More tech intrigue now the boss of the world's biggest crypto exchange has resigned and pleaded guilty to breaking U. S. Anti money laundering laws. Changpeng Zhao is one of the world's most powerful figures in crypto after co founding his company Binance, but has been forced to reach a settlement of U. S. Authorities which include billions of dollars in penalties. Erin Delmore has more now from New York.

As part of the plea agreement, Mr. Zhao, known as CZ, will step down from his role as Chief executive of Binance and will pay a $50 million fine. Finance will pay a $4.3 billion fine. The company will accept the appointment of a monitor. The company pled guilty to knowingly failing to prevent money laundering and sanctions violations on its side and allowing criminal actors to use the exchange named by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as including Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas.

The Justice Department is requiring Finance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures this is one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained from a corporate defendant in a criminal matter.

Mr. Zhao is one of the most influential figures in crypto. This is the latest development to Royal, the crypto industry since his rival, the FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman Fried was found guilty of fraud and money laundering earlier this month.

Erin Delmore in New York. There. Well, let's speak now to carolyn alexander from the university of sussex. Thanks for joining us. What does this say about the future of Binance? I mean, what will the impact be for them?

Well, they are facing these charges from the Department of Justice, CFTC, treasury, but we have many more charges that are coming against Finance in future. In particular, in June, the securities and Exchange Commission filed 13 charges including this type of money laundering trading unwittingly with terrorists. The US users have been using virtual private networks in order to trade on Binance, and Binance have known this. So that's one of the charges. But the charges from the SEC are much more extensive and in particular, they are also looking at the multifunctioning of Binance in that it's its own clearinghouse. It doesn't have an independent regulated clearinghouse. It owns the market makers. And like the Alameda, market makers on FTX had milliseconds advantages. It's quite possible that Merrick Peak and Sigma, the finance market makers, have been manipulating the prices. In fact, that is what the Department of justice, another one in October from the Department of justice about price manipulation using Tether as well. So there's a lot more charges to come. But on the other hand, Richard Tang has been, he immediately took over as CEO and we've known that for months because we've seen this coming and he's quite a steady hand.

He does specialize in compliance and security, which is what this is all about. But when it comes to these other charges, a lot of the C suite, the General Counsel has quit the head of compliance has quit. Strategy, intelligence, all these people have quit.

Carol, you're speaking in quite sort of like momentous terms here. We're not talking about the survival or non survival of the company here, are we? In its current form?

I don't think so. The thing is that there's a lot more to come. And when you say survival, it's not going to suddenly collapse like FTX and close customers'accounts. You shouldn't worry too much about that. Although, if I were you, if you do have money on Binance, I'd get it off. But it's just down the road with the SEC. I mean, the only way you can regulate crypto is by litigation. There's no other way because these companies, if they're Domiciled anywhere, are Domiciled in places that impose no controls. So the SEC at the US equity Asset Managers and so forth, they pay for the SEC. And the SEC has got 9000 people, much more than the CFC. Carol.