zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
Is this president extremely concerned about drug dealers and gangs in the US?

Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?

>>agentu+2w
Pardoning Ulbricht was a campaign promise he made at the Libertarian National Convention in response to it being a popular demand among the libertarians.

>>shoxid+qy
And more importantly, among the crypto crowd that dumped millions into his campaign. Libertarians have essentially no clout or money on their own. This was a pardon bought by Coinbase and Gemini and A16z.

>>noirbo+qz
Why would Coinbase and Gemini and A16z care about an obviously shady person who reportedly tried to hire a person to kill someone? surely they could find a more legitimate hero to advance the legal crypto case? i mean, it's kind of like them - companies trying to do legit crypto - rallying today around SBF when they already have image problems from other exchanges?

>>twelve+YB
Not sure, but when they have various political candidates getting millions from the crypto PACs and all of them in unison talking about how Ross Ulbricht needs a pardon, I'm not sure what else to tell you. Maybe someone just knew Ulbricht personally and is using their money to spring him.

But unless you can point to any other group with actual power and money who was pushing for it, the most obvious answer is that the main funders of the crypto PACs were at least ok with it. There's no way they couldn't have subtly squashed this pardon with Trump if it was just the Libertarians asking for it given that they seem to have gotten him to commit to do literally everything else they want.