Why Trump Fired Ross Ulbricht, Rod Silk Hacker Rod Roberts

Last September, I spent an evening at A Meeting Near Atlanta titled “Bitcoin Enters Mainstream Political Arena.” This was the first time that a group of mostly white, mostly male, mostly thirty- and forty-year-old kids had their eyes set on… policy Of cryptocurrency — which was suddenly, shockingly, front and center. Donald Trumpwhich called Bitcoin “A Scam” in 2021, was recently headlining a Bitcoin conference and making announcements saying things like “You know, they call me the crypto president.” Near the door to the Atlanta event, held in the courtyard of the plane’s hangar, sat a pile of Bitcoin Magazines with Robert F. kennedy jrface on the cover. Joey, the stage manager in the audience, explained Kennedy’s role in recent events: “When Kennedy came in — and he’s for Bitcoin — Trump said, ‘Oh, shit, I’m going to start losing people on Bitcoin.’ So he shifted.” Joey shrugged. “We’ll take it.”

The crypto crowd, going ahead with the jokes, was thrilled by his sudden shift in status — even if some doubted the authenticity or durability of Trump’s support. They were finally being taken seriously by one party, at least. The shirts showed their enthusiasm by using insider language and jokes that, to the untargeted, took some explaining: “bachelorand takenand hunting“Joey’s shirt read. There were boxes next to every word.”hunting“It has been checked.”Hodel“Is short for ‘Hold On Dear Life,’ which stands for Crypto’s crazy swings.) Get it? I made the rounds, catching up with a group of three dozen, drinking beer, and eating barbecue. I asked why most of them seemed so excited about Trump. There was his growing closeness to crypto enthusiasts such as Kennedy’s stated willingness to embrace crypto-friendly politics and also, in particular, his promise to release a forty-year-old man from prison: Ross Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was pardoned last week, at the end of the second day of Trump’s presidency, a day after Trump pardoned about 15 hundred people involved in the insurrection on January 6th. The delay has caused some of Ulbricht’s acolytes to worry. “People were posting in our chat, like, ‘Okay, there’s an hour and a half left in the day. . . Bitcoin Group organizer Rich Clark, who works in real estate, told me. “And a lot of my Facebook friends were posting things like ‘I hope that happens.'” He continued, “I think it was a shrewd move to pardon everything on his own, after Trump did the blanket pardon. It kind of gives the gesture more… “Gravity.”

In 2011, Ulbricht, a Seagle Scout from Austin, Texas, founded Silk Road, an online black market that existed until his arrest, in 2013, for crimes related to drug trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. According to authorities, more than one million transactions were conducted on the Silk Road, outside the government’s regulatory reach, Generate more than Two hundred million dollars in revenue. Drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin make up a large portion of the site’s sales, from which Ulbricht appears to have taken millions in commissions. A federal prosecutor said in closing argument that Silk Road “lowered barriers to drug dealing by enabling drug dealers to access customers online.” (Prosecutors also presented evidence that Ulbricht was involved in a murder-for-hire conspiracy, but The government admitted that there was no evidence that the alleged targets were harmed, and charges were not pursued. The Dark-Web Sobriquet Dread Pirate Roberts—a reference to an alter ego in “The Princess Bride”—was not pursued.receive Two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

What made Ulbricht a crypto hero, in the end, was that Silk Road demonstrated one of the first clear use cases for Bitcoin: all transactions on the dark web were done with the cryptocurrency of the time, which, thanks to addresses, allowed when disposed of to the buyer. And the seller, provided a great degree of coverage. Of course, this use case was, perhaps, not the ideal one for a new currency that wants to be legitimate. “For better or worse, Silk Road had a huge impact on Bitcoin in its early days, in its public perception, in its adoption,” Clark told me. “Ross has apologized in the past because he wasn’t sure – nor am I – whether Silk Road was positive for Bitcoin.”

But Ulbricht’s liberalization remained a big issue for liberals like Clark, who, given their superior philosophy, embraced pro-crypto politics before most Republicans or Democrats. At the Libertarian Party’s national convention last year, Trump went on stage and declared that he would liberate Ulbricht if elected. This impressed the people at the encounter, many of whom described themselves as liberal. I ended up having one of my longest conversations with a young man named Michael Tidwell, who was wearing “Free russian(Everyone there referred to Ulbricht by his first name, as if he were Prince or Madonna or LeBron.) Tidwell told me he had never voted in a presidential election before, unless you count the typing in “Pepe Rare” — A Crypto Meme he said Lee’s character – in 2016. “At least Trump says he’ll do it.”

