US President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road marketplace, delivering on a campaign promise he made to court the cryptocurrency community and libertarian voters.
Trump made the announcement on Tuesday in a post to his Truth Social platform, where he initially misspelled Ulbricht’s name. Trump said he had called Ulbricht’s mother “to let her know that in honour 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”.
Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison after a 2015 conviction in connection to his work running Silk Road, a dark web marketplace where customers used virtual currencies to buy illegal drugs and hacker tools. In its two years in operation, more than US$200-million worth of illicit activity flowed through the site, according to the department of justice.
Trump vowed to offer Ulbricht clemency during an address to the Libertarian Party convention during the 2024 campaign, part of an effort to win the support of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
“If you vote for me, on day one I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” Trump said at the convention. “We’re going to get him home.”
Better known by his online pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts”, Ulbricht — age 40 — was imprisoned in 2013 and was serving a double-life sentence without the possibility of parole for drug trafficking crimes as well as conspiracy to commit computer hacking and money laundering. Prosecutors also alleged that he tried to arrange murders to protect his business but the government did not believe any were carried out.
Ulbricht has already unsuccessfully appealed his sentence twice.
Embraced
Trump, who was initially a sceptic about digital assets, embraced cryptocurrencies during the campaign, vowing to streamline regulations, pick industry-friendly figures to oversee it, support a stablecoin framework and establish a bitcoin reserve, in addition to his pledge to commute Ulbricht’s sentence.
Read: Losses from crypto hacks jumped to R40-billion in 2024
The 2024 election highlighted the growing influence of the industry, which ramped up political contributions to elect favourable candidates to office. — Stephanie Lai, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
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