4 Crypto Comebacks From 2025 That Could Help Shape The Year Ahead

From Ross Ulbricht’s pardon to Ripple’s SEC victory, here’s a list of crypto’s most celebrated turnarounds this year and what they mean for the year ahead.

With 2026 now underway, Cointelegraph takes a look at some of the biggest comebacks in crypto last year and what it could mean for the next 12 months.

The year kicked off with a presidential pardon of one of the biggest names from the early days of Bitcoin.

After spending over 11 years in jail for his role in creating dark web marketplace Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht was pardoned by President Donald Trump from his double-life-time jail sentence and freed in late January.

The move gave Ulbricht a second chance at life, at what seemed like a slim chance at ever being able to live a normal life again.

“Thank you so much, President Trump, for giving me this amazing blessing. I am so, so grateful to have my life back, to have my future back, to have this second chance. This is such an important moment for me and for my whole family,” Ulbricht said after receiving his pardon.

This wasn’t the only pardon to a crypto figure Trump gave out in 2025. In October Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao (CZ) also received a similar honor.

Zhao completed a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in late 2023 to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act over a failure to implement an adequate Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program at Binance.

While the pardon didn’t wipe off the admission of guilt by CZ, it marked an acknowledgement by the government that the Binance co-founder faced too harsh of a penalty, and cleared the way for CZ to get more involved in crypto again.

“I don’t know him, I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, but I’ve been told he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime, it wasn’t a crime, he was persecuted by the Biden Administration,” Trump said of CZ’s pardoning.

Source: CoinTelegraph