I didn’t even notice that this happened:
Today, President Biden granted Leonard Peltier executive clemency and commuted the remainder of his sentence.
Oh… He’s not even the real Dread Pirate Roberts!
It’s so easy to see who bough his bitcoin “scam” now, isn’t it?
You think Ross did from prison?
Of course they do. This is how they cope with anything Trump related. They come up with conspiracy theories.
Kodak black paid 2mil for a pardon the first time. This is highly likely to be true, you are either uniformed, a bot, or in on the grift.
Ross was an idiot, that’s why he was caught. They seized all his remaining bitcoin, what hadn’t been stolen by hackers because, again, he was an idiot and the Silk Road was slapped together from code cobbled from other places. There’s no way the dude was smart enough to set some aside for bribes in case he got caught, because he was so sure he wouldn’t that he advertised the Silk Road using his personal email with his real name in forum posts.
While I don’t think he deserved life in prison, he sure as hell ended up there because of how ridiculously idiotic he was. The dude isn’t smart enough to be a manager at Arby’s, let alone run a criminal enterprise.
- How did he pay all that money while in prison?
- Where are you getting your facts about Ross from besides your ass?
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.”
He called Ulbricht’s prison sentence “ridiculous.”
I clearly recall Trump being president from 2016-2020, Ulbricht was sentenced to life without parole in 2015.
If it was so ridiculous, why didn’t he pardon him on his first term? What changed to make it such an immediate priority now?
Because he needed the libertarian vote this time in order to win. Its a very cheap promise that guarantees votes and doesnt alienate anyone that doesnt care. Honestly, the fact that he followed through suprises me.
“But why didnt he need the libertarian vote in 16?”
Because he never intended to win the first time. The first run was a fluke. He wanted to play victim and run the media circuit for profit.
Back then he thought Bitcoin was bad and a scam. This time someone showed him how to make money by creating a scam coin and doing a pump and dump, so now he’s pro Bitcoin. So pro he’ll get rid of all regulation so pump and dump scams are completely legal.
Imagine how many times he was asked:
“Why don’t you have your own “Bitcoin” coin yet, Mr. President?”
I remember this guy being a fucking idiot that paid for several fake assassinations of fake rivals. It was pretty funny.
It is funny in hindsight, knowing the assassinations were a scam. But he thought they were real, he talked in great detail about them and payed for them. This is missing from the article, I believe it was part of his indictment.
Oh yeah, he’s a piece of shit for sure. I just think it’s funny that he’s also a moron. What kind of drug lord gets a message saying “Hey, I heard of a guy who wants to take you down, wire me a cool mil and I’ll kill him for you, k?” and just… sends the money? More than once?! He definitely tried to rescue an overthrown Nigerian prince as a kid.
Don’t forget, he was caught because he posted his email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road. That email address contained his real name.
Yeah, when I watched a synopsis of the story, multiple alarm bells rang in my head midway through watching it. He’s so gullible for how rich he fucking was
So the twist that was that they were all the same person, didn’t even surprise me, you could see that it was a scam a mile away if you were paying attention
The scammer was pretty good, though, I will give them that. Too bad the scammer was also pretty dumb about how the handle the money after the fact, and got caught lmao.
Trump said he had called Ulbricht’s mother to tell her he would pardon her son “in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly”.
Wildy transactional.
So… does “full and unconditional” mean he’s also pardoned for the murders-for-hire? Or just for being a drug lord and America’s Next Top Website Boy?
He was never convicted on murders for hire, charges were dropped
I’m actually kind of impressed he kept his word. That’s unexpected
His part is signing a piece of paper with a Sharpie that one of his handlers puts in front of him. That phone call had to be horrible, Trump trying to explain to a mom he is setting her son that he knows nothing about, free because he once said he would to a large group of people he wants to grift.
Because 0% he knows the guy’s name, who he was, or why he was in prison.
Edit - autocorrect =(
I mean, I’m just going to go with the most obvious grift. Ulbricht is going to go right back to operating a crypto street pharmacy. Hell, he’ll do it on the open web now. He’ll call it “The New Silk Road” or similar.
And then there’s an agreement for the feds to not go after them. In exchange, Ulbricht uses a good portion of his earnings to become the largest single investor in Trumpcoin ever. If asked, the feds can either ignore the question or hide behind some fig leaf excuse they come up with.
It’s not like Trump didn’t run blatant undeniable cons in the last administration.
Having something like that as a government honeypot is also a great way to get kompromat on people.
Yeah, it’s insane that he’s just openly being like, “I promise to use the powers of my office to solely benefit myself,” and the Supreme Court’s just like, “Get it, grrrrrl”
Although, to be fair, it did also benefit a guy who tried to murder five people.
Could someone explain like to an non American why the president gets to pardon people at all?
If someone committed a crime they’re guilty, if there’s new evidence that they’re not guilty then that’s what appeals are for.
