Written by: Wu Blockchain Blockchain
This article has been edited and cited with permission from the relevant parties. Readers are encouraged to purchase the original version from Amazon and support charity.
It should be noted in advance that "Binance Life" is defined by the author as a personal memoir. The details of the case, prison experience, institutional details and motive judgments are mostly based on CZ's unilateral narrative and recollection, and should not be equated with an independent judicial record or complete external evidence.
The real starting point of this experience wasn't in prison, but in the lengthy negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023. By November 2023, an agreement was largely in place: CZ admitted to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, personally paying a $150 million fine, Binance paying a $4.3 billion fine and accepting three years of independent oversight, while two other charges were left to the courts for adjudication. According to the book, he originally hoped to return to the UAE to await sentencing after pleading guilty, but the Department of Justice required him to remain in the United States; his lawyers also repeatedly misjudged the situation, leading him to believe that the worst-case scenario was being placed in a relatively lenient minimum security "camp," only to later discover that it was extremely difficult for non-U.S. citizens to be assigned there.
On November 20, 2023, CZ arrived in Seattle. While transiting through the country, he was still confirming terms with his legal team. That evening, after having dinner with his sister, mother, and a few friends, he returned to his hotel alone and wrote his resignation statement, to be published the next day, until 4 a.m. For him, what truly sank that night wasn't the guilty plea itself, but the rupture of his identity: the next day, the world would know two things simultaneously—he had pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court and resigned as CEO of Binance. During his court appearance the following day, court staff even mistakenly checked "financial fraud" as the charge because there was no corresponding option on the form; the bail issue also reversed in court. The local judge initially believed he posed no flight risk and allowed him to return to the UAE to await sentencing, but the Department of Justice subsequently made a rare appeal, and a higher judge overturned the ruling, requiring him to remain in the United States until the sentencing hearing in February 2024. What was initially thought to be a legal process that would only take a few days turned into at least three months of detention.
For months, he prepared for sentencing while passively awaiting his fate within the United States. The Department of Justice later postponed the sentencing, originally scheduled for February, by three months, turning "three months" into "six months." Simultaneously, he began advocating for probation or house arrest, soliciting letters of support from friends and acquaintances, ultimately receiving 248 and submitting 160 to the court. It was also during this period of confinement that he began planning Giggle Academy, repeatedly pondering what he truly cared about beyond money, power, and fame. According to the book, the months awaiting sentencing were not simply a "pre-trial pause," but rather a forced withdrawal from the high-intensity work rhythm of the Binance founder, facing his future life for the first time in a state of semi-unemployment and semi-supervision. When the formal sentencing finally took place on April 30, 2024, the Department of Justice initially requested a three-year prison sentence, but the judge rejected aggravated charges such as "money laundering" and "terrorist financing" that lacked supporting evidence, ultimately sentencing him to four months in prison and explicitly stating that post-prison supervision was unnecessary.
The real downfall began on May 30, 2024. That day, his sister and 82-year-old mother drove him to Lompoc II federal prison to report for duty. After getting out of the car, the prison guards immediately urged the family to leave without even a proper goodbye; he could only sit alone on a bench outside, waiting in the cold wind to be taken inside. After entering, he went through a standardized depersonalization process: going through a metal detector, being locked in a small room to wait, stripping naked for a full-body search, changing into an old brown T-shirt, pants, yellowed socks, and flat shoes, and then being asked if he had used drugs, if he was depressed, and if he had suicidal tendencies. Then he was taken to Block C, facing a three-story prison area where about two hundred male prisoners lived together: tattoos, bald heads, long hair, beards, iron bars, heavy doors, not much different from those in the movies. Within minutes of entering, he had already revealed his "newcomer" status, and without any real choice, he was automatically assigned to the "Pacific Islanders" group, which was divided by ethnicity.
