It was entrapment because federal agents posing as crime bosses were threatening Ross that if he didn't hire the hitman there would be serious consequences. He was manipulated and forced into the position he was in.
What you see as manipulation, someone else might see as a user of the DPR account revealing his true nature
> "I need his real-world identity, so I can threaten him with violence," DPR told RealLucyDrop.
> "I don't know how I feel about that solution," said RealLucyDrop
What about when his (non-FBI, now-convicted) right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark convinced him to hire someone for murder?
Surely that can't be entrapment.
"Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real"
https://www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentenci...