In 2015, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering.

On his second day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of dark-web marketplace Silk Road. Trump had pledged to free Ulbricht as part of a raft of promises made to the cryptocurrency community while on the campaign trail.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.

President Donald Trump issued a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who ran the dark web marketplace Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht has been serving a life sentence without parole since 2015,

President Trump said he granted the full pardon in honor of Ross Ulbricht's mother "and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly."

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht is free after President Donald Trump pardoned him. But who is he and what did he do?

President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the drug marketplace Silk Road who is revered by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and Libertarians. “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Ulbricht’s name.

Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 on charges related to his website, where users could buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods with bitcoin.

Ulbricht, 40, was about 10 years into his life sentence for helming an online black market where drug dealers, money launderers, and traffickers used bitcoins to mask more than $214 million in illicit trades. (Ars thoroughly documented the Silk Road saga here .)

Donald Trump pardoned the creator of the world’s first dark-web drug market, who is now a libertarian cause célèbre in some parts of the crypto community.

The punishment struck some legal experts as harsh. It also drew protests from libertarians who opposed severe drug penalties and crypto enthusiasts who viewed Ulbricht as a pioneer.