President Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug marketplace and a cult hero in the cryptocurrency and libertarian worlds.
In doing so, Mr. Trump fulfilled a promise he made repeatedly during his campaign 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 on charges including distributing narcotics on the Internet.
“I just called Ross William Ulbright's mother to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a message on Truth Social, misspelling Mr. Ulbricht's name and referring to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. “The scum who worked to convict him were the same lunatics involved in today's weaponization of the government against me.”
In the nearly three years of its 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. (According to authorities, the site generated more than $200 million in revenue.) In court, prosecutors alleged that Mr. Ulbricht also solicited the killings of people he viewed as threats — but acknowledged that there was no evidence that the killings had taken place.
Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has remained popular among crypto enthusiasts, as Silk Road was one of the first locations where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods. For years, his supporters have argued that his sentence was overly punitive and have 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 at the news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry uniting and saying, 'We're going to reclaim ours.'”
Mr. Ulbricht's pardon was eagerly awaited by crypto enthusiasts. On Monday, after Mr. Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Elon Musk, one of the president's biggest supporters, responded to a concerned post on “Ross will be freed too.”
Mr. Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013 after the FBI tracked him down at a San Francisco library. At his sentencing in Federal District Court in Manhattan two years later, a judge called Mr. 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 linked to drugs purchased 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 Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, in affirming Mr. Ulbricht's conviction, recognized the harsh nature of the sentence.
“While we may not have imposed the same sentence ourselves at first instance,” the court said, “on the facts of this case, a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions the court could have made.”
Mr. Ulbricht served his sentence in a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. Supporters of the crypto industry have noted in calling for his release that he was convicted of a non-violent crime and never tried on prosecutors' most explosive claim that he paid to have people killed. At a Bitcoin conference in Miami in 2021, Mr. Ulbricht's supporters played a recording of him speaking from prison.
“I had so many big dreams for Bitcoin,” he said.
Last year, Mr. Trump embraced Mr. Ulbricht's cause during his campaign, first in a speech at a libertarian event and later at an annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville. He doubled down on his social media activity, posting the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne on Truth Social, the site he owns.
After the election, a message from Mr. Ulbricht on X said 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 said.
Benjamin Weiser reporting contributed.
