Trump Shuts the Door on an SBF Pardon

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ Trump rules out a pardon for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried

• 🔁 Optimism proposes monthly OP buybacks using Superchain revenue

• 👛 Ex Zcash dev team launches cashZ wallet after governance dispute

• 🚨 TRU crashes 99% after hackers drain $26 million from Truebit

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Trump Won’t Consider Pardon for SBF: Report

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s chances of receiving a presidential pardon are looking increasingly unlikely. 

In a Thursday interview, President Donald Trump told The New York Times that he has no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried, grouping him with other high-profile figures like Sean “Diddy” Combs whom he declined to consider.

Trump’s stance towards the FTX founder stands in contrast to his more sympathetic posture toward other figures tied to the crypto ecosystem, most notably Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.

Bankman-Fried has meanwhile appeared to reposition his political alignment, writing on microblogging website GETTR last October that his 2022 arrest was politically motivated and coincided with a shift in his political donations toward Republicans.

More recently, posts on X attributed to Bankman-Fried — likely shared on his behalf given his incarceration — suggest an effort to curry favor with Trump.

The President’s comments indicate those overtures have so far failed to gain traction. 

Optimism Foundation Proposes OP Buybacks With 50% of Superchain Revenue

The Optimism Foundation, the entity behind layer 2 network Optimism, has proposed using 50% of Superchain revenue for monthly OP token buybacks.

The new governance initiative would dedicate half of incoming Superchain sequencer revenue — collected from chains like Base, Unichain, World Chain, and OP Mainnet — to over-the-counter OP purchases each month for 12 months.

The tokens would go to the Collective treasury for potential burning, staking rewards, or ecosystem use, while the remaining ETH would be allocated by the Foundation’s management under governance oversight.

Optimism gathered 5,868 ETH from Superchain chains, which at current prices could have funded about $8 million in OP buybacks. The Superchain holds around 61% of layer 2 fee market share and processes 13% of crypto transactions.

“The OP Stack is becoming the settlement layer for the next generation of financial systems. With this proposal, the OP token will capture value alongside the Superchain’s growth,” said the Foundation in a statement.

The governance proposal moves to a vote on Jan. 22. If approved, the buyback program would begin as early as next month.

Zcash Dev Team Launches New Wallet After ECC Exit

The former Zcash development team from Electric Coin Company (ECC) has launched a new wallet called cashZ following their mass exit due to a governance dispute with nonprofit overseer Bootstrap.

“We are all in on Zcash. We need to scale Zcash to billions of users. Startups can scale, but nonprofits can't. That's why we created a new Zcash startup,” said Josh Swihart, ex-CEO of ECC, on X. 

The cashZ wallet builds directly on the existing Zashi codebase, aiming to scale Zcash for broader adoption with seamless migration for current Zashi users. Zashi is the official mobile wallet for Zcash.

Swihart said earlier this week that the team had chosen to leave because their employment terms had changed in ways that made it “impossible” to perform their duties effectively.

Industry watchers believe that issues stem from Zcash ending its 12% "dev tax" on miner rewards, moving $35 million into a governance-controlled Lockbox. Stalled unlocks left developers without funds to advance the protocol.

TRU Token Falls 99% as Hackers Drain $26 Million From Truebit

Truebit's native TRU token lost 99% of its value after the protocol reported a major exploit that led to over $26 million in losses.

Blockchain security analysts flagged that 8,535 ETH was stolen from Truebit on Thursday morning, with the Truebit team later confirming “the security incident involving one or more malicious actors.”

One independent researcher suggested that the root cause of the exploit appeared to be a misplaced minting function in the purchase contract that allowed anyone to purchase TRU tokens at artificially low prices.

The code from the vulnerable contract in question had been live on the Ethereum mainnet for nearly five years.

“No official audits are published in their docs, yet their slogan is ‘Don't just trust, verify’,” noted Dimitar Dimitrov, co-founder of CD Security on X. 

• 🌴 Florida lawmakers introduced a proposal to create a standalone, state-managed bitcoin reserve limited to ultra-large cryptocurrencies, positioning the state among a small but growing group testing how public balance sheets could hold bitcoin ahead of the 2026 session.

• ♟️⚔️ A governance fight erupted at CEA Industries after shareholder YZi Labs accused management of abandoning its BNB-only treasury strategy, demanding board changes, clearer disclosures, and governance reforms as the company moved to block any investor from gaining outsized control.

• 🕵️‍♂️ Global crypto crime surged to at least $154 billion in 2025, according to Chainalysis, as state-linked actors and professional laundering networks increasingly used stablecoins to evade sanctions, finance cyberattacks, and move illicit funds at unprecedented scale.

• 🇪🇺 Europe’s new DAC8 crypto tax rules sparked fierce debate after taking effect, as centralized platforms must now collect user tax IDs and report annual transaction data to authorities, raising privacy concerns even as officials stress it is not real-time surveillance.

• 💼 Morgan Stanley plans to deepen its crypto push by launching its own digital wallet in the second half of 2026, signaling a broader Wall Street shift toward blending traditional finance with blockchain-based assets.

• 🏦🇨🇦 Coincheck agreed to acquire a 97% stake in Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ for about $112 million in stock, a deal that would give the Japan-linked exchange group control over regulated crypto ETFs and expand its reach into institutional investment products.

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