Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road Founder, enters Bitcoin NFT space

At the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht will unveil a collection of Bitcoin NFTs. The “Ross Ulbricht Growth Collection,” the Silk Road founder’s latest art show, will feature four actual oil paintings, one animation with 318 hand-drawn frames, and five related NFTs saved and encrypted on the Bitcoin blockchain. In a tweet announcing the release, Ulbricht said, “I’ve put my heart, soul, and mind into this collection, and I’m incredibly excited to show it to you.”

The Bitcoin NFTs will be minted on April 5 to commemorate the birthday of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, and the collection will be auctioned off at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami on April 6.

In a blog post, Ulbricht indicated that the money raised would be used to help children see their incarcerated parents. “We are moving forward with the idea of aiding children in travelling to see their mothers and fathers in prison,” he said on March 10th in a Medium blog post, adding that his team is already in contact with organisations working on similar projects. “I’ve been working on my next art collection since the more money we can earn, the more good we can accomplish,” says the artist.

Ulbricht is currently serving his ninth year of a life sentence plus a 40-year sentence without the chance of parole for founding and operating the now-defunct Silk Road online bazaar. Before the FBI confiscated it in October 2013, the darknet website, which was widely used to deal illegal drugs and other contraband in exchange for Bitcoin, had a daily volume of millions of dollars. Silk Road was instrumental in bringing Bitcoin into the public for the first time in its existence, and Ulbricht has since become a cult figure in the Bitcoin community.

Ulbricht’s Bitcoin NFT drop comes after his $6.2 million Ethereum NFT drop, which was auctioned off at the Art Basel Miami art event in December. FreeRossDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation created to pool donations to assist in liberating Ulbricht from prison, won the bid for the collection.