The post Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht to Bitcoiners: ‘Freedom is Worth the Struggle’ appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has a message for the crypto community: if you want to maintain your freedom, you must remain unified and decentralized, and you must be prepared for a struggle. In a heart-felt keynote speech closing out Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Thursday, Ulbricht, addressing the public in-person for the first time since being released from prison in January, shared a story to illustrate his three guiding principles — freedom, decentralization and unity. Ulbricht explained that, in the early days of the Silk Road, he wanted to grow hallucinogenic mushrooms to stock the darknet marketplace with, so he rented a remote cabin. The cabin, he said, was infested with wasps. He set out to deal with the wasps, using a trick his father had taught him that involved trapping the wasps’ nests under a towel. “My heart was pounding,” Ulbricht said. “I selected the nest that was furthest from the others, because I didn’t know if the other nests would come and sting me, spread out the towel, got as close as I could — ready to flee if I had to — but when I wrapped up the nest, nothing happened. It was as if the other wasps didn’t even notice.” Ulbricht said that the wasps were strong because they were free: “It was impossible to keep track of so many individual wasps, a sting could come from any direction. They were strong because they were decentralized, across seven nests.”  But, Ulbricht said, the wasps were ultimately weak because they were not unified, and did not react when their fellow wasps were taken down. “Had a single wasp dared to come sting me when I reached for that first nest, I would have fled … but they didn’t. Thank god you…

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Filed under: News - @ May 30, 2025 12:24 pm