Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has filed a request for a presidential pardon through the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney. This comes despite former President Donald Trump's earlier statement that he has no intention of granting such clemency. Bankman-Fried, who was convicted in 2023 on multiple fraud and conspiracy charges for misappropriating billions from FTX customers, is currently serving a 25-year sentence at a federal facility in Santa Barbara, California. Over the past year, he has attempted to gain Trump's attention by publicly praising the former president's actions, including the pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, but these efforts have not yielded results. The pardon request has garnered attention in the context of ongoing developments related to FTX, including a recent call for his release by rapper Drake and a settlement by a former FTX legal advisor for $54 million. While a pardon would not directly impact cryptocurrency prices, it carries significant symbolic implications for crypto regulation narratives, with prediction markets assigning only a 13% chance of it occurring before 2027.