There&#x27;s probably still some SR btc they wanted the keys to.

Possibly a deal with the Libertarian Party, which chose not to run their candidate in several states to help Trump: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY</a>

It was one of the promises he made at a Bitcoin conference he attended a few months ago. It has been a popular issue in crypto circles

Two life sentences was a bit harsh. 11 years seems about right to me.I suspect the idea beyond &quot;Free Ross&quot; in some circles was that his conviction wasn&#x27;t so much about drug dealing, but rather it was more a political prosecution for popularizing real uses of cryptocurrencies.

Without any snark, why? What&#x27;s the motivation?

so we all individually can just decide a law is unjust? that&#x27;ll be fun

Is it unjust to prohibit the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, etc.? Society has good reasons for regulating certain goods. I regularly see people in my community who are enslaved by fentanyl and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The society I live in decided to make selling it illegal. What is unjust about that?

He tried to have multiple people murdered.

1. There is no evidence jefferson ever said this2. There is no evidence anyone else ever said this, eitherThe closest you get is MLK.See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.monticello.org&#x2F;research-education&#x2F;thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia&#x2F;if-law-unjustspurious-quotation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.monticello.org&#x2F;research-education&#x2F;thomas-jeffers...</a>But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.

Maybe Thoreau? That&#x27;s more authentic and gets at similar themes. On more than one level considering his circumstances and run-ins with law enforcement.”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.&quot;

I wonder how this sentiment is going to play out in Luigi Mangione&#x27;s trial.

“If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so” - Thomas Jefferson

Given there are at least thousands if not millions of people who &quot;provide online forums,&quot; and pretty much this single one is in prison, I have to wonder if there&#x27;s something unique about this case?I don&#x27;t know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?

Running an elicit drug and whatever else you want to sell market is legal now.

Crime has always been legal for the ones with money and the right connections.Biden pardonning his son and other criminals also made this clear.Most people are becoming aware most politicians are actually criminals in suits.

Paraphrasing an aphorism I saw elsewhere: &quot;Crime is legal now&quot;.

who else will buy new treasury DOGE coins?

RFK Jr is definitely not a libertarian (even compared to someone mainstream like Gary Johnson or Jared Polis), he supports strong state intervention in many areas of the economy and society

It&#x27;s odd because libertarian candidates usually only garner 1% to 3% of the votes. It does appear that there are a lot of libertarians that vote Republican because of the stigma third parties have, though. As someone who often votes for libertarian candidates, I can&#x27;t understand it. Republicans are about as libertarian as a cheese sandwich.

* Ulbricht&#x27;s conviction became a cause célèbre in American libertarian circles.* In May 2024, candidate Donald Trump said that if re-elected President, he would commute Ulbricht&#x27;s sentence on his first day in office~ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ross_Ulbricht" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ross_Ulbricht</a>I doubt Trump cares about Ulbricht as much as he cares (for whatever reason) about the continued support of various American libertarians (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various crypto elites).While he has made many promises this is significant for being one that he has kept.

Libertarians are very hard to take seriously because of shit like this.  Nothing about Donald Trump is Libertarian.

I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.

&gt; Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.Ironic? It&#x27;s the oldest trick in the book bro

Unfortunately you could level the same type of name calling towards Democrats. It&#x27;s now public record they colluded with all the major media outlets, coerced big tech to censor and debank opponents, imprisoned whistleblowers, violated bodily autonomy with unconstitutional mandates, weaponized the courts to conduct lawfare, and now issued an unprecedented number of pre-emptive pardons for unspecified crimes committed by Fauci, Hunter Biden, et al.I remember when the Democrats were the anti-war party, but Biden was escalating the Ukraine war in the final days of his presidency, and celebrated Dick Cheney&#x27;s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Crazy how things have changed so much. The left unanimously viewed Bush and Cheney as obviously psychopathic war criminals, and now almost all the Neocons have jumped over to the Democrats. The left used to be extremely skeptical of globalization as evident by the Seattle WTO Protests, mass immigration as evident by Bernie Sanders&#x27; comments on its effect on workers&#x27; wages, and Big Pharma&#x27;s perverse incentives to keep people sick and regularly consuming drugs. Yet the media has utterly psyop&#x27;d the progressives... it&#x27;s kinda disturbing.

It’s not ironic at all. The MAGA movement is really similar to how Mussolini came to power.The campaign against barbarians (Steve Miller’s) crusade, Elons “not enough white babies” stuff, sucking up to the church (Vatican City is a Mussolini scheme), aspirations for conquest of Greenland and Panama, etc are all analogous to the maga playbook.Most people are clueless. There are idiots who think they are getting $1 eggs next week. Riling up weirdos like libertarians lets the movement punch above their weight.

&gt;Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their supportVery interesting insight, thank you for sharing it. Do you happen to know other examples as well?

Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are  obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.

