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The US Seattle federal court made a verdict on Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) on April 30 local time. This is different from the 36-month sentence pursued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The presiding judge RichardRichard A. Jones set his sentence to four months in prison on charges of CZ (or Binance)’s actions violated relevant provisions of the U.S. Bank Secretariat Act.
Subsequently, CZ stated on the social platform that he would serve his sentence and would focus on the field of education in the future.At the same time, he said the importance of compliance to virtual currency exchanges, and the close attention received by Binance and the security of user funds during the (prosecuted by the US Department of Justice) incident are of great importance to (CZ obtaining a light sentence)important.最后，CZ重申要保护用户。
The last sentence “Protect users!” has to remind people of the FTX founder SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried) who was sentenced to 25 years on March 28 this year. The reason is that he fraudulently embezzled customer funds, resulting in more than $8 billion.loss.
It seems that CZ’s experience is not too bad, but the story is not over. Lawyer Liu sorted out the demands of different American law enforcement agencies for CZ or Binance, which may allow us to better understand what virtual currency exchanges may face法律困境：
Some friends will think that CZ’s experience is quite like a “pig killing” in the United States, and some articles are even full of gloating between the lines. Liu Lu thinks that these views are superficial (of course, this does not mean that my point of view must be profound)The encounter between Binance or CZ is essentially a stress response from centralized government agencies to the application of decentralized technology in finance, especially currency.
Virtual currency exchanges have to compromise when facing a conservative and powerful government.But what is embarrassing is that the virtual currency exchange itself is a typical centralized institution, which runs contrary to the original intention of decentralization of virtual currency.Although its existence is reasonable at the moment, for example, it can provide great convenience for virtual currency transactions between users.But it is essentially hard to escape the rut of centralization, CZ is not always flawless, and Binance is not the “flower protector” in the encryption circle, but CZ is not like SBF – touching too many red lines.
From the perspective of regulators, whether it is the DOJ, SEC, CFTC of the United States, or the local jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, protective jurisdiction, and universal jurisdiction in China’s criminal law, state legislators and law enforcement officers can always find a basis to prove their behavior.的正当性。In other words, at least in the eyes of many politicians, politics is the law of law, and law is the tool of politics (but Lawyer Liu still firmly believes in the law!).
The United States accused Binance of violating its Bank Secrecy Act anti-money laundering regulations, such as not informing U.S. authorities of nearly 100,000 transactions made by Hamas, “ISIS” and terrorist organization Kaida using Binance; andLimit $890 million in transactions between US users and Iranian users; in addition, Binance has millions of transactions between users “including Cuba, Syria and Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk in Ukraine”交易中赚取了巨额费用。(Quoted from “Judging Zhao Changpeng | Prism”, author Wen Shijun)
(The CZ trial pictures circulated online, delete if infringement)
According to some U.S. lawyers, the way the Bank Secrecy Act applies in CZ cases is not common in U.S. judiciary.Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the CZ case was fabricated.
However, as mentioned earlier, the author’s speculation is not to blame a certain government, because we cannot guarantee that CZ will be imprisoned less than four months in other countries, and may even be punished more severely.What the author wants to say is that it is difficult for the virtual currency exchange and the decentralized virtual currency represented by it to be accepted by all governments in a short period of time.However, some people expressed optimism instead – as the global financial overlord, the United States does not seem to have committed a desperate move against the “hegemon” of the virtual currency world. Does that mean that the possibility of virtual currency being accepted by the “mainstream world” is increasing?The bigger?
But for truly decentralized believers, what exactly is the idea of the “mainstream world”—Who cares?
