NEWSLETTER
President Trump on Tuesday granted clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug market and a cult hero in the libertarian and cryptocurrency worlds.
In doing so, Trump fulfilled a promise he made repeatedly during the election campaign while seeking political contributions from the crypto industry, which spent more than $100 million to influence the outcome of the election. A bitcoin pioneer, Ulbricht, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015, after being found guilty of charges that included distributing narcotics over the Internet.
“I just called Ross William Ulbright's mother to let her know,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Ulbricht's name and referencing federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. “The scum who worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern use of the government as a weapon against me.”
In its nearly three years of existence, Silk Road, which operated in a dark corner of the Internet known as the dark web, became an international drug market, facilitating more than 1.5 million transactions, including sales of heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances. (The site generated more than $200 million in revenue, according to authorities.) In court, prosecutors claimed that Ulbricht had also solicited the murder of people he considered threats, but admitted There was no evidence that the murders had occurred.
Despite his crimes, Ulbricht remains popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts because the Silk Road was one of the first places where people used bitcoin to buy and sell goods. For years, his supporters have argued that his sentence was too punitive and adopted the slogan “Free Ross” online and at industry meetings.
“It's hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn't the most successful and influential entrepreneur of the early bitcoin era,” said Pete Rizzo, editor of news publication bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry coming together and saying, 'Let's claim what's ours.'”
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts were eagerly awaiting Mr. Ulbricht's pardon. On Monday, after Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Elon Musk, one of the president's biggest supporters, responded to a concerned post on x, <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1881524296386031892″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>writing that “Ross will also be released.”
Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013 after the FBI located him in a San Francisco library. At his sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan two years later, a judge called Ulbricht “the kingpin of a global digital drug trafficking enterprise” and said his actions were “terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
At least six deaths were attributable to drugs purchased on Silk Road, prosecutors said. Addressing the court, the father of one of the people who died said that “the only thing Ross Ulbricht cared about was his growing stack of Bitcoins.”
But the life sentence seemed harsh to many observers. In 2017, the Second Circuit federal appeals court, in upholding Mr. Ulbricht's conviction, recognized the severity of the punishment.
“Although we may not have imposed the same sentence in the first instance,” the court said, “in the facts of this case, a sentence of life imprisonment was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have made.”
Mr. Ulbricht has been serving his sentence in a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. Supporters of the crypto industry, when asking for his releaseThey have noted that he was convicted of a nonviolent crime and was never tried on prosecutors' more explosive allegation that he paid to have people killed. At a bitcoin conference in Miami in 2021, Ulbricht supporters played a recording of him speaking from prison.
“I had so many big dreams for bitcoin,” he said.
Last year, Trump embraced Ulbricht's cause during the election campaign, for the first time in a speech at a libertarian event and then at an annual bitcoin conference in Nashville. He doubled his bet on social networks, destination the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne on Truth Social, the site he owns.
After the elections, a message from Mr. Ulbricht published in x <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/RealRossU/status/1856435917789245806″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>saying He had “immense gratitude to everyone who voted for President Trump on my behalf.”
“I can finally see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel,” the post read.
Benjamin Weiss contributed with reports.
