FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried wants a Trump pardon

About two years into his prison sentence, Sam Bankman-Fried, the former founder and CEO of the defunct crypto platform FTX, believes it is time for a presidential pardon.

He is therefore increasingly trying to appease Trump on social media. The White House granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road (the first marketplace for Bitcoin) earlier this year, but seems unwilling to do the same for SBF.

The Altruists

Just as Netflix is in the final stages of post-production on the series about the demise of the crypto platform FTX (and thus also on the Bitcoin crash of 2022), the upcoming series, titled The Altruists, is getting some free publicity from Sam Bankman-Fried himself.

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SBF, as he is known on the internet, has recently been trying to sway Trump on social media, whereas in his heyday in 2020-2022 he consistently spent the same amount on both Democrats and Republicans.

The Republicans, however, do not seem willing to grant a pardon to the founder of FTX.

FTX’s $500 million Anthropic stake would be worth $30 billion today 👇 https://t.co/8eoQskc22t

— Susan Li (@SusanLiTV) March 17, 2026

SBF also explains that the lawyer handling FTX’s bankruptcy made major errors in the sale of assets. For example, FTX had invested 500 million in Anthropic, currently just about the most popular AI helper in the Western world.

The sale yielded 1.3 billion dollars at the time. If that investment had only been sold now, SBF’s initial investment would have been worth 30 billion dollars.