Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, quit after admitting to breaking the law by moving money.
“I messed up, and I need to own up to it.” He wrote on X, “This is best for our community, for Binance, and for me.”
The Justice Department informed Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, that it had to pay $4.3bn (£3.4bn) in fines and losses.
It said that Binance had helped people get around restrictions all over the world.
“Binance enabled nearly $900 million in transactions between US and Iranian users and facilitated millions of dollars in transactions between US users and users in Syria and in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk” , said a spokesperson.
Binance, which is based in the Cayman Islands, is the biggest place in the world to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
They also said that the exchange made it easy for terrorists and crooks to move money.
There were straight transfers of about $106 million in bitcoin from Hydra to Binance wallets between August 2017 and April 2022. “Hydra was a well-known Russian dark web market that criminals often used to buy and sell illegal goods and services,” the department said.
Binance must now tell federal authorities about any behaviour that seems fishy.
The Justice Department stated.
“This will advance our criminal investigations into malicious cyber activity and terrorism fundraising, including the use of cryptocurrency exchanges to support groups such as Hamas,”
Richard Teng, who used to be in charge of area markets, is now the CEO.
Yang Peng Zhao wrote on X that it was “not easy to let go emotionally.”
He is one of the most important people in crypto.
In March, regulators in the US tried to ban Binance because they said the company was working illegally in the country.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued the company, saying it tried to do business in the US without fully registering with the government.
It said that Binance had broken many US financial laws, including rules meant to stop people from moving money.
At the time, Binance supported the way it did business.
It said it had made “significant investments” to make sure that US users weren’t using the site. For example, it blocked users who were known to be US citizens or residents or who had a US phone number.
Another suit was filed against the company in June.
It was charged with a “web of deception” by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The agency said that in order to stay in business in the US, the trade platform and its founder, Zhao, broke the rules that were meant to protect investors.
At that time, Binance said it would “vigorously” protect itself.
After the sudden failure of Binance competitor FTX last year, the US government promised to use existing laws to stop fraud and other problems in the crypto business.
This month, the founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was found guilty of theft.