In a perfect system, the pardon is meant to be a “check” on the powers of the other branches. (Legislative and judicial). Each branch is meant to both support AND check the others.
Obviously we are watching it all unwind. Certain things were a “gentleman’s agreement” in that a president normally wouldn’t over do it and just pardon tons of people. We are finding out lots of things were just assumed to be ok, but are easily abused by bad actors
That kinda makes sense, but aren’t some of your top judges appointed by the president. Which would mean the office of the president automatically has 2/3 of the things under their control.
Congress/Senate has to confirm judge appointments, but they mostly rubber stamp the appointments if the Senate is the same party as the president.
My best understanding is that it was a historic right of kings, governors, etc. The idea was to show mercy to those who may have been convicted wrongly, or to people convicted of laws that have been overturned.
Trump is abusing it in ways never done before to payback political supporters.
TBF Biden abused it as well in pardoning his son.
Carter’s blanket pardon of Vietnam War draft dodgers was pretty important
Yes - exactly. That’s the sort of high-minded use that I believe the framers were considering.
Sounds like a rule that very much should have been left in the 17th century
Wasn’t there a situation where he did not pardon his son?
Same situation, he just waited until later in his presidency
Just FYI this is not just an American thing. In Italy for example the President of the republic can cancel or amend sentences too, and it does happen relatively often, although not in the same partisan way as in the US (but that’s also because the president in Italy is a neutral and representative position).
Some example from few years ago when the president graced 33 people (each with a specific articulated motivation) https://www.ilpost.it/2021/12/10/mattarella-grazia-sette-persone-sebastian-oberleteir-heinrich/ (in Italian, but you can translate if you wish).
Wow, holy fuck, I never thought it’d happen. Even a broken clock is right twice a day I guess.
This dude is about to have a very lucrative career.
You’re saying it’s the right move to release a man convicted of (I believe) several counts of attempted murder?
Absolutely, free Ross.
I’m not a trump fan
The dude’s a clown. Get better role models.
He wasn’t charged with any of that.
Tough on drugs… For people who aren’t white
Someone should really convince him to legalise all drugs to stick it to the cartels.
Don’t know or care about this guy but all drugs should be legal.
Then you should probably care about him. He gave people around the world access to medicine that was illegal
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Silk Road wasn’t the first darknet market ya know. I helped launch the first couple that were .onion prior to Ross, but the movement has been about since the 90s at least and would’ve happened without any of us. We were working on a decentralised version that would’ve been unstoppable but people moved on and got other priorities when SR took all the media attention and spotlight. I’m guessing it’ll emerge out crypto soon now the tech has caught up with the theory.
I’m kind of curious to hear about this decentralized solution…
I lost touch with the guy who was working on it, but this was before smart contracts even came on the scene.
The original text that radicalised me; https://anarplex.sirion.io/hosted/files/Toward_A_Private_Digital_Economy/index.html
There was OpenBazaar, but flopped for obvious reasons.
Probably made a deal and wants all his Bitcoin. Smart kid, you know it’s hidden somewhere. Thank God he’s out there double life without parole. It’s inhumane.
Not to mention that undercover basically set him up to look bad.
If he didn’t wanna look bad he shouldn’t have sent a person he believed to be a hitman $300,000 to murder someone.
How was he set up to look bad?
People can watch his wallets right? And they suspect/know what ones they are? And this is something people are hotly following now?
I should look this up. It’s fascinating if we can just watch it happen, on the chain.
Can’t watch Monero. Which is what he should have been using instead of Bitcoin.
Because of bitcoin I’m sure.
Yeah, you know the kids smart enough to have some hidden like thousands of them or something crazy and made a deal.
It’s not out of the kindness of his heart.
Anyone else remember the panic when you logged in and saw the notice that the site was seized by the feds?
I mean, certainly not something I experienced but I’m sure if I had it would’ve been terrifying to think the feds could find your info
All sellers had pgp keys published, everyone just used these and feds could not see shit.
Not like the later honeypots where the market published fake pgp keys on sellers’ profiles and MITMed the communications.
Not like the later honeypots where the market published fake pgp keys on sellers’ profiles and MITMed the communications.
Goddamn.
the market published fake pgp keys on sellers’ profiles and MITMed the communications.
Daaaaamn
Okay i remembered it wrong, not PGP keys but close
Imagine having millions of dollars worth of bitcoin in 2013 and then being imprisoned until 2024.
I hope he made a good backup of at least a few thousand coins.
His coins were all seized by the government. Or what was left of them. You see, Ross was not a very smart person, and what he didn’t give to fake hitmen to knock off people he didn’t like, got pillaged by hackers because he wasn’t a programmer and the Silk Road was held together with spit and a whole lot of optimism. He got caught because he posted his personal email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road, and his email address contained his real name.
He’s an absolute idiot, and half the people in this thread could have run the site better than him.
