Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Thanks Trump for Pardon Promise

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht offered up thanks to former U.S. President and 2024 hopeful Donald Trump for pledging to commute his sentence "on day one" of his term if he's reelected. He made the remark during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday night.

"Last night, Donald Trump pledged to commute my sentence on day 1, if reelected. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," Ulbricht wrote on Twitter. "After 11 years in prison, it is hard to express how I feel at this moment. It is thanks to your undying support that I may get a second chance."

Ahead of the event, attendees had been handing out "Free Ross" signs. It was one of the few moments that earned Trump cheers during his speech.

He also promised to "keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin," but the bullish BTC talk doesn't seem to have done much for the price.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for just under $69,000—that's 0.8% lower than it was this time yesterday and a 2.5% gain compared to last week.

Ulbricht was arrested in October 2013 for his connection to Silk Road, an online black market. Two years later, a judge sentenced him to serve life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering.

Libertarians have long called for his release, saying his life sentence is an example of government overreach. But it's still true that Trump faced boos during a large portion of his speech on Saturday night.

And the promises don't seem to have been enough to win over the broader cryptocurrency community, whose affinity for ungovernable money tends to overlap with libertarian values like autonomy and political freedom.

Jameson Lopp, Bitcoin wallet provider Casa's chief technology officer, called the line political pandering. "He had the opportunity to do so for 4 years and declined," he wrote on Twitter. "Actions speak louder than words."

Trump reportedly considered granting clemency to Ulbricht as part of a round of pardons following his 2020 election defeat, but in the event did not do so.

Meanwhile, Adam Cochran—the founding partner at Cinneamhain Ventures and an outspoken figure in Crypto Twitter when it comes to law and policy—has been arguing that the industry shouldn't take Trump's bait.

"Unlike Biden, Trump has a decades long history of back peddling, not paying his bills, selling out others for his own interests and has promised policy that is economically destabilizing (politicizing the Fed, pulling out of international agreements)," he wrote on Sunday afternoon. "So even if you only care about the economics, the weird circlejerk of Trump on CT is misguided."

But a few notable figures have been swayed.

Messari co-founder and CEO Ryan Selkis has been especially chatty on Twitter since Saturday. He's been reposting pro-Trump messages on Twitter like, "Trump literally saved crypto." Selkis also shared a message posted by Gabriel Shapiro, U.S. attorney and the general counsel at Delphi Labs, speculating that the industry could see "an amazing vibeshift at the SEC under Trump."