{"id":269432,"date":"2025-01-23T17:24:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T17:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:09:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:09:37","slug":"donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.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> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p>                        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/.image\/c_fit%2Ch_800%2Cw_1200\/MjEyMjc3MDgzMDMwNjkzNTA0\/takes-banner.png\" height=\"91\" width=\"1200\"><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n<p>                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/.image\/c_fit%2Ch_800%2Cw_1200\/MjExMTE0ODY0ODgwMzk1NzY0\/aaron-takes.jpg\" height=\"800\" width=\"836\"><figcaption><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><\/figcaption><\/figure>\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>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/takes\/donald-trump-did-the-right-thing-by-freeing-ross-ulbricht\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Follow Aaron on Nostr or X. Technically, Donald Trump broke his campaign promise by not freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on day one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":269433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}