已编辑 |吴区块链本文经相关方授权发布。鼓励读者在亚马逊购买正式版，支持慈善事业。 首先需要说明的是，《金钱自由》被作者定义为个人回忆录。其对案件的记述、监狱经历、机构细节以及对动机的判断，很大程度上取自赵长鹏自己的回忆和单方面叙述，不应被视为等同于独立的司法记录或完整的外部证据。这一事件的真正起点不是在监狱内，而是在2023年与美国司法部的漫长谈判中。到2023年11月，协议的大致框架已经形成：赵长鹏承认违反了银行的规定根据《保密法》，同意支付 1.5 亿美元的个人罚款，币安同意支付 43 亿美元并接受三年的独立监控，而另外两项指控则留待法院裁决。书中称，他原本希望认罪后返回阿联酋并在那里等待宣判，但司法部要求他留在Unite
d 州。他的律师也一再误读情况，一度让他相信，在最坏的情况下，他可能会被送到一个相对宽松的最低安全“营地”，只是后来他才意识到，实际上很少有非美国公民被分配到那里。 2023年11月20日，CZ飞往西雅图。即使那天办理移民手续时，他仍在与法律团队确认条款。当天晚上，他与姐姐、母亲和几个朋友一起吃完晚饭后，独自回到酒店，熬夜写下第二天将要公开的辞职声明。对他来说，那天晚上解决的不仅仅是认罪本身，而是身份的断裂：第二天，世界会立即知道两件事——他已经认罪了
Edited | WuBlockchain
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It should be noted at the outset that 《Freedom of Money》 is defined by the author as a personal memoir. Its account of the case, the prison experience, institutional details, and judgments about motives is drawn largely from CZ’s own recollections and unilateral narrative, and should not be treated as equivalent to independent judicial records or complete external evidence.
The true starting point of this episode was not inside a prison, but in the long negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023. By November 2023, the broad framework of the agreement had taken shape: CZ admitted to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, agreed to pay a personal fine of $150 million, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion and accept three years of independent monitoring, while two other charges were left for the court to decide. According to the book, he had originally hoped to return to the UAE after pleading guilty and wait there for sentencing, but the Justice Department required him to remain in the United States. His lawyers also repeatedly misread the situation, at one point leading him to believe that, at worst, he might be sent to a relatively lenient minimum-security “camp,” only for him to later realize that non-U.S. citizens are in fact rarely assigned there.
On November 20, 2023, CZ flew to Seattle. Even while going through immigration that day, he was still confirming terms with his legal team. That evening, after having dinner with his sister, mother, and several friends, he returned alone to his hotel and stayed up until 4 a.m. writing the resignation statement that would be made public the next day. For him, what settled in that night was not simply the guilty plea itself, but a break in identity: the next day, the world would learn two things at once — that he had pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court, and that he had stepped down as Binance CEO. When he appeared in court the next day, court staff even checked “financial fraud” as the case category simply because there was no suitable option on the form. The issue of bail was also reversed in court. The district judge initially concluded that he posed no flight risk and allowed him to return to the UAE to await sentencing, but the Justice Department then took the unusual step of appealing, and a higher court reversed that decision, requiring him to remain in the United States until his sentencing hearing in February 2024. What had seemed like a legal wrap-up of only a few days turned into a stay of at least three months.
Over those months, he prepared for sentencing while passively waiting inside the United States. The Justice Department later pushed the originally scheduled February sentencing back by another three months, turning “three months” into “six.” At the same time, he began trying to secure the possibility of probation or home confinement, collecting letters of support from friends and acquaintances. He ultimately received 248 letters and submitted 160 to the court. It was also during this period of being effectively stuck that he began planning Giggle Academy and repeatedly reconsidering what, beyond money, power, and status, still mattered to him. In the book’s telling, the months waiting for sentencing were not a simple “pre-sentencing pause,” but a period in which he was forcibly removed from the high-intensity rhythm of being Binance’s founder and was, for the first time, facing his next stage of life in a condition that was part unemployed, part under supervision. When sentencing finally came on April 30, 2024, the Justice Department at one point sought a three-year prison term. The judge rejected unsupported aggravating claims involving “money laundering” and “terrorist financing,” and ultimately imposed a four-month sentence, explicitly stating that no post-release supervision would be required.
