Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

Ross Ulbricht is free, but unproven allegations against the Silk Road founder overshadow his well deserved pardon in some corners of the internet.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.

Console Wars’ duo Jonah Tulis and Blake J. Harris have conducted more than 60 hours of interviews with Ulbricht, who became a cause célèbre among libertarians and cryptocurrency enthusiasts after being handed two life sentences.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.

Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 on charges related to his website, where users could buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods with bitcoin.

In 2015, a 31-year-old yoga enthusiast from Austin named Ross Ulbricht was found guilty of being the online drug kingpin “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Convicted on 7 counts, the judge sentenced him to life in prison. Trump pardoned Ulbricht on Tuesday and now he’s a free man after more than 10 years in custody.

Those who convicted Ulbricht were "some of the same lunatics involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me," Trump wrote Tuesday.

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 “day zero.”) But as I explained in my previous Take, I wasn’t expecting a literal first day pardon anyways. Even day two exceeds my expectations. Trump delivered, and I’m very glad he did.

When wielded responsibly, the presidential power to pardon and commute sentences is essential to right injustices. Controversy rightly arose after President Joe Biden, in his last minutes in

Until, of course, in 2013 the Silk Road was shut down by FBI agents and Mr Ulbricht, then 29 years old, was arrested in the science-fiction section of a San Francisco public library. In 2015, after a four-week trial,