CZ Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering, Pays $4.3B in Fines, and Steps Down as CEO of Binance
TL;DR
Regulatory bodies like the U.S. Department of Justice, have apparently been conducting an investigation into Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ), for yeeears.
We found out, just a few hours ago that CZ plans to plead guilty to violating criminal U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements, when he appears in court next Tuesday.
...but the markets seem to be handling well (for now).
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Wow. Ok.
That headline ain't great!
Yet somehow, as of this writing, the market hasn't really reacted. Which begs the question...
Did we just dodge a Black Swan event?
For those of you playing at home, here's what you've missed:
Over the past year or so, there's been a knot of fear sitting in the crypto space's proverbial stomach - a fear that something bad might happen to Binance (the world's largest crypto exchange).
Something very 'FTX-y'...
But as more and more time passed without any incident, the fear of internal threats to Binance's business slowly began to subside...at which point, everyone turned their worries to potential external threats.
(Specifically from regulatory bodies).
Regulatory bodies like the U.S. Department of Justice, which had apparently been conducting an investigation into Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ), for yeeears.
Here's what we found out, just a few hours ago:
CZ plans to plead guilty to violating criminal U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements, when he appears in court next Tuesday.
He has apparently agreed to step down as CEO of Binance
Binance will pay $4.3 billion in fines
This would potentially allow the exchange to keep operating in the US
As we said at the top: this ain't great news!
...but the markets seem to be handling well (for now).
We're not sure why, but if we had to make guess - it'd go like this:
The headlines are reading 'settlement,' not 'loss at trial.'
And the markets are pretty well attuned to crypto companies settling with US regulatory bodies at this point.
Let's hope things stay that way!