![PatrickJBlum's tweet photo. Today marks Ross Ulbricht's 10th year in prison. In the past decade, Bitcoin has printed millionaires, cannabis stocks feature on CNBC, and psilocybin is accepted as medicine. Yet Ulbricht sits in a cage, in a world that otherwise celebrates the disruptive forces he championed through Silk Road.
Arrested just days after the Breaking Bad finale, Ross became the media's perfect anti-hero—an Eagle Scout who broke bad. Charged under a Kingpin Statute usually reserved for cartel bosses, he got two life sentences plus 40 years (El Chapo only received one). Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, told me, “The sentence shocked everyone. The prosecutors weren’t even asking for it. The judge gave him a death sentence. There was an audible gasp in the courtroom…It sets a terrible precedent.”
Ross now lives in a high-security federal prison in Tucson. The prison prohibits computer usage, but he is an avid reader and artist. USP Tucson permits weekend visits, which Ross typically spends with his fiancée—whom he met several years ago through exchanging letters. Ross finds fulfillment in life through the few avenues afforded to him in prison: he is a suicide watch volunteer, an inmate tutor, and is pursuing his master’s in psychology.
Ross's dull prison life sharply contrasts with the exciting drama found in the stories written after his arrest. Truthfully, Ross’s personal life always erred on the boring side. Ross lived with three roommates when he was arrested. He had no car and spent most of his time assiduously working on Silk Road. He had several changes of clothes and a pair of shoes that his mother had bought him two years prior—a slight improvement over his current wardrobe at USP Tucson. Despite his life sentence that offers no chance of parole, he tries to focus on the present. When conversations with his mother inevitably drift back to the regrets of the past, or the hopes of the future, he warns her, “Let’s not go down that path…It’s a torment if you do.”
Lyn Ulbricht can’t help it—she’s serving her own life sentence as a prisoner of hope. At 74 years old, Lyn spends her time running FreeRoss, a nonprofit she started a decade ago to advocate for his release. It’s a Sisyphean task, as she knows all too well. “Honestly, there are times where I’m like, oh my god, how am I going to keep going?” she told me. It's hard, she says, but she can't stop. "I can't leave Ross to die in there."
In the eyes of many, Ross’s punishment is well deserved. By the time Ross was arrested, Silk Road hosted over 145,000 buyers. Although the most common purchase on Silk Road was marijuana, the platform also featured more serious substances such as heroin and cocaine. The federal indictment alleged that Ross used his earnings to pay over $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting several people that allegedly threatened to reveal his enterprise. Notably, no one was actually murdered. And Ross Ulbricht seems to be the person who regrets the platform’s existence the most. In his letter to the judge before his sentencing, he says, “Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret…In creating Silk Road, I ruined my life and destroyed my future…I see that now but it is too late.”
Supporters of Ross claim that he wasn’t granted a fair trial. Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, two federal agents who built the government’s case against Ross Ulbricht, were later convicted on corruption charges related to their conduct in the case. The two agents used the account of an arrested Silk Road administrator to steal over 21,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road—worth over $400 million today—which they deposited into their personal accounts. After framing the administrator for that theft, Force then staged the first alleged murder-for-hire against that administrator. He later used an alias to sell information to Ross about the government’s investigation, playing the role of a double agent. To cover their tracks, these agents abused their subpoena power to erase evidence of their corruption. Shockingly, the judge screened the agents’ wrongdoing from Ross’s jury. And despite the absence of murder-for-hire allegations in the official charges, the prosecution was allowed to speak about them to the jury. Noam Chomsky called the case a "shocking miscarriage of justice.”
Ross is now serving his eleventh year in prison—over a quarter of his life. I can’t help but reflect on his story—one of idealism, naïveté, and ultimately tragedy. I think about how the world has changed in that decade while he remains stuck in the same place. When Ross started Silk Road in 2011, online privacy was still merely endangered—not extinct like it is today. A decade ago, fierce battles were fought over legislation like the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). Only a month before Ross founded Silk Road, Aaron Swartz was arrested on MIT’s campus for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR. Later in 2013, NSA surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden confirmed the longstanding suspicions of techno-libertarians like Ross Ulbricht.
