Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Street and one among Bitcoin’s earliest public champions, didn’t waste time calling out Kamala Harris after she labeled him “the fentanyl supplier” in her new ebook, additionally criticizing President Trump for commuting his sentence.
Ulbricht set the document straight: he was by no means prosecuted for dealing medication personally, and fentanyl wasn’t a part of his costs.
Harris’s ebook declare sparks pushback
Ulbricht’s put up pulls no punches. His message is evident: Harris’s assertion was factually inaccurate, and the motivation behind it seems political, portray each Ulbricht and President Trump in a unfavourable mild. Ulbricht wrote:
“The reality has by no means mattered to you. The aim is simply to make me and President Trump look unhealthy in any respect price, isn’t it? Don’t be a sore loser, Kamala.”
Democrats have lengthy been accused of hostile attitudes towards the crypto trade, ramping up regulatory crackdowns by way of initiatives like “Chokepoint 2.0.”
Harris’s mislabelling of Ulbricht appears like simply one other instance of the Democrats’ broader animosity towards crypto’s disruptive potential.
Ross Ulbricht, the architect behind Silk Street
For these much less aware of crypto lore, Ross Ulbricht is the architect behind Silk Street, the notorious on-line market that used Bitcoin for transactions at a time when most individuals had by no means even heard of the cryptocurrency.
Launched in 2011, Silk Street allowed customers to purchase and promote a variety of products (some authorized, many not) exterior the attain of conventional regulation.
Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and finally obtained a life sentence with out the potential of parole. It was a punishment many authorized consultants, tech leaders, and privateness advocates deemed extreme. His case turned a flashpoint in debates about web freedom, felony justice reform, and the federal government’s method to new know-how.
In January 2025, President Trump commuted Ulbricht’s sentence, permitting him to stroll free after greater than a decade behind bars. The transfer was celebrated by the Bitcoin group and extensively hailed as long-overdue justice. Nonetheless, others, together with Harris, criticized it as reckless and politically motivated.
Silk Street and its affect on Bitcoin
No matter the place you stand on the Silk Street’s actions, its affect on Bitcoin’s growth is simple. Silk Street gave Bitcoin its first real-world use case, demonstrating that decentralized, permissionless digital foreign money might really work.
Whereas Ulbricht didn’t invent Bitcoin, his website helped transfer it from an obscure experiment to a know-how with international title recognition. That legacy is sophisticated. Critics level out that Silk Street enabled criminal activity, whereas supporters counter that it confirmed the disintermediating energy of blockchain.
Even right now, Ulbricht’s story is regularly cited every time questions on crypto coverage and on-line freedoms come up.
Ulbricht’s rebuttal to Harris is about greater than setting the document straight. It’s a reminder of how contentious his case stays, not simply in tech circles however on the nationwide political stage.
Harris’s resolution to characterize Ulbricht as a “fentanyl supplier,” regardless of the absence of such costs, speaks to the heated narrative battles that accompany presidential politics and high-profile pardons.