Ross Ulbricht

Good morning my friends, Well morning here in Australia AEST time,

I am hoping someone out there can shed some light on why many in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency communities look at Ross Ulbricht as a hero of shorts?

In full disclosure I have watched and listened to several podcasts and or YouTube videos of interviews and public speaking with Ross, I.e. he spoke at Bitcoin conference 2021 from a prison video call, and several others under similar circumstances, additionally I have read quite a bit of what he wrote, said and did as a free man, but regardless of what I have watched or read I have barely scratched the surface, I know very little about him, and I really haven't made much of an effort at all to research or look deeper into anything really.

My confusion comes from, he is seemingly treated as a knowledgeable contributor in this space yet I literally haven't seen anything to even hint at why someone would want to hear this young man speak, It's unsettling to me, so I am hoping for possibly some Ulbricht fans and some haters to give me some more information on how and why this fornominom has come about, cheers.

My understanding, I recall back when he was free, I was 21 in my first adult career type job and Tor, the deep web, BTC, crypto was the hot topic, I specifically remember the general consensus online was jealousy of Ross due to him creating a platform that was extremely profitable when he was quite computer illiterate, with ordinary skill level people finding his identity, location, wallet addresses, emails linked to him and so on,

Additionally I remember from back than that he had a very poor understanding of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in general he used BTC as a form of payment for his platform only for anonymity, he said several times online things of this nature, Making money was the goal not a use case for BTC,

He was hacked several times, scammed, tricked, He didn't code, build on or contribute to cryptocurrency, He paid to have people killed, luckily the "hits" were fictional originally coming from an elaborate hacking scheme, but Ulbricht thought it was real and spent thousands of Bitcoin to have people killed, He spent Bitcoin to get people hacked, He stole, he lied, He blackmailed,

Many people rooting for him say, the large sentence he received was unjust because "all he did" was run a service online and he wasn't the drug dealers or arms dealers, But look at his charges and his actions, Most of his sentence comes from the FBIs sting operation and how he interacted with the criminals via email and such, He quiet literally was trying to kill, blackmail and extorte his competition or anything that stood in his way to making money.

So sorry for the long post but, help me understand more please?

P.s. his more recent talks, after studying for years in prison and becoming a billionaire from his BTC, he still seems to sound uneducated and ignorant.