Austin native Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road online marketplace, received a full and unconditional pardon from President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. Ulbricht posted a video thanking Trump to his X account on Thursday, Jan. 23.
Ulbricht was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison for founding and operating Silk Road, an online black market used by thousands of drug dealers. All transactions on Silk Road used the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and the market used other measures to keep buyer and seller identities private.