Imprisoned Ross Ulbricht Announces He Will Auction Off His NFTs

Former Silk Road founder, now Imprisoned Ross Ulbricht caused a stir recently after announcing he will auction off a series of non-fungible tokens starting on Thursday so let’s find out more about it in today’s cryptocurrency news.

Ross Ulbricht is the founder of the now-defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road and he got in the center of attention again by announcing he will auction off a series of NFTs starting on Thursday. The imprisoned Ross Ulbricht announced via his Twitter account that he has plans to auction the Genesis Collection on the Superare NFT marketplace from December 2 to December 8 and this collection comprises 11 works of handmade art that were minted into NFTs.

There are bitcoin maxis trying to cancel @RealRossU for selling NFTs to raise money to charity for people incarcerated.

One tweet say “way to lose your fanbase”.

This man is in jail for life and did more for bitcoin than all of the laser eye cult combined.

Bidding Ross NFTs.

— cobie (@CryptoCobain) November 30, 2021

The art was made in different stages of his life starting from his childhood and now his time in prison. The early works show comic book characters and animals while the later works show scenes from his court trial and his feelings when he got imprisoned. Proceeds from the auction will help fund a trust and support his efforts to be freed from prison. Funds will help launch the donor-advised charitable fund Art4Giving which is dedicated to relieving the suffering of the imprisoned and their families. Ulbricht was always a controversial character in the crypto space which is why he was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison in 2015 for operating the Silk Road marketplace.

Silk Road opened on the dark web in 2011 and allows users to buy everything from drugs, weapons but also Bitcoins. The announcement sparked some conflictive comments from people on social media and some were strongly opposing his decisions but most supported his cause. Francis Pouliot who is the founder of Bull Bitcoin said that he supports Ulbricht, the fact that the insane and immoral NFT Ponzi became fully normalized is deeply troubling. Other BTC maximalists took exception to the concept of NFTs with Twitter user Von Vladenhawk saying:

“I can tolerate the creation of international drug and weapons markets. But NFTS is where I draw the line.”

The host of UpOnly, Crypto Cobain, pointed out in support that although a few BTC maximalists are against Ulbricht’s NFTs, he was instrumental in generating early BTC adoption.