In the early 2010s, the media viewed Bitcoin as a strange cryptocurrency, synonymous with crime. Bitcoin’s advocates whispered about the currency in hushed tones and discussed its merit on pseudonymous forums. Today, cryptocurrencies are a trillion-dollar market, with institutional investors and respected corporations eagerly lining up for a slice of the pie. Prominent figures involved in the Silk Road cases now hold leading positions in the industry. Katie Haun, who established the U.S. government's first-ever “cryptocurrency task force,” raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in crypto—the largest initial fund ever raised by a solo female venture capitalist. One could imagine a present-day Ross Ulbricht announcing a seed round for his new crypto startup, backed by prominent venture capitalists, rather than an indictment featuring a litany of federal charges.
When Ross was arrested in 2013, medical cannabis—let alone recreational use—remained illegal in most states. Today, marijuana companies trade on public stock exchanges and receive billions of dollars from private equity funds. California—where Ross was arrested—now reaps over a billion dollars every year in tax revenue from the legal sale of cannabis. Similarly, the public once associated illegal psychedelics with burnt-out hippies. Now, academic journals openly discuss the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms—the first item sold on Silk Road and grown by Ross himself—and a wave of jurisdictions decriminalized their use. Even more serious drugs like heroin are often used in public without fear of prosecution in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York—in conditions much less safe than those offered by Silk Road.
Ross’s legacy weaves inseparably with this wave of change. When Ross started Silk Road in February 2011, Bitcoin was worth $1.00. It reached $27 within a week of Gawker publishing a story about Silk Road in June of that year and $145 by the time Ross was arrested in October 2013. As Lyn Ulbricht told me, “I think there is a consensus, that what he did, for better or worse…catapulted [Bitcoin] into the consciousness of people…It was the plaything of geeks before.”
While he’s been punished severely for his crimes, I can’t help but wonder if the world has also been punished as a result. Ross's sentence does more than imprison one man; it cages innovation itself. As his mother says, "Let's use our geeks."
We may never know what Ross could have accomplished had he been given a second chance. Ross has no possibility of parole, and his inmate page reads, “Release Date: Life.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7YGGxCboAA5Eev.png)
![PatrickJBlum's tweet photo. Today marks Ross Ulbricht's 10th year in prison. In the past decade, Bitcoin has printed millionaires, cannabis stocks feature on CNBC, and psilocybin is accepted as medicine. Yet Ulbricht sits in a cage, in a world that otherwise celebrates the disruptive forces he championed through Silk Road.
Arrested just days after the Breaking Bad finale, Ross became the media's perfect anti-hero—an Eagle Scout who broke bad. Charged under a Kingpin Statute usually reserved for cartel bosses, he got two life sentences plus 40 years (El Chapo only received one). Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, told me, “The sentence shocked everyone. The prosecutors weren’t even asking for it. The judge gave him a death sentence. There was an audible gasp in the courtroom…It sets a terrible precedent.”
Ross now lives in a high-security federal prison in Tucson. The prison prohibits computer usage, but he is an avid reader and artist. USP Tucson permits weekend visits, which Ross typically spends with his fiancée—whom he met several years ago through exchanging letters. Ross finds fulfillment in life through the few avenues afforded to him in prison: he is a suicide watch volunteer, an inmate tutor, and is pursuing his master’s in psychology.
Ross's dull prison life sharply contrasts with the exciting drama found in the stories written after his arrest. Truthfully, Ross’s personal life always erred on the boring side. Ross lived with three roommates when he was arrested. He had no car and spent most of his time assiduously working on Silk Road. He had several changes of clothes and a pair of shoes that his mother had bought him two years prior—a slight improvement over his current wardrobe at USP Tucson. Despite his life sentence that offers no chance of parole, he tries to focus on the present. When conversations with his mother inevitably drift back to the regrets of the past, or the hopes of the future, he warns her, “Let’s not go down that path…It’s a torment if you do.”
