Sam Bankman-Fried pardon probability quadruples on Polymarket

Doohyun Hwang

Summary

Polymarket reported that the pardon probability for Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) surged from 4% to 16%.
Following President Trump's successive pardons, the possibility of a pardon for FTX founder SBF was raised, but it noted significant practical limitations such as political burdens.
The industry said this pardon shows the deepening ties between the crypto industry and political circles, but assessed that SBF's chance of a pardon remains limited.

U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao(CZ), raising the possibility of a pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX.

On the 23rd (local time), on prediction-market platform Polymarket, bets on the possibility that SBF would be released before the end of this year surged from 4% to 16% immediately after the pardon announcement. SBF, who was convicted in March, has been sentenced to 25 years on multiple charges including fraud and money laundering.

President Trump's pardon of Changpeng Zhao is the second following his pardon of Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht immediately after taking office in January. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 on charges of leading drug trafficking based on anonymous Bitcoin (BTC) payments. Changpeng Zhao was prosecuted for regulatory noncompliance, including violations of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), and was sentenced to four months in prison in April the year before last.

SBF's alleged crimes are assessed to be roughly in between the two. He is accused of misappropriating billions of dollars of customer assets through FTX. However, since his offenses are far from public safety threats such as violent crime or organized drug trafficking, some interpret that "if Ulbricht was pardoned, SBF could be as well."

However, in reality there remain many hurdles before a pardon. Until his guilty verdict, SBF denied the charges and steadfastly defended himself at trial, and he was judged to show no signs of remorse during the proceedings. In contrast, Changpeng Zhao and Ulbricht both pled guilty and showed cooperative attitudes toward authorities. Also, SBF has a record of donating large sums to Democratic-leaning political organizations, leading some analysts to conclude that it is unlikely President Trump would risk the political burden to issue a pardon.

The industry called Trump's pardon "a symbolic event that shows the increasingly close relationship between the virtual-asset (cryptocurrency) industry and Washington's political circles," while also assessing that "in SBF's case, considering the political risk, the possibility of a pardon remains limited."

FTT