The real descent began on May 30, 2024. That day, his sister and his 82-year-old mother drove him to report to Lompoc II federal prison. After he got out of the car, prison staff immediately urged his family to leave, leaving no room even for a proper goodbye. He could only sit alone on a bench outside, waiting in the cold wind to be taken in. Inside came the standardized, depersonalizing intake process: passing through a metal detector, being placed 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 whether he used drugs, whether he was depressed, and whether he had suicidal tendencies. He was then taken to Unit C, a three-tier housing unit shared by around two hundred male inmates: tattoos, shaved heads, long hair, heavy beards, iron bars, heavy doors — not very different from what one sees in films. Within minutes of arriving, he had already exposed himself as a newcomer and, without any real choice, was informally placed into the racially grouped “Pacific Islander” circle.
The most concrete sensation of the first day was not some abstract sense of humiliation, but physical deprivation. From getting out of the car in the morning until the unit lockdown that afternoon, he did not drink a single sip of water for six hours. After being assigned a cell, he found that A5 had a leak and was moved elsewhere. At 3:40 p.m., the entire unit 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 or three centimeters thick, moldy and worn, with nothing beneath it but a hard steel frame. What was hardest about the first night was not only the back pain and the bed itself, but the fact that he had no way to tell his family that he was all right. Throughout the night, the sound of toilets flushing continued across the entire unit. The toilets there flushed with great force, and people were expected to keep flushing while using them so the smell would not bother cellmates. In a two-hundred-man unit, that meant someone was always flushing. For someone who normally would not even choose a slightly noisy restaurant, this was not background noise; it was the enemy of sleep itself.
Prison life quickly shifted from the initial shock of novelty to repetitive attrition. The food was highly industrialized: breakfast consisted of tasteless cereal like paper shreds, watery skim milk, and two fake cakes; lunch and dinner were heavy on carbohydrates and short on vegetables, fruit, and protein, with the most anticipated meal being a single chicken leg on Thursday evenings. The commissary opened only once every two weeks and was often delayed or canceled by prison staff. In his first few weeks, he could not even buy a toothbrush. The scarcity of phones and computers became another form of control: two hundred people shared six telephones and four “computers,” each limited to fifteen minutes per use. These “computers” were in fact locked-down terminals. Messages were limited to three thousand characters, delivered with a two-hour delay, and allowed no links or attachments. Most importantly, there was no copy-and-paste function. He typed the first draft of the book under exactly these conditions, in fragments. If he wanted to move a sentence, he had to delete it and retype it elsewhere. Just as his train of thought returned, fifteen minutes would be up, and he would have to line up again for another turn. Later, he learned that he had been designated a high-monitoring inmate, meaning that whatever he wrote or sent would be recorded and reviewed.
Two days later, he was reassigned to share a cell with a Native American inmate who, according to the book, had “killed two people and received a thirty-year sentence.” The biggest problem was not the man’s criminal record, but his thunderous snoring. The shower area had only three extremely narrow stalls whose doors covered only part of the body, and inmates had to shower in their underwear in case female guards passed by and saw them naked. Hot water came in thirty-second bursts and was often too hot to use directly. Most guards did not physically assault inmates, but they liked to assert power through rules. If one officer disliked the sound of dominoes, he would order tables wrapped in blankets; the next shift might find that ugly and order everything stripped off again. If someone did not like prisoners using plastic string to hang clothes, he would go cell to cell cutting it down with scissors. The Lompoc complex itself was an old facility built in the 1920s, its vents full of mold. Almost all newcomers got sick, and CZ developed a sore throat and high fever within days of arrival. There was a large yard with grass, a dirt track, volleyball courts, and exercise equipment, but whether inmates were actually allowed out depended entirely on weather, fog, construction work, and the mood of the guards. For someone with only a few weeks left on his sentence, the safest survival strategy was not protest, but keeping a low profile and staying emotionally flat.
During this period, the most recognizably human part of life came from family visits. Friends repeatedly applied to visit him, but their requests got stuck in cumbersome procedures. It was only about a week before his release that a counselor finally pulled out a stack of his friends’ applications and casually remarked, “You’re leaving anyway, so there’s no need to process these now, right?” Family visits were only made possible after Michael Santos pointed out a channel: if family members were listed in the pre-sentencing report, then in principle no separate approval should be required. His sister ultimately brought a printed copy of the rule into the prison, but his 82-year-old mother was still turned away the first time simply because her passport did not carry an entry stamp. His sister later printed out the legal entry record from a government website, and only then was their mother finally allowed in. The book is very specific here: before they saw him for the first time, he had said that they did not need to drive six hours to visit him, but when the day came, he still got ready hours in advance and, once the guard called his name, he ran to the visiting room so fast that his feet nearly did not touch the ground.
