Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht is now free from a life sentence after being pardoned by President Donald Trump. He was found guilty of operating the black market site Silk Road, which was used for criminal purposes such as selling narcotics, hacking data, forging identity documents, assassin services and money laundering.
Silk Road was founded in 2011 before being shut down by the FBI in 2013. $200 million worth of black market transactions are believed to have been made through the site during that period. Ulbricht has been in prison for 11 years. What makes Silk Road unique is that all transactions were made using Bitcoin to make it difficult for authorities to track it. This is one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies have a negative connotation to this day.