Just three years ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was the crypto king of Washington, D.C., establishing himself as a fundraising force after becoming one of the top donors to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. After a swift fall from grace, and a 25-year prison sentence following the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX, Bankman-Fried is changing his tune and appealing to President Trump for a pardon. But despite his new right-wing press tour, which included an unsanctioned appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show that landed Bankman-Fried in solitary confinement, political insiders characterize the bid as a long shot.
When asked about the probability that Bankman-Fried’s campaign will yield success, one crypto lobbyist—who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly—answered: “zero.”
“Sorry, it’s Trump world … near zero,” they added.
From blockchain golden boy to jail
As the founder of FTX, a crypto empire once valued north of $30 billion, Sam Bankman-Fried was briefly at the top of the blockchain world. He parlayed his growing riches into an influence campaign in D.C., funneling tens of millions of dollars in donations, mostly to congressional candidates, with the goal of advancing different policy issues, from crypto regulatory reform to pandemic preparedness.
Publicly, Bankman-Fried’s cohort of twentysomething employees affiliated with the “effective altruism” philanthropic movement seemed to lean left, mostly donating to Democratic candidates. But after the bankruptcy of FTX and his arrest, Bankman-Fried claimed that he had donated just as much money to Republicans, albeit through “dark money” channels that could not be traced.
During Bankman-Fried’s trial, prosecutors’ evidence included a document where the crypto founder listed ways to potentially fend off his company’s impending collapse. “Go on Tucker Carlson,” read the third item. “Come out as a republican [sic].”
Over a year after his guilty sentence, Bankman-Fried appears to be deploying the playbook. The New York Times reported that, along with speaking with the Trump-friendly Carlson, Bankman-Fried is also consulting with a lawyer with ties to the president. His father, Stanford Law professor Joe Bankman, also cowrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post last month lauding Trump’s plans for a sovereign wealth fund.
The moonshot idea to procure a pardon from Trump is not out of the bounds of possibility. Notably, the president embraced crypto during the election campaign, and then pardoned the founder of blockchain-powered dark web marketplace Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, just a few days after taking office.
But while Ulbricht was a popular figure in libertarian corners of the crypto industry, and his release a long-standing political goal, Bankman-Fried is still reviled among much of the sector, especially after the fraud that he perpetrated at FTX caused a prolonged Crypto Winter.
A different crypto lobbyist told Fortune that Bankman-Fried’s odds of a pardon are increasing because of Trump’s increasing ties to the industry and his willingness to use his pardoning power freely. “That said, it doesn’t feel like the broader crypto community has made SBF a priority like it did with Ross Ulbricht,” said the lobbyist. “Until that happens, the pardon probably doesn’t occur.”
