Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, will make his first public appearance since his release from prison earlier this year, speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas from May 27 to 29.

The news, announced by Ulbricht on X on April 10, follows a presidential pardon by Donald Trump in January that saw the end of his incarceration. 

Trump granted Ulbricht a “full and unconditional pardon,” citing support from the Libertarian movement and calling the sentence “ridiculous.”

From 2011 to 2013, Ulbricht operated the Silk Road marketplace under the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts.” 

Accessible only through the Tor browser, Silk Road offered everything from heroin and cocaine to high-grade cannabis, all purchased using Bitcoin and making it one of the first large-scale use cases for cryptocurrency. 

The FBI estimated the Silk Road generated $13 million in Bitcoin commissions.

In 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht in a San Francisco library. It also seized 173,991 Bitcoins, worth over $33 million at the time, in connection with the site.

Ulbricht spent over 11 years behind bars after being convicted in 2015 on a laundry list of charges related to the creation and running of Silk Road.

Among them were charges of narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. He received two life sentences plus 40 years with no chance of parole. 

At the time, Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, branded Ulbricht “a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people.”

Federal prosecutors also alleged Ulbricht paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in murder-for-hire services targeting people threatening to reveal the workings behind Silk Road, although no killings actually occurred. 

The charges related to this were eventually dropped before trial.

However, his case became a cause célèbre in some Libertarian and crypto circles. Following his pardon, the Libertarian Party in the U.S. thanked Trump for honoring his pledge to release him.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair