Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht served 12 years of a double life sentence (plus an additional 40 years) before US President Donald Trump pardoned him in January, freeing him from prison and sparking a wave of other pardons that continues through this month.
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Ulbricht, who was convicted in February 2015 and sentenced in May of that year, was initially incarcerated after being convicted of drug trafficking, conspiracy and computer hacking.
Trump pledged to pardon Ulbricht in May 2024 during the Libertarian National Convention and followed through shortly after returning to office last January, explicitly linking the pardon to the support he received from the Libertarian Party.
“I just called Ross William Ulbricht’s mother to let her know that in her honor and in honor of the libertarian movement, which has so strongly supported me, I had the pleasure of signing a full and unconditional pardon for her son, Ross,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social message at the time.
Trump didn’t stop there: In March, he pardoned former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, Hayes co-founders Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo, and top employee Greg Dwyer. In a first in the United States, he also pardoned HDR Global Trading, the company that operates the BitMEX platform. All had pleaded guilty to violations of the bank secrecy law.
Later still, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, who also pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act charges.
These latest pardons open the door for Hayes, Zhao and others to return to the United States as the company proposes, and for BitMEX to easily begin doing business in the United States.
Trump’s pardons are not limited to crypto executives; in recent weeks, he pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (convicted of conspiring to distribute more than 400 tons of narcotics), commuted the sentence of David Gentile (convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud charges related to a $1.6 billion scheme), and pardoned Rep. Henry Cuellar (on corruption charges with a trial scheduled for next year), among others. Trump began the year with a massive pardon of those convicted of charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
It remains to be seen whether another crypto executive will be pardoned, although one recently launched a PR campaign in an apparent bid to secure a pardon even as he serves a 25-year prison sentence while awaiting an appeals court’s verdict on his attempted retrial: FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
