Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht served 12 years of a double life sentence (plus another 40 years) before US President Donald Trump pardoned him in January, releasing him from prison and setting off a wave of other pardons that continues through this month.
This feature is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2025 list.
Ulbricht, who was convicted in February 2015 and sentenced in May of that year, originally went to prison after being convicted of drug trafficking, conspiracy and hacking.
Trump promised to pardon Ulbricht in May 2024 at the Libertarian National Convention and followed through shortly after taking 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 honor of her and the Libertarian Movement that supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon for her son, Ross,” Trump wrote on a Truth Social post 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 senior employee Greg Dwyer. In a first for the US, he also pardoned HDR Global Trading, the corporate entity that operates the BitMEX platform. All had pleaded guilty to breaches of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Later, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and former CEO, who also pleaded guilty to charges related to the Bank Secrecy Act.
These last few pardons open the door for Hayes, Zhao and the others to re-enter the US, as the company is offering, and for BitMEX to easily start doing business in the US
Trump’s pardons are not limited to crypto bosses; in recent weeks, he has pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (convicted of conspiring to distribute over 400 tons of narcotics), commuted the sentence of David Gentile (convicted of securities and wire fraud charges linked to a $1.6 billion scheme) and pardoned Rep. Henry Cueller, among others, for another year. Trump began the year with a mass pardon of people convicted of charges related to the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.
It remains to be seen whether another crypto executive will be pardoned, though one has recently gone on a PR blitz in an apparent attempt to secure a pardon even as he serves a 25-year prison sentence while awaiting an appeals court ruling on his attempted retrial: FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
