I still think it's a good deal for CZ. Different countries have different restrictions for someone who has done time, some stringent, some not so much and some you can clean off after a few years of decent community service.
CZ should also have enough money stashed away that he may not need to look for work as normal people would, and any job he does get will be covert and more of a consultancy role than a financial manager or part of an open board. That will not get so much trust from the public.
Of course he does. I bet CZ has all of his money in crypto stored away someplace safe. He's not that stupid. The government may be able to confiscate Fiat (USD) and crypto on exchanges. But not self-custodied crypto (where you control the private keys).
Once CZ gets out of prison, he will enjoy spending his fortune. SBF will not be that lucky because of his longer sentence. He used customer funds, whereas CZ only allowed money laundering on Binance exchange (and paid a hefty fine in return). He saved crypto by taking responsibility and stepping down as CEO of the world's largest crypto exchange. Hopefully, we'll see CZ involved in crypto again after four months. Who knows what the future of Binance and BNB will be?
I am no so sure about that, he has been pretty much complying with the regulations, and at least tries to stay legit, but Binance does fight against all regulations that can't necessarily be forced upon them. Technically allowing money laundering could be because they chose to go with assumptions on what different regulations meant on that. And weren't actively reporting and kyc:ing and double checking every restricted country that used VPN.
And like you said, CZ isn't stupid. He knows that if he wants to hide the crypto, it's getting more and more harder to wash out that as legit money. And large amounts could take forever to wash, and will end up being more and more expensive. If he indeed has saved money/crypto, it's legit, reported and washed already. Not stashed in some transparent blockchain which is more and more under a microscope. Or god forbit opaque and private blockchain which would be nearly impossible to cash out in the future.