Despite calling for the death penalty for drug dealers, president Donald Trump pardoned Ross "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht, who once ran Silk Road, which facilitated the sale of over $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods.

Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

On Wednesday, the price of bitcoin jumped to more than $104,000, following Donald Trump’s announcement of a presidential pardon for Silk Road and bitcoin-libertarian folk hero Ross Ulbricht. The digital asset community also eagerly anticipated a flood of crypto executive orders that would overturn years of perceived regulatory slights.

Ulbricht, 40, was about 10 years into his life sentence for helming an online black market where drug dealers, money launderers, and traffickers used bitcoins to mask more than $214 million in illicit trades. (Ars thoroughly documented the Silk Road saga here .)

President Donald Trump has done it again. With his unconditional pardon of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, he