Last week, the petition to free Ross Ulbrich, reached the 250,000 signature mark. A quarter of a million souls have signed their names, affirming their desire to see justice done, and Ross once again, a free man. I've called Ross Ulbrich, bitcoins Nelson Mandela. I say this not to equate Ross's actions with Mandela's. Ross advocated non-violent voluntary exchange while Mandela was not opposed to the use of violence to achieve his desired goals. Rather, I say Ross is like Mandela in that. We will know Bitcoin has truly changed the world when Ross is finally free. After Satoshi, Ross Ulbrich is the most important person in the history of Bitcoin. It's arguable that without the Silk Road project that he began, Bitcoin might have been little more than an interesting experiment. The Silk Road Charter, written by Ross Ulbrich, gives a vision for the type of world Bitcoin enables. The Charter reads. Silk Road is a global enterprise whose purpose is to empower people to live as free individuals. We provide systems and platforms that allow our customers to defend their basic human rights and pursue their own ends. Provided those ends do not infringe on the rights of others. Our mission is to have voluntary interaction between individuals be the foundation of human civilization. We conduct ourselves and our enterprise from the following fundamental values that are at the heart of who we are. Self-ownership. Individuals own their bodies, thoughts and will. Anything they create with their property or obtain without coercion is also theirs. Responsibility. People are responsible for their actions. If one infringes on another's rights, they should be held accountable. Equality. Property rights apply to all individuals, equally without exception. Integrity. Honoring one's word as one's self. Word, thought and action are aligned. Virtue. Striving to improve oneself and the lives of others in all actions to create value. We promise to be true to our purpose, to accomplish our mission, to operate consistent with our values, and to run our enterprise and service of our customers. This is who we are. This is what you can count on. For building a website that leveraged peer-to-peer electronic cash to facilitate a marketplace based on those principles, Ross Obert was sentenced by the United States government to two life sentences, plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. Ross Obert has made the ultimate sacrifice. He is a hero. Bitcoin is a voluntary system. As Satoshi states in the white paper, nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the proof of work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone. Bitcoiners cannot be co-rest into a particular action. Persuasion, not force, is the means by which the humans of Bitcoin are moved to a particular behavior. There are leaders in Bitcoin, but the nature of the system is such that they must lead by example. The ideal behavior is to state morally consistent principles and positions as Ross did in the Silk Road Charter, and then live by those principles. The individuals who arrive closest to that ideal are heroes. Number go up is not a morally consistent position. Neither is Moon or Lambo. Those memes do not call to hero to action. They do not demand a sacrifice of blood, sweat, and tears. They are childish fantasies, not the type of moral sustenance that gives meaning to the life of an adult. Peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world is a vision, an achievable vision, of a world with greater individual sovereignty, peace, and prosperity. Satoshi writes, What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. To manifest this system that Satoshi calls us to build is to disrupt a millennium of the coercive power of the state in league with the financial powers that be. The most powerful individuals and groups that have ever lived benefit from the corruption of that second decrepit system. Founding heroes like Satoshi and Hal Finney have left us. Living heroes like Ross O'Bride have demonstrated the power of Bitcoin and the sacrifice that being a hero can entail. Bitcoin is still in a time of heroes. These are the early days of what will be a global revolution. Satoshi calls you to adventure because the system that he says is needed is a system that is accessible to every human being. You have the opportunity to heed that call and be a hero of yourself. That will require sacrifice. Sacrifice of time, of energy, of financial resources. But I assure you, and I speak from experience, the wisdom you will acquire in the meaning that playing a role in such a monumental project will give your life as well worth the sacrifice. I can also assure you that your sacrifice will never be as great as that of Ross O'Bride. Your burden will never be as heavy as the concrete walls that surround that pioneer every day. No moment of hardship that you face as you struggle to make peer-to-peer electronic cash for the entire world of reality will be as dark as the day is Ross O'Bride, a man of peace who wanted to make the world a better place, spends cut off from that world and those he loves. So he'd be caught. Bitcoin is a tool to benefit mankind. It's needed. It's up to you to manifest it. If you haven't yet, sign the petition to FreeRossObride by visiting FreeRoss.org.