Binance founder CZ sentenced to prison. BTC price lost $5,000 on Tuesday

Canadian billionaire Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, was sentenced on Tuesday in the US to 4 months in prison for tolerating money laundering practices through the crypto exchange.

The sentence handed down by Judge Richard Jones, in Seattle, is much milder than the 3-year prison sentence requested by US prosecutors, reports Reuters. CZ’s lawyers had asked that he not be sentenced to prison.

The judge appreciated the fact that Zhao took responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty, AP writes. Instead, the magistrate expressed displeasure that Binance’s founder ignored US anti-money laundering banking requirements in order not to slow down the company’s explosive growth.

“Regardless of wealth, power or status, no one is above the laws of the United States or immune from investigation,” the judge told Zhao, according to the AP.

Zhao pleaded guilty in November to one count of failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program on the Binance platform. He then stepped down as CEO of Binance and chairman of BinanceUS, its American subsidiary. CZ also agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle the allegations.

US prosecutors accused Zhao of looking the other way as criminals traded on the crypto platform that supported child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

Changpeng Zhao he was born in China, in 1977, and left at a young age, together with his family, to Canada, where he also went to college (at McGill University in Montreal). “CZ” founded Binance in 2017 at the age of 40. He currently has an estimated fortune of $33 billion, according to Forbes.com.

On Tuesday, the day of the US verdict, the largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, lost $5,000 in about 8 hours, its price falling from $64,562 to a low of $59,163 for the day, according to data from Coinmarketcap . In the same interval, the trading volume over the last 24 hours increased from $27 billion to $35 billion. Subsequently, BTC rose above the $60,000 threshold in the early hours of May 1, 2024.