It&#x27;s a trite thing to say, but when it comes to Trump it fits the pattern of inside dealing ... I&#x27;m guessing he personally will profit from this somehow &#x2F; someone promised a donation &#x2F; money.

If you meant Trump, it&#x27;s not hidden, they released a Trump meme coin and the rug pull was after the inauguration timed with the release of the Melania meme coin, though entirely speculatively makes more sense for the investors to be foreign governments buying influence less obviously than the last Trump administration like Saudi Arabia hiring his son in law.

It would have to be bitcoin, which isn&#x27;t very hidden

Wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if he is sitting on a billion dollars of hidden crypto somewhere.

Crypto currency proponents benefit from the existence of dark net marketplaces because they are some of the main places for the non-speculative use of crypto currencies.  I think Ross and his pardon represent a sort-of metaphor in crypto-currency proponents&#x27; eyes for the government&#x27;s toleration of these dark net crypto marketplaces.

I had no idea this was a campaign promise. Why? I don’t understand.

Ulbricht was indicted in federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire charge.The case was dropped after NY conviction since he was sentencing to life, so there was little point in continuing.Clearly that was a mistake if a lack of an attempted murder conviction helped him get a pardon.

The judge factored it into the sentencing, though. He likely did actually try to hire a contract killer - twice. In both cases he sincerely believed the murders were successfully committed, and he sent a lot of money to the assassins after being sent (doctored) &quot;proof&quot; of their killings.I think it&#x27;s fair to say judges shouldn&#x27;t factor non-charged allegations into sentencing, but I think he&#x27;s at least morally culpable, here, and should at the very least be expected to now show public contrition for repeatedly trying to murder people drug kingpin-style.I doubt he will ever admit it, but now that he&#x27;s free I still would like it. I don&#x27;t care about people enabling drug sales but I do care about people with a God complex who feel entitled to end the lives of those they oppose (in one case because he thought someone stole from him, and another because he thought they would dox him).

He was in jail for running a darknet drug marketplace. Hiring a contract killer was a crime he was neither charged with nor convicted of.

Yes the FBI had root or admin access to the Silk Road system and could have very easily changed or otherwise affected logs&#x2F;record IDs that the technical case rested on. Two of the FBI agents on the case were later punished for corruption on the case.

Didn&#x27;t Ulbricht actually run the Silk Road? Did someone from the FBI persuade Ulbricht to do it?

By accepting the pardon the accused concedes to guilt in the crime.

It was not entrapment. There is mention of undercover purchases and a controlled delivery by law enforcement, but these are not entrapment. Most of the evidence came from his own laptop.

I haven&#x27;t reviewed the info for a while but it was pretty clearly entrapment as I recall.

The charge was dropped, but the court did hold a hearing on it when deciding on sentencing. They heard the evidence for and against and ruled by a preponderance of the evidence that he did in fact do it.

It had a lot to do with the fact that they already had him for more than long enough on other charges, such that it would have been a waste of time.

No, that charge was dropped. IIRC, it was on shaky ground and they were just trying to throw the book at him.

Some info from a previous thread:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33045520">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33045520</a>

According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.So, he wasn&#x27;t convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.---[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ross_Ulbricht" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ross_Ulbricht</a>

Wasn’t he in jail for hiring a contract killer?I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.

It&#x27;s absolutely one of the reasons why it was politically beneficial for him to enact the pardon.

There is absolutely no way harm reduction was the reason Trump pardoned him.

As well as online drug marketplaces? Or would running one without legal trouble require a campaign-contribution booster pack?What a beautiful political anschluss between people who just want to ban contraceptives and abortifacients, and people who just want to shoot up heroin. Not sure how you square that circle[1], but it&#x27;s 2025, and here we are.It&#x27;s very telling about libertarian priorities when a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty, while hundreds of thousands of people who have been convicted of drug possession[1] do not. Likewise, somehow reproductive rights are just not a libertarian issue, either. It&#x27;s not a party of freedom, it&#x27;s a party of freedom for wealthy men.[1] Biden gave a blanket pardon for people convicted of marijuana posession, but that&#x27;s far less important for libertarians than Ulbricht.

Does trump also support needle exchanges and safe consumption sites?

No no no, he is right. Its safe because if you receive a bad batch of drugs you can leave a negative review on the page of the drug cartel that has your name and address, no chance of that having any repercussions for you at all.

The overwhelming majority of listings on the site were for personal use quantities.

Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren&#x27;t less safe than street drugs. Most of them were likely &quot;fell off the truck&quot; samples from the original manufacturers being sold by people with an in on the supply, but no otherwise-easy access to an out on the demand.Their observation was that reputation mattered on SR a lot and a well-kept reputation was valuable at scale in a way that it isn&#x27;t for being a street-corner pusher looking to stretch your buck by cutting your supply with adulterants. The smart play was to provide a high-quality product at a reasonable price (the latter being the easiest part since they were bypassing the obscene markup of official channels).

