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What was Silk Road?
Silk Road was a hidden website, run from January 2011 until law enforcement shut it down in October 2013, where users bought and sold illegal drugs and other unlawful goods, paying in bitcoin. Its creator, Ross Ulbricht, was convicted on seven counts in 2015 and sentenced to life in prison. He was pardoned in January 2025.
What it means for you
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Every transaction stays on a public record, and investigators traced Silk Road's bitcoin years after the site closed.
How it works
The US Justice Department says Silk Road ran on the Tor network with a bitcoin-based payment system and served more than 100,000 buyers. On February 5, 2015 a jury found Ulbricht guilty on all seven charges, including narcotics distribution and money laundering conspiracy. On May 29, 2015 he was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to forfeit $183,961,921. On November 3, 2020 the government seized thousands of bitcoins, worth over $1 billion, that its complaint says a hacker it calls "Individual X" took from Silk Road in 2012 and 2013; IRS investigators found them by tracing 54 earlier transactions. On January 21, 2025 the Justice Department's clemency list records a full pardon for Ross William Ulbricht.
Sources: US DOJ (SDNY): Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison (May 29, 2015), US DOJ (NDCA): civil action to forfeit cryptocurrency valued over $1 billion (November 5, 2020), US DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney: clemency grants, 2025 to present · checked 8 October 2026
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