US government sold Ross Ulbricht’s Bitcoins at $344 a piece

Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym of Ross Ulbrcht on Silk Road, originated from ‘The Princess Bride’ movie. The fact that the world’s first ‘crypto criminal’ chose a character from a Disney film as his moniker is remarkable. What’s even more remarkable is that at the time of his arrest, Ulbricht was in possession of 144,000 Bitcoins, which were all seized by the FBI.

“On day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.”

— Trump pic.twitter.com/k9WV5i7lf5

— Alan ₿ Watts ⚡️ (@alanbwt) January 21, 2025

During the Obama administration it was decided to sell all those Bitcoins for an average price of $344. Hence if Ulbricht had managed to stay out of the hands of the law, he would be one of the richest people in the world by now, with a fortune of some 15 billion dollars.

6 January

There was a lot of fuss in the American media about some of Trump’s decisions this week. His pardon for the rioters of January 6, 2021, his ban on automatically obtaining American nationality if you are born in the US but your parents are not Americans, his decision to immediately deport criminal illegal immigrants from the country (the first flights have are already left) were just a few of the controversial decisions.

Ross Ulbricht thanks President Trump after receiving a pardon:

“I was doing life without parole and I was locked up for more than 11 years and he let me out. I’m a free man now. So let it be known that Donald Trump is a man of his word.”pic.twitter.com/TWHVloFLuM

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) January 24, 2025

For the crypto world, the highlight (so far) was probably the release of Ross Ulbricht, the man who spent 11 years in prison for founding the website Silk Road, an illegal marketplace where you could buy drugs and all other illegal materials and pay them with Bitcoin. Ross got a small percentage for every sale on that site. The same principle as Amazon, but with anonymity, illegal goods and payment in crypto.

When the FBI arrested Ulbricht in 2014, they also confiscated his Bitcoins. He had about 144,000 of them.

Obama

Fortune reminded everyone a few days ago that the US government (at that time led by President Barack Obama) made the decision to sell those Bitcoins (in 2014) instead of ‘hodling’ them. Proceeds from that sale were approximately $30 million.

Ross, who published a Bitcoin price analysis several times from prison, knew he had lost his wealth. Like any of us, he cannot understand why the US government did not choose to wait a little longer. Because at that time it was already becoming clear that the price of Bitcoin rose as the digital currency became ‘older’. If US authorities had waited and kept Silk Road’s Bitcoins in their possession, they would be worth about $15 billion today. That could have bought a lot of roads and bridges.