April 1, 2025
By Our Correspondent
President Donald Trump has granted pardons to three co-founders of the BitMEX global cryptocurrency exchange, along with a former senior employee of the firm, as reported by CNBC. The co-founders—former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed—along with Gregory Dwyer, the former head of business development, had previously pleaded guilty to a single count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act due to their failure to implement anti-money laundering and know-your-customer protocols.
The founders received varying lengths of probation as part of their criminal sentences and were mandated to pay a total of $30 million in civil fines stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Dwyer, who was sentenced to 12 months of probation, agreed to pay a fine of $150,000. Prosecutors alleged that the individuals operated BitMEX as a “money laundering platform” and claimed that the company’s withdrawal from the U.S. market was merely a façade.
Trump’s pardons were issued on Thursday, occurring more than three months after BitMEX was ordered to pay a $100 million fine for breaching the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish and uphold necessary anti-money laundering and know-your-customer measures.
Hayes, in a tweet on Friday, wrote, “Thank you POTUS,” using the term for “President of the United States.”
Delo, in a statement, said, “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 said.
“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,” Delo said. “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.”
In 2014, Hayes, Delo, and Reed established BitMEX. Prosecutors alleged that the executives were aware of the necessity for the exchange to adopt an anti-money laundering strategy due to its service to U.S. customers, yet they opted to disregard these obligations, allowing customers to access BitMEX’s services with merely an email address.
The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office stated in January that senior executives were aware that customers in the U.S. continued to use BitMEX’s trading platform as recently as 2018.
They recognized that the policies BitMEX had ostensibly implemented to prevent such trading were ineffective or could be easily bypassed, allowing the company to pursue revenue from the U.S. market without consideration for U.S. criminal laws. Delo, who previously served as the chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of BitMEX, received a sentence of 30 months of probation following his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Hayes was sentenced to six months of home confinement, followed by two years of probation.
Reed, who is the exchange’s former chief technology officer, was sentenced to 18 months of probation.
