President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, the Hill reported.

The White House cast the crypto mogul as the target of overzealous prosecution by the Biden administration, which cracked down on the crypto industry.

Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering on his platform for profit. He stepped down from Binance, which agreed to pay a massive $4 billion settlement with the DOJ.

“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.

Four months in prison

A judge sentenced Zhao to four months in prison last year. Biden prosecutors sought a three-year sentence, a punishment Trump's White House called excessive.

Binance celebrated Trump's pardon and thanked him for "his commitment to make the US the crypto capital of the world."

“Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice,” Zhao wrote in a post on X.

Biden's "war on crypto"

Trump's pardon signals the Biden-era "war on crypto" has ended, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” she continued. “The Biden Administration sought to imprison Mr. Zhao for three years, a sentence so outside Sentencing Guidelines that even the Judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career.”

“These actions by the Biden Administration severely damaged the United States’ reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation,” Leavitt added. “The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over."

Pardon brings controversy

Critics have blasted the pardon as corrupt, pointing to ties between Zhao and the Trump family's lucrative crypto venture.

"First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

“Then he boosted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon,” she said. “Today, Donald Trump did his part and pardoned him. If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption in pending market structure legislation, it owns this lawlessness.”

When asked why he pardoned Zhao, Trump said "a lot of people" had vouched for him.

“A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump said. “And so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”