Buying Bitcoin on Binance: An Unfiltered Guide to Not Getting Ripped Off

Of course it happened. On a perfectly ordinary Friday, President Trump reached into his bag of executive tricks and pulled out a full pardon for Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance. Just like that, a federal conviction for, you know, failing to stop money laundering for terrorists and criminals… poof. Gone.

The White House, in its infinite wisdom, called the original case a "politically motivated overreach." Give me a break. "Overreach" is what you call it when the government tries to regulate the size of your soda. Prosecuting a billionaire for letting illicit funds flow through his platform like a sewer is called "doing your job." But I guess when you've got enough money and enough lobbyists, federal law becomes more of a suggestion.

CZ, fresh off his four-month stint in a minimum-security facility, was "deeply grateful" and eager to "continue supporting innovation responsibly." Let's deconstruct that, shall we? "Responsibly" is a fun word to use when you've just been pardoned for the opposite. It’s like a bank robber promising to use his ill-gotten gains to responsibly invest in community projects. Does anyone actually believe this stuff, or are we all just supposed to nod along?

This isn't just a bad look. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of ethics and governance. It's a flashing neon sign that says, "Crime pays, as long as you're rich enough to buy the exit." What message does this send to every other crypto cowboy out there? That the rules are for the little guys, and a US$4.3 billion fine is just the cost of doing business before you get your get-out-of-jail-free card. And honestly, I just...

The Suits Are Here to Save Us

While the ink was still drying on CZ's pardon, we got another little news nugget that paints the rest of the picture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.—the very symbol of the buttoned-up, old-guard financial system that crypto was supposed to destroy—announced it's letting its big-shot clients use Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral for cash loans.

Let that sink in. The same institutions that spent years calling Bitcoin a "fraud" and a "scam" are now using it as the bedrock for new financial products. They’re not just dipping a toe in; they’re building a swimming pool. They even did a test run with BlackRock, for God's sake. This isn't a revolution anymore; it's a corporate takeover.

The whole crypto movement was sold to us as a grand populist project. It was supposed to be a middle finger to Wall Street, a way to bank the unbanked and create a decentralized future. Instead, it’s become Wall Street’s new casino, and they're slowly buying up all the poker tables. JPMorgan isn't offering Bitcoin-backed loans to you or me. They're offering them to the same institutional players who already own everything else. We’re just the suckers at the penny slots, watching the high-rollers get free drinks and presidential pardons.

And look at the market. Bitcoin is hovering around US$110k, but millions in long positions just got wiped out. The Fear & Greed Index is still cowering in the "fear" zone. It's a volatile mess built on hype and speculation, and now the biggest banks are setting themselves up as the house. The house, offcourse, always wins. It’s infuriating. It feels like every good idea in tech eventually gets corrupted by money. Remember when the internet was about connecting people and sharing knowledge? Now it’s about selling your data and serving you ads for junk you don't need. This just feels like the speed-run version of that.

Meanwhile, the prediction market Polymarket just got a US$2 billion injection from ICE, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. A prediction market—a platform for institutionalized gambling on real-world events—is now officially part of the financial establishment. Are we supposed to be excited about this? That the same people who brought us the 2008 financial crisis are now building the infrastructure for us to bet on the next one?

It's All Just One Big Club

What we saw this week wasn't a series of disconnected events. It was a single, coherent story about power.

On one hand, you have the political power. Trump, with deep and growing ties to the crypto industry, uses a pardon to absolve one of its most powerful figures. This isn't about "correcting an injustice"; it's about rewarding an ally and signaling to a wealthy donor class that he's on their side. Let's not be naive. This is how the game is played.

On the other hand, you have the financial power. JPMorgan, BlackRock, and ICE are absorbing the crypto space, taming it, and turning it into another asset class for the ultra-rich. They're taking the "wild west" and building a gated community on top of it. The price of Bitcoin or the Solana price doesn't really matter in the long run. What matters is who controls the infrastructure. And it ain't the little guy.

The pardon for CZ wasn't an anomaly. It was the logical conclusion. He’s part of the club now. He played the game, broke the rules, paid a fine that's a rounding error for his company, and now he's been welcomed back into the fold with a presidential handshake.

So what's left for the rest of us? We get to watch from the sidelines as the dream of a decentralized world gets bought, sold, and pardoned away. We get to read CZ's grateful tweets and JPMorgan's press releases and pretend this is all progress. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe this is exactly what everyone wanted all along—for the outlaws to become the establishment.

So, We're Just Pretending Now

Let's drop the charade. This was never about innovation or financial freedom. It's the same old story, just with a new set of buzzwords. The pardon, the Wall Street embrace—it's proof that the system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed: protecting the powerful, absorbing any threat, and ensuring that no matter who invents the game, the same people always end up owning the casino. And we’re all supposed to applaud.