WASHINGTON, D.C. — For months, the rumors swirled through the halls of Mar-a-Lago and the digital forums of the crypto-elite. Could Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the disgraced founder of FTX currently serving a 25-year sentence, be next on President Donald Trump’s list of high-profile pardons?
That speculation was decisively extinguished this week. In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, President Trump confirmed that Bankman-Fried’s name is nowhere near his desk. “We’re looking at a lot of people who were treated very unfairly by the previous administration,” Trump stated. “But what happened at FTX… that was a different league. You’re talking about billions of dollars of people’s hard-earned money just vanishing. No, I’m not looking at that one.”
The Failed Lobbying Campaign
The President’s comments come as a crushing blow to a sophisticated “rehabilitation” campaign orchestrated by Bankman-Fried’s inner circle. Throughout 2025, SBF’s parents—Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried—reportedly met with several key legal advisors in Trump’s orbit, hoping to frame their son’s actions as those of a “misunderstood math nerd” rather than a criminal mastermind.
SBF himself attempted to lean into the political shift. In jailhouse interviews with figures like Tucker Carlson, he sought to distance himself from his former status as a top Democratic donor, claiming he was “disillusioned” with the Biden administration and characterizing himself as a victim of a “weaponized” Justice Department.
A Tale of Two “Crypto Kings”
Critics and supporters alike have noted a sharp contrast in how the Trump administration views various figures in the digital asset space. While SBF remains behind bars at FCI Terminal Island, others have found favor:
| Individual | Case Context | Trump's Action (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Ross Ulbricht | Silk Road Founder | Pardoned (January 2025) |
| Changpeng "CZ" Zhao | Binance Founder (AML violations) | Pardoned (October 2025) |
| Sam Bankman-Fried | FTX (Fraud/Conspiracy) | Clemency Denied |
The administration’s logic appears to be the distinction between “regulatory overreach” and “outright theft.” Trump has characterized the cases against Ulbricht and Zhao as part of a “war on crypto” led by the previous SEC. However, the FTX collapse—which saw $8 billion in customer funds diverted to prop up Alameda Research—falls under the category of “blatant financial fraud” that Trump’s “law and order” platform cannot easily excuse.
The Political Dead End
There is also the inescapable reality of SBF’s past political ties. Despite his 2024–2025 attempts to pivot rightward, the record shows Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes in the 2022 cycle, contributing over $5 million to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign alone.
For a President who frequently highlights the perceived “double standards” of the legal system, pardoning a man so closely associated with the Democratic establishment—and one whose fraud actually harmed many of the everyday investors Trump claims to champion—would be a significant political liability.
“He burned the people,” a senior White House aide whispered to reporters following the interview. “You can’t brand yourself as the ‘crypto president’ while letting the man who almost killed the industry off the hook.”
What’s Next for SBF?
Following the President’s public rejection, betting markets for an SBF pardon plummeted, with Polymarket odds dropping from 20% to a mere 6% within hours. Bankman-Fried’s last remaining hope now rests with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which heard oral arguments in November 2024.
Unless the courts find a procedural miracle, the man who once aimed to be the world’s first trillionaire will likely be spending the next two decades exactly where he is: in a federal prison cell, watching the crypto market he once led move on without him.