Lyn Ulbricht can’t help it—she’s serving her own life sentence as a prisoner of hope. At 74 years old, Lyn spends her time running FreeRoss, a nonprofit she started a decade ago to advocate for his release. It’s a Sisyphean task, as she knows all too well. “Honestly, there are times where I’m like, oh my god, how am I going to keep going?” she told me. It's hard, she says, but she can't stop. "I can't leave Ross to die in there."
In the eyes of many, Ross’s punishment is well deserved. By the time Ross was arrested, Silk Road hosted over 145,000 buyers. Although the most common purchase on Silk Road was marijuana, the platform also featured more serious substances such as heroin and cocaine. The federal indictment alleged that Ross used his earnings to pay over $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting several people that allegedly threatened to reveal his enterprise. Notably, no one was actually murdered. And Ross Ulbricht seems to be the person who regrets the platform’s existence the most. In his letter to the judge before his sentencing, he says, “Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret…In creating Silk Road, I ruined my life and destroyed my future…I see that now but it is too late.”
Supporters of Ross claim that he wasn’t granted a fair trial. Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, two federal agents who built the government’s case against Ross Ulbricht, were later convicted on corruption charges related to their conduct in the case. The two agents used the account of an arrested Silk Road administrator to steal over 21,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road—worth over $400 million today—which they deposited into their personal accounts. After framing the administrator for that theft, Force then staged the first alleged murder-for-hire against that administrator. He later used an alias to sell information to Ross about the government’s investigation, playing the role of a double agent. To cover their tracks, these agents abused their subpoena power to erase evidence of their corruption. Shockingly, the judge screened the agents’ wrongdoing from Ross’s jury. And despite the absence of murder-for-hire allegations in the official charges, the prosecution was allowed to speak about them to the jury. Noam Chomsky called the case a "shocking miscarriage of justice.”
Ross is now serving his eleventh year in prison—over a quarter of his life. I can’t help but reflect on his story—one of idealism, naïveté, and ultimately tragedy. I think about how the world has changed in that decade while he remains stuck in the same place. When Ross started Silk Road in 2011, online privacy was still merely endangered—not extinct like it is today. A decade ago, fierce battles were fought over legislation like the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). Only a month before Ross founded Silk Road, Aaron Swartz was arrested on MIT’s campus for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR. Later in 2013, NSA surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden confirmed the longstanding suspicions of techno-libertarians like Ross Ulbricht.
In the early 2010s, the media viewed Bitcoin as a strange cryptocurrency, synonymous with crime. Bitcoin’s advocates whispered about the currency in hushed tones and discussed its merit on pseudonymous forums. Today, cryptocurrencies are a trillion-dollar market, with institutional investors and respected corporations eagerly lining up for a slice of the pie. Prominent figures involved in the Silk Road cases now hold leading positions in the industry. Katie Haun, who established the U.S. government's first-ever “cryptocurrency task force,” raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in crypto—the largest initial fund ever raised by a solo female venture capitalist. One could imagine a present-day Ross Ulbricht announcing a seed round for his new crypto startup, backed by prominent venture capitalists, rather than an indictment featuring a litany of federal charges.
When Ross was arrested in 2013, medical cannabis—let alone recreational use—remained illegal in most states. Today, marijuana companies trade on public stock exchanges and receive billions of dollars from private equity funds. California—where Ross was arrested—now reaps over a billion dollars every year in tax revenue from the legal sale of cannabis. Similarly, the public once associated illegal psychedelics with burnt-out hippies. Now, academic journals openly discuss the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms—the first item sold on Silk Road and grown by Ross himself—and a wave of jurisdictions decriminalized their use. Even more serious drugs like heroin are often used in public without fear of prosecution in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York—in conditions much less safe than those offered by Silk Road.
Ross’s legacy weaves inseparably with this wave of change. When Ross started Silk Road in February 2011, Bitcoin was worth $1.00. It reached $27 within a week of Gawker publishing a story about Silk Road in June of that year and $145 by the time Ross was arrested in October 2013. As Lyn Ulbricht told me, “I think there is a consensus, that what he did, for better or worse…catapulted [Bitcoin] into the consciousness of people…It was the plaything of geeks before.”
