Silk Road Founder Freed from Prison. Does He Still Own Bitcoin?

Ross Ulbricht, the odious founder of the Silk Road dark website, has been freed from prison.

A photo of Ulbitch leaving prison has already started circulating on social media.

BREAKING: Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht leaves prison following pardon from President Trump pic.twitter.com/MjOxRww7vj

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) January 22, 2025

He has spent nearly a decade behind bars after being sentenced to double life imprisonment plus 40 years in May 2015. He was charged with narcotics and money laundering conspiracies by the U.S. government.

Ubricht’s infamous website made it possible to buy and sell drugs as well as other illicit goods such as fake IDs.

He was also charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have multiple people murdered, but these murder-for-hire charges were then dismissed due to being

A highly controversial pardon

Ulbricht, an early Bitcoin adopter often credited with popularizing Bitcoin, is celebrated within the Bitcoin community, which heavily leans libertarian.

However, the decision to free Ubricht has been met with a wave of criticism outside of the crypto space.

“Ulbricht is a high-tech drug dealer who got rich off the dead bodies of those who overdosed by the sales he made possible on the dark web,” Juliette Kayyem of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government said.

Does Ulbricht have a secret Bitcoin stash?

Now that Ulbricht has been freed from prison, the community is busy speculating whether or not he still has secret Bitcoin wallets.

What’s the likelihood Ross Ulbricht still has a stash of Bitcoin somewhere?

Seems reasonably high.

— Austen Allred (@Austen) January 22, 2025

The U.S. government has seized a total of 173,991 Bitcoins directly and indirectly from Ulbricht. As of today, this sum would be worth more than $18 billion.

It is unclear whether Ulbricht still has a claim on any of the remaining Bitcoins related to Silk Road.

As reported by U.Today, the U.S. government was recently allowed to liquidate a total of 67,000 Bitcoins seized from an unidentified Silk Road hacker.

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