Bloomberg Settles with Binance: Apologizes for Defamatory Article

• Bloomberg Businessweek apologized to Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao.
• Bloomberg published a cover page with a misleading title in its 250th edition.
• CZ said that Bloomberg ignored the positives and cherry-picked the negative.

Bloomberg Businessweek has issued a public apology to Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ in the crypto space), retracting a 2022 article that labeled Zhao’s business a “Ponzi scheme.”

The magazine’s publisher, Modern Media CL, admitted the headline was “false and baseless,” promising not to repeat such claims in the future.

We have journalistic standards that should, and will, be better. To that end, we will not publish or make any allegations to the same or similar effect, in any manner whatsoever.

While apologizing for the distress caused to Binance and Zhao, Bloomberg said that in order to “right its wrong,” the media platform will make a donation to the Songzi, Hubei Province Special Education Foundation. The amount of the donation was not disclosed.

According to a Fortune report, Zhao sued Bloomberg in 2022 over the title, which the crypto entrepreneur claimed spurred “hatred, contempt, and ridicule” against him and his exchange. Binance also filed a separate motion for discovery against Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Inc. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 25, 2022.

Zhao took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to express his frustration over the matter, adding that while Bloomberg has some “nice” journalists, their article on him was inaccurate and unfounded. CZ said that Bloomberg had ignored all the positive facts, instead cherry-picking negative comments they got from third parties and undisclosed traders to frame such an article.