Donald J. Trump has pledged to commute Silk Highway founder Ross Ulbricht’s life sentence to time served if he’s re-elected president.
“For those who vote for me, on Day 1, I’ll commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served,” Trump stated throughout his Saturday evening remarks on the Libertarian Nationwide Conference in Washington, D.C. “He’s already served 11 years, we’re gonna get him dwelling.”
“I’m very optimistic and open minded to cryptocurrency corporations, and all issues associated to this new and burgeoning business. Our nation should be the chief within the subject. There is no such thing as a second place,” Trump wrote, including that President Joe Biden “desires [the cryptocurrency industry] to die a gradual and painful loss of life. That may by no means occur with me!”
In his night deal with, Trump’s pledge to free Ulbricht was met with raucous cheers from the assembled viewers, lots of whom had been holding up indicators studying “Free Ross.”
Ulbricht has turn out to be one thing of a martyr for a lot of within the crypto neighborhood, in addition to to many Libertarians, who see Ulbricht’s draconian sentence as a governmental overstep and a violation of his constitutional rights. In 2018, the Libertarian Social gathering called on then-President Trump to pardon Ulbricht.
Earlier than Trump’s presidency led to January 2021, he granted clemency to 143 people – pardoning 73, together with Ripple board member Ken Kurson, and commuting the sentences of 70 others. He didn’t supply clemency to Ulbricht, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, who launched particulars a couple of U.S. surveillance program to American journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Trump additionally made extra common feedback about cryptocurrency on the conference, telling attendees that he would “cease Joe Biden’s campaign to crush crypto – we’re gonna cease it.”
“I’ll be certain that the way forward for crypto and the way forward for bitcoin will probably be made within the USA, not pushed abroad. I’ll help the precise to self custody,” Trump stated, to cheers. “To the nation’s fifty million crypto holders, I say this: I’ll maintain Elizabeth Warren and her goons away out of your bitcoin, and I’ll by no means permit the creation of a central financial institution digital foreign money.”
