On November 21, 2023, The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced settlement agreements with Binance Holdings Limited (“Binance”), the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and Changpeng Zhao (affectionally known as “CZ” in the cryptocurrency industry), the exchange’s founder and Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”).  Under these agreements, Binance and CZ each agreed to plead guilty to a variety of offenses in order to resolve the ongoing investigations.  Binance plead guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and a variety of sanctions violations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”).  This guilty plea was a resolution of investigations conducted by the DOJ, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”).  CZ, meanwhile, plead guilty to related violations including failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (“AML”) program in violation of the BSA. 

In this Episode, Matt Stankiewicz and Michael Volkov discuss the Binance settlement and the implications for the cryptocurrency industry.