While he’s been punished severely for his crimes, I can’t help but wonder if the world has also been punished as a result. Ross's sentence does more than imprison one man; it cages innovation itself. As his mother says, "Let's use our geeks."
We may never know what Ross could have accomplished had he been given a second chance. Ross has no possibility of parole, and his inmate page reads, “Release Date: Life.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7X_njDbQAAD2aV.png)
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Avi Sinha
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entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, investor’s investor, contrarian’s contrarian
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With my return back to Twitter. Free mcchicken for everyone that likes this tweet.
series 1-0.
🚨 🔊 TRAVIS SCOTT — ‘CIRCUS MAXIMUS TOUR’ NEW DELHI, INDIA NIGHT ONE SETLIST 🎪🇮🇳
1. HYAENA
2. THANK GOD
3. MODERN JAM
4. AYE
5. SDP INTERLUDE
6. BACKR0OMS
7. TYPE SHIT
8. NIGHTCRAWLER
9. NIGHTCRAWLER ACAPELLA
10. CHAMPAIN & VACAY
11. DUMBO
12. UPPER ECHELON
13. PRAISE GOD
14. GOD'S COUNTRY
15. MY EYES
16. BUTTERFLY EFFECT
17. HIGHEST IN THE ROOM
18. MAMACITA
19. BEIBS IN THE TRAP (BROUGHT OUT NAV)
20. I KNOW ?
21. 90210
22. MELTDOWN
23. TOPiA TWINS
24. NO BYSTANDERS
25. FE!N (4X times)
26. SICKO MODE
27. ANTIDOTE
ENCORE
28. GOOSEBUMPS
29. TELEKINESIS
‘DA WIZARD’ was performed in full for the first time, during the final act of the concert.
Everyone thinks Claude Code is just for engineers.
The truth is it’s one of the most underrated tools for product managers. It’s basically a cheat code for anyone buried in ops grind and endless analysis.
Here’s how I use it day-to-day 🧵
Who to follow
Nicolas Meilhan 
@NicolasMeilhan
Ingénieur Automobile et Energie #MIT #Econoclaste
Ancien conseiller scientifique à France Stratégie
Manshesht Sharma
@manshesht
im not as caught up as I should be on Twitter culture and this is me fixing that
Dice Martin
@DiceyKnight
You can call me Dicey. Recently moved to LA, music means the world to me. Producer/Rapper
When VC legend Joe Lacob bought the Warriors for $450M in 2010, everyone called him crazy.
5 years later: NBA champions. Today: Worth $10B+.
He turned GSW into the Google of the NBA.
It was the masterclass in management every entrepreneur should study: 🧵
Nikesh Arora makes $288M/year in salary. More than Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella.
He turned Palo Alto Networks from $19B to $120B in 5 years.
Previously built Google’s Europe Business ($8B) and Softbank.
The highest paid CEO you’ve never heard of: 🧵
@fentasyl I propose a literal dick measuring contest 📏
Today marks Ross Ulbricht's 10th year in prison. In the past decade, Bitcoin has printed millionaires, cannabis stocks feature on CNBC, and psilocybin is accepted as medicine. Yet Ulbricht sits in a cage, in a world that otherwise celebrates the disruptive forces he championed through Silk Road.
Arrested just days after the Breaking Bad finale, Ross became the media's perfect anti-hero—an Eagle Scout who broke bad. Charged under a Kingpin Statute usually reserved for cartel bosses, he got two life sentences plus 40 years (El Chapo only received one). Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, told me, “The sentence shocked everyone. The prosecutors weren’t even asking for it. The judge gave him a death sentence. There was an audible gasp in the courtroom…It sets a terrible precedent.”
Ross now lives in a high-security federal prison in Tucson. The prison prohibits computer usage, but he is an avid reader and artist. USP Tucson permits weekend visits, which Ross typically spends with his fiancée—whom he met several years ago through exchanging letters. Ross finds fulfillment in life through the few avenues afforded to him in prison: he is a suicide watch volunteer, an inmate tutor, and is pursuing his master’s in psychology.
