Donald Trump, the former US president, promises that if he is reelected, he will release Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. In the event that he is re-elected in November, former US President Donald Trump has promised to pardon Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht himself.
At the Libertarian Party National Convention in Washington on May 25, Trump declared, “If you vote for me on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbircht.” Referring to the man who founded Silk Road, dubbed the first contemporary darknet market with a Bitcoin-based payment mechanism, “He’s already served 11 years, we’re going to get him home,” he declared.
Under the moniker “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht ran Silk Road from his own laptop when it first opened in 2011. The laptop was taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States on October 1, 2013. In 2015, Ulbricht was found guilty on a number of offences pertaining to the Silk Road’s operations by a federal court in the United States.
He received a sentence of two life sentences plus an additional forty years with no chance of release. Trump talked about his support for cryptocurrencies as well, having changed his mind about them earlier in the year.
He began by saying, “I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA, not driven overseas,” and then vowed to defend anybody who elected to keep their cryptocurrency holdings off of centralised exchanges.
He continued, sounding very different from when he was disparaging Bitcoin as a hoax while he was president. “I will support the right to self-custody, to the nation’s 50 million crypto holders I say this with your vote, I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin,” he said.