The Guardian
So apparently yesterday Trump pardoned CZ, for whatever reason, for crimes that he already served time for. Why do this? Well I guess he's no longer a convicted felon now, so that's something.
It is also yet another sign of the Trump administration’s shift toward easing scrutiny on the crypto industry, at a time when Trump and his family are building their own multibillion-dollar crypto empire.
Is it safe to assume that Trump and his cronies are somehow getting something out of a deal like this? Certainly it would be naïve to discount the possibility, but thus far it's difficult to pin down anything definitive. Of course Trump denies even really understanding who he's just pardoned let alone any kind of shady deal that may or may not have been made.
“Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump told a reporter who asked about the decision. “They say what he did was not even a crime. It wasn’t a crime. That he was persecuted by the Biden administration, and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
While I do agree that the Biden Administration's stance against our entire industry was wildly inappropriate and likely quite illegal, it's also difficult to take a guy like Trump seriously just because he happens to say something that I might agree with at face value. Then again I'm fairly certain CZ and Binance are guilty of several high profile crimes. Whether those crimes can actually be proven in a fair court of law is another question entirely.
When we think about some of the things that CZ actually did... I mean he did tip us off in advance right before FTX completely imploded, and what did people do? They blamed CZ for SBFs crimes that netted him almost a life sentence in prison. Meanwhile CZ served his time in like 4 months. The moral of this story? If you're going to steal from people and be shady as hell you better not go broke. Can't pay the fine? Straight to jail. Binance paid over $4B which is obviously insane and higher than the penalties imposed on mainstream banks inside the country.
Of course all of us here on Hive may remember CZ quite a bit differently. When Justin Sun did a hostile takeover on the network he hijacked investor funds and powered up all the exchanges to bust him out of soft-fork prison we built for him. CZ feigned ignorance during this time, and then turned around and gave the first Binance powerdown to Justin Sun... so yeah clearly he's a huge corporate fuckup on one or more levels. Rules for thee but not for me, peasants!
Binance has nevertheless played an important part in the growth of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto enterprise. When Binance accepted a $2bn transaction from an Emirati investment fund earlier this year, it agreed to have the funds be paid in a cryptocurrency developed by World Liberty Financial – a move that legitimized the Trump family’s digital currency and was highly lucrative for the firm.
There's no use pretending that there isn't at least some connection with Trump's crypto dealings and Binance. After all even if there wasn't anything definitive to point out: Binance touches a piece of almost everything around here. Ironically now that they're potentially captured by the Biden Administration that could give the Trump Administration more leverage over this situation than we realize.
The centralization of the BNB network itself has always been somewhat of a punchline. That being said I've always described BNB as more of a stock 2.0 than any type of actual crypto. The fact that it's EVM compatible makes it exponentially easier to integrate into the cryptosphere. The price action of the BNB token itself has always remained solid since launch in 2017. Either crypto is in an infancy or a failed experiment considering how difficult it is to actually distinguish BNB from another more "decentralized" network. Still early?
“As the Administration loosens oversight on an industry where bad actors have violated money laundering and sanctions law, it is not surprising that Binance, which has admitted to prioritizing its own growth and profits over compliance with US law, would seek to roll back the oversight required by its settlement,” the senators wrote.
Yeah that's literally every corporation in existence. These entities are in it to make money, not follow compliance rules. The only logistical reason to follow the rules is if you can make more money following them than not. Just ask the banks that habitually break the rules but keep making money because the fine is smaller than the financial gain.
Yes, there are a lot of bad actors in crypto.
That's a rule that applies to the entire financial sector.
That's also kind of the entire point of crypto. Rather than rely on some centralized nation-state to enforce the law under the threat of violence... we have embarked on a journey to try and build something different: networks that regulate themselves and do not require outside intervention to operate.
Anyone who's been around for even a couple years already knows just how messy that goal can be. Pump.Fun enabled basically anyone to create a memecoin for degenerates to gamble on before inevitably getting rug pulled. Why these coins weren't organized in a way that makes rug-pulling impossible is beyond me. I guess degens don't care about such petty details.
Conclusion
CZ got a pardon and Binance oversight may be getting rolled back... shortly after Trump completely wiped out all long leverage across the board on Oct 10th by threatening to tariff China 100%. Is this really as shady as it looks? Maybe crime season is still in full effect after all.