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A $3B Silk Road seizure will erase Ross Ulbricht’s debt
- yieldcrv 4y agoVery interesting, especially since SDNY had no idea about this and wasn't involved in coordinating this agreement The longer Ross is in there, the more friends in high places he will have, as so many people become familiar with online marketplaces, bitcoin lore, education about the technology, the corruption of the investigators, trial judge, unsatisfactory testimony by “expert witness”, circular logic to undermine bill of rights protections for defendant, withheld evidence (that is not deemed exculpatory by the appeals court, but could have swayed a jury regardless) and seeing that this problem with Ross is still ongoing So many cases have been dropped for waaaaay fewer procedural problems To see this level of unorthordox coordination ongoing with the Federal Government and Ross, I am pretty confident other individuals will be able to use their employment and status in the public sector to alter Ross’ conditions in his favor
- anewpersonality 4y agoI have it on good authority that certain cypherpunks have joined the public sector with the secret, explicit goal of helping Ross.
- yieldcrv 4y agoHow do I get a message to them I thought it was weird nobody considered donating to a Trump campaign or PAC in exchange for a desired outcome, in 2020 convicts and senators did that to mitigate consequences Free Ross raises enough money and have enough friends to get the conversations going, as seen by this article, so not doing that path seemed to have lacked inspiration Its easy to have tunnel vision, that path was still obvious. It is important that he also doesn't have to pay restitution, but I feel like the state sanctioned Presidential pay for play available in the US would have absolved that too
- anewpersonality 4y agoAssange tried the same thing and destroyed his reputation.
- asdfastawa 4y ago>> I thought it was weird nobody considered donating to a Trump campaign or PAC in exchange for a desired outcome, in 2020 convicts and senators did that to mitigate consequences This pardon could not have been without some back-story: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/anthony-levandowski-pardoned-after-stealing-trade-secrets-from-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/anthony-levandowski-pardoned...
- jimmygrapes 4y agoSure you could impute some nefarious/corrupt intent (almost every pardon seems to have some "lobbyist" or personal attached, regardless of the President or even state governors), but the justification quoted in that article seems reasonable enough on its own: > “Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing judge called him a ‘brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs.’ Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.”
- freedomben 4y agoFrom what I know of Trump he is very anti-drug and is a classic moralist (imposing his anti-drug morals by force on others) (despite himself engaging in behavior such as adultery that many people consider immoral). After all he did put that Mississippi guy who thinks the War on Drugs needs to be magnified significantly in as his attorney general. And he (allegedly) is good friends with Eric Ericson who (as a result of his son dying from overdose) has a personal jihad against opioids and wants to throw doctors in jail for prescribing them in good faith, and doesn't care one wit that innocent law abiding people in pain are suffering from his advocacy. I would think Trump is the last person on earth who would be sympathetic to Ulbricht.
- skilled 4y agohttps://archive.ph/RlmJA https://archive.ph/RlmJA
- colinmhayes 4y agoStill in for life without parole.
- upupandup 4y agohe's never getting out because they want to set a precedent for anyone attempting to run a marketplace like this. yet he's step brother is still free. its a mystery.
- chefkoch 4y agoNever heard about his step brother?
- 323 4y agoThat tends to happen when you create "The Amazon for drugs".
- willcipriano 4y agoWhat you expect good people like the Sackler family to compete with some upstart on the internet? The medical industrial complex doesn't make a dime when you buy your opioids out of band, we can't have that. Those medical degrees aren't going to pay for themselves.
- haliskerbas 4y agoThis plus all the people we in the US fund to be in prison, for minor drug crimes, some of which are legal now. The crime isn’t that you did something wrong. It’s that you didn’t make the right person richer by doing so.
- restes 4y agoThis and the parent's argument are just whataboutism.
- Pakdef 4y agoWhere's the rest of the money going? (i.e.: most of it)
- wmf 4y agoThe government keeps it.
- Pakdef 4y agoMakes sense... to the government.
- rdbell 4y agoFunny how these “tainted” coins are no longer tainted as soon as the US gov gets their hands on them. Anyone else holding the same coins would have their assets seized and get taken in for questioning.
- pm90 4y agoHow do you think money works?
- Larrikin 4y agoThat's not funny or interesting. Sequential bills reported from a bank robbery are interesting when their source is unknown. If the bank gets the money back from police they go back to being exactly the same as they were before the robbery.