On January 21, Trump did just that. Ulbricht was pardoned
On social truth. It was all Ulbricht’s supporters wanted, perhaps, for Trump to misspelt Ross’s last name (which was later corrected). “I just called Ross William Albright’s mother to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which has supported me so strongly, I had the pleasure of just signing a full pardon for her son, Ross,” Trump wrote. “The scum who worked to convict him were the same lunatics who engaged in the government’s modern weapons against me.”

Following Ulbricht’s release, she called out a few members of the Bitcoin Atlanta group Meetup, which hosted Ulbricht’s mother in 2017. “But not that. It was the size of the sentence that really set him apart. This was redemption for a cruel and unusual punishment. Others in the group felt the same way. Clark posted a forward-looking message on Facebook, which Lee reiterated, “I’m so happy that Ross is now a free man after more than a decade. I hope Ross can use his experiences and whatever influence he has, due to his high school session, for good in his new life as a free man. He guessed Ulbricht would be “active” in criminal justice reform. (Ulbricht has not yet given any interviews, but has posted video To X’s account, on Thursday night, viewed more than ten million times, where he said, among other things, “Let us know that Donald Trump is a man of his word.” Ulbricht, sounding emotional, went on to say, “This is an important moment for everyone everywhere who loves freedom and who cares about second chances.”) Later, Clark texted me his favorite funny Responding to the pardon, a meme who viewed it on Facebook: “Heartbreaking: Trump turns man into 20-year-old top libertarian podcaster.”

He was one of the only members of the Meetup group as vocally anti-Trump as they were happy to say. “Sorry Ross is unequivocally good news,” the man, who asked not to be identified, told me. “I personally think the book was thrown at him because of his strong anti-authoritarianism posts on the Libertarian blog for setting an example on him. His punishment was a truly cruel and unusual punishment.”

I also spoke to another frequent attendee of the group, who previously worked, named Mel Dodd. He told me that liberals and the crypto-enthusiasts he knew were “overjoyed” by the Ulbricht pardon, the recent resignation of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, and Trump’s ban on creating a digital U.S. central bank. currency, which would pose a threat to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. (Apparently, they were also pleased that Bitcoin had risen in value by about fifty percent since Trump’s election, and were now trading at over a hundred thousand dollars.) “There’s still a lot to be said,” Dodd said, most notably: whether Trump would create a “stockpile.” nationally” of Bitcoin, as he also indicated he would before his election. “Are they really doing it — and doing it really right — or are they going to raise it the way politicians usually do? There is general skepticism about anything Trump or any politician does. But if they do something good, we will stand up and cheer.” On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order Titled “Strengthening US Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” which, among other things, outlined the creation of a “working group” to consider crypto policy, including the creation of a “National Digital Asset Stockpile.” Its first recommendations are expected within six months.

Trump didn’t wait long to launch his $Trump Currency, which he was exposed to a few days ago His inauguration. The coin displays a picture of Trump from the moment of the assassination attempt on him, last July. “Its valuation went up to twenty billion or something like that,” Clark told me. “However, his team or whoever is running this thing still controls most of it.” Affiliated with the Trump Organization It is said He owns eighty percent of the currency supply, which he values reached its climax About fifteen billion dollars and now sitting at about half that, after introducing $Melania currency. (Meanwhile, Trump’s teenage son, Barron, has been named “Defi Visionary” at a vaguely identified Trump crypto platform called World Liberty Financial.) “It’s kind of the classic pattern of something that doesn’t usually end,” Clark said.

Dodd advised that judgment be reserved. “Trump coin will stand or fall on whether it is accepted or not, like everything else that has been introduced to the American free market,” he said. “There are a lot of products coming out of the US market all the time. But you can beat a cringe product. Money raised by Hawkgirl Its meme currency It is as good as any other money. “

Ross Ulbricht may indeed be a millionaire again. According to Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, one of the largest crypto trading platforms, some of Ulbricht’s crypto wealth may have vanished after his arrest and conviction. “I found ~430 BTC across dozens of wallets associated with Ross Ulbricht that have not been confiscated by the USGOVT and have not been wiped for 13 years,” Grogan posted to X the day after Ulbricht was pardoned. “At the time, these were probably dust wallets; now, collectively, they are worth about $47 million. Welcome back Ross.” ♦