Ross Ulbricht found out. Don't f**k with the government's money.

FreedomFest 2024 has come and gone and it was a grand old time. It was held in the newish Caesar’s Forum convention center, which I’d never seen before but was very well-suited to the task.

There were an amazing array of speakers and events and booths and a great time was had by all. One of the best events (from my perspective) wasn’t actually at the event though. It was the off-site meet and greet the Libertarian Party of Nevada held for Ross Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn.

I told you all about Ross and his amazing (and cruel) story a few days ago. The broad strokes: in 2011 Ross created a “dark” website called Silk Road where users could buy and sell (almost) anything they wanted for Bitcoin.

The only restriction Ross put on it was that the products and services for sale on Silk Road must not be used “to harm or defraud”. Other than that, anything goes.

Over 70% of the traffic on the site was the buying and selling of illegal drugs. The other 30% consisted of a mish-mash: fake drivers licenses, erotica, and a smattering of legal goods that sellers thought might appeal to “dark” buyers.

But if you thought of Silk Road as a digital underground illegal drug site, you’d be largely correct. The site didn’t sell weapons. It didn’t sell kiddie porn. It didn’t sell stolen goods. And yet when he was caught, Ross got life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? What gives?

Most Americans, if they know about it at all, think the case was about online drug sales and they don’t even know about the severity of Ross’s sentence.

Others may be aware of how embarrassed the government was because it took them a year and a half to catch him, and they figure the excessive sentencing was because of that.

But I don’t think it was anything like that. I think they threw the book (and then some) at Ross because he was messing with their money. And the government really doesn’t like it when you do that.

During the Silk Road’s brief period of operation (from February 2011 to July 2013) the site facilitated sales totaling just under 10 million Bitcoins.

And remember, back in those early days Bitcoin advocates were shouting from the rooftops that this new digital currency was going to completely eliminate the need for the crooked, inflationary, taxable, traceable, regulatable, backed by nothing, US dollar.

Oh, and in his spare time, Ross liked to write libertarian essays where he talked about how we don’t need the government and their crooked regulations and their counterfeit money.

And he was a living example that proved his claims.

See why that might piss off the government a wee bit and make them want to make an example of him?

When I first heard about Ross Ulbricht’s cruel and unusual punishment (double life sentences plus 40 years for running a website!) I suspected it was about the money right away.

My insight came from my familiarity with Las Vegas. I moved here 14 years ago, but I’ve been visiting regularly since the late 1980s, when I first started playing poker in a serious way.

Back in the day, casino chips circulated around town (at least downtown or near the strip) just like cash. You could literally pay for breakfast at Denny’s with casino chips and receive dollars back in change. People would tip their waiters with casino chips. People would settle bets with casino chips.

Everybody knew that the chips were just as good as cash. Most any casino would accept chips from other casinos and periodically they would “settle their accounts” by trading the chips back to the original casino of origin.

But again, the government really doesn’t like it when you mess around with their money. The treasury department “rolled the tanks” on this practice, threatening the casinos to put a stop to this very convenient aspect of gambling life in Las Vegas.

Too bad.

It’s a good lesson to learn, and absorb deeply. When a criminal gang (a government) forces its victims (us) to use a counterfeitable means of exchange (the crappy US dollar), it really freaks out when you threaten that system.

The severity of the freakout should give you some indication of how bad the system is for us all.

They couldn’t abide using a $25 Stardust chip to pay for your breakfast. They sure as hell weren’t going to fail to make an example of a guy that facilitated exchanges using a completely new and untraceable form of money.

Nope, nope, nope. Gotta make an example of a guy like that. Gotta do something very drastic and very cruel.

And they did.

Free Ross Ulbricht. Do it now, you bastards. Enough is enough.

Naturally,

Adam

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