加密人群很高興特朗普赦免羅斯·烏爾布里奇（Ross Ulbricht）

在線黑市絲綢之路的創始人於2015年被判處無期徒刑。現在，他是一個自由人，這要歸功於唐納德·特朗普（Donald Trump）。

Last September, I attended a meetup near Atlanta titled “Bitcoin Enters the Mainstream Political Arena.” The group, mostly white, male, bearded thirty- and forty-year-olds, had gathered to discuss the surprising entry of cryptocurrency into politics. Donald Trump, who had called bitcoin “a scam” in 2021, had recently headlined a bitcoin conference and released ads saying things like “You know, they call me the crypto President.” At the door of the Atlanta event, held on the patio of an airplane hangar, sat a stack of Bitcoin Magazines with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s face on the cover.

去年9月，我參加了亞特蘭大附近的一次聚會，名為“比特幣進入主流政治舞台”。該組織大多是白人，男性，有三十歲和四十歲的小組，他們聚集在一起討論了加密貨幣進入政治的令人驚訝的進入。唐納德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在2021年將比特幣稱為“騙局”，最近曾標題為比特幣會議，並發布了廣告，說“你知道，他們稱我為加密貨幣總統”。在亞特蘭大賽事的門口，在飛機機庫的露台上舉行，與小羅伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy，Jr。

Joey, a theatre director in attendance, explained Kennedy’s role in recent events: “When Kennedy came along—and he’s for bitcoin—Trump said, ‘Oh, shit, I’m gonna start losing people over bitcoin.’ So he shifted.” Joey shrugged. “We’ll take it.”

出席劇院主任喬伊（Joey）在最近的事件中解釋了肯尼迪（Kennedy）的角色：“當肯尼迪（Kennedy）出現時- 他是比特幣- 特魯普（Trump）說，'哦，該死，我要開始因比特幣而失去人們。”所以他轉移了。”喬伊聳了聳肩。 “我們接受。”

The crypto crowd, long the butt of jokes, was thrilled by its sudden shift in status—even if some doubted the authenticity or durability of Trump’s support. They were finally being taken seriously by one party, at least. T-shirts displayed their enthusiasm using insider lingo and jokes that, to the uninitiated, took a bit of explaining: “SINGLE, TAKEN, HODLING,” Joey’s shirt read. There were boxes beside each word; “HODLING” was checked. (“HODL” is an acronym for “hold on for dear life,” which refers to crypto’s crazy-making volatility.) Get it? I made the rounds, as the group of three dozen caught up, drank beer, and ate barbecue. I asked why most seemed enthusiastic about Trump. There was his increasing closeness to crypto-enthusiasts like Kennedy; his stated willingness to embrace crypto-friendly policy; and also, notably, his promise to release a now forty-year-old man from prison: Ross Ulbricht.

加密人群很長，笑話的屁股，對其地位的突然轉變感到興奮，即使有些人懷疑特朗普支持的真實性或耐用性。至少，他們終於被一個政黨認真對待。 T卹使用Insider Lingo和開玩笑表現出了自己的熱情，這些襯衫對未經啟發的方式進行了一些解釋：“單身，拍攝，hodling，” Joey的襯衫讀到。每個單詞旁邊都有盒子。檢查了“霍德林”。 （“ hodl”是“堅持親愛的生活”的首字母縮寫，這是指加密貨幣瘋狂的波動。）明白嗎？我進行了巡迴演出，當時三十個捕捉，喝啤酒和燒烤。我問為什麼大多數人似乎對特朗普充滿熱情。他與像肯尼迪這樣的加密助教者的親密關係越來越緊密。他表示願意接受加密友好的政策；而且，尤其是他承諾從監獄中釋放一名40歲的男子：羅斯·烏爾布里希特（Ross Ulbricht）。

Ulbricht was pardoned last week, at the close of the second day of Trump’s Presidency, a day after Trump’s pardon of roughly fifteen hundred people involved in the January 6th insurrection. The delay had caused some of Ulbricht’s acolytes to worry. “People were posting in our chat, like, ‘O.K., there’s an hour and a half left of Day One . . . ’ ” Rich Clarke, the bitcoin meetup group’s organizer, who works in real estate, told me. “And a lot of my friends on Facebook were posting things like ‘Hope It Happens.’ ” He went on, “I think it was a shrewd move to pardon Ross sort of all on his own, after Trump did the mass pardons. It kind of gives the gesture more gravitas.”

上週，烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht）在特朗普總統任期的第二天結束時被赦免，在特朗普赦免約1500人參加1月6日起叛亂的第二天。延遲導致烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht）的一些助手擔心。 “人們在我們的聊天中發布，例如，'好吧，第一天還剩一個半小時。 。 。 ”在房地產工作的比特幣聚會集團的組織者里奇·克拉克（Rich Clarke）告訴我。 “而且我在Facebook上的許多朋友都在發布諸如'希望發生的事情之類的事情。 ”他繼續說，“我認為在特朗普做了大規模赦免之後，這是一個精明的赦免羅斯。這使手勢更多。”

In 2011, Ulbricht, an Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, founded Silk Road, an online black market that existed until his arrest, in 2013, for crimes related to drug trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. According to authorities, more than a million transactions took place on Silk Road, out of the government’s regulatory reach, generating more than two hundred million dollars in revenue. Drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin made up a huge portion of the site’s sales, from which Ulbricht apparently took millions in commissions. Silk Road “lowered the barriers to drug dealing by enabling drug dealers to reach customers online they could have never met on the street,” a federal prosecutor said in a closing argument. (Prosecutors also presented evidence that Ulbricht was involved in a murders-for-hire plot, but the government admitted that there was no evidence that the alleged targets had been harmed, and charges were not pursued.) In 2015, Ulbricht, who went by the dark-Web sobriquet Dread Pirate Roberts—a reference to a shifting character in “The Princess Bride”—received two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

2011年，來自德克薩斯州奧斯汀市的鷹偵察兵烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht）創立了絲綢之路，這是一個在線黑市，直到他於2013年被捕，原因是與毒品販運，洗錢和計算機黑客攻擊有關的犯罪。據當局稱，超過一百萬筆交易在絲綢之路上進行，出於政府的監管範圍，產生了超過200萬美元的收入。甲基苯丙胺，可卡因和海洛因等毒品佔該網站銷售的很大一部分，烏爾布里希特顯然從中佔了數百萬美元的佣金。絲綢之路“通過使毒品經銷商能夠在網上吸引他們在街上從未見過的客戶，從而降低了毒品交易的障礙，”一名聯邦檢察官在閉幕詞中說。 （檢察官還提供了證據表明，烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht）涉嫌謀殺案件，但政府承認沒有證據表明所謂的目標受到了損害，並未提出指控。）2015年，烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht黑暗殺害恐怖的海盜羅伯茨（Roberts）是對“公主新娘”中變化的角色的提法，但有兩個終身句子，而沒有假釋的可能性。

What made Ulbricht a crypto hero, ultimately, was that Silk Road had offered one of the first clear use cases for bitcoin: all transactions on the dark-Web site were made with the then nascent cryptocurrency, which, thanks to pseudonymous addresses at the disposal of buyer and seller, provided a significant degree of cover. Of course, this use case was, perhaps, not the ideal one for a new currency wishing to be seen as legitimate. “For better or for worse, the Silk Road did have a huge impact on bitcoin in its early days, in its public perception, in its adoption,” Clarke told me. “And Ross has, in the past, apologized because he’s not certain—nor am I—whether Silk Road was a net positive for bitcoin.”

最終，烏爾布里希特（Ulbricht）成為加密英雄的原因是，絲綢之路為比特幣提供了第一個清晰的用例之一：Dark-web網站上的所有交易都是由當時新生的加密貨幣進行的，這要歸功於Pseudonymose the Pseonyporny the Percosal的地址買賣雙方提供了很大程度的保險。當然，這種用例也許不是希望被視為合法的新貨幣的理想選擇。克拉克對我說：“無論好壞，絲綢之路的確對比特幣在公眾的意識中確實對比特幣產生了巨大影響。” “過去，羅斯一直道歉，因為他不確定 - 我不是 - 絲綢之路是否對比特幣呈淨空。”

But freeing Ulbricht remained a big issue for libertarians like Clarke, who, given their laissez-faire philosophy, embraced pro-crypto policy before most Republicans or Democrats. At the Libertarian Party’s national convention last year, Trump went onstage and announced that he

但是，對於像克拉克這樣的自由主義者來說，釋放烏爾布里希特仍然是一個大問題，克拉克鑑於自由放任的哲學，他們在大多數共和黨人或民主黨面前接受了親克賴特託的政策。去年，在自由黨的全國代表大會上，特朗普上台並宣布他