Ross's dull prison life sharply contrasts with the exciting drama found in the stories written after his arrest. Truthfully, Ross’s personal life always erred on the boring side. Ross lived with three roommates when he was arrested. He had no car and spent most of his time assiduously working on Silk Road. He had several changes of clothes and a pair of shoes that his mother had bought him two years prior—a slight improvement over his current wardrobe at USP Tucson. Despite his life sentence that offers no chance of parole, he tries to focus on the present. When conversations with his mother inevitably drift back to the regrets of the past, or the hopes of the future, he warns her, “Let’s not go down that path…It’s a torment if you do.”
Lyn Ulbricht can’t help it—she’s serving her own life sentence as a prisoner of hope. At 74 years old, Lyn spends her time running FreeRoss, a nonprofit she started a decade ago to advocate for his release. It’s a Sisyphean task, as she knows all too well. “Honestly, there are times where I’m like, oh my god, how am I going to keep going?” she told me. It's hard, she says, but she can't stop. "I can't leave Ross to die in there."
In the eyes of many, Ross’s punishment is well deserved. By the time Ross was arrested, Silk Road hosted over 145,000 buyers. Although the most common purchase on Silk Road was marijuana, the platform also featured more serious substances such as heroin and cocaine. The federal indictment alleged that Ross used his earnings to pay over $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting several people that allegedly threatened to reveal his enterprise. Notably, no one was actually murdered. And Ross Ulbricht seems to be the person who regrets the platform’s existence the most. In his letter to the judge before his sentencing, he says, “Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret…In creating Silk Road, I ruined my life and destroyed my future…I see that now but it is too late.”
Supporters of Ross claim that he wasn’t granted a fair trial. Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, two federal agents who built the government’s case against Ross Ulbricht, were later convicted on corruption charges related to their conduct in the case. The two agents used the account of an arrested Silk Road administrator to steal over 21,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road—worth over $400 million today—which they deposited into their personal accounts. After framing the administrator for that theft, Force then staged the first alleged murder-for-hire against that administrator. He later used an alias to sell information to Ross about the government’s investigation, playing the role of a double agent. To cover their tracks, these agents abused their subpoena power to erase evidence of their corruption. Shockingly, the judge screened the agents’ wrongdoing from Ross’s jury. And despite the absence of murder-for-hire allegations in the official charges, the prosecution was allowed to speak about them to the jury. Noam Chomsky called the case a "shocking miscarriage of justice.”
Ross is now serving his eleventh year in prison—over a quarter of his life. I can’t help but reflect on his story—one of idealism, naïveté, and ultimately tragedy. I think about how the world has changed in that decade while he remains stuck in the same place. When Ross started Silk Road in 2011, online privacy was still merely endangered—not extinct like it is today. A decade ago, fierce battles were fought over legislation like the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). Only a month before Ross founded Silk Road, Aaron Swartz was arrested on MIT’s campus for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR. Later in 2013, NSA surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden confirmed the longstanding suspicions of techno-libertarians like Ross Ulbricht.
In the early 2010s, the media viewed Bitcoin as a strange cryptocurrency, synonymous with crime. Bitcoin’s advocates whispered about the currency in hushed tones and discussed its merit on pseudonymous forums. Today, cryptocurrencies are a trillion-dollar market, with institutional investors and respected corporations eagerly lining up for a slice of the pie. Prominent figures involved in the Silk Road cases now hold leading positions in the industry. Katie Haun, who established the U.S. government's first-ever “cryptocurrency task force,” raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in crypto—the largest initial fund ever raised by a solo female venture capitalist. One could imagine a present-day Ross Ulbricht announcing a seed round for his new crypto startup, backed by prominent venture capitalists, rather than an indictment featuring a litany of federal charges.
When Ross was arrested in 2013, medical cannabis—let alone recreational use—remained illegal in most states. Today, marijuana companies trade on public stock exchanges and receive billions of dollars from private equity funds. California—where Ross was arrested—now reaps over a billion dollars every year in tax revenue from the legal sale of cannabis. Similarly, the public once associated illegal psychedelics with burnt-out hippies. Now, academic journals openly discuss the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms—the first item sold on Silk Road and grown by Ross himself—and a wave of jurisdictions decriminalized their use. Even more serious drugs like heroin are often used in public without fear of prosecution in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York—in conditions much less safe than those offered by Silk Road.
