you can argue they threw the book at him, and they did, but he's not some angel who never meant any harm lol he knew what he was doing

if you think I'm defending the feds or CIA you literally can't read

@tmuxvim Eh, I guess it's kinda like Mastercard knows cards used for crime. Still collect 5% doe

@study_joe Mastercard isn't purpose-built and branded to be a drug marketplace

@tmuxvim don’t forget he literally hired a hitman to carry out a murder yes, the hitman turned out to be fake and they faked the murder evidence as part of the sting, but he didn’t know that

@0xz80 yeah some people dispute that was fabricated by corrupt prosecution. I haven't seen strong evidence in either direction. even without that, I don't understand why Bitcoiners love him so much. he set the industry back by creating a bad reputation for Bitcoin early on

@tmuxvim To me he just got too much time for what he did but yeah definetly not innocent

@MimanyMaker yeah I agree, 2 life sentences is pretty excessive considering how young and naive he was

@tmuxvim The federal government, famous for its principled stand against the international drug trade.

@scorpioblxck not defending the feds or their countless crimes against humanity

@tmuxvim take off that milady.

@sdlsista I don't see what milady has to do with crystal meth trafficking

@tmuxvim Weapons? You sure? Drugs should be legalised

@BallaTheSenior yeah dude heroin and meth should totally be easy to get

@tmuxvim I had always heard that Ross was against selling guns as a matter of ethics (in reality probably because he thought the FBI would investigate that much sooner)? Either way, not an innocent man. This is a really good video by @SociableBarely It is…

@Alice_comfy @SociableBarely less sure about the guns thing but I know they were traded on Silk Road at some point. and for the record I think his sentence was way too extreme. I just can't stand people when people say facilitating drug trade is harmless and Ross is innocent

@tmuxvim Way more people were affected negatively from what Sam did than what Ross did.

@monetoshi I agree that Sam was more egregiously out to ruin people and the sentences they each got are completely imbalanced

@tmuxvim Ross used to be active on the silk road forums and you could see he was a true believer in anarcholibertarianism, all the posts of his I remember were long talks about it in a milieu that was just there for the market, he had nothing to justify. He wasn’t doing it for money.

@CharlotteFang77 I know there was some idealistic libertarian motivation behind the project, and if he had stuck to just selling harmless things like mushrooms and LSD I wouldn't feel the same way about him. regarding the money, he amassed tens of millions of dollars in BTC running the site (at…