&gt; Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform.The basic immorality&#x2F;pointlessness of the war on drugs aside, I don&#x27;t know how you can assert this: it&#x27;s not like there&#x27;s a chain of provenance, and there&#x27;s no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples&#x27; bodies.My understanding of the Silk Road case is that, at its peak, it was servicing a significant portion of the international drug market. The dimensions of that market include adulteration; Silk Road almost certainly didn&#x27;t change that.

Yup.  Drugs and the accompanying business disputes (there&#x27;s a reason street dealers are armed or have armed people around) that would be normal in any other industry are sooo many people&#x27;s (who would other wise not be violent criminals) entry point to violence.  Letting parties remain at arms length yet transact successfully is such a huge step forward compared the prior status quo.  Anything that gets buyers and sellers (either at the retail or distribution level) in illegal industries farther from each other is a win as far as I care.

Absolute no brainer, he should be celebrated. Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform. Of course if we had less draconian drug policy, it wouldn&#x27;t be necessary but here we are.

It’s almost a scandal that politician followed through on a campaign promise.

Trump made the deal at the Libertarian National Convention to garner their support.

A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn&#x27;t run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn&#x27;t worth the credibility cost.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY</a>

It’s also just good politics. There are a vocal group of voters that are in favor of this, so it gets those people on his side. And no reason not to (politically), as most people just don’t care about this topic, or if they do and disagree with the decision, this isn’t going to be the action that moves the needle for them on how they feel about Trump or the Republican Party.

Partisan caricature is not a reliable starting point for logical inference or deduction. To answer your question - on the campaign trail he attended a convention of libertarian organizers and promised them that if he won he would free Ross, and has followed through on that promise today.

I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he&#x27;s been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?

&gt; “All my Republican donations were dark,” [SBF] said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”&gt; Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;6241262&#x2F;sam-bankman-fried-political-donations&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;6241262&#x2F;sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...</a>

Trump refused to pardon Assange and Snowden. I suppose he has priorities.In 2021, presumably during SBF&#x27;s (big Democrat donor) FTX scam, Trump thought that Bitcoin was a scam:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business-57392734" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business-57392734</a>Now he is best friends with the &quot;crypto&quot;, AI, and H1B bros.

I guess this is why he was upset about Mexico sending drug dealers and murderers - he didn&#x27;t want competition for our homegrown drug dealers and murderers.

Among other things this guy was trying to have people murdered.

Because their isn&#x27;t a change in law doesn&#x27;t mean the convictions were secure and bound by law before.

&gt; a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he brokeTrump doesn&#x27;t have the power to unilaterally change laws (fortunately!)

I would find this easier to celebrate if it was a commutation and not a pardon, or if it was a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke.

Life no but probably more than he did in the end. He was really turning into a syndicate boss. The deep ars technica article was pretty depressing.

Most people in real life don’t even know who this guy is. This is a guy that online people know. I will agree it’s a win, he was unfairly sentenced. I just wish I would have been able to buy from SR. I did get to browse it before it was seized.

This is a rare Trump win. There are many things to criticize him for, but this pardon isn&#x27;t one of them. I don&#x27;t think anyone, after researching this case, would be okay with the life sentence handed down to Ross.

&gt; I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they&#x27;re sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly![dead] is different than [flagged][dead]. [dead]-only (no [flagged]) means they&#x27;re auto-dead, they aren&#x27;t killed by someone reviewing the comments (moderator or users flagging). One of the two commenters was shadow banned years ago but still gets vouched for occasionally (including by me at times). The other one was shadow banned (looked through their history) 11 days ago, with a comment from dang at the time stating as much. They also get vouched for on occasion, based on their comment history.&gt; Maybe &quot;Please don&#x27;t use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.&quot; or &quot;Please don&#x27;t pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.&quot;?dang does usually respond to people with something like that first, then for people who get repeatedly flagged or repeatedly engage in certain kinds of behavior, he bans them.

&gt; This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politicsNo, it&#x27;s not. Because the same magnification effect causes the causal, simple and correct sounding to float to the top and the nuanced &quot;&lt;signs deeply&gt; so I dealt with this for 20yr and here&#x27;s the deal&quot; takes that nobody wants to hear because they&#x27;re not simple and easy wind up at the bottom but above the flagrantly wrong crap and the trolls.There&#x27;s a reason that nothing with real stakes adopts this format and technical discussions that matter still mostly happen in some sort of threaded format that doesn&#x27;t allow voting or any sort of drive-by low effort interaction to effect much.Format like this is good for driving interaction, which is why public facing websites use it for their comment sections.

