US President Donald Trump has pardoned three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange and a fourth high-ranking former employee. The co-founders are Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed.
Prosecutors accused the co-founders of effectively running the BitMEX exchange as a money laundering platform and that its purported withdrawal from the US market was a sham.
Trump Pardons BitMEX Founders
US President Donald Trump has pardoned three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange and a fourth former high-level employee. The founders, including Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, along with former head of business development Gregory Dwyer had pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act in 2022 and were mandated to pay $30 million in civil fines. The three also received criminal sentences and probation. Authorities also alleged BitMEX did not effectively use its anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) measures.
Trump issued the pardons on Thursday, over three months after BitMEX was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish and maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs.
BitMEX Founders Thank Trump
Hayes thanked Trump for the pardon, tweeting, “Thank you, POTUS.” Delo also issued a statement stating that the pardon vindicates their position and that the US Department of Justice wrongfully targeted the exchange and its founders.
“The US Department of Justice wrongfully targeted BitMEX and its co-founders. This full and unconditional pardon by President Trump is a vindication of the position we have always held – that BitMEX, my co-founders, and I should never have been charged with a criminal offense through an obscure, antiquated law.”
Delo also alleged that BitMEX was wrongfully made an example of for political reasons and was used to send out inconsistent regulatory signals.
“As the most successful crypto exchange of its kind, we were wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons, and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals. I’m sincerely grateful to the President for granting this pardon to me and my co-founders. A legal wrong has been righted today, and despite the distress I have been through over the past few years, I’m pleased to have cleared my name and to be able to continue my life and philanthropic work without the burden of an unfounded conviction.”
The Case Against BitMEX
BitMEX was founded in 2014. Prosecutors alleged that executives were aware that the exchange was required to implement strict AML and KYC protocols because it served customers in the US. However, it ignored and flouted these requirements, requiring customers to only provide an email address to access BitMEX’s services. The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, in a statement released in January, had said,
“Indeed, senior executives each knew that customers residing in the U.S. continued to access BitMEX’s trading platform through at least in or about 2018 and that BitMEX policies nominally in place to prevent such trading were toothless or easily overridden to serve BitMEX’s bottom line goal of obtaining revenue through the U.S. market without regard to U.S. criminal laws.”
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