Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht to make first public appearance at Bitcoin conference

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht said on Thursday he plans to make his first public appearance since being released from prison at an upcoming Bitcoin event.

"It's official. I am excited to announce that I will be making my first public appearance and speech since my release from prison at The Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas," he said in a post to X. 

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order issuing a full and unconditional pardon to Ulbricht. Both Ulbricht and Silk Road's story and is heavily intertwined with Bitcoin’s early history.

Ulbricht was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for creating and operating Silk Road, a darknet market that facilitated the sale of narcotics and other illegal products and services. The platform used bitcoin for transactions and helped to popularize the cryptocurrency's use.

In a video clip posted shortly after his release Ulbricht suggested he would eventually want to speak publicly.

“For the next however long we need, I'm going to be with my family so that we can reunite and be whole again and heal,” Ulbricht said at the time. “But there's a lot to talk about, and I look forward to re-engaging with the free world. And so once I'm feeling up to it, we'll talk again.”

The Las Vegas Bitcoin conference is set for late May.