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, in addition to senior worker Greg Dwyer and BitMEX’s working entity, HDR International Buying and selling, a BitMEX spokesperson stated. CNBC first reported the pardons, which the White Home stated had 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, Dwyer, accusing them of violating the Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA). Prosecutors alleged BitMEX marketed itself as a spot the place clients might use its platform just about anonymously, with out offering fundamental know-your-customer (KYC) data. All 4 people finally pleaded responsible and had 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 acquired 12 months of probation.
In an announcement, Delo stated he and his colleagues had been “wrongfully focused.”
“This full and unconditional pardon by President Trump is a vindication of the place we have now all the time held — that BitMEX, my co-founders and I ought to by no means have been charged with a legal offense via an obscure, antiquated regulation,” he stated. “As probably the most profitable crypto alternate of its sort, we had been wrongfully made to serve for instance, sacrificed for political causes and used to ship inconsistent regulatory indicators. I’m sincerely grateful to the President for granting this pardon to me and my co-founders.”
Hayes simply stated “thanks” on X (previously often called Twitter).
The Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee 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 Highway 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 particular person to ever go to jail within the U.S., but additionally the one particular person to ever serve jail time for violating the BSA — has denied experiences that he, too, is in search of a pardon from President Trump.
However, Zhao admitted in a current X put up that “no felon would thoughts a pardon, particularly being the one one in US historical past who was ever sentenced to jail for a single BSA cost.”
UPDATE (March 28, 2025, 20:40 UTC): Provides Delo assertion and White Home official.
UPDATE (March 28, 21:06 UTC): Provides Hayes.
UPDATE (March 29, 04:15 UTC): Provides Dwyer and HDR.