Key facts: Ulbricht founded Silk Road, an illicit goods marketplace that accepted bitcoin as payment. Trump's electoral promise generates various comments among the bitcoiner community. Political campaigns reveal an innumerable amount of promises by candidates. In the case of Donald Trump, who aspires to reach the White House for the second time, he indicated that he would grant freedom to Ross Ulbricht. “If you vote for me, from day one, I will commute Ross Ulbricht's sentence,” Trump said. Furthermore, he added that Ulbricht «has already served 11 years in prison, we will take him home.» He expressed this during his speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington. The Republican candidate has put bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies on the agenda, making them one of the protagonists of the presidential elections on November 5th. Ross Ulbricht founded Silk Road in 2011, a website that functioned as a marketplace for illicit products, such as drugs, accepting BTC as payment. In addition to accepting Bitcoin as a difficult-to-trace means of payment, he also used the Tor protocol, which de-identifies users through their IP. This made police investigations around Silk Road users, its employees and its creator more difficult. Ulbricht was arrested and, after a two-year trial, He was sentenced in 2015 to two life sentences plus 40 years in prison., without the possibility of parole. The sentence may be considered excessive, since life sentences are not usually awarded in drug sales cases. In fact, some have compared Ulbricht's sentence to that of Sam Bankman-Fried, former director and founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing billions of dollars from exchange customers and causing the collapse of several companies, affecting thousands of people around the world. According to experts' calculations, the charges against the former executive justified a sentence of up to more than 115 years. Part of Ulbricht's plan was to eliminate violence from the drug trade, while Bankman-Fried robbed and manipulated very important people, taking advantage of his contacts.
Ross Ulbricht, symbol of freedom
Despite everything, Ulbricht became, for some bitcoiners, into a symbol of freedom and fight against government regulations that limit the lives of citizens. In a way, the development of Silk Road transformed Ulbricht into a contributor to liberalism in society. This market had a positive impact, since it was one of the first internet markets to use Bitcoin as a payment method. This also brought negative consequences for Bitcoin, since from that moment Bitcoin was linked to drug cartels, murderers and pedophiles, as pointed out by Criptopedia (educational section of BitcoinDynamic).
The bitcoiner community expresses itself for Trump's promise
The relevance of Ross Ulbricht for the bitcoiner sector and the statements of candidate Trump generated various comments on the social network hopes to be able to “shake Ulbricht's hand” when he is released from prison next January, assuming that the former president will keep his word. Bitcoiner and podcaster Peter McCormack noted that he will be «very happy» for Lyn Ulbricht (Ross's mother), as she has campaigned «tirelessly, not only for Ross's release, but also for the reform of prison sentences in the United States.» Joined». Pierre Rochard, vice president of research at Riot Platforms, believes that the president of the United States, Joe Biden should grant clemency next week. «I should have done it three years ago. «It's obviously aligned with progressive criminal justice reform, an easy win,» he commented. On the other hand, Jameson Lopp, a famous Bitcoin popularizer, believes that what Trump said is just a political move. “She had the opportunity to do it for 4 years and declined. “Actions speak louder than words.” Lopp maintains that Trump had no incentive to do so during his term and this time “there is no incentive for him to fulfill the promise once elected, since it would be his last term.” According to PolitiFact's meter, a website that tracked 100 promises Trump made during his 2016 campaign, the former president it did not comply with 55% of them and only carried out 25%as seen in the following image.
Promises kept and broken by Donald Trump in his last term. Source: PolitiFact. In any case, we will have to wait if Donald Trump keeps his promise or if it is just a play to attract young voters, a segment of the population that identifies with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.