This Thanksgiving week is wild. The OpenAI drama is still on-going. Today we have another bombshell. CZ steps down as CEO of Binance, pleads guilty to violating criminal U.S. anti-money-laundering law and pays a $50M fine. Binance also pleads guilty and agrees to pay $4.3 billion to settle criminal charges by DoJ and civil charges by regulators. CZ will come to Seattle this afternoon to enter the plea deal. He made a Twitter post this morning as shown below.
It appears that CZ won’t go to jail or only serves a very light 18-months-or-less sentence. CZ handled this so much better than SBF. After committing all the crimes and admitting wrongdoing, CZ gets to walk away with his billions and lives a comfortable and peaceful life. In comparison, SBF looks like an idiot. SBF went through the disastrous trial and is looking at a potential life sentence. I have mixed feelings about CZ/Binance’s plea deal and feel the consequence should have been harsher. At the same time, Binance might finally get its act together and make the world’s largest crypto exchange safe and compliant for millions of customers. My question now is when the big Tether grift will be addressed. Tether/USDT’s current market cap is $88B. It’s hard to believe they actually have $88B US dollars in the bank. When are the regulators going to act and stop Tether from counterfeiting US dollars? It’s getting out of control.