The most tangible feeling on the first day wasn't some abstract humiliation, but the physical deprivation: from getting off the bus in the morning until the afternoon lockdown, he hadn't had a drop of water for six hours; after being taken to his cell, he discovered that cell A5 was leaking, so he was moved to another cell; at 3:40 PM, the entire prison area was locked down, and he sat alone on his steel bed, holding only an old plastic cup borrowed from someone else. The mattress issued for the night was only two or three centimeters thick, moldy and worn, with a hard steel frame underneath. The hardest part of his first night wasn't just the back pain and the hard bed, but the inability to tell his family that he was alright. Throughout the night, the sound of flushing was constant throughout the prison area. The toilets here had extremely strong flushing power, and everyone tacitly agreed to flush repeatedly to avoid the smell affecting their cellmates, so there was always someone flushing in the 200-person prison area. For someone who usually wouldn't even go to a slightly noisy dining hall, this noise wasn't background noise, but the enemy of sleep itself.
Prison life quickly transformed from "novel shock" into "repetitive consumption." The food was highly industrialized: breakfast consisted of cereal as bland as scraps of paper, skim milk as watery as diluted milk, and two pieces of fake cake; lunch and dinner were high in carbohydrates, low in fruits and vegetables, and low in protein. The most anticipated meal was a chicken leg every Thursday night. The community center opened every two weeks, but was frequently delayed or canceled by the guards; for the first few weeks, he couldn't even buy a toothbrush. The scarcity of telephones and computers created another form of control: two hundred people shared six telephones and four "computers," each only usable for fifteen minutes. The so-called computers were simply locked terminals; messages were limited to a maximum of three thousand characters, with a two-hour delay, no links, no attachments, and most importantly, no copy-paste. It was under these conditions that he intermittently typed out the first draft of this book. If he wanted to move a sentence, he had to delete it and retype it; his train of thought would often just begin when the fifteen minutes were up, forcing him to start over in the next round. Later, he learned that he was listed as a high-prisoner under close surveillance; everything he wrote and sent was recorded and reviewed.
Two days later, he was transferred to share a cell with a Native American prisoner who had killed two people and was sentenced to thirty years in prison. The prisoner's most fatal problem wasn't his criminal record, but his thunderous snoring. The shower room consisted of only three extremely narrow cubicles with doors that could only be partially closed. He had to wear underwear while showering to prevent female guards from seeing him naked during patrols. The hot water only lasted for thirty seconds at a time and was often too scalding to rinse directly off. Most of the guards didn't beat people, but they liked to demonstrate their power through rules: if someone complained about the domino effect, they would have blankets wrapped around the tables; if the next shift complained about the unsightly appearance, they would order them all removed. If someone didn't like prisoners using plastic ropes to hang their clothes, they would cut them off one by one with scissors. The entire Lompoc prison itself was an old facility built in the 1920s, with mold growing in the ventilation ducts. Almost all newcomers would fall ill; CZ developed a sore throat and high fever after only a few days. The exercise yard was quite large, with grass, a dirt track, a volleyball court, and equipment, but whether or not someone could be released depended entirely on the weather, fog, construction, and the guards' mood. For someone with only a few weeks left on their sentence, the safest survival strategy is not to protest, but to avoid trouble and keep their emotions in check.
During this period, the most "human" part came from family visits. Friends repeatedly applied for visits, but all were stuck in the cumbersome process. It wasn't until a week before his release that his counselor pulled out a stack of friend application forms and casually said, "Anyway, you're leaving, so there's no need to deal with it anymore." Family visits were only facilitated thanks to Michael Santos's reminder: as long as a family member was on the pre-sentencing reporting list, no additional approval was required in principle. His sister eventually entered the prison with a printed copy of the regulations, but his 82-year-old mother was initially turned away because her passport lacked an entry stamp. His sister later went to the government website to print out her legal entry record, and only then was his mother finally allowed in. The book describes it in detail: before they actually saw him for the first time, he said they didn't need to travel six hours to see him, but on that day, they still prepared several hours in advance, and when the prison guard called their names, they practically ran to the visiting room.
