Silk Highway Founder  Marks 10 Years in Jail Amidst Requires Clemency – Cryptopolitan

Ross Ulbricht, the founding father of the now-defunct on-line black market Silk Highway, marked a big milestone – a full decade spent in jail. The 2013 sentencing by United States authorities handed him a double life sentence, together with a further forty years, leaving no chance of parole. In a latest message on a social platform, Ulbricht expressed his fears of spending the rest of his life “behind concrete partitions and locked doorways,” with nothing to do however “pray for mercy.”

Silk Highway’s notorious historical past

Silk Highway, initiated in 2011, was the pioneering darknet market, operated covertly by Ross Ulbricht underneath the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Notably, it featured a fee system constructed on the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The platform gained notoriety for facilitating illicit transactions, together with drug trafficking and different unlawful actions.

Simply at some point earlier than the tenth anniversary of Ulbricht’s imprisonment, on October 1, 2023, his private laptop computer, used to handle Silk Highway, was seized by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This occasion provides one other layer to the continuing debate surrounding Ulbricht’s conviction and sentence.

Throughout its operation from February 2011 to July 2013, the Silk Highway reportedly enabled gross sales totaling 9,519,664 Bitcoins, with a fee of 600,000 Bitcoins. These figures, in response to courtroom paperwork, translated to roughly $1.2 billion in gross sales and round $80 million in commissions. The Silk Highway’s scale and impression proceed to be a topic of debate.

Requires clemency and widespread assist

Ross Ulbricht’s case has attracted widespread consideration, with quite a few organizations and half one million people signing a digital petition advocating for his launch. The crypto and Bitcoin communities, particularly, have been vocal supporters of Ulbricht. Some have even referred to him as a “Bitcoin political prisoner,” emphasizing the importance of his case inside the cryptocurrency house.

Whereas many argue that the punishment meted out to Ulbricht was unjust, others view the case in another way. The prosecution had alleged that Ulbricht employed hitmen to have a number of people killed, though this was by no means formally charged to him and stays a declare. Some customers spotlight the darker facets of Silk Highway, equivalent to its function in intercourse trafficking and drug commerce, contending that it was utilized by “horrible folks” to interact in illicit actions.

Supporters of Ulbricht draw parallels between the Silk Highway’s actions and people on trendy social media platforms. They argue that related illicit actions happen on these platforms as effectively. This angle contributes to the continuing debate over the equity of Ulbricht’s sentencing.

A number one web site devoted to securing Ulbricht’s launch has posted sentences handed all the way down to others concerned with Silk Highway. These sentences, on common, amounted to round six years. Curiously, the highest drug vendor on the platform acquired solely seven years in jail and is at the moment free. Furthermore, the creators of Silk Highway 2.0, a subsequent iteration of {the marketplace}, served comparatively quick sentences of as much as 6.5 years and at the moment are all free.