- Pakdef 4y agoIts funny because those dollars were not stolen from the Government and they end up with them... Actually it is sad bit that's besides the point.
- Pakdef 4y ago
- deadbunny 4y agoIf he's in prison for life without the chance of parole, why does it matter to him if his debt is paid off?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HyprMusic 4y agoIt's mentioned in the article. Any money he would earn in prison would go towards paying off his debt, so this allows him to earn whilst in there and make his life marginally more comfortable.
- jumboshrimp 4y agoThere's a full paragraph in the article that answers this question.
- giarc 4y agoRTA: "But the repayment of his restitution could mean that he's able to earn money in prison to share with family or friends without it being seized or garnished to pay his debts—or even keep any previously unknown caches of bitcoins that he may possess, so long as they aren't tied to the Silk Road or other criminal sources."
- that_guy_iain 4y agoIt basically means the money he gets while he is in prison he keeps. So if he works, he'll keep his salary. If someone puts money on his books, he gets to keep that. If he didn't keep up with his payments to his debt he would be on a more restricted regime. While it seems like a small thing for us, it's a pretty big deal for his quality of life since he was never going to pay that back so for the rest of his life he would have had less prison money than he earned.
- jancsika 4y ago
- chimeracoder 4y ago
- Overtonwindow 4y agoChelsea Manning is free yet Ross Ulbrecht is in prison. It doesn’t seem right. He can be punished, but give him a chance at life. I don’t believe that he tried to have people killed, but even so, no one died.
- etchalon 4y agoThat's why "attempted murder" is a thing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- AndyNemmity 4y agoWhispers from Inmates say Ross Ulbricht is having a horrible time in prison, unable to adjust to the culture and politics of it. Prison is a dangerous place, and it's said he's very much not doing well. If this helps provide himself with some prison currency being able to buy from the store, that could go a long way towards helping him have something to trade to help the living hell he is going through.
- mysore 4y agoi really wish we could get this guy out of prison. he does not deserve to be there for longer than 10 years.
- mullen 4y agoHe really did try to have someone killed. Ulbricht is exactly the kind of person who should be in prison.
- ALittleLight 4y agoIf my memory serves the government never brought that as a charge at trial. In part, I think, because they wanted to not discuss that the agent Ross tried to buy the hit(s) from wound up stealing money from the Silk Road.
- tptacek 4y agoYour memory does not serve you right, and the murder-for-hire scheme was in fact part of the charges he was tried for.
- ALittleLight 4y agoPer Wikipedia - "Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder for hire". Wikipedia does say that there was evidence that was shown at trial about the murder for hire thing and that it did weigh against him in sentencing - which seems odd to me that crimes you haven't been charged with or convicted of could impact your sentence. Wikipedia also says "Ulbricht was separately indicted in federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire charge, alleging that he contracted to kill one of his employees (a former Silk Road moderator). Prosecutors moved to drop this indictment after his New York conviction and sentence became final" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest
- simmerup 4y agoDoes this mean the US government is about to convert $3 billion worth of Bitcoin into USD? If so I wonder how the crypto market will react to that
- throwaway742 4y agoThey auction it off so it's not like they are going to dump it all on an exchange or something. In the past it hasn't really effected much.
- asah 4y agoliquid market: think of it as $3B worth of demand-for-BTC that's *not* buying bitcoin on the spot market and propping up the buy-side of the exchanges...
- RainaRelanah 4y agoA lot of bulk purchasers of crypto already do this via dark pools, at a discount, to avoid tanking the spot price.
- robocat 4y agoAnd one way to get “clean” bitcoins, because they have been washed. Presuming you can buy small amounts from whomever buys them in bulk. I am interested in crypto, but I really don’t want to be a retail schmuck buying tainted coins. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30224637S https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30224637S
- j0hnyl 4y agoLess than one percent of circulating BTC. I don't think it will even register.
- HaZeust 4y agoIt responded to Tesla's short for less.
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- ArrayBoundCheck 4y agoRoss got a raw deal. I think 15yrs would have been reasonable
- refurb 4y agoHe was bragging “they’ll never catch me” (Forbes interview). He made the US govt and DEA look like fools. So they made an example out of him. If he was smart he should kept a lower profile and his first interaction with police (the multiple fake IDs) he should have shut it all down or pass the site to someone else. But hey ego and hubris gets the best of us.
