Sentenced to Life In Prison for Running the Silk Road Bitcoin Exchange

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has been sentenced to life in prison for
setting up the bitcoin exchange.

This is one of the all time ridiculous decisions. Libertarians should make
a campaign issue over this. Ross Ulbricht did not buy, sell, handle or deal
in drugs. He just ran the bitcoin exchange.

The bitcoin is an alternative currency. People use bitcoins for commercial
transactions because many members of the public no longer trust the US
Dollar. Anybody who has serious money will be afraid to put it into a
normal bank account because Obama has been going around seizing people's
bank accounts to pay for ObamaCare. With banks no longer being trusted,
people are looking for alternative currencies. The bitcoin is one of them.

The pretext to sentencing Ross Ulbricht to life in prison was that somebody
had used bitcoins to buy drugs and later that person had died of a drug
overdose. The prosecutor said that had there been no Silk Road bitcoin
exchange, he could not have used them to buy drugs and therefore he would
not have died.

According to this logic, if instead he had used paper money, Federal
Reserve Notes, to buy the drugs, then the Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Board would have been guilty of murder because he printed and issued the
paper money that was used to buy the drugs.

If the government wants to stop people from using alternative currencies,
they should stop seizing people's bank accounts and they should put the US
dollar on a sound footing so that people will no longer be afraid to open
bank accounts and save their dollars.

Sam Sloan

Too bad libertarians are so weak and disorganized, they can do nothing about anything, but whine and watch the guy be tortured.

I think any campaign against the sentencing of Ulbricht will surely be as lame as his defense was during his trial. The charges were: trafficking drugs on the internet, narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, running a
continuing criminal enterprise, computer-hacking conspiracy, and
money-laundering conspiracy. He established and ran Silk Road for the intended purpose of selling extra-legal goods. What in tarnation did Ulbricht think was going to happen to him if he got caught!?! Certainly deliberately breaking laws one does not agree with might be commendable (assuming one truly believes the act will not harm anyone), but assuming that if caught there will be/should be no consequences is a stretch!

Now, if any attorney who knows the laws regarding trafficking drugs, running a continuing criminal enterprise, money-laundering, as well as virtual currency and web hosting, wants to donate time to help reduce the sentence during the appeal, or if those who want to campaign in favor of Ulbricht want to pay for such attorney, then I would say that would work well.

Marcy