On August 13, 2024, he was transferred from federal prison to a halfway house. At 7 a.m. that morning, he was called to the release area and, after waiting for an hour, was finally allowed to change back into his own sports clothes. Guards then wheeled over three large boxes of books and letters people had sent him, even though none of them had been given to him while he was serving his sentence. Only at the moment of departure were they suddenly presented to him as “personal property.” He refused to take them. When he walked into the parking lot, he stood there alone for twenty minutes — his family had not yet arrived, and he had no phone on him, so he had no way to contact the outside world. Only after his family and Michael Santos arrived, and the car had driven away from the prison, did he gradually realize that he had in fact left. But even then, that freedom was only partial: released at 8 a.m., he still had to report to the halfway house by 3 p.m. In those few hours in between, he first went to his sister’s home, ate a proper lunch, and took what he described as a “real shower” — without touching the walls, without wearing shower slippers, and without having to endure a filthy floor.
The halfway house looked like a college dorm, but it was filled with men nearing release. The doors were unlocked. There were three units, each with eight bunk beds, sixteen men to a unit. For the first seven days, residents were not allowed to leave, but they could use phones, access the internet, order takeout, and receive items from family at any time. For CZ, the greatest recovery there was not space but rhythm: he could finally get back online, reconnect with family and friends, and structure his daytime again. He later went to Michael Santos’s organization as a volunteer, helping organize cryptocurrency educational materials for prisoners. The book singles out one small detail: after going 76 days without copy and paste, he was almost excited when he could use that function again.
Under the original process, after September 18 he was supposed to spend the final nine days of his sentence in home confinement at his sister’s house. The house, landline, monitoring requirements, staff home inspections, and his sister’s training had all been prepared. But on September 13, the halfway house suddenly told him to come back immediately. Two female officers gave almost no explanation, put him in handcuffs and leg irons, placed him in a caged police vehicle, and took him to the Santa Ana Police Department. There, he went through the entire intake process all over again: paperwork, stripping naked, a full-body search, and an orange jumpsuit. It was not until noon the next day that he learned the reason — ICE had issued a third immigration hold against him, arguing that his visa had expired and that he was unlawfully present while serving his sentence. In the book’s telling, the absurdity lay in the fact that it was precisely the Justice Department’s earlier decision to stop him from leaving the United States, along with the subsequent delays in sentencing and enforced stay, that had pushed him step by step into the condition now labeled “overstay.” Three days later, ICE headquarters withdrew the hold, but by then his halfway-house file had already been closed. Reapplying would take at least two to four weeks, far longer than the remainder of his sentence. As a result, he spent the final fourteen days being held in detention for no substantive purpose.
The detention center was worse than prison. There was no yard, no exercise equipment, no computers — only an extremely limited tablet, and even sending a message cost money. The only thing he could do was stay in his small compartment and do push-ups and sit-ups to offset the drag of time with physical movement. What was more punishing than the environment itself was the uncertainty at the very end. The day before, his lawyer had told him that under the normal process he should be released the next day, but detention staff said nothing. That night he barely slept. From 3 a.m. onward he stayed awake, got dressed, packed up his small space, and sat waiting. Nothing happened at 8:30. Nothing happened at 9. Nothing happened at 10. It was not until 10:50 that a guard finally walked over and said, “Get ready.” Fifteen minutes later, he had changed back into his own clothes, signed the paperwork, and found his sister and mother already waiting outside. He stepped through the door and took his first breath of free air in fourteen days. The family then went straight to the airport, where a private plane was waiting. From the moment he walked out of the detention center to the moment the plane took off, only twenty-six minutes passed. Yet even after takeoff, he still did not fully relax. Only after the plane had left U.S. airspace did his nerves finally ease. When he arrived in the UAE and embraced his children and family again, that was when, for the first time in eleven months, he felt the meaning of freedom as “happiness.”
In the first few weeks after his release, he did not want to see too many people, did not want to do interviews, and rarely used social media. It was only a month later that he made a single appearance at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai. After that, he continued working on Giggle Academy and slowly reconnected with the world of work.
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