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The Silk Road founder in 2015 had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
By Stephen Alpher, Sam Reynolds
Updated Jan 22, 2025, 12:54 a.m. UTCPublished Jan 22, 2025, 12:53 a.m. UTC
What to know:
- Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has been freed as President Donald Trump signed a pardon.
- Trump made the announcement via a Truth Social post.
President Trump has followed through on one of his key campaign promises — at least for those in the crypto community — pardoning the sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote on a Truth Social post.
The move assures an imminent release for Ulbricht, who in 2015 was convicted of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and distributing narcotics, along with a host of related crimes, via his operation of the darknet Silk Road marketplace. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Ulbricht’s case has become a cause célèbre for many in the crypto community who note he did not himself sell drugs or other illegal items, but instead operated a platform where others were allowed to transact.
Then candidate Trump promised a “Day One” commutation of Ulbricht’s sentence last May, while addressing the Libertarian Party convention
The price of bitcoin (BTC) rose in the minutes following the news, possibly as the pardon, along with a flurry of executive orders over the past hours, signals the president’s intention to follow through on campaign promises.
Another one of those promises, of course, was a far friendlier crypto regulatory stance, including the possibility of the creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve.
Stephen is CoinDesk’s managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
Sam Reynolds is a senior reporter based in Asia. Sam was part of the CoinDesk team that won the 2023 Gerald Loeb award in the breaking news category for coverage of FTX’s collapse. Prior to CoinDesk, he was a reporter with Blockworks and a semiconductor analyst with IDC.
