Ulbricht, who was convicted of running an anonymous online drug marketplace, became a hero to crypto-holders everywhere. What does his pardon signal for the future of the technology?Last September, I spent an evening at a meetup near Atlanta titled “Bitcoin Enters the Mainstream Political Arena.” It was the first time that the group of mostly white, mostly male, mostly bearded thirty- and forty-year-olds, had convened to focus their attention on the politics of cryptocurrency—which had suddenly, rather shockingly, become front and center. Donald Trump, who called bitcoin “a scam” back in 2021, had recently headlined a bitcoin conference and released ads saying things like “You know, they call me the crypto President.” Near the door of the Atlanta event, held on the patio of an airplane hangar, sat a stack of Bitcoin Magazines with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s face on the cover. Joey, a theatre director in attendance, explained Kennedy’s role in recent events: “When Kennedy came along—and he’s for bitcoin—Trump said, ‘Oh, shit, I’m gonna start losing people over bitcoin.’ So he shifted.” Joey shrugged. “We’ll take it.”The crypto crowd, long the butt of jokes, was thrilled by its sudden shift in status—even if some doubted the authenticity or durability of Trump’s support. They were finally being taken seriously by one party, at least. T-shirts displayed their enthusiasm using insider lingo and jokes that, to the uninitiated, took a bit of explaining: “SINGLE, TAKEN, HODLING,” Joey’s shirt read. There were boxes beside each word; “HODLING” was checked. (“HODL” is an acronym for “hold on for dear life,” which refers to crypto’s crazy-making volatility.) Get it? I made the rounds, as the group of three dozen caught up, drank beer, and ate barbecue. I asked why most seemed enthusiastic about Trump. There was his increasing closeness to crypto-enthusiasts like Kennedy; his stated willingness to embrace crypto-friendly policy; and also, notably, his promise to release a now forty-year-old man from prison: Ross Ulbricht.Ulbricht was pardoned last week, at the close of the second day of Trump’s Presidency, a day after Trump’s pardon of roughly fifteen hundred people involved in the January 6th insurrection. The delay had caused some of Ulbricht’s acolytes to worry. “People were posting in our chat, like, ‘O.K., there’s an hour and a half left of Day One . . . ’ ” Rich Clarke, the bitcoin meetup group’s organizer, who works in real estate, told me. “And a lot of my friends on Facebook were posting things like ‘Hope It Happens.’ ” He went on, “I think it was a shrewd move to pardon Ross sort of all on his own, after Trump did the mass pardons. It kind of gives the gesture more gravitas.”In 2011, Ulbricht, an Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, founded Silk Road, an online black market that existed until his arrest, in 2013, for crimes related to drug trafficking, mon
Gio. Gen 30th, 2025
