Arthur Hayes, the previous CEO of crypto alternate BitMEX, has been granted a pardon by U.S. President Donald Trump, a White Home official confirmed Friday.
Trump additionally pardoned Hayes’ co-founders at BitMEX, Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo. CNBC first reported the pardons, which the White Home mentioned have been signed on Thursday.
In 2020, the U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) introduced fees in opposition to BitMEX, its three co-founders, and its first worker, Gregory Dwyer, accusing them of violating the Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA). Prosecutors alleged BitMEX marketed itself as a spot the place clients may use its platform nearly anonymously, with out offering fundamental know-your-customer (KYC) info. All 4 people ultimately pleaded responsible and have been sentenced to fines and probationary sentences. The alternate itself pleaded responsible to violating the BSA final yr.
Hayes confronted two years of probation; Delo spent 30 months on probation and Reed 18 months on probation. Dwyer obtained 12 months of probation.
In an announcement, Delo mentioned he and his colleagues had been “wrongfully targeted.”
“This full and unconditional pardon by President Trump is a vindication of the position we have always held — that BitMEX, my co-founders and I should never have been charged with a criminal offense through an obscure, antiquated law,” he mentioned. “As the most successful crypto exchange of its kind, we were wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals. I’m sincerely grateful to the President for granting this pardon to me and my co-founders.”
The Commodity Futures Buying and selling Commission ordered BitMEX to pay $100 million for violating the Commodity Alternate Act and different CFTC laws in 2021, individually from its DOJ settlements.
Attorneys representing Hayes, Delo and Reed didn’t instantly return requests for remark.
The reported pardons come only a day after Trump granted a pardon to Trevor Milton, the previous CEO of Nikola Motors who was beforehand convicted of fraud in 2022. In January, Trump made good on long-standing guarantees to pardon Silk Street creator Ross Ulbricht, who was 11 years right into a draconian sentence of double life in jail plus 40 years, with no chance of parole. Since Ulbricht’s pardon, former FTX CEO and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been angling for his personal pardon, trying to curry favor with the Trump administration and showing on Tucker Carlson in an unauthorized jailhouse interview that landed him in solitary confinement.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who pleaded responsible to the identical cost as Hayes and served 4 months in jail final yr — making him not solely the richest individual to ever go to jail within the U.S., but additionally the one individual to ever serve jail time for violating the BSA — has denied experiences that he, too, is searching for a pardon from President Trump.
However, Zhao admitted in a current X submit that “no felon would mind a pardon, especially being the only one in US history who was ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA charge.”
UPDATE (March 28, 2025, 20:40 UTC): Provides Delo assertion and White Home official.
