TL;DR
- The chances of Ross Ulbricht receiving a presidential pardon from Trump during his first term are 80% according to Polymarket.
- Bets on Ulbricht’s pardon on Polymarket have reached a volume of $136,000, with a market predicting a 97% chance of pardon in the first 100 days of Trump.
- Ulbricht denied any links to cryptocurrencies or memecoins related to his name, clarifying rumors about the creation of a “Ross coin.”
The odds of Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, receiving a presidential pardon from Donald Trump during the first week of his second term reached 80% on the Polymarket platform after a comment by Elon Musk on the social media platform X. Tesla CEO and Trump ally Musk stated that Ulbricht would be released, which led to a significant rise in bets related to the pardon.
Musk’s comment, which was a response to another user’s post saying “Ross will be freed too,” caused the odds on Polymarket to spike, with the probability of a pardon quickly rising from 54% to 95%. However, the odds later dropped back to the current level.
Bets on Ulbricht’s pardon have accumulated a volume of $136,000. Additionally, another market on Polymarket predicting potential pardons during Trump’s first 100 days of office gives Ulbricht a 97% probability of receiving a pardon, supported by a total betting volume of $5 million.
Ulbricht’s Conviction
Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and convicted two years later for creating and operating Silk Road, a dark web market that facilitated the sale of illegal products, such as narcotics, using Bitcoin for transactions. He is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Over the years, there has been growing public support for clemency, with more than 600,000 signatures on a petition at freeross.org, which criticizes his sentence as excessive.
Ross Denies Any Link to Cryptocurrencies
Although Trump promised in 2024 to commute Ulbricht’s sentence on his first day in office if re-elected, no official announcement has been made yet. Meanwhile, Ulbricht, through his X account, clarified that he has no connection to any cryptocurrency or memecoin bearing his name, debunking rumors about the creation of a “Ross coin.”
This shift in the odds of a pardon highlights the continued media attention surrounding Ulbricht’s case and his potential release, a topic that remains of interest to both justice advocates and members of the cryptocurrency community
