It's been a wild say of crypto news with Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announcing that he has stepped down as CEO of Binance. The news broke as part of a major $4 billion settlement between United States agencies and the cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
The announcement from CZ capped a years long investigations by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and others into anti-money laundering violations and sanctions violations. The comes on the heels of FTX's Sam being charged for his crypto related crimes.
Unlike Sam, CZ admitted that he made mistakes, and he must take responsibility and that's why he is stepping down. He followed these comments with saying that this is best move for the community, for Binance, and for himself. Binance said it would take responsibility for not having appropriate compliance controls.
As part of the settlement, CZ pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering and sanctions violations brought by the Department of Justice. Additionally, Binance settled charges with the DOJ and Commodities Futures Trading Commission; the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which will give the Treasury Department access to Binance’s books and records under the terms of a five-year monitorship. The settlement also comes with a $3.4 billion penalty to FinCEN and $968 million to OFAC, as well as compliance requirements and monitoring for a period of five years!
Bitcoin (BTC) is down 2.46% at the time of writing this article. We will have to see the short and long term fallout from this news...
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Theres so much news involving crypto nowadays. At least he is admitting his mistake. This can only be good for cryptocurrency !
This took me by surprise I'm still trying to guess what this will do to markets. Obviously it's been negative to start but long term it might be good.
It's going to be a bit bad I think. At the very least this is just going to make things harder. Especially once they end up rewriting all of the regulations. Thanks a lot SEC!
Yeah they really don't want a system to compete with the dollar. That is very clear.
Another day, another turn in the market, this is going to be massive.
It's getting old, right??
Just as the bull run was around the corner and now we have this.
Very good timing on the regulators. They have been trying to kill crypto for some time.
How bad this thing can impact crypto? what's your opinion?
this is not the right time for this kind of news.
It doesn't sound too bad and at least it's not too serious. Outside of him stepping down, I think he just took what he could get and move on with his life. it sucks to see the price drop but it happens.