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 freedoms.
In this way, Mr. Trump fulfilled a repeated campaign promise as he courted political contributions from the crypto industry, which spent more than $100 million to influence the election’s outcome. A 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 distributing drugs online.
“I just called Ross William Ulbright’s mother to let her know,” wrote Mr. Trump in his post on Truth Social, misspelling the name of Mr. Ulbricht and reporting to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. “The scum who worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics involved in the modern weaponization of 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, 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, authorities said.) In court, prosecutors argued that Mr. Ulbricht had also called for the killings of people he considered threats — but acknowledged there was no evidence the killings took place.
Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht remained popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts because Silk Road was one of the first places where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods. For years, his supporters 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 powerful entrepreneur of Bitcoin’s early days,” said Pete Rizzo, editor at Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry coming together and saying, ‘We’re going to get ours back.’
The forgiveness of Mr. Ulbricht was eagerly awaited by crypto enthusiasts. On Monday, after Mr. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest supporters, responded in a disturbing post on X, writing that “Ross will be freed too.”
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 a global digital drug-trafficking operation” and said his actions were “horribly destructive to our social fabric.”
At least six deaths have been attributed to drugs bought on 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 stack of Bitcoins.”
But the life sentence seemed harsh to many observers. 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, “on the facts of this case a life sentence was within the range of permissible sentences the district court could have made.”
Mr. Ulbricht is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz. Supporters of the crypto industry, calling for his release, noted that he was convicted of a non-violent crime and was never tried for 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 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 website he owns.
After the elections, a message from Mr. Ulbricht posted on X that he had “boundless 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 contributed to the report.
