Freed From Prison, Binance Founder CZ Gets Ovation in Dubai and Talks New Educational Venture

DUBAI — Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao was greeted with a standing-room-only crowd and ovation in his return to crypto following his release from a U.S. prison.

Attendees stood shoulder to shoulder at Binance Blockchain Week to hear Zhao, colloquially known as "CZ," make his first public appearance since his release last month. He served a four-month sentence following his guilty plea for violating the Bank Secrecy Act during his time running the exchange.

Zhao took the stage Thursday on the second day of the event, a two-day conference held in Dubai. In the hour or so before his scheduled appearance, the main stage area began filling up and no seats were left half an hour before the scheduled time of his appearance. When he was announced, attendees cheered and pulled out their phones to film him walking up onto the stage.

Altcoin Daily founder Austin Arnold, the session's moderator, opened the talk by asking Zhao about his experience in prison.

"First question, how was your summer?" he asked, drawing laughter from the room.

Zhao smiled at first but grew serious as he delved into the charges he pleaded guilty to — including violating the Bank Secrecy Act — noting that per his plea agreement, he can't speak badly about the deal.

"It's not good," he said of prison. "It's less fun than now [at the Binance event]. I think the whole experience is just very limiting in a lot of ways, right? Your freedom is taken away and you have nothing to do, so it gives you a lot of time to reflect."

The crypto founder, who spoke about missing his family, friends and colleagues during his time behind bars, said he has no immediate plans to run another crypto exchange.

He came back to the sentencing process itself a few times, saying the judge had a tough job but that he was also the first person to go to prison over a Bank Secrecy Act violation, in contrast with TD Bank's recent settlement with U.S. prosecutors in which no individual has so far pleaded guilty to any similar charges.

He also noted that while he was in prison, former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris — the Republican and Democratic nominees for U.S. president, respectively — have started talking about crypto on the campaign trail.

"I'm just sitting in prison like 'What the hell happened?' What if I waited for two months?" he said.

Asked about what's next, Zhao said he's spending at least half of his time on an educational platform called Giggle Academy, something he originally announced last year.

The project is aiming to provide digital education services to people who don't have access to educational resources already, he told the audience.

"Today there's about 700 to 800 million adults who are illiterate, and two-thirds of them are women. And on top of that, there's about, depending on which report you read, there's about 300 million to 500 million kids who don't go to school," he said. "When you look at educational apps, educational projects, they're all in places where … they're all supplementing the existing education system."

Alongside Giggle Academy, Zhao said he's focusing on investments, including in artificial intelligence, biotech and other blockchain projects.

Blockchain week

Zhao's successor, current Binance CEO Richard Teng, made the rounds on the exposition floor during the first day of the conference, taking photos with attendees both before and after his opening remarks.

During opening remarks on Wednesday, Teng said the theme for the upcoming year is "momentum" in the crypto industry, pointing to approvals of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. as an example of forward progress for the industry.

Around 4,000 people are in attendance, with 1 million more streaming the panels online, a spokesperson for Binance said.

CORRECTION (Oct. 31, 15:06 UTC): Corrects spelling of Zhao's surname throughout.