Trump pardons BitMEX's founders and the company itself
Trump pardoned BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, early employee Greg Dwyer, and BitMEX's operating company, HDR Global Trading. The four men had pleaded guilty in 2022 to Bank Secrecy Act violations for failing to implement required anti-money-laundering controls.
What happened
DOJ's clemency list records the pardons on March 27, 2025. The founders had been sentenced to probation, and the CFTC had ordered each of the three co-founders to pay a $10 million civil penalty; HDR Global Trading had been sentenced in January 2025 to a $100 million fine. Decrypt reported that the pardons cleared the felony records and that Hayes thanked Trump on X shortly after the announcement. No payment from BitMEX or its founders to the Trumps is documented in the reporting cited here, so no take figure is counted.
Why it matters
Trump cleared the felony records of a crypto exchange's founders, and pardoned the exchange itself, while his sons were building the family's own crypto business, World Liberty Financial. The pardons fulfilled a campaign promise to end what Trump called the "war on crypto"; the reporting cited here shows no payment from BitMEX to the Trumps.