The staggering irony of the Binance hack

November 2, 2026 — 3:55pm

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When he was serving jail time in 2024, the crypto exchange billionaire Changpeng Zhao wrote a book with a modest title: Freedom of Money: A Memoir of Protecting Users, Resilience, and the Founding of Binance.

The tome was short on introspection. A $US50 million ($71.2 million) personal fine, $US4.3 billion company penalty and four-month stretch in prison for failing to run an effective anti-money laundering scheme were like water off a duck’s back.

In one irony-free observation, Zhao wrote of being in jail that “the entire process was designed to deliver the lowest possible customer satisfaction.”

The book did little too to explain how Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has protected its users, except where that is a byproduct of its own rapid growth. Since last........

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