January 21, 2025 is Ross Ulbricht Day!
Greetings Freedom Lovers of All Shapes and Sizes!
We are as stunned as you are with the recent Breaking News of a well-known legend in the Crypto space finally seeing the light of day for the first time in over 11 years now.
If you didn’t read or hear about the news I’m talking about, well on January 21, 2025, Donald Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht. It has been over 11 years now, since the The FreeRoss movement has been protesting and pressing for Ross Ulbricht’s release from the clutches of the US ‘justice’ system.
We held onto a lot of doubt for a while of whether Ross Ulbricht would ever be released given the extent of the prison sentence that was issued on him. Two life sentences without the possibility of parole and an additional 40 years on top of that for ‘suspected’ and ‘assumed’ crimes that Ross never committed. Money laundering…because he did business with Bitcoin instead of FIAT, suspected drug trafficking and distribution…because he operated a free market system like a prototype yet functional Amazon on the DarkNet where buyers and sellers traded substances that weren’t legal at the time. Sure, other illegal items were traded back and forth through the network, though when there’s an upcoming Jeff Bezos around the corner, Silk Road is bad for business.
Oh, how the times have changed since then…Amazon is pretty much our modern day Silk Road if you really think about it.
Ross Ulbricht created the Silk Road website for the sole purpose to give anyone the opportunity to buy and sell, literally anything, with legality of the trade depending on the relationship between the buyer and seller without any government oversight or interference anonymously. Anonymity was the key to its ways of operation and business was booming on the DarkNet back in 2011 when Silk Road came around.
Until October 1st, 2013 arrived and the arrest was being made of a 29 year-old, Ross Ulbricht, that was a nightmare of a day for Bitcoin even with the price being around $180 USD. He held 144,000 Bitcoin at the time and it was confiscated - stolen - by the Federal Bureau Investigation. In today’s world of crypto 144,000 Bitcoin would be valued at around $14.6 billion USD.
Ross you deserved better than to be put away for providing a free market system for the world to freely use.
Even Donald Trump's motive behind why he chose to pardon Ross was mentioned in his Truth Social post: “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me strongly, it was my pleasure to have signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
I can agree with Donald Trump on the ridiculousness of giving someone a prison sentence like so, when there are plenty of others who have been given slaps on the wrist for much, much worse wrongdoings in this world.
It is a time for celebration and relief for the crypto and blockchain space, as well as for the rest of the world. A step in the right direction rather than facing forward and moving backwards.
We wish Ross and his family and friends a full recovery back into the real world while welcoming him back. There's a lot of catching to do.
Let's all celebrate with some Peace, Love and Anarchy everyone! Ross Ulbricht is FREE at last.