CZ: I'd Have Blocked U.S. Users and Built Compliance From…

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said in a May 9, 2026 interview with Crypto In America that if he could rebuild Binance from scratch, he would have geo-fenced U.S. users from the very beginning and invested in KYC and compliance infrastructure far earlier than the exchange actually did.

CZ noted that Binance was a roughly 20-person team in 2017 with very few users, and that he thought of it primarily as a technology platform rather than a financial one. That framing, he acknowledged, led to decisions that created serious regulatory exposure down the line.

The admission is a rare public post-mortem from one of crypto's most consequential founders. CZ's legal troubles with U.S. regulators — culminating in a guilty plea and prison sentence — stemmed directly from Binance's failure to enforce geographic restrictions and maintain adequate anti-money-laundering controls.