Remember Silk Road?
The Ross Ulbricht Growth Collection is an assortment of original art by Ross Ulbricht created in prison, well after conviction for operating the darknet-market website, Silk Road, from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. (The site used Tor for anonymity and bitcoin as a currency and facilitated the sale of narcotics and other sales.) The Growth Collection includes four physical oil paintings, one animation made up of 318 hand-drawn frames and five corresponding Bitcoin NFTs with Bitcoin-tokenized certificate of authenticity (COA).
The tokens will be minted on the Bitcoin blockchain on April 5, Satoshi Nakamoto’s birthday, in Miami during Bitcoin 2022. Bidding is open April 6-8 on the Scarce.city platform.
Ross Ulbricht, a 38-year-old first-time offender, is condemned to die in prison for his role in an e-commerce website called Silk Road. His trial charges were nonviolent.
Bitcoin was the only means of exchange on the Silk Road platform, and advocates of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies recognize Ross’s vision as a catalyst for blockchain adoption.
With this collection, Ross honors the Bitcoin community, which has shown him unwavering support in his fight for freedom over the years.
The artworks’ data and proof of ownership will be stored and secured by the Bitcoin blockchain using the Counterparty protocol. The artworks will be auctioned for Bitcoin using Scarce.City’s Bitcoin and Lightning Network native auction platform.
In a Medium post, Ross wrote: “We can look more broadly at making the whole system just, rather than focusing just on me. That is as it should be. There is a lot of work to do…All of this has brought a new spark to my life. I have direction and purpose and I feel like I can make a difference again. The more money we raise the more good we can do.
I have put my heart, soul and mind into this collection, and I am really looking forward to unveiling it to you.”
On October 1, 2022, Ross Ulbricht will begin his 10th year of a life sentence without parole. His mother, Lyn Ulbricht, and a not-insignificant contingent of people claim that media portrayals of his case and story have often been false and misleading. This auction is an opportunity to bring renewed attention to his plight and gain support for his release.
To learn more about Ross Ulbricht and his case, visit FreeRoss.org.
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