Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, has firmly pushed back against accusations that Binance played a role in the October 2025 crypto market crash. The former CEO dismissed claims that the exchange contributed to the $19 billion liquidation event as “far-fetched” and lacking “logical merit.”
Pretty convenient timing for a denial.
The massive crash on October 10, 2025, sent Bitcoin tumbling below $80,000 with no meaningful recovery since. CZ insists there’s a timing mismatch between Binance’s technical issues and the market collapse. He’s sticking to his guns.
The crash, according to him, was triggered by Trump’s tariffs on China, not by any exchange malfunction. Sure, buddy.
Binance did experience slowdowns in internal asset transfers between 21:18-21:51 UTC that day. Users reported temporary zero balances and timeouts.
Several Binance-issued tokens including USDe showed index deviations between 21:36-22:15 UTC. But CZ maintains these hiccups happened after most liquidations had already occurred.
Timing is everything, isn’t it?
The exchange has offered over $600 million in compensation to affected businesses and customers. All users impacted by the USDe dip received full reimbursement, classified as a “technical glitch.”
Critics argue this is just damage control.
CZ’s defense comes amid personal tensions with executives from competing exchange OKX and investor Dragonfly. He even quoted a critic claiming Dragonfly is OKX’s largest investor—a claim Star Xu, OKX’s founder, promptly denied.
Drama never ends in crypto.
CZ himself has had a tumultuous few years. He stepped down as Binance CEO in 2023 after pleading guilty in a DOJ money laundering case. After serving 4 months in jail, he received a pardon from President Trump in 2025.
Talk about a comeback story.
Ethena founder Gut Young provided a technical explanation, attributing the issues to a Binance-specific oracle problem rather than a fundamental stablecoin failure.
This isn’t the first time Binance has faced scrutiny, as the exchange has a well-documented history of system failures during significant market movements, particularly during downward trends.
Despite Binance’s history of price discrepancies during market downturns, CZ remains adamant: external macroeconomic factors, not exchange failures, caused the crash. Investors would be wise to implement stop-loss orders to protect their portfolios against such sudden market volatility, regardless of the cause.
The debate continues. Some things never change in crypto.
