PANews reported on May 30 that according to CoinDesk, Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, used his experience of clearing a beehive as a teenager to illustrate the three principles that the crypto community should have: freedom, decentralization, and unity in his closing speech at the Bitcoin 2025 conference. He recalled that "wasps are strong because of their dispersion, but fail because of their lack of unity," and emphasized that "opponents would most like to see us split."

Ulbricht was pardoned by President Trump in January 2025, ending his 12-year prison sentence. In his speech, he thanked the crypto community for speaking out for his release, and admitted that after being released from prison, he was like a "modern Rip Van Winkle" facing the impact of new technologies such as DeFi and Web3. Data shows that during the operation of the dark web market Silk Road he founded from 2011 to 2013, the Bitcoin transaction volume accounted for 6% of the total network transactions at that time.