One presidential signature this week set off a frenzy in crypto betting circles. When President Trump pardoned Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, speculators immediately started wondering: could Sam Bankman-Fried be the next?
The answer from traders on the online betting platform Polymarket came swift and decisive. They doubled SBF’s pardon odds from 5.6% to 12%, pouring more than $6.5 million into bets on the disgraced FTX founder’s future. Another market tracker about whether he will walk free this year spiked to 19.1% before cooling to 15.5%. With his appeal to slash the 25-year sentence dragging on, a Trump pardon looks like Bankman-Fried’s only hope for freedom before 2026.
Not So Fast, Say Legal Experts
Most industry watchers are not buying the comparison. Zhao got four months for a compliance slip-up. Bankman-Fried? He stole billions from FTX customers and is supposed to get 25 years of imprisonment.
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Crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky says he would be shocked if President Trump pardoned Bankman-Fried, who supported the Democrats before FTX spectacularly imploded in late 2022. Sasha Hodder from Hodder Law put it bluntly: Zhao never touched customer money, while Bankman-Fried ran what amounted to a massive fraud scheme. Trump shrugged off Zhao’s charges as the Biden administration’s overreaction, and this is also being attributed to Zhao’s financial backing of the Trump family’s crypto venture.
As the world watches, the fate of Bankman-Fried may set the tone for how administrations wield power over digital finance’s most controversial figures.
