Donald Trump grants presidential pardon to Silk Road creator. “If you vote for me, from day one, I will commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence,” Trump said during his election campaign and now, after being inaugurated as US president, he keeps his promise.
Ulbricht’s release was confirmed by Trump himself, who was pronounced about it on the platform he owns Truth Social. There he said that he called Ross’s mother to tell her that it was a “pleasure” to have signed her son’s total and unconditional pardon. «They gave him two life sentences plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
As reported through X, the account @Free_Rosswhich is managed by Ulbricht’s family, the developer received a “full and unconditional forgiveness” from the president, so they expressed their gratitude to Trump by keeping his word.
Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a website that functioned as a marketplace for products, some illicit, and accepted bitcoin (BTC) as a form of payment, was pardoned by the president. after spending more than a decade in prison. “He has already served 11 years in prison, we will bring him home,” Trump said during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington.
The developer was arrested in 2013 and, after a two-year trial, was sentenced in 2015 to two life sentences, plus 40 years in prison, without the possibility of parole.
At that time he was found guilty of charges related to drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy to commit computer crimes. He is currently serving his sentence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
Ross Ulbricht’s release comes three years after Trump denied him clemency in 2021, at the close of his first term. Date on which he also refused to grant a presidential pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Ross’s pardon causes joy among members of the ecosystem, who have been waiting for this decision for a long time, especially considering that his sentence was exaggerated. She was questioned by her family and the community because it was her first judicial offense and she apparently had no bad intentions.
During these years, Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, has been active on social networks remembering the case and advocating for a second chanceconsidering that his son’s human potential is being wasted. To this end, he founded the FREE ROSS organization, where he collects signatures and tells his son’s life story.
The case of Ulbricht and his freedom also symbolizes the struggle of various communities for freedoms on the internet. That is why his cause accumulates more than 600,000 signatures requesting a presidential pardon on the website Change.org.
Trump proceeded to release Ulbricht amid the pro-cryptocurrency turn he took during his election campaign, kicking off a second term in which he puts bitcoin as an important part of his government agenda.
Rumors about the pardon intensified after the Republican’s victory last November. Trump’s willingness to grant a pardon gave much hope to your familyto Ulbricht and all the defenders of his cause, who were waiting for a release that was expected for this month of January.
Silk Road is a defunct marketplace that served as a platform to publicize BTC more than 10 years ago. The website, the first of its kind, was only accessible through the Tor browser until it was shut down in 2013 by the FBI.
Its existence has had a significant impact on the bitcoin ecosystem, both positive and negative, since it was one of the first Internet markets to use the cryptocurrency as a means of payment.
However, its association with bitcoin also brought negative consequences for the creation of Satoshi Nakamoto, since from that moment on he was related to drug cartels, murderers and pedophiles, as pointed out by Criptopedia (educational section of CriptoNoticias).
