FINANCE

Trump’s Crypto Pivot Puts Binance’s Zhao Back in Play

Published: Sep. 5, 2025 4:47 a.m. GMT+8

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Zhao Changpeng

World Liberty Financial’s WLFI, a new cryptocurrency token backed by the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, made its debut Sept. 1 on major exchanges, marking a turning point in Washington’s approach to digital assets. The listing briefly boosted the Trump family’s wealth by more than $7 billion and underscored a sharp reversal of fortunes in the industry, particularly for figures such as Zhao Changpeng, founder of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest crypto exchange.

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What Happened When

1977：: Zhao Changpeng was born in Jiangsu province, China.

2005：: Zhao founded a high-frequency trading systems firm in Shanghai.

2013：: Zhao discovered Bitcoin and became the third founding employee of Blockchain.info.

2014：: Zhao became chief technology officer at OKCoin.

June 2017：: Zhao launched Binance and raised $15 million through an initial coin offering (ICO).

August 2017：: Binance held a promotional event with TRON that sold out in 53 seconds.

September 2017：: China banned ICOs and fiat-to-crypto trading; Binance pivoted to crypto-to-crypto transactions.

Early 2018：: Binance had become one of the world’s largest exchanges.

2018：: Forbes dubbed Zhao the “richest person in cryptocurrency,” with a net worth exceeding $1.39 billion.

December 2021：: Zhao’s net worth reached $94.1 billion, making him the wealthiest individual of Chinese descent.

2023：: Commodity Futures Trading Commission and SEC filed lawsuits against Binance and Zhao.

November 2023：: Zhao pleaded guilty in federal court to violating anti-money-laundering laws, stepped down as Binance CEO, paid a $50 million fine, and Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion penalty.

April 30, 2024：: Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison.

September 2024：: World Liberty Financial project was founded as a decentralized finance protocol.

January 2025：: Trump issued an executive order to promote cryptocurrencies and curb excessive regulation.

January 17, 2025：: Just before his second inauguration, Trump launched the TRUMP coin.

February 2025：: SEC moved to pause its lawsuit against Binance.

March 2025：: MGX (Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund) invested $2 billion into Binance, settled with WLFI project’s dollar-pegged stablecoin USD1.

March 2025：: Speculation intensified over possible financial ties between Trump family and Binance’s U.S. arm.

May 5, 2025：: Zhao disclosed on a podcast that he had applied for a presidential pardon two weeks earlier.

September 1, 2025：: World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, backed by the Trump family, debuted on major exchanges, boosting Trump family’s wealth by more than $7 billion. Binance processed nearly $20 billion in trades this day.

AI generated, for reference only