Make your bets! After the presidential pardon granted to Chengpeng Zhao by President Donald Trumpeyes are now turning to Sam Bankman-Fried. The latter also hopes to obtain presidential favor and the Polymarket platform has just opened betting on the issue. Well, the situations are still not at all the same, but that doesn't stop punters from having fun.
The key points of this article:The Polymarket platform opened bets on the possibility of a presidential pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried, sparking strong interest.
Despite the optimism of some punters, the seriousness of the accusations against Bankman-Fried makes his pardon by Donald Trump highly unlikely.
Polymarket opens bets on Donald Trump pardons
Polymarket is a decentralized betting platform that has become known for its political bets during the last American presidential campaign. Numerous bets around the different candidates were then proposed and the success was clearly there. Building on these first successes, Polymarket has since expanded its offer and today, it is therefore possible to bet on the presidential pardons of Donald Trump! The bet on “Who will be pardoned by Trump in 2025? » saw the probabilities of SBF go from 5.6% to 12% in just 12 hours, but there are other candidates in this area like Eric Adams, Roger Ver, Julian Assange and the list goes on! There is even the possibility of betting on a self-forgiveness of Donald Trump. In total, more $6.5 million were placed on this market, including 302 090$ about the founder of FTX. But that's not all, since a special question is also asked on this specific case: “Will SBF be released in 2025? ». And this position has very recently exploded with chances which rose from 4.3% to 19.1% before falling back to 15.5%.
The probability of seeing SBF released is low, but some are clearly tempted to bet anyway – Source: Polymarket
After CZ, can SBF also be forgiven?
However, although the punters seem optimistic, nothing is less certain and the parallel with CZ a ses limits. SBF was found guilty of fraud and of conspiracy with a view to launder money for having embezzled several billion dollars from client funds and sentenced to 25 years in prison. For his part, CZ was charged with violating US money laundering laws by allowing illicit funds to pass through Binance and sentenced to four months in detention. An obviously good deal less serious than that of SBF and the comparison is rather preposterous. As crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky pointed out, he would be “really shocked” if the Trump administration granted a pardon to SBF. His name is associated with a gigantic media-economic-political scandal, and it is really not sure that the president wants to attach his name to that of public enemy number 1 of crypto. But for the more playful among us, it remains possible on Polymarket.