Sam Bankman-Fried told a fellow inmate he plans to launch his own coin upon release, according to a New York Magazine profile published Wednesday drawing on months of phone calls and an in-person prison visit.
Life At Lompoc: Pickleball, Pixel Dungeon, and a Vegan Cookbook
Bankman-Fried, 34, now lives at FCI Lompoc in California after transferring from Terminal Island this spring, roughly 30 pounds lighter and tanned from daily pickleball.
He has played the mobile game Shattered Pixel Dungeon approximately 6,000 times, written a tongue-in-cheek Vegan Prison Cookbook, and spent months serializing a prison memoir called Manfred, distributed to a small email list through the prison’s CorrLinks system.
Beyond the games and writing, his daily routine revolves around CorrLinks terminals where he drafts X posts for his father to publish on his behalf, works on legal motions, and maintains outside correspondence.
At Terminal Island he taught a chess class, won a pickleball tournament with a fellow inmate, and helped multiple prisoners prepare legal filings, earning a yard-wide reputation as the unofficial lawyer everyone wanted on their case.
The Pardon Campaign Is Running At Full Speed With Two GOP Lobbyists
Bankman-Fried officially filed a presidential pardon request in June, and his parents hired two Republican operatives to lobby the Trump administration: Bryan Lanza of Mercury Public Affairs, who advised Trump’s 2024 campaign, and Kory Langhofer, a former Trump campaign lawyer.
Polymarket currently prices his odds of receiving a pardon before 2027 at roughly 14%.
Against that backdrop, Trump told the New York Times he has no plans to pardon Bankman-Fried, and the White House has pointed back to that quote every time the pardon request resurfaces publicly.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) publicly urged Trump not to grant clemency, and on June 12 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his official appeal, closing his last remaining legal escape route.
A bipartisan Senate resolution introduced Wednesday now formally blocks any pardon path through Congress.
Why This Matters For Crypto Markets Right Now
FTX’s estate has disbursed over $10 billion to victims with several billion more still to distribute.
Bankman-Fried’s pre-collapse Anthropic investment, purchased for roughly $500 million in 2021, would be worth an estimated $80 billion today had bankruptcy proceedings not liquidated it.
His plan to launch a new coin upon release puts the entire SBF pardon debate back at the center of crypto market conversation.
Image: Shutterstock
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