Las Vegas, Nevada – Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has a message for the crypto community: If you want to maintain your freedom, you must remain united and decentralized, and you must be prepared for a struggle.
In a heart that the keynote closed Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Thursday, Ulbricht, addressing the public man for the first time since released from prison in January, shared a story to describe his three guides that are liberating, decentralization and unity.
Ulbricht explained that, in the early days of Silk Road, he wanted to grow hallucinogenic mushrooms to stop the Darknet Marketplace with, so he rented a remote cabin. The cabin, he said, was filled with wasps. He set to deal with the wasps, using a trick that his father taught him to be involved in the WASP’s nests under a towel.
“My heart is pounding,” Ulbricht said. “I chose the nest farthest with others, because I didn’t know if the other nests were coming and I was going to keep the towel.
Ulbricht said the wasps were strong because they were free: “It is impossible to monitor so many individual wasps, a cunning can come in any direction. They are strong because they are decentralized, throughout the seven nests.”
But, Ulbricht said the wasps were eventually weak because they were not united, and did not respond when their fellow wasps were lowered.
“There was a single wasp that dared to come to me when I reached that first nest, I would run away … but they didn’t. Thank God that you are not wasps,” Ulbricht said.
Before US president Donald Trump forgave in January – the result of a promise Trump made on the path of the campaign in 2024 – Ulbricht spent 12 years behind the bars. His speech on Thursday marked a 10-year anniversary, until the day, of a New York judge who forgiven-31-year-old Ulbricht in two sentences in life, with 40 years, for owning and running the dark net market.
During his keynote speech, Ulbricht, who was free for four months, seemed very good at his new freedom. In a video montage leading his look on stage, Ulbricht clips that experience life outside of prison – traveling, surfing, spending time with his wife – playing on the screen, each showing a beaming Ulbricht.
“Winning your freedom feels amazing -it’s just as losing it feels terrible,” said Ulbricht, who trusts the crypto community for advocating for his release. “I’m free, and because of you. You made this moment … Thanks, thank you, thank you.”
After more than a decade behind the bars, Ulbricht likened himself to Rip Van Winkle, admitted that he was excited about all technological advances since he was jailed.
“There are twelve new cryptocurrencies and blockchains, each one is attracted to its own right, and thousands of times I have no time to know. There is a defi and web3 and AI to help me navigate at all. It’s peanuts,” Ulbricht said. “I mean, a few months ago, when I walked out of prison, I never saw a drone anymore … It all hit me at the same time, at the same time, freedom, the new technology, the fact that I have a future.”
Ulbricht closed by telling the audience about gangs and factions in prison, saying that he quickly understood that ward wards like prisoners were divided.
“The only time I saw the wardens show respect for the prisoners when we were united,” Ulbricht said. “Those who oppose decentralization and freedom love it when we are divided, I promise you, so stay united. As long as we can say that we deserve freedom, and decentralization is how we can secure it, then we can be united … stay true to these principles and our future.”
