President Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug marketplace and a cult hero in the cryptocurrency and liberal worlds.
In doing so, Mr. Trump fulfilled a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail as he spent on political contributions from the crypto industry. Over $100 million To influence election results. A Bitcoin pioneer, Mr. Ulbricht, 40, was punished Life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015, after being convicted of drug distribution over the Internet.
“I just called Ross William Ulbricht’s mother to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Mr. Ulbricht’s name and a reference to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. “Those who worked to convict him were among the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of the government against me.”
In its nearly three-year existence, Silk Road, which operated in a shadowy corner of the Internet known as the dark web, became an international drug market, facilitating more than 1.5 million transactions, including the sale of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal substances. (The site generated on $200 million in revenue, according to the authorities.) In court, prosecutors claimed that Mr. Ulbricht also solicited the killing of people he considered a threat — but Recognized No evidence of murder has been found.
Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has become popular with crypto enthusiasts because the Silk Road was one of the first places where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods. Over the years, his supporters have argued that his sentence was overly punitive and have adopted the slogan “Free Ross” online and at industry rallies.
“It’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t one of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs of the early Bitcoin era,” said Pete Rizzo, an editor for news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry banding together and saying, ‘We’re going to reclaim our own.'”
Mr. Ulbricht’s apology was eagerly anticipated by crypto enthusiasts After Trump on Monday Mr About 1,600 have been pardoned Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest supporters, accused of involvement in the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, responded in a related post on X, writing That “juice shall also be released.”
Mr. Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013 after the FBI tracked him down to a library in San Francisco. Judge in Federal District Court in Manhattan two years later to call Mr Ulbricht is “the kingpin of a global digital drug-trafficking enterprise” and said his actions were “horribly destructive to our social fabric.”
At least six people died from drugs bought on the Silk Road, prosecutors said. Addressing the court, the father of one who died said that “all Ross Ulbricht cared about was his growing pile of bitcoins.”
But the life sentence struck many observers as harsh. In 2017, the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Mr. Ulbricht’s conviction, acknowledging the severe nature of the sentence.
“Although we may not impose the same sentence ourselves in the first instance,” the court said, “under the facts of this case a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that could have been reached by the district court.”
Mr. Ulbricht is serving his sentence in a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz. Supporters of the crypto industry, Calling for his releaseNoting that he was convicted of a non-violent crime and was not prosecuted on prosecutors’ most explosive allegation that he paid people to be killed. At a Bitcoin conference in Miami in 2021, Mr. Ulbricht’s supporters played a recording of him speaking from prison.
“I had big dreams for Bitcoin,” he said.
After the election, a message from Mr. Ulbricht was posted on X said He added, “I am extremely grateful to everyone who voted for President Trump for me.”
“I can finally see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel,” the post said.
Benjamin Weiss Contribution reporting.
