Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, has received a pardon from U.S. President Donald Trump, as reported on Friday.
Trump also reportedly pardoned Hayes’ co-founders, Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against BitMEX, its three co-founders, and its first employee, Gregory Dwyer, for breaching the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Authorities alleged that BitMEX promoted itself as a platform allowing customers to trade with near anonymity, without requiring essential know-your-customer (KYC) information. All four individuals eventually entered guilty pleas and received sentences involving fines and probation. The exchange itself admitted guilt regarding BSA violations last year.
Hayes was sentenced to two years of probation; Delo to 30 months, and Reed to 18 months. Dwyer received 12 months of probation.
In 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission mandated BitMEX to pay $100 million for breaching the Commodity Exchange Act along with other CFTC regulations, distinct from its DOJ resolutions.
Legal representatives for Hayes, Delo, and Reed did not promptly respond to requests for commentary.
The news of these pardons follows Trump’s recent pardon of Trevor Milton, the ex-CEO of Nikola Motors, who was previously convicted of fraud in 2022. Earlier in January, Trump acted on long-standing commitments to pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, after he had spent 11 years serving a harsh sentence of double life plus 40 years without parole eligibility. In the wake of Ulbricht’s pardon, former FTX CEO and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been seeking his own pardon, trying to gain favor with the Trump administration while appearing on Tucker Carlson in an unsanctioned jailhouse interview that led to him being placed in solitary confinement.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who also pleaded guilty to the same charge as Hayes and served a four-month prison term last year—making him not only the wealthiest person ever incarcerated in the U.S. but also the only individual to have served time for violating the BSA—has dismissed claims that he is pursuing a pardon from President Trump.
Nonetheless, Zhao conceded in a recent post on X that “no felon would decline a pardon, particularly as the only person in U.S. history sentenced to prison for a single BSA violation.”