Nothing wrong with HN in particular. Every polarising discussion on a platform with moderation or up&#x2F;down voting system ends up this way. This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politicsRemoving moderation or voting systems (simple chronological comment sorting) creates another set of issues so this problem can&#x27;t be solved without entirely changing discussion formats

Jtsummers is correct.Just to add one point, flagged comments are mostly flagged by users (as opposed to mods). We can only guess why users flag things, but from looking at a sample in the current thread it&#x27;s probably because they&#x27;re mostly flamewar-style comments and&#x2F;or political-battle style comments (or both). Those aren&#x27;t good for HN because what we want here is curious, thoughtful conversation.

I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they&#x27;re sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!Is it due to HN policy? I guess they&#x27;re subjective and ideological, and prone to starting arguments rather than debates.Maybe &quot;Please don&#x27;t use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.&quot; or &quot;Please don&#x27;t pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.&quot;?I&#x27;m honestly just curious as a conscientious internet citizen lol

The hitman was a conman for a murder on a fictitious person. While he fully believed he was committing a real assassination, you can&#x27;t convict people for killing imaginary people.

Yes but he did get scammed as that wasn&#x27;t a real hitman

There wasn&#x27;t any evidence that actually happened. It appears that it may have been fabricated by the same investigators that later robbed him of some millions of dollars worth of bitcoin. Then when it went to trial the murder-for-hire charges were completely dropped due to lack of evidence.He was convicted of:<pre><code> 1. Conspiracy to traffic narcotics
 2. Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE) (sometimes referred to as the “kingpin” charge)
 3. Computer Hacking Conspiracy
 4. Conspiracy to Traffic in Fraudulent Identity Documents
 5. Money Laundering Conspiracy</code></pre>

wasn&#x27;t there evidence of hiring a hitman to commit a murder in furtherance of the Silk Road? that&#x27;s not part of &quot;the debt of running the silk road&quot;

He wasn&#x27;t dealing them. He&#x27;s not exactly culpable for the effects of his platform any more than Zuckerberg is responsible for mass hate speech coordinated by third-world dictators or Evan Spiegel for facilitating millions of nude images of children and teenagers.

People have died from things bought on Amazon, tooAlso, Ross wasn&#x27;t selling those things. He was just operating a market where other people sold things.

People regularly die from drinking alcohol. Should liquor store owners be doing life in prison?  (And why are Australians special?)

Maybe spend a little less time reading propaganda.

People die when they take drugs all the time, whether brought online or not.But the war on some drugs are a failure, but also impossible to change due to stupid people, so Silk Road and crypto was a means to work around this, while lowering crime and turning it into an iterated prisoners dilemma so that quality etc could stay high.

Manslaughter is at most 10 years, he served 12 years, I feel its fair to release him now.

As an Australian who had friends who bought product on silk road my understanding was:1) It&#x27;s safer to buy something online and have it mailed to your house than go pick it up from some shady dude.2) On the street you would often get duds or spiked product, online reputations were built up over time and important to be maintained (think uber&#x2F;ebay stars).Overall silk road probably increased the amount of drug activity but made each incident safer. Not sure what the overall impact would be.

Smart people can differentiate between a market place and the sellers themselves.

Idk about silk road, but hydra (russian online marketplace) was the best thing that happened to russia drug market. It had very good reputation system and even labs that did random testing of drugs being soldExistence of big marketplaces definitely lower chances of people dying from drugs

You have to understand that half of the people here are libertarians who never grew out of their teenage philosophy.

Did you just make a &quot;think of the children&quot; argument? Teens are well known to engage in risk taking. Why not prosecute the parents?

&gt; Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Roadmore or less than those who bought drugs from street dealers?could it not be possible the silk road saved the lives of many more teenagers who would have died from street drugs otherwise?

drugs is one part, but silkroad facilitated more than drug, guns, fake documents, stolen data, money laundering, fake currency, contract killers... the list goes on.

The government should have investigated the people that listed and sourced the drugsthis isn&#x27;t controversial to say, the governments just go for the laziest intermediary latelybut there is the choice of doing actual investigations for time tested crimes. those dealers just went to other darknet markets, which are far far bigger than Silk Road ever was

Plus he tried to hire a hitman to kill someone. Ten years sentence seems a little light for that alone.

Coltec, Sterigenics, UCC&#x2F;UCIL, DuPont, Bayer-Monsanto, Dow, Mallinckrodt, Imperial Sugar, BP, A.A.R. Contractors, W.R. Grace, PG&amp;E, Perdue Pharma.So much corporate&#x2F;gov negligence leads to permanent environment damage, cancer, death. In most cases it&#x27;s a slap on the wrist. Maybe some exist, but I&#x27;m having a hard time finding an example.Show me one executive that served this kind of jail time despite direct links to the deaths of multiple individuals and evidence of negligence leading to those deaths.You can certainly make an argument that the sentencing was warranted but there&#x27;s a whole lot of history of being sentenced, if at all, to far less for far more egregious crimes.

