The founding father of the darknet market Silk Road which dealt solely with Bitcoin, Ross Ulbricht, just lately announced that he had spent 10 years in jail. Regardless of his fraudulent actions, Ulbricht is a well-liked determine within the crypto neighborhood as he’s believed to have contributed to the accelerated adoption of the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Silk Highway And Bitcoin Adoption
Silk Highway was a web based black platform that was used to facilitate unlawful actions, together with drug commerce and cash laundering. Curiously, Bitcoin was the one foreign money used to facilitate these transactions, as Ulbricht is claimed to have been an enormous proponent of the flagship cryptocurrency.
Based on Ulbricht’s mother, her son created the Silk Highway with the intention of offering a “actually free market.” She mentioned he used Bitcoin because the platform’s foreign money as a result of he believed within the “financial freedom” that the foreign money supplied.
His actions undoubtedly helped to extend Bitcoin’s utility and recognition (though not essentially in a great way). In reality, some take into account Silk Highway as Bitcoin’s “first important use case” because it exemplified what could possibly be achieved (the nice and the dangerous) with the decentralized foreign money.
Silk Highway is claimed to have processed as a lot as $45 million yearly in gross sales (all in Bitcoin). There isn’t any doubt that the platform supplied early liquidity to the ecosystem as such determine means that there was an enormous demand for the foreign money simply because of transactions on the Silk Highway platform.
Ulbricht Silk Highway was even rumored to have been one of many largest holders of BTC in some unspecified time in the future. Regulation enforcement is said to have confiscated a complete of 174,000 BTC from Ulbricht and the Silk Highway syndicate.
The usage of Bitcoin on the platform additionally supplied perception into how Bitcoin (and different cryptocurrencies) might disrupt the monetary system and change into the go-to choice for every day transactions, particularly because the world continues to undertake decentralized methods.
Ross Ulbricht Exhibits Regret
In the meantime, the Silk Road founder has continued to precise regret for his actions on his X (previously Twitter) platform. Nevertheless, it’s believed {that a} relative manages the web page, contemplating that Ulbricht continues to be in jail.
In his newest publish, asserting 10 years in jail, he admitted that his “poor decisions” led him to the place he’s now, and all that he might do was pray for mercy.
Many have additionally jumped to his protection and proceed to clamor that injustice was accomplished in how his case was dealt with. Some imagine he didn’t deserve the punishment as a result of it didn’t match the crime. Ulbricht’s sentence is life imprisonment with out the potential for parole.
BTC value rises above $28,000 | Supply: BTCUSD on Tradingview.com
Featured picture from Vicarius, chart from Tradingview.com
