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 over $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. Trump had announced plans to commute Ulbricht's sentence in May during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention. His arrest brought to an end what prosecutors described as a global, black market bazaar that for two years starting in 2011 was used by more than 100,000 people to buy and sell $214 million worth of illegal drugs and other illicit services.