Written by: Wu Says Blockchain

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It needs to be stated in advance that "Binance Life" is defined by the author as a personal memoir, and many details regarding the case, prison experiences, institutional specifics, and motivational judgments are primarily from CZ's unilateral narrative and recollections, which should not be equated with independent judicial records or comprehensive external evidence.

The real starting point of this experience is not in prison but in the long negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023. By November 2023, the agreement had roughly taken shape: CZ admitted to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, paying a $150 million personal fine, Binance paying a $4.3 billion fine and accepting three years of independent monitoring, while the other two charges were left for the court's decision. As stated in the book, he originally hoped to return to the UAE after pleading guilty to await sentencing, but the Department of Justice required him to remain in the U.S.; his lawyers also continually misjudged the situation, at one point leading him to believe the worst that could happen was entering a relatively lenient minimum-security "camp," only to later find out that it was nearly impossible for non-U.S. citizens to be assigned there.

On November 20, 2023, CZ flew into Seattle. That day, he was confirming terms with his legal team while in transit; by evening, after dining with his sister, mother, and several friends, he returned to the hotel alone and wrote his resignation letter for public disclosure until 4 AM. For him, what really settled that night was not the plea itself but the fracture of identity: the next day, the whole world would simultaneously learn two things—he pleaded guilty to a U.S. federal court and resigned as CEO of Binance. When he appeared in court the next day, court staff even accidentally checked "financial fraud" on his case number due to the absence of a corresponding option in the forms; the bail issue also reversed in court, as the district 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, resulting in a higher judge's ruling that he must remain in the U.S. until the sentencing hearing in February 2024. What he thought would only take a few days to wrap up legally turned into at least three months of detention.

During these months, he prepared for sentencing while passively waiting within the U.S. The Department of Justice later pushed back the originally scheduled sentencing from February by three months, turning "three months" into "six months"; meanwhile, he began advocating for probation or home confinement, gathering letters of support from friends and acquaintances, ultimately receiving 248 letters and submitting 160 to the court. It was also during this trapped time that he began to plan Giggle Academy, repeatedly questioning what else mattered to him beyond money, power, and fame. According to the book, the months awaiting sentencing were not simply a "pre-trial pause" but a period where he was forced to detach from the high-density work rhythm of a Binance founder, for the first time facing his upcoming life in a state of partial unemployment and partial regulation. When the formal sentencing took place on April 30, 2024, the Department of Justice initially sought a three-year prison sentence, but the judge rejected the aggravated claims of "money laundering" and "financing terrorism" due to lack of evidence, ultimately sentencing him to four months of incarceration and explicitly stating that he did not require post-release supervision.

The real downward spiral began on May 30, 2024. That day, his sister drove him and their 82-year-old mother to report to Lompoc II Federal Prison. Upon exiting the car, the guards immediately urged the family to leave, without a proper farewell; he could only sit alone on a bench outside, waiting to be taken inside in the cold wind. Upon entering, he underwent a standardized dehumanization process: passing through a metal detector, being put in a small room to wait, stripping for a full-body search, changing into an old brown T-shirt, pants, yellowing socks, and flat shoes, followed by being asked whether he used drugs, suffered from depression, or had suicidal tendencies. He was then taken to Area C, facing a dormitory shared by about two hundred male inmates: tattoos, bald heads, long hair, beards, iron bars, heavy doors, and not much different from scenes in movies. Just a few minutes in, he had already revealed his status as a "newcomer," and without any real choice, he was defaulted into the "Pacific Islander" group classified by ethnicity.

The most concrete feeling on the first day was not some abstract humiliation but a physical deprivation: from the morning he got out of the car to the afternoon lockdown, he went six hours without a sip of water; after being assigned to a cell, he discovered A5 had a leak and was moved to another room; at 3:40 PM, the entire facility was locked down, and he sat alone on a steel bed, holding only an old plastic cup borrowed from someone else. The mattress issued that night was only two to three centimeters thick, moldy, worn out, with a hard steel frame underneath. The toughest part of the first night was not just the back pain and hard bed but the inability to tell his family that he was okay. At night, the flushing sounds of toilets throughout the facility were incessant. The toilets here had powerful flushes, and everyone defaulted to continuously flushing while using them to avoid odor affecting their roommates, so there was always someone flushing in the two-hundred-person dormitory. For someone who usually wouldn’t even go to a slightly noisy restaurant, this noise was not background but an enemy to sleep itself.

Life in prison quickly transformed from "fresh shock" to "repetitive consumption." The food was highly industrialized: breakfast consisted of cereal as bland as paper shavings, diluted skim milk, and two pieces of fake cake; lunch and dinner featured abundant carbohydrates, few vegetables and fruits, and minimal protein, with the most anticipated meal being one chicken leg every Thursday night. The commissary opened every two weeks but was often delayed or canceled by guards; during the first few weeks, he couldn't even buy a toothbrush. The scarcity of phones and computers created another form of control: two hundred people shared six phones and four "computers," each use limited to fifteen minutes; the so-called computers were simply locked terminals, messages capped at three thousand characters, delayed by two hours for sending, with no links, no attachments, and most critically, no copy-paste functionality. It was under these conditions that he intermittently typed out the first draft of this book. To move a phrase, he had to delete and retype; often, just as thoughts connected, the fifteen minutes would be up, forcing him to requeue for the next round. Later, he learned he had been classified as a high-monitoring inmate, and everything he wrote or sent would be recorded and reviewed.

