Ancient traders faced challenges and devised solutions that, surprisingly, resemble some of the practices used by modern startup founders. Here are three strategies employed by Silk Road traders and how they relate to building and scaling innovative businesses today.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday 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.

President Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website for selling drugs.

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Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

Libertarian activists, who generally oppose criminal drug policies, argued the government overreached in building its case against Ross Ulbricht and the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

On his second day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of dark-web marketplace Silk Road. Trump had pledged to free Ulbricht as part of a raft of promises made to the cryptocurrency community while on the campaign trail.

President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the drug marketplace Silk Road who is revered by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and Libertarians. “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Ulbricht’s name.

Ulbricht could already be sitting on millions in Bitcoin, according to Conor Grogan, a director at the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Grogan noted that around 430 BTC—worth approximately $47 million—awaits untouched in wallets possibly linked to Ulbricht. These wallets have been dormant for over 13 years, he said.

Donald Trump claims China ‘operates’ the Panama Canal. This isn’t quite right, but China’s investment in shipping infrastructure globally has made many countries jittery.

President Donald Trump has been back in the Oval Office for just a week, but he has already unleashed a flurry of executive actions designed to remake the government and country in his image. Within minutes of signing dozens of consequential executive orders,