I feel like I&#x27;m taking crazy pills reading the comments on this thread. Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Road. Ross was ok with selling grenades, body parts, etc  on there.   But everyone is saying he served his time ???

Real justice would be changing the laws and sentencing guidance (through a democratically legitimate process), and re-evaluating the sentences of everyone affected.Whatever you think about the outcome in this case, it is the moral equivalent of vigilante justice. It is unfair to others convicted under the same regime, who don&#x27;t happen to be libertarian icons who can be freed in exchange for a few grubby votes.

Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds&#x27; prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government&#x27;s case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road.I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.

What the future holds for someone who was pardoned is likely decided based on very different rationalization compared to how one acts while serving a lifetime prison sentence.

He has admitted his wrong doings and made efforts to change whilst in prison. I doubt he will go straight back to a life even remotely close to before. He was doing good in prison for other inmates and I imagine he will continue doing the same now he has this second chance.

Pardoned from the crimes convicted of? Or pardoned from any crime. I found the Biden pardon to be particular egregious because of how vague it was.

does he even need to launder it ? The pardon may cover any proceeds given Trump described it as &quot;a full and unconditional pardon&quot;

That&#x27;s the old way of doing things.Now it&#x27;s all about podcasts, energy drinks and crypto coin rug-pulls.

If he’s smart he’ll go Jordan Belfort style and make money with book, speaking, and movie deals.

I&#x27;m wondering that too. I think there&#x27;s three options: he either has secret money hidden away, is going to get a cushy job in tech by some fan, or he&#x27;s going to be working as a walmart greeter in 3 years.Honestly I&#x27;m hoping he gets an X account so I can follow him and see which it is lol

I wonder if he is going to be able to launder and cash out whatever crypto he squirreled away. His finances are probably going to be closely watched.Starting a business that accepts crypto payments is going to be a tell.

Is it more on topic than the Musk Nazi salute thing, which you chose not to unflag? The comments are equally predictable in both cases.

Of course it&#x27;s on topic. Why did users flag it? Probably some combination of not liking the event itself and fatigue with political stories. But that&#x27;s just a guess.In any case, we turned the flags off when we saw it.

This conversation is presently flagged.  Why?  When Ross was sentenced HN had a discussion about it with more than 600 comments.  His conviction has been discussed numerous additional times in other threads throughout the years.  His pardon is plainly on-topic for HN, and this discussion is a necessary followup to those previous discussions.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;FNvkp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;FNvkp</a>

According to Trump, he is doing this to get libertarian support.

Voters wanted a better economy first, not pardons for drug traffickers and violent offenders.This could have waited until after the midterms.

&gt; Trump seems to be a man of his word.when there&#x27;s political gain, sure

This is 100% true. I am posting from an anon account (obviously), but I was heavily involved in this. I worked with members of the party to push part of their strategy - mainly the coalition with trump and an effort to get vivek and elon involved. We spoke about this in 2023. I didn&#x27;t care about Ross, had my own motivations, but I wrote some of their playback with AI and it worked. I didn&#x27;t know about certain things (like the losing candidate for example). I wrote strategy that seems to have made its way all the way to Trump&#x27;s team.

&gt;Trump seems to be a man of his word.One of the big reasons I voted for him. He actually keeps the promises he made as far reality will allow.What&#x27;s really stupid is that keeping promises made isn&#x27;t the norm for politicians, of all kinds.

The LP candidate was nominated due to some fluke&#x2F;shenanigans&#x2F;dealings between candidates. Based on the right-leaning demographics you would not expect him to win. It just happened to work out perfectly to get the people who would never vote for him anyway to vote for Trump. (Meanwhile the chairwoman encouraged Biden supporters to vote for the LP candidate).Also, Trump actually got a mixed reception at the convention at best.

man of his word, ok. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.azquotes.com&#x2F;quote&#x2F;660639" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.azquotes.com&#x2F;quote&#x2F;660639</a>

Trump promised to do this at the Libertarian Party convention. This case is very important to the libertarian crowd. He is a martyr for many of their ideals. After Trump was so well received at the convention the LP, recently taken over by the right faction of the party, put forth a candidate specifically chosen to not get votes so that members would vote for Trump. Trump seems to be a man of his word.

Musk is definitely a fan recreationally chemistry

It’s been a campaign of Mike Cernovich’s for a long time.

Trump promised it when he attended the libertarian convention

Whether or not he was the sole or even primary reason, he knew about it beforehand as seen by his tweet last night saying it was coming soon. Love him or hate him, it&#x27;s a bit concerning that he has that level of access IMO.The tweet:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1881524296386031892" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1881524296386031892</a>

Presumably musk pushed for it. Not sure who else in&#x2F;near the administration would even have him on their radar

What?  All crimes were proved beyond a reasonable doubt according to a jury of our peers.  (Or they plead guilty).

