President Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug market and a cult hero in the world of cryptocurrency and freedom.
In doing so, Mr. Trump fulfilled a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail as he sought political contributions from the crypto industry, which spent more than $100 million to influence the outcome of the election. A Bitcoin pioneer, Mr. Ulbricht, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015 after being convicted of charges involving the distribution of narcotics online.
“I just called Ross William Ulbright’s mother to let her know,” Mr Trump wrote in a post on Social Truth, misspelling Mr Trump’s name. Ulbricht and referring federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. “The lunatics who worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the government’s modern weaponry against me.”
In its nearly three years of existence, Silk Road, which operated in an obscure corner of the Internet known as the dark web, became an international drug marketplace, facilitating more than 1.5 million transactions, including the sale of heroin. , cocaine and other illegal substances. (The site generated more than $200 million in revenue, according to authorities.) In court, prosecutors alleged that Mr. Ulbricht had also called for the killing of people he considered threats – but admitted there was no evidence the killings had taken place.
Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has remained popular with crypto enthusiasts because 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 gatherings.
“It’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t the most successful and influential entrepreneur of the early Bitcoin era,” said Pete Rizzo, an editor at news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry coming together and saying, ‘We’re going to take ours back.'”
Forgiveness of Mr. Ulbricht was eagerly awaited by crypto enthusiasts. On Monday, after Mr. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest supporters, responded to a concerned post on X, writing that “Ross will have been released as well.”
Mr. Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013 after the FBI tracked him down to a library in San Francisco. At his sentencing in Federal District Court in Manhattan two years later, a judge called Mr.
At least six deaths have been attributed to drugs bought on the Silk Road, prosecutors said. Addressing the court, the father of one of the people 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, affirming the conviction of Mr. Ulbricht, acknowledged the severe nature of the sentence.
“Although we might not have imposed 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 sentences that the district court could have reached.”
Mr. Ulbricht has been serving his sentence in a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz. Supporters in the crypto industry, calling for his release, have pointed out that he was convicted of a non-violent crime and was never tried for prosecutors’ more explosive allegations that he paid to kill people. At a Bitcoin conference in Miami in 2021, supporters of Mr. Ulbricht played a recording of him speaking from prison.
“I had a lot of big dreams about Bitcoin,” he said.
Last year, Mr. Trump embraced the cause of Mr. Ulbricht on the campaign trail, first in a speech at a libertarian event and later at an annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville. He doubled down on social media, posting the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne on Truth Social, the site he owns.
After the elections, a message from Mr. Ulbricht posted on X that 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 Weiser contributed to the reporting.