From life imprisonment to returning to the Bitcoin stage: Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht auctions prison items to restart his life

Ross Ulbricht, former founder of the notorious dark web trading platform Silk Road, has been pardoned by Trump to regain his freedom and return to the world of cryptocurrency. After serving twelve years in prison, he not only gained freedom, but also embarked on a journey of rebirth of his own. His first public speech after his release will be dedicated to the upcoming Bitcoin Conference 2025, and before taking the stage, he chose to start this new journey by auctioning off his personal belongings before and after his imprisonment. His auction items, including backpacks, sneakers, prisoner IDs, oil paintings created in prison, and prison notebooks chronicling his journey from captivity to freedom, are not just a trade in objects, but an indelible microcosm of the crypto world. Through Ross Ulbricht's personal belongings, the public can get a glimpse into how the powerful founder of the dark web got into prison and regained his freedom, redefining his distance from Bitcoin and evil through auctions.

Why is Ross Ulbricht in prison?

Ross Ulbricht founded Silk Road, a dark web platform that utilized Tor anonymity technology and Bitcoin payments. Silk Road went live in 2011. The platform allowed users to anonymously purchase illegal goods, counterfeit documents, and even find hitmen, although Ulbricht claimed that the platform merely facilitated voluntary transactions among users, serving as a free market trading platform, and prohibited human trafficking and the purchase of firearms. However, it sparked controversy due to its high level of anonymity and its operation on the fringes of legality and gray areas.

In 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht in San Francisco on charges of Dread Pirate Roberts, the operator behind Silk Road, who was charged with money laundering, drug smuggling, hacking and murder (the last of which was not established in the verdict), and was eventually sentenced to two life sentences plus forty years in prison without parole in 2015. The heavy sentence was widely debated in society, and some people believed that the sentence was too severe, and launched a rescue operation called #FreeRoss, asking the US Department of Justice to pardon or commute the sentence. In 2024, Trump promised to release Ulbricht in the presidential election campaign, and after his election, he fulfilled his promise to grant Ulbricht an unconditional amnesty on his first day in office.

Ulbricht is auctioning personal artifacts, with an estimated auction amount reaching 31,000 USD.

Four months after his release, Ross Ulbricht embarked on a new life and took the first step towards returning to the public eye. He will be speaking publicly for the first time as a free man at the "Bitcoin 2025 Conference" in Las Vegas this Friday, addressing the Bitcoin community that he has profoundly influenced.

Before the upcoming public speech, he first auctioned off personal items from before and after his imprisonment, symbolizing a farewell to the past and the beginning of a new chapter in life. The auction took place on the Bitcoin collectible auction platform Scarce City, auctioning a total of 13 items, including the sneakers, sportswear, and T-shirts he wore during his incarceration (with laundry bag )), three oil paintings created in prison, a personal notebook from prison, a locker lock, and three prisoner identification cards (two of which feature a big beard style).

The items with the most emotional value to him are three items that have a direct emotional connection to his arrest: a down sleeping bag, an African drum, a backpack, and a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes. These are the items he carried when he was arrested at the San Francisco library in 2013.

The current auction page shows that the highest bid is for Ross Ulbricht's prison ID, with a bid of 0.1 BTC. The auction will end in two days and thirteen hours.

This article From life imprisonment to returning to the Bitcoin stage: Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht auctions prison items to restart his life first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.