‘It’s Not Fun’: Binance Founder CZ Recounts Prison Experience

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said that his time spent in prison was “scary” and “extremely hard,” adding that he wouldn’t wish it on anybody—though he admitted that the experience ultimately brought him closer to his family.

Last year, Zhao was sentenced to four months in U.S. prison after pleading guilty to money laundering violations. As a result, Zhao was forced to step down as CEO of Binance as part of a $4.3 billion settlement between him, the exchange, and U.S. authorities.

“The minute you walk in, there are guys with tattoos, all big buff guys, [with] face tattoos, head tattoos, and they’re all yelling over each other,” Zhao told Farokh Sarmad of Rug Radio—Decrypt’s sister company—in a video interview from last week’s Token2049 conference in Dubai. “When you’re walking in, it’s like: This is not fun.”

He explained the dehumanizing process of entering prison, including having to spread your “butt cheeks” during a strip search—an “extremely hard” moment, Zhao recalled, adding that he “would not wish that experience on anyone.”

Zhao said that when he first arrived, his cellmate had been convicted for double murder. Because the former CEO is not a U.S. citizen, he was restricted from being placed in a minimum security prison. Instead he was put in a low-security facility, where his cellmate was living due to good behavior.

“My celly had a 30-year sentence for murdering two guys at once,” Zhao told Farokh. “I shared a cell with him for a few weeks. We got on fine.”

“When you go through that experience, it’s not fun,” he added, “It was scary… I was scared.”

The billionaire Zhao claims that he wasn’t treated differently by inmates due to his status in crypto, nor because of his purported multi-billion-dollar net worth. That said, the Binance founder was centrally monitored by the facility, which refers to prison employees taking special considerations when dealing with an inmate.

“I don’t think they treated me very differently,” Zhao explained. “All the guys, all the inmates were actually very nice.” He added: “I still correspond with a couple friends [from] there. You know, you meet friends everywhere. There’s good people everywhere.”

The hardest struggle for the former Binance CEO was the mental stress that his four months could be extended at any time by new, unforeseen charges, as he watched similar fates befall friends that he made inside.

“It made me realize what is important,” Zhao said of the stay. Health is most important, and second is family. And then it’s work and the rest of the stuff. You don’t miss the good food—I missed the nice bed a little bit—but I missed my family.”

Zhao said his upcoming book will go into further detail about his prison experience. But it appears that the experience has given him a different view following his fabled history with FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence after being found guilty of seven fraud and conspiracy charges following the exchange’s collapse.

Amid the FTX crash, Bankman-Fried said that Zhao was his “sparring partner,” due to the pair’s public and private disagreements. Back in 2022, the Binance founder called Bankman-Fried a “psychopath” for writing such a tweet.

But now that the heat of the moment has passed and Zhao has had a taste of prison life himself, his stance on Bankman-Fried appears to have softened.

“I don’t wish for anyone to go through a prison experience, but I do think that bad behavior needs to stop,” Zhao said. “Long prison [sentences] usually don’t really help that much, to be very frank. After what I’ve seen in prisons, the guys who have like 10-year sentences—that becomes their life. They don’t think about reforming themselves anymore.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward