Ross Ulbricht has officially been behind bars for ten years, a grim milestone for the Silk Road founder who is serving a double life sentence — plus 40 years — without parole.
His X account, updated with his fiancée’s help, reminded the world of his conviction with a Sunday evening post.
“I sometimes fear I’ll spend the rest of my life behind concrete walls and locked doors. But I have no one else to blame. It’s my poor choices that led me here,” The post is read. “All I can do now is pray for mercy.”
Ulbricht created Silk Road, the online marketplace named after the ancient Eurasian trading route in 2011, when he was 39 years old. Silk Road, a marketplace modeled after eBay that allows users to conduct anonymous transactions using bitcoins, is based on the eBay model.
A 2013 FBI complaint alleges that the website, accessible through Tor (and valued at $1.2billion at the time), facilitated sales of 9.5m bitcoins between February 2011 and Jul 2013.
Ulbricht considered himself to be an “idealistic libertarian” A passionate proponent of the free market. He says that ideology is what inspired him to develop an online marketplace built on the principle of non-aggression. The site would let users buy and sell whatever they want, regardless of whether the item would harm the buyer. Ulbricht claimed that the site was working to prevent many items not falling under this criteria. These included child pornography as well as acts of violence done for money, stolen goods, and any item used to “harm or defraud” others.
But rather than becoming a hub for the free and anonymous sale of books, art, clothing and electronics — the kinds of items Ulbricht claims he intended the site to be for — Silk Road became synonymous with the illegal drug trade.
Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI on October 1, 2013 after US authorities had shut down Silk Road. In addition, the government seized approximately $30 million worth of BTC (144,336 BTC).
Ulbricht was then convicted by a jury in February 2015 for drug trafficking and computer hacking, as well as money laundering. In May 2015, Ulbricht was given a life sentence in prison.
“Ross has expressed heartfelt remorse for creating Silk Road and accepts responsibility for the mistake he made. Although he never intended harm, he has learned how even well-meaning and idealistic actions can have unintended consequences,” A blog on freeross.org said:
The remorseful tone that Ulbricht has struck has, at times, been shared by Sam Bankman-Fried — whose trial is set to begin Tuesday, days after Ulbricht’s tenth year of incarceration. Both share other similarities.
Ulbricht’s involvement in bitcoin came at a period when it was less well-known. Bankman Fried and Ulbricht both had a youthful, idealistic outlook and they were eventually accused of the same crimes including money laundering.
It is notable that there has not been a similar movement in support of the former leader FTX, to have him released from prison and to dismiss the charges brought against him as there was with Ulbricht. Change.org’s petition to grant clemency to the Silk Road founder attracted over half-a-million signatures.
Ulbricht’s involvement in a number of sensational violent crimes including murder-for hire was first accused by the US federal government. However, Ulbricht has never been charged in court for any violent crime.
Ulbricht says that these accusations are untrue and he has never intended to kill anyone. The prosecutors went public in 2013, saying that they didn’t believe the allegations of killings.
Ulbricht has also received complaints about his sentence being disproportionate compared with others who were involved in Silk Road or subsequent “darknet” marketplaces.
Cornelis Jan “SuperTrips” Slomp, the drug dealer who became known as Silk Road’s most prolific, was found guilty and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in May 2015. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2021 due to Covid-19 six years into the sentence.
The two men who tried to resurrect Silk Road — Blake Benthall and Thomas White — also received much lighter scrutiny than Ulbricht. White received a sentence of over five years imprisonment by UK authorities for his involvement in the operation of Silk Road 2.0 in 2019. Benthall, who was arrested in November 2014 and charged with operating Silk Road 2.0, is thought to have avoided jail time due to his guilty plea which required him to work closely with the law enforcement.
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