On August 13, 2024, he was transferred from federal prison to a halfway house. He was called to the release area at 7 a.m. that morning and waited an hour before changing back into his workout clothes. Guards brought in three large boxes of books and letters sent to him by others, but these items had never been given to him during his incarceration; now, at the moment of departure, they were suddenly presented as "personal belongings." He refused to take them. After reaching the parking lot, he stood alone for twenty minutes—his family hadn't arrived, and he didn't have a cell phone to contact the outside world. It wasn't until his family and Michael Santos arrived and the car drove out of the prison that he slowly realized he was truly leaving. But this freedom was still compromised: he was released at 8 a.m. and had to report to the halfway house before 3 p.m. In the few hours in between, he first went to his sister's house, had a decent lunch, and took a "real shower"—no need to touch walls, no need to wear slippers, no need to endure dirty floors.
The halfway house resembled a college dormitory, yet it was filled with inmates about to be released. The doors were unlocked; there were three units, each with eight bunk beds, housing sixteen people. For the first seven days, they couldn't leave, but they could use their phones, access the internet, order takeout, and their families could deliver supplies at any time. For CZ, the biggest recovery wasn't the space, but the rhythm: finally being able to reconnect with the internet, re-establish contact with family and friends, and rearrange his daytime routine. He later volunteered at Michael Santos's organization, compiling cryptocurrency educational materials for prisoners. The book specifically details how, after 76 days without the ability to copy and paste, he was almost overwhelmed with emotion when he finally used the function again.
According to the original procedure, he was supposed to go to his sister's house for his final nine days of home confinement after September 18th. The house, landline, line restrictions, staff inspection, and his sister's training were all prepared. However, on September 13th, the halfway house administrators suddenly notified him to return immediately. Two female officers, with almost no explanation, handcuffed and shackled him, shoved him into a police car with an iron cage, and took him to the Santa Ana Police Department. There, he was subjected to the entire incarceration process again: filling out forms, stripping naked, undergoing a full body search, and changing into an orange prison uniform. It wasn't until noon the next day that he learned the reason—ICE had issued him a third immigration detention order, citing an expired visa and "illegal overstay" during his sentence. As described in the book, the absurdity lies in the fact that it was precisely the Department of Justice's previous obstruction of his departure from the United States and its delays in sentencing and overstaying that pushed him step by step into the so-called "overstay" situation. Three days later, although ICE headquarters revoked the detention order, the halfway house file had been cancelled, and reapplying would take at least two to four weeks, far exceeding his remaining sentence. Thus, he would have to spend his final 14 days in detention.
The detention center was worse than prison: no playground, no exercise equipment, no computers, just a tablet that was extremely difficult to use; even sending a message cost money. All he could do was do push-ups and sit-ups in his small cubicle, using physical movement to slow down the passage of time. What was even more torturous was not the poor environment, but the uncertainty of the final moment: the day before, his lawyer had told him that he should be released the next day according to procedure, but the people in the detention center said nothing. He barely slept that night, staying up from 3 a.m. until dawn, getting dressed, tidying up his cubicle, and sitting there waiting. There was no movement at 8:30, no movement at 9 a.m., still no movement at 10 a.m., until finally at 10:50 a.m., a guard came up to him and said, "Get ready." Fifteen minutes later, he changed back into his clothes, signed the documents, and his sister and mother were already waiting outside. He walked out that door and breathed in the first breath of free air in 14 days. Afterwards, the whole family went straight to the airport, where a private plane was waiting; from the time he walked out of the detention center to the plane taking off, only 26 minutes had passed. Even after takeoff, he dared not fully relax until he flew out of US airspace, at which point his nerves finally loosened. Upon arriving in the UAE, when he hugged his children and family again, he finally felt a true sense of freedom for the first time in 11 months and called it "happiness."
In the first few weeks after his release from prison, he didn't want to see many people, give interviews, or use social media much; he only made one appearance a month later at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, after which he continued with Giggle Academy and slowly reconnected with the working world.
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