Ross’s legacy weaves inseparably with this wave of change. When Ross started Silk Road in February 2011, Bitcoin was worth $1.00. It reached $27 within a week of Gawker publishing a story about Silk Road in June of that year and $145 by the time Ross was arrested in October 2013. As Lyn Ulbricht told me, “I think there is a consensus, that what he did, for better or worse…catapulted [Bitcoin] into the consciousness of people…It was the plaything of geeks before.”
While he’s been punished severely for his crimes, I can’t help but wonder if the world has also been punished as a result. Ross's sentence does more than imprison one man; it cages innovation itself. As his mother says, "Let's use our geeks."
We may never know what Ross could have accomplished had he been given a second chance. Ross has no possibility of parole, and his inmate page reads, “Release Date: Life.”
![PatrickJBlum's tweet photo. Today marks Ross Ulbricht's 10th year in prison. In the past decade, Bitcoin has printed millionaires, cannabis stocks feature on CNBC, and psilocybin is accepted as medicine. Yet Ulbricht sits in a cage, in a world that otherwise celebrates the disruptive forces he championed through Silk Road.
Arrested just days after the Breaking Bad finale, Ross became the media's perfect anti-hero—an Eagle Scout who broke bad. Charged under a Kingpin Statute usually reserved for cartel bosses, he got two life sentences plus 40 years (El Chapo only received one). Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, told me, “The sentence shocked everyone. The prosecutors weren’t even asking for it. The judge gave him a death sentence. There was an audible gasp in the courtroom…It sets a terrible precedent.”
Ross now lives in a high-security federal prison in Tucson. The prison prohibits computer usage, but he is an avid reader and artist. USP Tucson permits weekend visits, which Ross typically spends with his fiancée—whom he met several years ago through exchanging letters. Ross finds fulfillment in life through the few avenues afforded to him in prison: he is a suicide watch volunteer, an inmate tutor, and is pursuing his master’s in psychology.
Ross's dull prison life sharply contrasts with the exciting drama found in the stories written after his arrest. Truthfully, Ross’s personal life always erred on the boring side. Ross lived with three roommates when he was arrested. He had no car and spent most of his time assiduously working on Silk Road. He had several changes of clothes and a pair of shoes that his mother had bought him two years prior—a slight improvement over his current wardrobe at USP Tucson. Despite his life sentence that offers no chance of parole, he tries to focus on the present. When conversations with his mother inevitably drift back to the regrets of the past, or the hopes of the future, he warns her, “Let’s not go down that path…It’s a torment if you do.”
Lyn Ulbricht can’t help it—she’s serving her own life sentence as a prisoner of hope. At 74 years old, Lyn spends her time running FreeRoss, a nonprofit she started a decade ago to advocate for his release. It’s a Sisyphean task, as she knows all too well. “Honestly, there are times where I’m like, oh my god, how am I going to keep going?” she told me. It's hard, she says, but she can't stop. "I can't leave Ross to die in there."
In the eyes of many, Ross’s punishment is well deserved. By the time Ross was arrested, Silk Road hosted over 145,000 buyers. Although the most common purchase on Silk Road was marijuana, the platform also featured more serious substances such as heroin and cocaine. The federal indictment alleged that Ross used his earnings to pay over $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting several people that allegedly threatened to reveal his enterprise. Notably, no one was actually murdered. And Ross Ulbricht seems to be the person who regrets the platform’s existence the most. In his letter to the judge before his sentencing, he says, “Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret…In creating Silk Road, I ruined my life and destroyed my future…I see that now but it is too late.”
Supporters of Ross claim that he wasn’t granted a fair trial. Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, two federal agents who built the government’s case against Ross Ulbricht, were later convicted on corruption charges related to their conduct in the case. The two agents used the account of an arrested Silk Road administrator to steal over 21,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road—worth over $400 million today—which they deposited into their personal accounts. After framing the administrator for that theft, Force then staged the first alleged murder-for-hire against that administrator. He later used an alias to sell information to Ross about the government’s investigation, playing the role of a double agent. To cover their tracks, these agents abused their subpoena power to erase evidence of their corruption. Shockingly, the judge screened the agents’ wrongdoing from Ross’s jury. And despite the absence of murder-for-hire allegations in the official charges, the prosecution was allowed to speak about them to the jury. Noam Chomsky called the case a "shocking miscarriage of justice.”