- ArrayBoundCheck 4y agoSo because you pissed off someone in the government you get life in jail? That's not justice. That could be what happened but idk I hate the idea he's not getting released and IIRC he killed noone and robbed noone
- natpalmer1776 4y agoThe legal system is worth only as much as the population it governs believes in it's authority. Undermining the authority in a public manner is a sure fire way to ensure that the legal system will use you to reassert it's own authority as an act of long term preservation of the system's status quo.
- throwaway654329 4y agoTo call that a legal system and not a systemic political persecution is probably not uniquely American, though it is uniquely on display in this case. Lately with SCOTUS, I think we are seeing widespread dissent about the worth of the entire legal system. For many, the system was already unbelievably unjust simply for the logic of what you observe. That’s just how it is, but is that how it should be?
- refurb 4y ago
- _fat_santa 4y agoRoss's story is heartbreaking honestly. Yes the guy basically built the Amazon of drugs, yes he should have done prison time for it. But FFS 2X life without possibility of parole. This guys has maybe one chance left and that's if a sympathetic President gets elected and pardons him.
- Hamuko 4y agoPardoning someone that was found guilty of running a massive drug operation doesn't seem like an optic that is popular for a lot of presidential candidates. Maybe if the Libertarian Party manages to win the presidency?
- digianarchist 4y agoI think overturning "life without parole" as a punishment is a better angle. The US punitive justice system really is awful.
- fourseventy 4y agoIdk I would rather have murderers and child molesters in jail for life without parole.
- ShamelessC 4y agoEven if that means people who aren’t guilty inevitably experience those sentences due to inevitable flaws in the courts?
- encryptluks2 4y agoI think decriminalizing drugs and offering extensive health care as a basic human right sounds like a better choice. I don't see Walmart execs going to jail when people conduct drug exchanges in Walmart parking lots.
- Hamuko 4y agoIt's not unpopular though. Only about 28% of Americans think that prison sentences are too long, whereas 32% think they are too short and 37% think that they're about right. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/06/u-s-public-divided-over-whether-people-convicted-of-crimes-spend-too-much-or-too-little-time-in-prison/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/06/u-s-public-...
- godmode2019 4y agoI think we programmers should look after our own, no matter the charge. Ross Julian Martin Joe biden has the power to pardon these people, we just need to stand as a united front to get our follow programmers the freedom they need. Makes me sick to see non violent offenders locked up in a violent place.
- UberFly 4y agoThe original Wired Magazine story of the investigation and his capture is an amazing read. Really worth the time: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/
- arcticbull 4y agoAlso if you're into podcasts the Crypto Critics Corner episode with Nicholas Weaver [2], who was involved in the trial to a small degree, is really good. [1] [1] https://cryptocriticscorner.com/2021/12/30/episode-40-the-silk-road-bitcoin-and-ross-featuring-nicholas-weaver/ https://cryptocriticscorner.com/2021/12/30/episode-40-the-si... [2] https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/nweaver.html https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/nweaver.htm...
- hoseja 4y agoProbably parallel construction, right?
- throwaway654329 4y agoYes, it is reasonable to assume so. The DEA coined the term, right? It seems like mass surveillance provided by intelligence was likely used to locate relevant computers but that is not what was introduced in court to the best of my knowledge.
- ElCapitanMarkla 4y agoThe book American Kingpin is a fantastic read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31920777 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31920777 The audiobook is great too
- xwdv 4y agoIf Ross Ulbricht ever leaves prison he can expect to probably be killed off quickly by a hitman. As long as he lives on this earth, he will never know freedom or peace. He has enemies everywhere, and with vast resources.
- splintercell 4y agoWait, who are these enemies?
- xwdv 4y agoYou really think he made no enemies along the way?
- splintercell 4y agoThat's not a valid answer to the question asked. He did not steal anyone's territory, he did not steal anyone's money. He is out of the game, he did not testify against someone else to get them to prison. Yeah I can imagine that someone might still be ticked off by him and try to kill him, but you said your original claim with so much conviction ("he has enemies everywhere, with vast resources....he will never know peace") that you clearly know who you're talking about, and your response is "you don't think he made any enemies along the way", which makes no sense.
- etchalon 4y agoUlbricht had deeply incompetent counsel, at least based on what I've seen other lawyers argue. Still … once you've decided that hiring people to kill other people is a valid path towards your libertarian utopia, my sympathy approaches zero.