Trump Grants Pardon to Crypto Founder, Who Now Turns Focus to Biohacking

Arthur Hayes built his fortune, faced legal challenges, and encountered a prohibition—all before reaching the age of 40. He turned BitMEX into one of the world’s foremost crypto trading platforms, witnessed it struggle under regulatory pressure, and ultimately had his conviction overturned through a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Now, Hayes is reinvesting—not only in cryptocurrencies but also in his personal health. He recently took a significant stake in a stem cell company that operates clinics in Mexico and Bangkok, where he has been a frequent patient for over a year, traveling in for treatments aimed at improving his healthspan.

“I want to live as long as possible, in the best health I can,” Hayes remarked in a video interview. “This represents the future—you’re observing a trend where more nations are loosening their regulations on stem cell applications.”

He chose not to reveal the company’s name due to an ongoing rebranding effort but mentioned that he joined the board this past summer.

In March, Trump granted pardons to Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, the three co-founders of BitMEX, formerly the largest platform for crypto derivatives trading. The trio faced charges in 2020 for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, pleading guilty in 2022, each agreeing to forfeit $10 million and receiving probation.

The pardon, Hayes shared, had minimal effect on his professional standing. Before it, the 40-year-old lived in Singapore and spent three months annually skiing in Hokkaido, Japan. His essays—covering a wide array of topics from meme culture to monetary theory—are well-respected within crypto communities. One post from March 2023, titled “Dust on Crust,” contributed to the creation of Ethena’s synthetic dollar, which is now the third-largest stablecoin valued at $11.6 billion.

Currently, Hayes is capitalizing on the crypto market’s revival, armed with investment funds, a focus on longevity, and a desire to disrupt. Inspired by a supportive White House and powered by gains from a bull market, crypto pioneers like Hayes, who once challenged the financial system through code, are now redirecting their ambitions toward sectors they deem stagnant, over-regulated, or ripe for disruption.

Be it stem cells, speculative tokens, AI-driven education, or public companies accumulating token holdings, a clear pattern emerges: individuals with capital and determination, who built their wealth in a largely unregulated arena, are probing how much they can stretch the limits.

Longevity has surfaced as the ultimate frontier for industry trailblazers. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has donated millions to life-extension research. Former Coinbase Global Inc. CTO Balaji Srinivasan has invested in biotech and startup ecosystems. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong co-founded NewLimit, a genetic engineering endeavor that secured $130 million in a Series B funding round led by Kleiner Perkins earlier this May.

Similarly, ambitions in the crypto markets are broadening. Digital asset treasury companies (DATs)—public firms purchasing crypto for their balance sheets—have gained immense popularity, offering token exposure in a manner more familiar to institutional investors. Currently, these entities hold around $110 billion in Bitcoin, as reported by CoinGecko, in addition to a growing inventory of smaller, less liquid tokens.

Treasury boom

This surge has prompted caution from Hayes’s family office, Maelstrom, which has backed three DATs. General partner Akshat Vaidya expressed concerns that the trend might be spiraling out of control, posing risks to the overall crypto market rally. Hayes—serving as an advisor to Solana-centric Upexi Inc.—believes the real challenges are yet to come.

“The DATs that distinguish themselves,” he observed, “will be those that meet the volume market cap metrics that allow passive index fund managers in the U.S. to allocate resources to them.”

“If they don’t succeed, I can easily envision many of these treasury firms trading at a discount. Unwinding those trades, of course, would be very tricky.”

Trump Inc. has also embraced the treasury model. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which operates Truth Social, raised over $2 billion earlier this year to buy Bitcoin. Recently, a lesser-known firm in Las Vegas, Alt5 Sigma Corp., announced plans to gather around $1.5 billion for crypto purchases, focusing on World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token linked to Trump.

Trump’s sons have ventured into the crypto mining sector, while the former president and First Lady Melania Trump have introduced their own memecoins—speculative cryptocurrencies that can spike due to social media hype but can also plummet in value just as quickly. Trump’s coin has dropped approximately 80% from its peak shortly after its launch.

The family’s growing presence in the digital sphere has raised allegations of conflicts of interest. However, for Hayes, it merely serves to validate the crypto-driven era.

“If the president of the empire is launching his own memecoin that can be traded freely, I think it paves the way for other politicians to leverage memecoins for campaign financing,” he stated. “I commend Trump for introducing his own memecoin. I genuinely don’t care about its price fluctuations.”

© 2025 Bloomberg

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