Roger Ver calls Ross Ulbricht a genius; urges people to sign petition for his release

Bitcoin hard fork proponent, Roger Ver, called Ross Ulbricht a genius entrepreneur and a hero during a recent YouTube session. Ulbricht, who was the founder of Silk Road, was charged with money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. He further emphasized that Ulbricht was condemned to die in prison unless he got a pardon from the President of the United States.

The CEO of Bitcoin.com stressed that Ulbricht had already served around six years in jail and urged people to sign a petition for his release. At press time, over 156,300 individuals had signed the petition.

The BCH advocate also revealed that the team was planning to organize a benefit concert for the ‘Free Ross’ campaign in Los Angeles this year.

Ver and many crypto-luminaries had previously criticized the prosecution, terming it too harsh a sentence for creating a mere e-commerce website.

Litecoin’s [LTC] Charlie Lee had also tweeted in support of Ulbricht,

“Whatever you think of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, does not deserve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.”

Ulbricht, a first-time offender, is currently serving two life sentences without parole, and an additional 40 years for all non-violent charges associated with the creation of Silk Road. Ulbricht intended Silk Road to be a free market experiment with the underlined idea – to maintain user anonymity, using Tor and Bitcoin. According to Ulbricht, individuals should have the right to trade anything, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Tor was useful towards this purpose as it helped in maintaining user anonymity by concealing IP addresses.