A shop that needed money without names
Ulbricht was a twenty-six-year-old physics graduate and a convinced libertarian. He believed an adult has the right to decide what to smoke and swallow, and he wanted a shop that showed what a market without the police looks like. Tor hid who visited the shop and from where. What was missing was money that does not pass through a bank and carries no cardholder’s name, and in 2011 bitcoin was that money (chapter “The Dread Pirate Roberts”).
The shop was run like an ordinary online store. Sellers had ratings and reviews, the buyer’s money sat with the shop until the parcel arrived, and the shop took a commission on every deal. On the forum Ulbricht signed himself Dread Pirate Roberts, after the pirate in The Princess Bride whose mask passes from one man to the next (same chapter). In June 2011 Gawker described the site, two US senators demanded it be shut, and bitcoin made the general news for the first time as money for drugs (same chapter).
How much passed through it
By the shutdown the FBI counted more than 9.5 million bitcoins of sales, of which about 600,000 stayed with Silk Road as commissions (US Attorney, SDNY, 2013). At the October 2013 exchange rate that came to about $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in income. The dollar figure is a multiplication at one day’s price, and most of those coins changed hands when bitcoin cost a few dollars. Still, no honest shop that accepted bitcoin in those years came close. Bitcoin found the people who badly needed it here first (chapter “The Dread Pirate Roberts”).
The arrest, the sentence and the pardon
On 1 October 2013 Ulbricht opened his laptop in the public library in Glen Park, San Francisco. Agents waited until the Dread Pirate Roberts logged into the staff chat, two of them staged a quarrel next to him, and a third took the open laptop before it could lock. On the screen was the logged-in administrator of Silk Road (same chapter).
In February 2015 a jury in Manhattan found him guilty on all seven counts, and on 29 May 2015 Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced him to life in prison (US Attorney, SDNY). Prosecutors said he had ordered the murders of people who threatened the shop. None of the murders happened, and a separate charge in Maryland was dropped in 2018, but the judge took the episodes into account (same chapter).
On 21 January 2025, his second day back in office, Donald Trump granted Ulbricht a full pardon, keeping a campaign promise (The Washington Times). That year an anonymous donor sent him 300 bitcoins, about $31 million, and Chainalysis said it had reasonable grounds to suspect the money came from AlphaBay, the darknet market that grew up in Silk Road’s place (Fortune).
Everyone who could reach the money took some
Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, who worked on the case, moved $820,000 in bitcoins out of the shop’s accounts and got seventy-one months. DEA agent Carl Force sold the Dread Pirate information about the investigation and got seventy-eight (same chapter). A customer, James Zhong, found a withdrawal bug in 2012 and pulled out more than 50,000 bitcoins. In November 2021 agents found them in a safe under the floor and on a small computer in a popcorn tin in a closet of his Georgia home. The cache had been worth about $3.4 billion. Zhong got a year and a day (Fortune).
Sources
US Attorney’s Office, SDNY: Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison (May 2015)
The Washington Times: Trump pardons Ross Ulbricht (21 January 2025)
Fortune: Chainalysis traces the 300 BTC donation to AlphaBay (June 2025)
Fortune: James Zhong sentenced to a year and a day (April 2023)
