By Nate Raymond
U.S. President Donald Trump has pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.
The Republican president made good on a campaign pledge to free Ulbricht, 40, who was arrested in 2013 and sentenced in 2015 in what became a landmark U.S. prosecution launched only a few years after the emergence of the popular cryptocurrency.