After serving a four-month prison sentence in the US, Changpeng Zao, "CZ" to friends, was released Friday. CZ served time inside and paid $50 million in fines (for those who think that's a lot: it's apparently barely enough for decent office space for a startup in San Francisco these days) because as CEO of Binance, he wasn't doing a very good job of fighting money laundering.
For anyone working in the blockchain world, it was no surprise that CZ would encounter the long arm of the U.S. Justice Department. In March 2022, I wrote about it.
What is often forgotten in this regard is that Binance was unimaginably fast and creative in product development. As I wrote at the time:
"It is to be hoped for the crypto industry that Binance succeeds in growing into a serious global market player. The company has always been very innovative and had a speed and execution power that competitors like U.S.-based Coinbase and Kraken looked at admiringly. As an outsider, it is probably impossible to imagine the enormous obstacles Binance has managed to circumvent in growing from China into an international crypto powerhouse. The question is whether the need for reform and alignment with international anti-money laundering policies gets through to CZ."
We know how the last remark worked out, but in the meantime the policy at Binance has been changed and CZ is no longer its CEO. It is to be hoped for the industry that the company's innovativeness lives on now that it is playing by all the rules, because the company is an exceptional and underrated innovator. It will also be fascinating to follow what CZ himself will do, as it does not strike me as a man who is going to spend the rest of his life sitting on the waterfront with a fishing rod.