President Donald Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht

 https://reason.com/2025/01/21/president-donald-trump-pardons-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht/

Silk Road's innovative mail order using bitcoin, combined with user reviews of sellers, imposed some real market discipline on dealers, kept buyers from the occasional dangers of physically obtaining drugs, and allowed people not violating others' lives and property to buy and sell drugs with less (but not zero) legal risk.

Because of all that, and the site's role in publicizing and popularizing the use of bitcoin as currency, Ulbricht was considered a martyr of sorts to many in the libertarian and bitcoin communities.