Ross is now serving his eleventh year in prison—over a quarter of his life. I can’t help but reflect on his story—one of idealism, naïveté, and ultimately tragedy. I think about how the world has changed in that decade while he remains stuck in the same place. When Ross started Silk Road in 2011, online privacy was still merely endangered—not extinct like it is today. A decade ago, fierce battles were fought over legislation like the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). Only a month before Ross founded Silk Road, Aaron Swartz was arrested on MIT’s campus for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR. Later in 2013, NSA surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden confirmed the longstanding suspicions of techno-libertarians like Ross Ulbricht.
In the early 2010s, the media viewed Bitcoin as a strange cryptocurrency, synonymous with crime. Bitcoin’s advocates whispered about the currency in hushed tones and discussed its merit on pseudonymous forums. Today, cryptocurrencies are a trillion-dollar market, with institutional investors and respected corporations eagerly lining up for a slice of the pie. Prominent figures involved in the Silk Road cases now hold leading positions in the industry. Katie Haun, who established the U.S. government's first-ever “cryptocurrency task force,” raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in crypto—the largest initial fund ever raised by a solo female venture capitalist. One could imagine a present-day Ross Ulbricht announcing a seed round for his new crypto startup, backed by prominent venture capitalists, rather than an indictment featuring a litany of federal charges.
When Ross was arrested in 2013, medical cannabis—let alone recreational use—remained illegal in most states. Today, marijuana companies trade on public stock exchanges and receive billions of dollars from private equity funds. California—where Ross was arrested—now reaps over a billion dollars every year in tax revenue from the legal sale of cannabis. Similarly, the public once associated illegal psychedelics with burnt-out hippies. Now, academic journals openly discuss the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms—the first item sold on Silk Road and grown by Ross himself—and a wave of jurisdictions decriminalized their use. Even more serious drugs like heroin are often used in public without fear of prosecution in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York—in conditions much less safe than those offered by Silk Road.
Ross’s legacy weaves inseparably with this wave of change. When Ross started Silk Road in February 2011, Bitcoin was worth $1.00. It reached $27 within a week of Gawker publishing a story about Silk Road in June of that year and $145 by the time Ross was arrested in October 2013. As Lyn Ulbricht told me, “I think there is a consensus, that what he did, for better or worse…catapulted [Bitcoin] into the consciousness of people…It was the plaything of geeks before.”
While he’s been punished severely for his crimes, I can’t help but wonder if the world has also been punished as a result. Ross's sentence does more than imprison one man; it cages innovation itself. As his mother says, "Let's use our geeks."
We may never know what Ross could have accomplished had he been given a second chance. Ross has no possibility of parole, and his inmate page reads, “Release Date: Life.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7YIxuBaoAAmWFi.png)
@fentasyl Zuck is a cuck
Ayo @babbulicious can you break Travis Scott’s record tonight and perform Gaddi Red Challenger 15 times in a row.
https://t.co/kt8I13nFyi
With my return back to Twitter. Free mcchicken for everyone that likes this tweet.
Novovax Djokovic
Last-minute SF-only costume idea: Rahul Ligma
It was previously thought there was no sound in outer space, but now NASA has released the sound waves they picked up from a black hole.
This is wild 🤯
@NipunBathini1 “When are u gonna start streaming again?”
@farhahanuh I’m selling 2 tickets for Manhattan Mirage on the 14th
When I’m not doomscrolling twitter, 99% of the time I think about the times I do doomscroll twitter
@HaasF1Team you guys for sale?
ok guys hear me out, what if we move silicon valley to miami
Contracts for February 25, 2022 https://t.co/59zqbRsvWu
I’m never putting money on the blazers again. Every parlay I’ve done so far has been destroyed due to the fact that the blazers choke in the 4th quarter.
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