President Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug market and a cult hero in the world of cryptocurrencies and libertarians.
In doing so, Mr. Trump made good on a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail, courting political contributions from the crypto industry, which spent more than $100 million to influence the outcome of the election. Bitcoin pioneer Mr Ulbricht, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015 after being convicted of charges that included the distribution of narcotics on the internet.
“I just called Ross William Ulbright’s mother to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that omitted Mr. Ulbricht’s name and referred to federal prosecutors in southern New York. “The scum who convicted him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in modernizing the government against me.
In its nearly three years of existence, Silk Road, which operated in a shadowy corner of the Internet known as the dark web, has become an international drug marketplace, facilitating more than 1.5 million transactions, including the sale of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal substances. (The site has generated more than $200 million, according to the authorities.) In court, prosecutors argued that Mr. Ulbricht also solicited the murders of people he saw as threats — but conceded there was no evidence the murders took place.
Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht remained popular with crypto enthusiasts because Silk Road was one of the first places where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods. His supporters argued for years 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 the news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is an industry coming together and saying, ‘We want to reclaim our own.’
Cryptocurrency lovers eagerly awaited Mr. Ulbricht’s grace. On Monday, after Mr. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest supporters, responded to the concerned post on X, writing that “Ross will also be freed.”
Mr. Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013 after the FBI tracked him down in a library in San Francisco. At his sentencing in Federal District Court in Manhattan two years later, a judge called Mr. Ulbricht “the kingpin of the global digital drug trade” and said his actions were “terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
At least six deaths can be attributed to drugs bought on the Silk Road, prosecutors said. The father of one of the people who died told the court that “all Ross Ulbricht cared about was his growing pile of bitcoins.”
But the life sentence seemed cruel to many observers. In 2017, the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit acknowledged the severe nature of the sentence when it upheld Mr. Ulbricht’s conviction.
“Although we may not have imposed the same sentence in the first instance,” the court said, “under the facts of this case, a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have reached.”
Mr. Ulbricht is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. In calling for his release, supporters in the crypto industry noted that he was convicted of a non-violent crime and was never tried on prosecutors’ most explosive allegation 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 so many big dreams about Bitcoin,” he said.
Last year, Mr. Trump took up Mr. Ulbricht’s cause on the campaign trail, first in a speech at a libertarian event and later at the annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville. He doubled down on social media, posting the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne on Truth Social, a site he owns.
After the election, a message from Mr Ulbricht posted on X said he was “extremely grateful to everyone who voted for President Trump on my behalf”.
“I finally see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel,” the post said.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