Trump know the Jan 6 rioters and supported them. Pardoning is important to justify his claim that nobody did anything wrong as that the election was &quot;stolen by the Dems&quot;.I can&#x27;t imagine he would have known Ross Ulbricht&#x27;s case.

What do you mean?  Trump just pardoned or commuted pretty much all of the J6 crowd.  One guy convicted of crimes that don&#x27;t require proving violence beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty tame in comparison.  He is one of thousands.

He upgraded from commutation to pardon, I wonder about what happened there.

because it was a promise he made to the libertarian camp<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X8ofi6U0eWE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X8ofi6U0eWE</a>

&gt; The Biden DOJs bungling of the insurrection, turning a jail into a martyrs club, slow rolling prosecutions, etc is ultimately worse than the insurrection for democracy.I&#x27;d argue promoting that narrative was ultimately worse than the insurrection for democracy.

They seem to be pandering to the more libertarian tech community. This guy appeals to that and to the more radical maga types who want a revolution. I’m sure we’ll see more.The Biden DOJs bungling of the insurrection, turning a jail into a martyrs club, slow rolling prosecutions, etc is ultimately worse than the insurrection for democracy.

Yay the drug trafficker and hitman hirer is free!
What a happy ending! &#x2F;s

Someone with that dedication can now move on to remedying the damage done by a free-for-all gun marketplace.

It&#x27;s because of his mother Lyn.She was a tireless advocate for his release from the start, and it became a part of the libertarian cause to see him released.It worked. Trump courted the libertarian vote, and this was his most popular promise to them.She&#x27;s an inspiring woman. I&#x27;m so glad she lived to see this.

Trump explains it eloquently:&quot;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,&quot; Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. &quot;He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!&quot;

Genuine question:  Of all the people to pardon, why him?

What were your number 2 and 3 issues, out of curiosity?Were there any accompanying policies that you would say, &quot;despite promising to free Ross Ulbricht, I don&#x27;t think accompanying Policy X would be worth it?&quot;

Immensely more important than an ineffective agreement on an overblown problem.

Not OP, but yes, immensely. Two different galaxies.The Paris Agreement is a joke; it has done nothing. It&#x27;s just a bunch of big-ass politicians and a few celebrities bloviating about not solving the problem.Look, I&#x27;m not disputing at all that global warming is an issue, or that we need to solve it, or that humans cause it, or whatever. But the Paris Agreement and those all other agreements are all about big idiots pretending to do stuff.Probably the most effective thing we have done globally to combat warming is changing to electric cars, and that&#x27;s NOT the Paris Agreement. Not even close.The Paris Agreement is the ultimate politician&#x27;s move. Global warming is a technical problem and must be solved by technical means.Ironically, the one person who is doing more than all the politicians combined to solve this is backing the current administration. Twitter is nuts over if he did a Nazi salute, while doing nothing to focus on solving what they believe is the biggest issue in our lifetimes.

If Paris agreements cannot prevent tariffs on Chinese EV and Chinese solar panels, which are basically battling climate change on Chinese money, these agreements don&#x27;t justify the cost of paper they are written on.

This one act was more important than the Paris agreement?

Unless it&#x27;s your day job: never try to unpack the priorities of a voter. You&#x27;ll just get sad.(For consideration on this topic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.princeton.edu&#x2F;books&#x2F;paperback&#x2F;9780691138732&#x2F;the-myth-of-the-rational-voter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.princeton.edu&#x2F;books&#x2F;paperback&#x2F;9780691138732&#x2F;th...</a>)

I am very sympathetic to the idea of voting just for Ross. It is unclear to me which candidate would be better, since neither of them are close to my political beliefs at all. It is a deadlock and I seem completely unrepresented. The consequences of voting based on any big issues I care about seems completely unpredictable; politics is a game of lies, smoke and mirrors. So I would perhaps rather vote for the candidate that would definitely save one person&#x27;s life that is important to me.

How could that possibly be the most important political issue?

How do you feel about him backing down on H1B visas, price of groceries, peace in Ukraine...

Not in this case and this is the only one I care about. So pound sand?

&gt;Trump is a man of his word.Trump&#x27;s history contradicts this.

LOL!You don’t know me. Seems you are pretty bigoted towards people not like you. How not progressive of you.

&gt; I voted for him just because of this campaign promise.LOL. You&#x27;re a conservative Christian[1] who thinks climate change is a hoax[2].[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29187368">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29187368</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?type=comment&amp;query=author:macinjosh+climate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?type=comment&amp;query=author:macinjosh+...</a>

I am happy to see that Trump is a man of his word. I voted for him just because of this campaign promise. I would have voted for almost anyone who promised this.

I mostly stopped typing in paragraphs because I use a smart phone for most of my internetting. It&#x27;s a lot easier to write your thoughts on a keyboard

The value of the &lt;EOS&gt; token has gone up since then.

