Changpeng Zhao is a free man — and the markets are celebrating.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump pardoned the former Binance CEO, who served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 after pleading guilty to violating US banking laws.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Under Zhao’s leadership, Binance failed to prevent criminals and sanctioned entities from laundering billions in dirty money, according to court filings.

The pardon sent tokens associated with Zhao, who goes by the acronym CZ, soaring.

BNB ($1,138.38), the native cryptocurrency of Binance’s BNB Chain, surged by more than 5% to $1,123 in the hours following the announcement. Aster, a decentralised exchange backed by CZ’s family office, jumped double digits to $1.07.

“Incredible news of CZ’s pardon today. We thank President Trump for his leadership and for his commitment to make the US the crypto capital of the world,” Binance spokesperson Jessica Jung told DL News in a statement.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency.”

That war, she added, is now “over.”

Aster connection

One of the big winners today was Aster, the decentralised perpetual futures exchange backed by YZi Labs.

YZi Labs is a family office run by Zhao and his long-term partner Yi He, a fellow Binance co-founder.

Aster has been competing aggressively with Hyperliquid, the sector’s biggest player. In September, however, Aster briefly overtook Hyperliquid in daily trading volume after launching a token airdrop campaign.

But that success was met with scrutiny.

DefiLlama, a DL News sister company, delisted Aster’s perpetual trade volume data earlier this month. Pseudonymous DefiLlama head 0xngmi cited his inability to verify whether wash trading was inflating the platform’s reported volume.

“Aster is reporting very, very high perp volumes — to the tune of $100 billion,” 0xngmi told DL News earlier this month.

“So it’s a bit suspicious.”

Trump’s crypto ties

Pardon aside, Trump has gone to great lengths to deepen his ties to the crypto industry.

Earlier this year, his family’s crypto empire was already valued at $16 billion. It spanned memecoins, DeFi, stablecoins, Bitcoin mining, NFTs, and an investment business dubbed Truth.Fi.

And that’s just on the commercial side.

In the political arena, meanwhile, Trump has been adamant on naming key crypto allies to top policy positions.

The president has also signed executive orders cheered by the crypto industry and pushed for crypto-friendly legislation. He signed the Genius Act in July but a more ambitious bill dubbed the Clarity Act has stalled in the Senate.

Pedro Solimano is DL News’ Buenos Aires-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.