient path. He awaits notice by the Probation or Pretrial Services Office.

So, why has the office not yet notified Zhao to go to Seatac?

By law, the Bureau of Prisons is required to contemplate the following items prior to designating a criminal to prison. If the Bureau of Prisons doesn’t complete this analysis, a criminal’s lawyers can appeal to the court for a reduced sentence on due process grounds.

• The resources of the facility contemplated
• The nature and circumstances of the offense
• The offender’s history and characteristics
• Any statement by the court that imposed the sentence recommending a type of facility as appropriate
• Any pertinent policy statement issued by the US Sentencing Commission

In short, the ultimate reason Zhao isn’t in prison yet is because the US Constitution guarantees due process. The Fifth Amendment provides this protection to all persons within the US, including non-citizen occupants. This simple guarantee and its extensive, multi-century interpretive guidance by the US court system, provides redress for anyone ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’

Read more: 3AC founder Su Zhu says prison ‘good for you’ after four-month stay

Not obvious enough to complete statutory work before sentencing

Some criminals go immediately to prison on the day of their sentencing. These are typically straightforward proceedings when it is obvious that the criminal will serve a sentence. When it’s nearly guaranteed beforehand, the Bureau of Prisons is able to complete its statutory obligations before the sentencing hearing and know, in advance, whether a particular cell within a particular prison is appropriate for immediate occupancy by that defendant.

Before Zhao’s hearing, however, no one actually knew for certain whether the US District Judge would sentence him to prison. There were last-minute pleadings, hundreds of letters, and even secondary markets for gambling on the length of his sentence.

Because of this uncertainty, there was no reason for the Bureau of Prisons to complete its exhaustive, statutory obligations of double-checking the appropriateness of a particular cell at Seatac for CZ.

Read more: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison

Zhao having seven criminal defense lawyers couldn’t hurt

Moreover, Zhao employed a remarkable ensemble of lawyers who rank among the best money could buy. His counsel consists of not one, not three, not five, but seven lawyers plus untold paralegal and on-call staff across three world-class law firms: Latham & Watkins, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and Davis Wright Tremaine.

Without a doubt, high-powered lawyers were able to find every avenue possible to delay his prison term commencement so that Zhao would have time to fully prepare.

To be clear, Zhao will go to prison when the Probation or Pretrial Services Office of the US Bureau of Prisons notifies him. It’s been been conducting statutory reviews of the appropriateness of Seatac to Zhao’s individual circumstances to avoid any legal redress for failure to provide Constitutional due process.

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Changpeng Zhao, the founder of industry-leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has been sentenced to prison for four months.

This sentence follows his early guilty plea for charges related to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Binance additionally agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement related to its failure to register as a money services business (MSB) and failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.

Zhao’s personal testimony at the hearing emphasized his sorrow for his actions and involved him taking responsibility for his mistakes while he led Binance. He also mentioned that his current focus is a ‘platform for online education for underprivileged kids.’

The four-month sentence is less than the three years recommended by prosecutors in their sentencing memo and more than the no jail time recommended by Zhao’s defense. 

Changpeng Zhao’s sentencing is also significantly less than the recent 25-year sentence handed down to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried did not plead and was convicted on multiple felony charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and money laundering. 

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