Wow. I thought you were being glib, but the average comment length is noticeably higher in the linked discussion. While length isn’t necessarily a valid proxy for meaningful conversation, this was definitely an eye-opening contrast to the current thread.

The main thing I notice is that back then we were writing paragraphs.

Based on the sheer number of posts that have misrepresented the charges or misunderstood why he was actually in prison, it appears to partially be a lack of knowledge on the case, likely due to time hazing some of the memories. Of course someone will change their mind, and some may have their view influenced by who happens to support him.

Exactly. If anything, the one thing that’s guaranteed in these types of threads is that someone will make this same tired argument of “aha, but HN back then said differently” as if it’s some kind of gotcha. I used to always look, and not only was it never the same people but the threads are largely more balanced than the original poster let on. It’s like the contrarian dynamic, which dang has to explain over and over and over and over and over again.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20by%3Adang&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a>

But “mind virus“ is such a cool phrase, and it implies that people who disagree with you are not just wrong, but diseased. Great bit of rhetoric.

This is often a bit of a cop-out.Any time a criminal is caught, people want them to do hard time, but people believe we&#x27;re too hard on crime if you don&#x27;t use examples. People think the government should spend less, but are far less likely too agree to any specific cut. People thought Musk was a genius until they realised he is also a jerk.And while it&#x27;s sometimes different people, it&#x27;s suspiciously reliably consistent in what you see said and upvoted.

Or it could be different people commenting than on that original thread? And people might have changed their minds? HN is not a monolith. Humans are not static. You don&#x27;t need to blame it on &quot;politics being a mind virus&quot;.

It’s different people commenting on each post. There’s no “mind virus”.

It was pretty out of left field and seemingly uncharacteristic for the him to do this. It&#x27;s fair to ask why. I think Trump is terrible in every way, think the pardon is fine, but can&#x27;t help but wonder why and other questions about it

&quot;Politics&quot; is a dismissive word for crypto&#x27;s evolution over the last decade. North Korea ransoming our hospitals, industrial scale gambling and scam enablement, wealthy kingpins buying self-serving policy. Crypto grew up. So did our opinions.That doesn&#x27;t change what Ross Ulbricht did, but we can now see him as continuous with a great evil that we couldn&#x27;t see at the time. With more information, our opinions changed, and they were right to change.

I don&#x27;t see anything special about that thread. There are in fact more people there who believe the contract killing allegations than now.

Could you post the literal text? I don&#x27;t really want to make a Doubleplustruth Social account, and it doesn&#x27;t seem to be in other news excerpts.

Donald literally cites Mommy Ulbricht&#x27;s political inclinations...

Well, that thread is almost a decade old. HN a decade ago was a very different vibe than today.You are insinuating one thing, but perhaps it is also possible reason is that the same people with those old views of the crimes have grown and their views changed. I know mine certainly have gone that way. I’d have to imagine other users have grown with me.

Man, that shit is so old. Even if you&#x27;re right, which I don&#x27;t think you are, you are adding nothing to the conversation but cynicism.

At the time of sentencing, did we already know that the murder for hire plots were created by corrupt Secret Service and DEA agents on trial next door? and all of that was withheld from the defense and the jury?because that&#x27;s where the story really jumps the shark. I&#x27;m all for some accountability - such as the 12 years in prison already - but that particular case should have been dropped for several reasons, I&#x27;ve seen cases dropped for way less.

Nah social media is just about engagement.  People who are happy with the article don’t bother to comment.  Those who are outraged comment.  It’s just two different groups of people commenting

I believe they are implying that people are disapproving the pardon because it was done by Trump.

What exactly are you trying to say here?That people can&#x27;t change their minds? That HN is a hivemind ? (news flash: it&#x27;s not , it&#x27;s more diverse than you actually think) or that everything is attributed to &quot;Politics is a mind virus&quot; ? if so, what do you mind by this term specifically?I personally, find little substance in such comments. If you have an opinion on the matter (which seemingly you do), then please share it so that we can have a discussion about it.So.. care to elaborate?

The craziest part about that thread is how much the attitude around drugs has changed in the past years. 10 years ago the comments felt a lot more optimistic about drugs and liberalization.I guess since then, the fentanyl crisis has happened and shown that drugs also have more negative impacts

This thread is a great lesson in &quot;Politics is a mind virus&quot;I recommend you read the HN thread when Ulbricht was sentenced [0] first, then come here and read all the &quot;Honest, genuine question, why?&quot;sThen start practicing not letting politics influence your thought process<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9626985">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9626985</a>

Hence why, if DPR was going to get off somehow, a sentence commutation would have been better rather than an unconditional pardon. The latter implies he did absolutely nothing wrong, which hilariously runs counter to Trump&#x27;s supposed tough on drugs and crime shtick he has.

