2026-01-11 06:23:21

The road to pardon for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is completely closed.

U.S. President Trump recently made it clear in an interview that he will not grant a pardon to the incarcerated crypto mogul. This means SBF's 25-year sentence will continue to be enforced unless a future president is willing to intervene on his behalf.

Interestingly, Trump is not unfamiliar with figures in the cryptocurrency space—he has previously pardoned several well-known industry insiders. Co-founders of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes and Benjamin Delo, received pardons, as did Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road. Former CEO of a major exchange Zhao Changpeng (CZ) is also on the list. Even Ilya Lichtenstein, involved in the Bitfinex hack case, was released early under the First Step Act.

But SBF is a different case. The mastermind behind the FTX collapse due to orchestrated fraud was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. By 2025, his parents had submitted a pardon application to Trump, and SBF himself has publicly expressed his hopes, but now all efforts are in vain.

Trump's stance is very clear—no chance for SBF, and also explicitly rejecting others such as rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs, the former Venezuelan president detained on drug and terrorism charges, and former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who was sentenced to 11 years for bribery.

These decisions reflect Trump's firm stance on financial crimes and corruption issues. For those hoping for a pardon, they can only wait for policy changes in future administrations.

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faded_wojak.eth

· 9h ago

Huh? SBF still wants to make a comeback? Dream on, brother. This time, there's really no hope. Someone defrauded so many retail investors, why should they be pardoned? Trump has seen through this. 25 years is just 25 years, at least it's a bit better than Diddy. That guy's situation is even worse. It's outrageous. CZ can come out, but SBF insists on fighting to the end. The difference is quite big. It seems that financial fraud in the US is to be nailed down, even more brutal than drug trafficking... He ruined the wallets of hundreds of thousands of people. Want to walk out of prison lightly? Wake up. This time, it's not about a pardon. No one is willing to speak up for him.

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StablecoinSkeptic

· 9h ago

SBF is really done this time, starting from 2025 no negotiations. Trump pardons others but not you, isn't that awkward?

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BlockchainDecoder

· 9h ago

Research shows that there is an interesting pattern here—the criteria for Trump's pardon list do not seem to be solely based on technical criminal charges, but rather involve a quantitative assessment of the scale of fraud. From the data, the uniqueness of the FTX case lies in its scope of impact—losses of funds for hundreds of thousands of users and ecosystem-level destruction. This scale clearly exceeds that of simple technical operators or hacker cases. Citing some perspectives from judicial system research, the degree of social trust damage caused by fraud often determines the tilt of pardon decisions. It is worth noting why SBF is so special. It's not because he is involved in crypto, but because he undermines the entire system's credibility foundation. This is fundamentally different from Ross Ulbricht's case—a system destroyer versus an individual operator. In summary, the rejection this time may not reflect an anti-crypto stance, but rather a clear delineation of the boundaries for large-scale fraud.

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InscriptionGriller

· 10h ago

Haha, SBF is definitely done for this time. Trump didn't even give him a face, it seems fraud just can't be washed away.

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BloodInStreets

· 10h ago

Haha, SBF really missed out this time, not even getting Trump’s face CZ and UBG turned around, but he ended up getting cut out, very sarcastic I thought I could buy the dip back then, but now it looks like a value trap 25 years, this account is probably going to be permanently liquidated You can tell who Trump will support—if the gameplay is illegal, there's no discussion, scammers really deserve to go in

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