CZ pleads guilty to money laundering, pays $4.3 billion in fines and steps down as CEO of Binance

TL; DR

• Regulators such as the US Department of Justice have apparently been investigating Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ) for years.

• We found out a few hours ago that CZ plans to plead guilty to violating criminal US anti-money laundering regulations when he appeared in court next Tuesday.

• …but the markets seem to be doing well (for now).

Full story

Wow. OK.

That headline isn’t great!

But somehow, at the time of writing, the market hasn’t really responded. Which begs the question…

Did we just dodge a Black Swan event?

For those of you playing at home, here’s what you missed:

Over the past year, there has been a lot of fear in the proverbial stomach of the crypto space: the fear that something bad would happen to Binance (the largest crypto exchange in the world).

Something very ‘FTX-y’…

But as more and more time passed without any incident, the fear increased internal The threats to Binance’s business slowly started to diminish… at which point everyone turned their concerns to potential external hazards.

(Specific from regulatory authorities).

Supervisory bodies such as the US Department of Justice, which apparently had been investigating Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ) for years.

This is what we discovered a few hours ago:

1. CZ plans to plead guilty to violating US anti-money laundering regulations when he appears in court next Tuesday.

2. He has apparently agreed to step down as CEO of Binance

3. Binance will pay $4.3 billion in fines

4. This could potentially allow the exchange to continue operating in the US

As we said at the top: This is not great news!

…but the markets seem to be doing well (for now).

We’re not sure why, but if we had to guess, it would go like this:

The headlines read “settlement,” not “loss at trial.”

And the markets are quite attuned to crypto companies settling with US regulators at this point.

Let’s hope it stays that way!