The judge issued the punishment at their sole discretion. The legislature sets the laws often without any input from the constituency.Meanwhile a sizable campaign has materialized around this case and many people do feel he has done enough time and should be free without any restrictions

What do you mean &quot;lightly?&quot; He ran an illegal drug market and tried to assassinate a competitor. We gave him the punishment that society has determined one should receive for this. Revoking his punishment is &quot;light.&quot;

Is there some reason he should not be allowed to vote,  own a firearm,  or receive federal benefits?

He built a website.  He didn&#x27;t dictate how people used it.  That was the point.  He was charged as a drug kingpin with mobster era consequences.  His sentence didn&#x27;t fit whatever crimes he did or didn&#x27;t commit.

I agree that a commutation would have made much more sense.But &quot;always make sense&quot; doesn&#x27;t seem to be in Trumps OKRs...That&#x27;s mostly a symbolic difference though. The practical end result is the same

I&#x27;m just shocked it was a full pardon instead of a commutation or something. I don&#x27;t think the US is gaining a ton from keeping him locked up but he still did run an organization he knew was used for selling drugs and other illegal things and a full pardon for that seems weird. I feel like I mainly heard people talking about commuting his sentence

Keep in mind that he spent 11 years locked up.He&#x27;s not getting off lightly!

I don&#x27;t see how this benefits the American economy, jobs, or national security. I do see that for a cohort of people in the Libertarian community this was held to be a central Tenet: Ulbricht was their &quot;hostage&quot; just as the Proud Boys thought their leader was.But, I can&#x27;t see how this becomes net beneficial in Congress, or in the wider economy. At best it&#x27;s providing lower friction movement of goods and services. They tend not to go to Federal Tax collecting exchanges, so I cannot for the life of me see how this helps the exchequer, but maybe thats the point?

IIRC it was to do with the conduct of the FBI agents posing as hitmen? I think they ended up in prison too, so a prosecution would be hard.

Wasn&#x27;t charges about paying a hitmen dropped?

Given the farcical nature of those allegations and all that we now know, including that others with access to the Dread Pirate Roberts account assert that the DEA agent making the allegations (who is himself now in prison for attempting to steal some of the silk road bitcoin) had access as well, it will be wonderful if DoJ attempts to bring charges, just to further clear Ross&#x27; name.There are not a shred of evidence that Ross ever had the slightest thing to do with those conversations, and it seems much more likely that the DEA used the DPR account to frame him.

From wikipedia:&gt; &quot;full and unconditional pardon for any crimes related to drugs&quot;.Does &quot;any crimes related to drugs&quot; include the murder for hire allegations? Does this mean new charges related to that could be brought against him?

I think they&#x27;re pointing out the hypocrisy of wanting to crack down on drugs while doing this.I see so many Trump adjacent folks demanding we lock up drug dealers, deport them, whatever. But they want to let this one go.

I think serious jail for running an illegal drug marketplace is good, even if he used lots of neat tech to do so..

Mr. Trump isn&#x27;t exactly known for making distinctions like that.

I knew people who were wringing it out of medicated patches and sniffing it out of Afrin bottles during high school in the 90s. I also knew someone who ODd and died from tainted&#x2F;fake pills they bought from one of The Silk Road&#x27;s (immediate) successors.Some number of people also OD on &quot;traditional&quot; street drugs every day. So, this is really not a sound argument.

Fentanyl wasn&#x27;t big yet when Silk Road was around. And besides, people were buying straight from China off the clearnet

At the same time he is threatening to tariff China 10% due to their responsibility for fentanyl, lol

I think that requires convincing evidence. Also, how is it relevant to the question?

I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.

with a name like DPR id have to assume its buried treasure

I suspect there&#x27;ll be a lot of people very carefully watching for transactions from wallets with some sort of links to Silk Road that have been dormant for 12 years or so.

It&#x27;s a full pardon; there is no crime.

If they were from the commission of a crime, then no.

This is obviously incorrect. Actually pardon means the charges filed has been voided, hence anything happening afterwards has had no merits and court decisions made are now rendered moot. For example, Roger Stone was charged and found guilty of multiple crimes and Trump pardoned him; he still brandish guns and was &quot;proudly voting Trump&quot; in 2024 in state of Florida. Getting pardon is literally like it never happened in the first place.

No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.&gt; Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;articles&#x2F;presidential-pardons-settled-law-unsettled-issues-and-a-downside-for-trump" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;articles&#x2F;presidential-pardons-sett...</a>

Will he get his possesions back then?50,676 bitcoins, today valued at 5,3 billion USD.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;usao-sdny&#x2F;pr&#x2F;us-attorney-announces-historic-336-billion-cryptocurrency-seizure-and-conviction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;usao-sdny&#x2F;pr&#x2F;us-attorney-announces-h...</a>

Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon