加密人群很高兴特朗普赦免罗斯·乌尔布里奇（Ross Ulbricht）

在线黑市丝绸之路的创始人于2015年被判处无期徒刑。现在，他是一个自由人，这要归功于唐纳德·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，我参加了亚特兰大附近的一次聚会，名为“比特币进入主流政治舞台”。该组织大多是白人，男性，有三十岁和四十岁的小组，他们聚集在一起讨论了加密货币进入政治的令人惊讶的进入。唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在2021年将比特币称为“骗局”，最近曾标题为比特币会议，并发布了广告，说“你知道，他们称我为加密货币总统”。在亚特兰大赛事的门口，在飞机机库的露台上举行，与小罗伯特·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.”

出席剧院主任乔伊（Joey）在最近的事件中解释了肯尼迪（Kennedy）的角色：“当肯尼迪（Kennedy）出现时 - 他是比特币 - 特鲁普（Trump）说，'哦，该死，我要开始因比特币而失去人们。”所以他转移了。”乔伊耸了耸肩。 “我们接受。”

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.

加密人群很长，笑话的屁股，对其地位的突然转变感到兴奋，即使有些人怀疑特朗普支持的真实性或耐用性。至少，他们终于被一个政党认真对待。 T恤使用Insider Lingo和开玩笑表现出了自己的热情，这些衬衫对未经启发的方式进行了一些解释：“单身，拍摄，hodling，” Joey的衬衫读到。每个单词旁边都有盒子。检查了“霍德林”。 （“ hodl”是“坚持亲爱的生活”的首字母缩写，这是指加密货币疯狂的波动。）明白吗？我进行了巡回演出，当时三十个捕捉，喝啤酒和烧烤。我问为什么大多数人似乎对特朗普充满热情。他与像肯尼迪这样的加密助教者的亲密关系越来越紧密。他表示愿意接受加密友好的政策；而且，尤其是他承诺从监狱中释放一名40岁的男子：罗斯·乌尔布里希特（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.”

上周，乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht）在特朗普总统任期的第二天结束时被赦免，在特朗普赦免约1500人参加1月6日起叛乱的第二天。延迟导致乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht）的一些助手担心。 “人们在我们的聊天中发布，例如，'好吧，第一天还剩一个半小时。 。 。 ”在房地产工作的比特币聚会集团的组织者里奇·克拉克（Rich Clarke）告诉我。 “而且我在Facebook上的许多朋友都在发布诸如'希望发生的事情之类的事情。 ”他继续说，“我认为在特朗普做了大规模赦免之后，这是一个精明的赦免罗斯。这使手势更多。”

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，来自德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的鹰侦察兵乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht）创立了丝绸之路，这是一个在线黑市，直到他于2013年被捕，原因是与毒品贩运，洗钱和计算机黑客攻击有关的犯罪。据当局称，超过一百万笔交易在丝绸之路上进行，出于政府的监管范围，产生了超过200万美元的收入。甲基苯丙胺，可卡因和海洛因等毒品占该网站销售的很大一部分，乌尔布里希特显然从中占了数百万美元的佣金。丝绸之路“通过使毒品经销商能够在网上吸引他们在街上从未见过的客户，从而降低了毒品交易的障碍，”一名联邦检察官在闭幕词中说。 （检察官还提供了证据表明，乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht）涉嫌谋杀案件，但政府承认没有证据表明所谓的目标受到了损害，并未提出指控。）2015年，乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht黑暗杀害恐怖的海盗罗伯茨（Roberts）是对“公主新娘”中变化的角色的提法，但有两个终身句子，而没有假释的可能性。

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.”

最终，乌尔布里希特（Ulbricht）成为加密英雄的原因是，丝绸之路为比特币提供了第一个清晰的用例之一：Dark-web网站上的所有交易都是由当时新生的加密货币进行的，这要归功于Pseudonymose the Pseonyporny the Percosal的地址买卖双方提供了很大程度的保险。当然，这种用例也许不是希望被视为合法的新货币的理想选择。克拉克对我说：“无论好坏，丝绸之路的确对比特币在公众的意识中确实对比特币产生了巨大影响。” “过去，罗斯一直道歉，因为他不确定 - 我不是 - 丝绸之路是否对比特币呈净空。”

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，对于像克拉克这样的自由主义者来说，释放乌尔布里希特仍然是一个大问题，克拉克鉴于自由放任的哲学，他们在大多数共和党人或民主党面前接受了亲克赖特托的政策。去年，在自由党的全国代表大会上，特朗普上台并宣布他