Featured Image Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty
Amid concerns that the cryptocurrency world is a hotbed of criminal activity, misdemeanours from the likes of OneCoin's Karl Sebastian Greenwood, "Crypto Queen" Ruja Ignatova, and the late Faruk Fatih Özer of Thodex have racked up impressive prison sentences spanning thousands of years.
Two of the most famous are FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, with the latter being pardoned by President Donald Trump on January 21, 2025.
He’s remembered as the creator of the dark web marketplace where 10,000 products, ranging from credit card details to heroin, were available to buy with Bitcoin.
After earning a reported $13 million in commission, Ulbricht found himself behind bars but an unlikely poster boy of Trump's campaign when the returning POTUS vowed to free him to earn votes from the Libertarian Party.
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Of course, Ulbricht isn't the only crypto bro to find himself escaping the shackles of the past thanks to the current administration.
Another is Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the billionaire co-founder of Binance, who received a presidential pardon from the big guy.
Known for serving as the CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange from 2017 to 2023, CZ stepped down after he pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in the USA.
Sentenced to four months in prison, Zhao was released in September 2024, later receiving a presidential pardon in October 2025. Speaking to Fox News “Special Report” in his first full interview since his pardon, CJ said he was 'surprised' to have landed on the President's radar.
He admitted to host Bret Baier: "You never know if it’s going to happen, or when it’s going to happen, so I was a little bit surprised."
While Zhao is clearly grateful to Trump, we're not sure the latter will take much notice. Just a week after Trump granted the pardon, he told 60 Minutes he had "no idea who [Zhao] is". Reminding us of when Trump didn't know who Nvidia's Jensen Huang is, the President added: "I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt."
There were early whispers that the White House had been discussing a pardon for Zhao and a potential return for Binance to the US market.
Eyebrows were raised over a potential conflict of interest, especially when The Wall Street Journal claimed that Zhao's representatives were looking to strike a deal with the Trump family's World Liberty Financial as 'leverage' for a pardon.
This is something that Zhao continues to deny, telling Baier: "That’s completely not accurate. There’s no deal. There’s no – there has never been any discussions.”
The pardoned billionaire's net worth is reported to sit at $88 billion in October 2025, and while he's keen to get on with his life, he maintained that his connections to Donald Trump don't extend beyond a simple pardon. Calling TWSJ's reporting "categorically false," he said he's "super grateful" for the pardon but concluded: "It’s as simple as that. There’s no business relationships between me, Binance and World Liberty Financial.
"I want to help America become the capital of crypto."
