{"id":2340,"date":"2025-01-23T17:17:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T17:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht\/"},"modified":"2025-01-23T17:17:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T17:17:23","slug":"donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump Did The Right Thing By Freeing Ross Ulbricht"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <em>Follow Aaron on <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/primal.net\/aaronvanw\">Nostr<\/a><em> or <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AaronvanW\">X<\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Technically, Donald Trump broke his campaign promise by not freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on day one of his presidency. (No, inauguration day is not \u201cday zero.\u201d) But as I explained in my\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/takes\/trump-did-not-free-ross-on-day-one-because-of-course-he-didnt\">previous Take<\/a>, I wasn\u2019t expecting a literal first day pardon anyways. Even day two exceeds my expectations. Trump delivered, and I\u2019m very glad he did.<\/p>\n<p>When I first heard about Silk Road in early 2013, I was immediately intrigued by the concept of buying and selling drugs anonymously online. To this day, I think darknet markets are the best intermediary step before the war on drugs is ended: It removes dealers from street corners while providing users some level of quality assurance through a public rating system.<\/p>\n<p>Discovering Silk Road was also how I first learned about Bitcoin. I started writing about the digital currency a few months later, and am still at it today. In a way, I owe my career to Ulbricht.<\/p>\n<p>That Ulbricht was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison was a miscarriage of justice in my view. Even if you believe he is guilty of everything he\u2019s been convicted of (all non-violent crimes), over a decade behind bars should be long enough.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, I don\u2019t believe Trump actually cares about Ulbricht; he could have freed him during his first term if that was the case. And Trump certainly has no intent of ending the war on drugs; if anything, he\u2019s about to escalate it by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/01\/designating-cartels-and-other-organizations-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists\/\">designating cartels to be terrorist organizations<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/clip\/campaign-2024\/former-president-trump-calls-for-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers\/5041276\">imposing the death penalty on drug dealers<\/a>. Trump promised to pardon Ulbricht because that would benefit him politically \u2014 but to his credit, he kept his word.<\/p>\n<p>Ross is finally free. Well done President Trump, and everyone else who helped make this happen.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article is a <\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/takes\/bitcoin-magazine-introduces-opinion-takes\">Take<\/a><\/em><em>. Opinions expressed are entirely the author&#8217;s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Follow Aaron on Nostr or X. Technically, Donald Trump broke his campaign promise by not freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on day one of his presidency. (No, inauguration day is not \u201cday zero.\u201d) But as I explained in my\u00a0previous Take, I wasn\u2019t expecting a literal first day pardon anyways. Even day two exceeds my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}