Chengpeng Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange we all love - Binance, was arrested on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, on money laundering charges. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Binance failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, which allowed criminals to use the platform to launder money.
Zhao has agreed to plead guilty to the charges and has resigned from his position as CEO of Binance. The arrest of Zhao and the charges against Binance are a significant blow to the entire cryptocurrency industry - ESPECIALLY at the beginning of a bull-run... Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, and its failure to comply with anti-money laundering regulations could have resulted in worse legal action so we should be thankful for the facts we've got right now.
The charges against Binance are also likely to increase scrutiny of other cryptocurrency exchanges. Exchanges will need to take steps to ensure that they are complying with anti-money laundering regulations, or they could face similar scrutiny, not from the government, but rather their own customers and the general public.
I don't think binance is big enough to be able to deal with a 4.3 billion dollar fine. Not to mention losing the CEO that grew the company....How will this effect you? I personally have just removed all my funds from Binance.
Thankfully, no trouble there...but...what now?
Where do I go for my trades? I can't use kraken because they're being sued and might collapse..why does this keep happening?
I never held money in FTX but this is giving me strong flashbacks to FTX. I bet the only reason chengpeng took the plead deal was because of what happened to sam bankman fried. He was likely frightened by the possibility of spending years in jail.
Chengpeng is worth around 10 billion dollars, so he'd still be a billionaire after paying off this fine. He'd be well off financially so that surely isn't a problem, it's just extremely surprising how nobody saw it coming. It sprung out of nowhere.
Closing statement: Can't wait to see what happens to the BnB ecosystem...yikes. Not to mention what it's already doing to the tokens most of us hold - like bitcoin and ethreum. They're losing value insanely quickly.
