UPDATE: Seattle Times carrying a NYT Jan 22, 2025 post -
Ulbricht had also solicited the murders of people whom he considered threats — but acknowledged there was no evidence that the killings took place.
Despite his crimes, Ulbricht has remained popular with crypto enthusiasts because Silk Road was one of the first venues where people used bitcoin to buy and sell goods. For years, his supporters have argued that his sentence was overly 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 the news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry banding together and saying, ‘We’re going to reclaim our own.’”
Ulbrich’s pardon was eagerly anticipated by crypto enthusiasts. On Monday, after 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 the social platform X, writing that “Ross will be freed too.”
Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, was arrested in 2013, after the FBI tracked him down at a library in San Francisco. At his sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan two years later, a judge called Ulbricht “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise” and said that his actions were “terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
[...] But the life sentence struck many observers as harsh. In 2017, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in affirming Ulbricht’s conviction, acknowledged the severe nature of the punishment [...] “on the facts of this case a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have reached.”
Ulbricht has been serving his sentence at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. Supporters in the crypto industry, in calling for his release, have noted that he was convicted of a nonviolent crime and was never tried on prosecutors’ most explosive allegation that he paid to have people killed. At a bitcoin conference in Miami in 2021, Ulbricht’s supporters played a recording of him speaking from prison.
“I had so many big dreams for bitcoin,” he said.
Last year, Trump embraced Ulbricht’s cause on the campaign trail, first in a speech at a libertarian event and later at an annual bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He doubled down on social media, posting the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne on Truth Social, the site he owns.
Big dreams for bitcoin, indeed. Ten years served is a lot. Released, half his life is gone. Half remains. With the unconditional and total pardon he can run for office or buy a gun. He can again sit at a keyboard free to again get in trouble.
As to the excessive sentence, judges can be arbitrary and severe. Discretionary allowances allowed Ross to get hammered hard. Bankman Fried got less than life. Zhao paid a lot, but skated.
Ross was first and made an example. Harshly so. Now -
Bitcoin has passed him up and he starts anew.
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Trump has a knack for sniffing out pockets of votes and wealth, and Musk . . .
Musk and friends are an example. Trump won the election and has started his final four years in office. Unless . . .
Let's not even touch any "unless" dimensions. Yet keep it in mind and hope other powers will quell any "unless" will or thinking. JD has ambition and expects a torch to be passed to him.