Silk Road Founder Spends 10 Years In Prison, Hopes For Dozens

Online black market founder Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, (left) (photo: Twitter @PatrickJBlum)

JAKARTA - online black market founder Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, has spent 10 years behind bars after being given a double life sentence by US authorities in 2013.

On October 2, Ulbricht posted on platform X (formerly Twitter) that he had spent a full decade in prison and feared he would spend the rest of his life "behind a concrete wall and a locked door." He said the only thing he could do now was "pray for mercy."

Silk Road began in 2011 and was run by Ulbricht from his personal laptop under the username "Dread Pirate Roberts." It is known as the first modern black market with a payment system based on Bitcoin.

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… pic.twitter.com/rjUEcYSLPu

— Patrick Blumenthal (@PatrickJBlum) October 1, 2023

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 sites in a cage, in a world that next to the disruption force he championed... pic.twitter.com/rjUEcYSLPu

However, on October 1, 2013, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confiscated the laptop.

Ulbrichtt was found guilty in a US federal court in 2015 on charges related to Silk Road operations. He was sentenced to two life sentences plus forty years without the possibility of parole.

According to court documents from the case, the Silk Road website facilitated sales of 9,519,664 Bitcoins between February 2011 and July 2013 and took a commission of 600,000 Bitcoins.

At the time court documents were issued, the amount was equivalent to about 1.2 billion US dollars (Rp 18.6 trillion) in sales and around 80 million US dollars (Rp 1.2 trillion) in commissions.

The Ulbricht case has received widespread attention, with many following calls for mercy to the site's founders.

According to a website battling Ulbricht's freedom, more than 250 organizations have supported this call, and half a million people have signed a virtual petition to free Ulbricht. He also received great support from the crypto community and Bitcoin.

While there was a strong wave of support for Ulbricht and many internet users voiced the opinion that the punishment given to the Silk Road founder was unfair, some saw the results differently.

One user X pointed out that in the Ulbricht case, the prosecutor claimed that he had allegedly hired a hitman to kill several people, although he was never officially tried on these charges.

Other users highlighted what actually happened on the Silk Road site, including sex and drug trafficking, as well as how the site was used by "terrible people to do this."

Online debate continues as Ulbricht defenders show modern social media platforms, such as X and Facebook, saying, "Everything is happening in [X] as well. And on every other social media site."

The main website dedicated to freeing Ross has posted a sentence given to others involved in Silk Road, stating that the average sentence is about six years. The top drug seller on the site has only been sentenced to seven years in prison and is currently free.

In addition, the creator of Silk Road 2.0 was not convicted or only sentenced to 6.5 years and is now also free.