Few know this, but Charlie Kirk was a Bitcoiner. An even smaller cohort knows about Kirk’s behind-the-scenes campaign to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to pardon Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was serving two life sentences and an additional forty years for multiple drug-related offenses.
(Ulbricht and Kirk in an undated photo after Ulbricht was released from prison following President Donald Trump’s pardon)
Ulbricht was unusually fortunate to have Kirk in his corner. The 31-year-old Republican activist had a direct line to the President after helping Trump garner a significant share of the youth vote in last year’s presidential election. So when Kirk whispered, Trump listened; and it seems that connection helped Ulbricht walk out of prison a free man in January, after serving less than twelve years on his double life sentence.
“He never took credit for it, but he played a BIG role in my freedom in many ways,” Ulbricht explained in a post on X, referring to Kirk. “When President Trump won the election, he asked Charlie what was the #1 thing he could do for him and Charlie replied: ‘Free Ross.’”
Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday in broad daylight by an as-yet unknown gunman on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. The location was the first stop of his “American Comeback Tour,” where he planned to debate college students on controversial topics such as race, religion, politics, and sexuality. Kirk was infamous for his provocative statements, earning him a slew of negative labels. Outside of the crypto community, few knew him as a hardcore bitcoin proponent, but he was.
“ Bitcoin, in some ways, has more integrity than the U.S. dollar,” Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show in 2022. “The idea that you can have a currency not controlled by the federal government is a direct competition to the U.S. Treasury, and it should be. That’s why I am a crypto enthusiast,” he added, during a different episode of the show in 2024.
It was that enthusiasm for bitcoin that ultimately led him to secretly lobby the president for Ulbricht’s release in 2025. “In the days leading to my release, Charlie advocated for a full pardon,” Ulbricht said. “He did this and more without expectations of me.”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
