One afternoon in May, Ross Ulbricht strode into a gold-bedecked banquet hall at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, the venue for one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency conventions.
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Dozens of crypto enthusiasts rose to applaud and shout his name, cheering as he made his way to a table at the front. Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, Mr. Ulbricht sat next to several of his biggest supporters, who had paid $5,000 apiece to dine with him at a luncheon advertised as a “personal” welcome back celebration.
“I have been in an alien world for a long time,” Mr. Ulbricht, 41, said as the applause died down. “Now this world is alien to me.”
The walk was far different from the one Mr. Ulbricht had taken four months earlier, when he was released into the parking lot of a high-security prison in Tucson, Ariz., wearing a gray sweatsuit. As the creator of Silk Road, a dark web market that used Bitcoin to facilitate millions of dollars in sales of heroin, cocaine and other drugs, he had been sentenced to life in prison in 2015 without the possibility of parole.
Mr. Ulbricht seemed destined to spend the rest of his life inside a cell. After he was arrested, he lost access to Bitcoin that would now be worth billions and was ordered to pay nearly $200 million in penalties.