Ross Ulbricht pardon odds surge to 95% on Polymarket after Elon Musk comment

The odds of U.S. President Donald Trump commuting Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht's sentence during his first week in office surged to 95% on Polymarket, after Elon Musk stated that the clemency would occur.

At 9 p.m. ET on Monday, Tesla CEO and Trump ally Musk wrote in a reply to another user's post on X that "Ross will be freed too."

Shortly after, the decentralized prediction market platform saw the odds of Ulbricht being pardoned during Trump’s first week rise from 54% to the current 95%. The bets on the specific pardon have reached a volume of $51,367.

Another Polymarket bet predicting potential pardons during the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency assigned Ulbricht a 97% likelihood of receiving a pardon, supported by a total betting volume of $5 million.

Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2015 for creating and operating the darknet market Silk Road, which facilitated the sale of illegal products such as narcotics, with transactions conducted with bitcoin. Ulbricht is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

A petition calling for clemency for Ulbricht on freeross.org has gathered over 600,000 signatures since his incarceration. The petition has garnered support from those who argue his life sentence is excessive and unjust, and from some bitcoiners that uphold Silk Road’s libertarian ideals.

In May last year, Trump said he would commute the Silk Road creator’s sentence on his first day in office if reelected, to which Ulbricht expressed his gratitude via X. However, the U.S. President has yet to make an official announcement regarding Ulbricht.

In his latest X post on Monday, Ulbricht posted a disclaimer distancing himself from any cryptocurrency or a memecoin that uses his name, saying that there is no official “Ross coin.”