Two days later, he was assigned to share a cell with a Native American inmate who "had killed two people and was sentenced to thirty years," and the most deadly issue was not their criminal record, but thunderous snoring; the shower room had only three extremely narrow stalls, the doors could only be partially covered, and one had to wear underwear while showering to prevent any female guard on patrol from seeing total nudity; the hot water lasted only thirty seconds at a time and was frequently scalding hot, making it hard to rinse off. Most guards did not hit inmates but liked to use rules to demonstrate power: some disliked the noise of dominoes being played, so they covered the tables with blankets; the next guard found it unsightly and ordered everything to be removed. Some guards didn’t like inmates using plastic ropes to hang clothes, so they went around cutting the ropes one by one with scissors. The entire Lompoc prison itself was an old facility built in the 1920s, riddled with mold in the ventilation ducts, and nearly all newcomers fell ill; CZ developed a sore throat and high fever just a few days after entering. The outdoor exercise area was quite large, with grass, dirt tracks, volleyball courts, and equipment, but being allowed outside depended on weather, fog, construction, and guard moods. For those with only a few weeks left on their sentences, the safest survival strategy was not to protest but to avoid causing trouble and keep their emotions low.

During this time, the most "human" parts came from family visits. Friends repeatedly applied for visits but got caught up in tedious procedures, until a week before his release when a counselor took out a stack of friend application forms, casually saying, "Since you're leaving anyway, there's no need to process these, right?" Family visits found a channel thanks to a reminder from Michael Santos: as long as family names were on the pre-sentencing list, there was no need for additional approval. Ultimately, his sister brought a printed rule into the prison, but their 82-year-old mother was initially blocked at the door simply because her passport lacked an entry stamp. The sister then went to print the legal entry records from the government website, and only then was the mother finally allowed in. The book details: before they truly saw him for the first time, he claimed he didn't need to run six hours just to see him, but on that day, he was ready several hours early, almost "running on air" to the visiting room when the guard called his name.

On August 13, 2024, he was transferred from federal prison to a halfway house. That morning, he was called to the release center at 7 AM and waited an hour to change back into his sportswear. The guards rolled in three large boxes of books and letters sent to him by others, but these items had never been handed to him during his incarceration; at the moment of departure, they were suddenly treated as "personal belongings" and pushed out. He refused to take them. Once in the parking lot, he stood alone for twenty minutes—his family hadn’t arrived, and he had no phone to connect with the outside world. It wasn't until his family and Michael Santos arrived, and the car drove away from the prison, that he slowly realized he had truly left. But this freedom was still limited: released at 8 AM, he had to report to the halfway house by 3 PM. During the intervening hours, he first went to his sister's house, had a decent lunch, and took "a real shower"—no walls to bump into, no need for flip-flops, and no filthy floors to endure.

The halfway house looked like a university dormitory but was filled with inmates about to be released. The doors were unlocked, there were three units, each with eight bunk beds, housing sixteen people together; for the first seven days, no one could go outside, but they could use phones, go online, order takeout, and family could send things anytime. For CZ, the greatest recovery here was not the space but the rhythm: he finally had access to the internet again, reconnected with family and friends, and rearranged his day. He later volunteered at Michael Santos's organization, organizing cryptocurrency education materials for inmates. The book cites a detail specifically: after experiencing 76 days without the copy-paste function, when he got to use it again, he felt almost ecstatic.

According to the original process, he could spend the last nine days of home confinement at his sister's house after September 18, with everything prepared—house, landline, line restrictions, staff visits, and sister’s training. But on September 13, the halfway house staff suddenly notified him to return immediately; two female officers gave him no explanation and almost immediately shackled his hands and feet, stuffing him into a police vehicle with a cage, taking him to the Santa Ana police station. There, he was subjected to the full intake process again: filling out forms, stripping, full-body search, and changing into an orange prison outfit. It wasn't until noon the next day that he discovered the reason—the ICE issued a third immigrant detention order against him due to his visa expiration and "illegal stay" during his incarceration. The absurdity lay in the fact that it was the Department of Justice's prior actions that had prevented him from leaving the U.S. and led to delays in sentencing, thus pushing him into this "overstay" circumstance. Three days later, although the ICE headquarters rescinded the detention order, the halfway house records had already been canceled, and reapplication would take at least two to four weeks, far exceeding his remaining time. Thus, for the last 14 days, he could only be locked up again in the detention center.

The detention center was worse than prison: no exercise yard, no gym equipment, no computers, only an extremely difficult-to-use tablet; sending a message also incurred charges. The only physical activities he could do were push-ups and sit-ups in a small cubicle, relying on physical motion to counter the slow passage of time. What tormented him more than the poor environment was the uncertainty at the last moment: the day before, his lawyer told him he was due for release the next day according to the process, but the detention center staff remained silent. That night, he hardly slept, staying awake from three in the morning until dawn, getting dressed, tidying his small cubicle, and waiting. At 8:30 AM, no movement; by 9 AM, still nothing; at 10 AM, there was still no news, until 10:50 AM, when a guard finally walked 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 waiting outside. He stepped out that door, breathing in the first free air he'd had in 14 days. The whole family then headed straight for the airport, where a private plane awaited; it took only 26 minutes from his exit from the detention center to the plane's takeoff. Yet even after takeoff, he still couldn’t fully relax; it wasn’t until they flew out of U.S. airspace that his nerves finally eased. Upon arriving in the UAE, as he embraced his child and family again, he genuinely felt this first real sense of freedom in 11 months as "happiness."

In the initial weeks after his release, he didn’t want to see too many people, didn’t want to give interviews, and rarely used social media; a month later, he only appeared once at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, then continued working on Giggle Academy, gradually reinstating his connection with the work world.

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