FTX's Defunct FTT Token Jumps 50% After Bankman-Fried Files for a Pardon

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, filed a formal application for a presidential pardon with the US Department of Justice on June 8, 2026. Within hours, FTT — the exchange's largely abandoned token — jumped more than 50 percent, briefly trading around $0.35 after touching an all-time low near $0.21 only days earlier.

A token with no exchange behind it

FTT was created by FTX as an "exchange token": holders received perks such as trading-fee discounts on the platform. That purpose disappeared in November 2022, when FTX collapsed after revelations that customer funds had been funneled to its affiliated trading firm. Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on seven counts of fraud and money laundering and is serving a 25-year federal prison sentence, alongside a forfeiture order of more than $11 billion.

The token, however, never stopped trading. With the exchange gone, FTT has no function and no claim on anything — its entire market value, roughly $95 million before this week's move, rests on speculation. That is what makes a 50 percent single-day jump possible: thin trading and a headline are enough.

What the pardon application actually is

According to reports on the filing, the application was submitted to the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney and requests a "pardon after completion of sentence" — a category aimed at restoring civil rights rather than securing early release. Legal observers note that the president is free to grant broader clemency at any time regardless of what a petition asks for, which is presumably what traders were reacting to.

The political backdrop explains the speculation. President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October 2025, and the administration has granted clemency in several other crypto-related cases. But Trump has publicly dismissed the idea of clemency for Bankman-Fried this year, and bettors on the prediction platform Polymarket priced the odds of a pardon before the end of 2026 at under 10 percent even after the filing.

The takeaway for everyday investors

This episode is a clean illustration of a recurring crypto pattern: tokens connected to dead or dying projects can still produce violent price moves on news that may never amount to anything. Buying such an asset is a bet on headlines, not on any underlying business or technology — the exchange that gave FTT its purpose has been gone for more than three years, and its estate has been repaying creditors through bankruptcy proceedings, not through the token.

Sharp spikes in low-value, low-liquidity tokens also cut both ways. A move up of 50 percent in a day can reverse just as quickly, and often does once the initial speculation fades. This article does not make any prediction about the pardon request or the token's price; it is worth understanding what such a token does — and does not — represent before treating a headline as an opportunity.

Sources

• Sam Bankman-Fried Files Formal Trump Pardon Request as FTT Jumps 50% (Bitcoin.com News)
• FTX Co-Founder Bankman-Fried Requests Trump Pardon — FTT Soars (Bitcoinist)
• CoinGecko: FTX Token (FTT)