Binance CEO says Trump has been 'fantastic' for cryptocurrency

Binance CEO Richard Teng says the Trump administration has been a “fantastic” reset for the cryptocurrency industry.“It’s an extremely different environment that we’re operating in,” Teng told CNBC on Tuesday.In the span of 16 months, Binance has gone from a political outcast to a possible power broker in Washington. Once the poster child for regulatory defiance – Binance was slapped with a record $4.3 billion settlement with regulators and forced to oust billionaire founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao – the crypto exchange is now navigating a dramatically friendlier political landscape under President Donald Trump’s second administration, Teng said.“We’ve benefited from this shift,” said Teng, who was appointed Binance’s CEO in November 2023. Teng’s comments come as the crypto exchange is in talks to have the Trump family take a financial stake in the company, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. That same day, Bloomberg reported that World Liberty Financial, a Trump-linked crypto bank that has not yet launched, is engaged in talks with Binance to launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin. If such deals were reached, it would mark a staggering reversal for a company that was once a pariah in Washington. Teng, a soft-spoken former regulator, was careful with his words when addressing the reports.“I believe both World Liberty Financial as well as CZ himself have tweeted and denied the reports,” said Teng, who runs the exchange’s operations outside the U.S. As for the rumors about a Trump stake in Binance.US, Teng demurred. ″.US and .com are quite different animals, right?” he said. “They have different sets of shareholders, different boards of directors, and different CEOs running the show.”

In the background of all this optimism is the reality of Binance’s checkered past

Zhao, the company’s founder and former CEO, was criminally charged, forced to step down and served a short prison sentence. Binance paid the multibilllion-dollar settlement – finalized in late 2023 – to resolve a raft of violations with U.S. regulators, including the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.One major front remains open: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil case against Binance and Zhao. The SEC and Binance in February agreed to a 60-day pause in proceedings as both sides consider a potential resolution. The stay comes amid a broader pullback by the SEC from several high-profile crypto lawsuits, signaling a potential regulatory reset under the new administration.“We under-invested in compliance in those very early days,” Teng said. “But what’s important as a responsible institution is to acknowledge those early mistakes, make amends for it and invest greatly into compliance, which we are doing now.”Binance now employs more than 1,300 professionals in compliance, roughly a quarter of its total workforce, Teng said. “The direction of travel is very clear. It’s one of compliance.”The Nigerian government might disagree.