Cryptocurrency is in a rather unusual place, one that is either a golden opportunity to buy the dip or a sign of the start of a decline, depending on which economists and experts you ask.
Either way, it is an exciting time to take advantage of an easy-to-use crypto conversion platform and start investing.
According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin peaked on 7th October 2025, and nearly a month later, it has on several occasions dipped below the $100,000 price floor that has been so critical for the confidence of the currency.
It is far from time to panic unless your investment play relies on telephone-digit valuations, but the market has been somewhat unsettled in recent days.
One aspect is overall market conditions and concerns about a potential AI bubble four times the size of the Great Recession of 2008 and 17 times the size of the dotcom, as well as the shutdown of the United States government and its effect on the economy.
Amidst this concern and flight to safety is one of the more unusual cryptocurrency stories of the past few months, one that sends a rather unclear message about the state of the market in 2025.
The Unusual Pardon
As reported by The Guardian, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance, was pardoned by the President of the United States after being sentenced to four months in prison and a fine of $50m for his personal liability in money laundering violations when he ran Binance, who also was fined $4.3bn.
The pardon itself, whilst clearly beneficial for Binance by removing a major barrier that stops them from operating in the United States, has been subject to some scrutiny and suspicion both inside and outside of the cryptocurrency world.
What has not helped was an interview President Trump had with Norah O’Donnell on the TV show 60 Minutes, where he claimed that he had “no idea who he is”, according to The Guardian.
This has led to allegations that either he is lying about his connections to CZ or that he filed for a pardon to help “a lot of very good people” without knowing the extent of the charges he pled guilty to.
What has strengthened this was reports by the Wall Street Journal that members of the Trump family, via their World Liberty Financial organisation, had discussed the possibility of buying a partial ownership of Binance’s US subsidiary.
This has been denied by CZ himself, but Binance did accept a transaction using a WLF cryptocurrency token worth $2bn, providing enough liquidity to legitimise it.
Multiple US senators published a joint statement when the transaction was made, expressing their concerns about potential conflicts of interest and a risk of an abuse of White House power to enrich the President and his family personally, lending credence to allegations of lying.
It is also possible that the President was unaware of the scale of the crimes CZ and Binance were convicted of, and the role they played in crypto’s long road to legitimacy.
The Binance Convictions
Following the bankruptcy of FTX and the conviction of its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, Binance became the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, but less than two years later, the company was also the subject of criminal convictions.
Binance admitted to charges of acting as an unlicensed money transmitter, violating sanctions and not having adequate measures to prevent money laundering on the platform at the time.
The issue with being the most popular is that it also means that the platform faces the most bad actors; a 2024 study highlighted that Binance was the exchange most commonly used in so-called ‘pig butchering’ scam, where victims increasingly send money to others under false pretences before having the money stolen afterwards.
Binance also fired several internal investigators after they accused a VIP client of market manipulation, operating pump and dump schemes (raising the value of a token artificially before selling off at a peak, leaving holders out of pocket) and wash trading (buying and selling the same tokens to create the illusion of popularity and high valuations).
Binance was also convicted of failing to report over 100,000 transactions involving suspicious activity, sales of illegal goods, transactions involving extremist groups and criminal organisations.
As part of the plea deal, CZ stepped down, replaced by Richard Teng, and Binance was banned from operating in the United States, as well as in other countries such as the United Kingdom.
Whether this will change with the pardoning of Mr Zhao is uncertain, but for some investors, it may stir unwelcome memories of the less regulated era of cryptocurrency trading that most do not wish to return to.