Kody Palmer Posted October 2, 2013 Posted October 2, 2013 FBI arrested known Libertarian Ross William Ulbricht the man behind Silk Road. How about a "The Truth about Silk Road?" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24373759
Wesley Posted October 2, 2013 Posted October 2, 2013 Yes, I was watching this story when bitcoin took a bit of a hit today, however it didn't seem to phase things too much and it seems bitcoin is recovering already. In general, when you run the world's biggest drug trafficking site, it is less than ideal to unsecurely attempt to hire a hitman to take out someone. Generally..
Kody Palmer Posted October 2, 2013 Author Posted October 2, 2013 I read that the court documents note the Canadian law enforcers have said there was no record of a homicide taking place in White Rock, British Columbia at the time.
Wesley Posted October 2, 2013 Posted October 2, 2013 My understanding is he didn't succeed, he just attempted/solicited it. I may be wrong.
kalmia Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 There will be lessons learned for whatever replacement comes.
NumberSix Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 It’s hard to believe the person behind Silk Road was living in the USA. I wonder how many days before a new site takes it’s place.
ribuck Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 Silk Road already had competitors, and I guess more will spring up as a result of this publicity. If you want to see the guy, here is a YouTube video of an interview that he did a year ago with one of his high school buddies. The interview is unrelated to Silk Road, but at 33:51 the other guy asks him "What are you going to do over the next five years?". Ulbricht looks extremely uncomfortable, because he can't admit that he's running a billion dollar clandestine business that will shape his next five years (and the rest of his life, now that he's going to be in the slammer). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh68DDUYVPM
Wesley Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 Whenever someone can figure out (and assure others) that the mistakes made by Dread Pirate Roberts have been solved and potential sellers/customers can be assured of this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24371894 It appears he used an email address that linked to his actual name when marketing the site. That email address had then been linked with the IP address that was in the source code of the SR that was the only one allowed to change things, and was 500 yards from Ulbricht's residence. Then a coincidental customs check that discovered Ulbricht getting fake IDs shipped to his house in order to get more servers. Finally, on another message board he asked intricate questions about the source code of SR and associated the name with his real name.
pretzelogik Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 Supposed offender is 29 3.6 Million dollars seized Arrested at 3:15 pm using library internet Genius coder puts out easily traceable request for hitman on Silk Road on March 27 There are hit men for sale on Silk Road? Libertarian Devotee of the Austrian school Voluntaryist Silk Road and Tor network raid linked to child pronography Made tens of millions of dollars, used library computer to run illicit business and cannot afford an attorney Available images of supposed offender show signs of digital manipulation/creation
Wesley Posted October 3, 2013 Posted October 3, 2013 Silk Road and the potential to disrupt a truly evil industry http://www.zdnet.com/silk-road-and-the-potential-to-disrupt-a-truly-evil-industry-7000021498/ The FBI's shutdown of web site Silk Road is a hollow victory in the hugely expensive war on drugs, which has consistently failed to stop the drug trade, or stop criminals from amassing huge amounts of wealth and ordering more than 60,000 murders in Mexico alone. Silk Road had some positive aspects. The FBI admitted that Silk Road vendors provided high quality drugs. And the prices were far below the street. Based on advanced Internet technologies, it was able to create a protected market that kept money out of the hands of violent street gangs and international criminal syndicates. It also protected buyers (lots of US citizens) from the poisons that adulterate street drugs. If it had grown large enough, Silk Road, or a collection of similar online services, would have begun to seriously challenge the revenues of local and international mobsters on a scale that the war on drugs has consistently failed to do. It's much better to have drug distributors such as Silk Road and competitors fight over Google keywords in online auctions than murder and behead each other. The beneficiaries of this FBI takedown are the international criminal syndicates, hit men, and the corrupt networks that enable the drug trade to cross borders in staggering quantaties. The FBI has unwittingly done them all a big favor and kept the Internet from disrupting a truly evil international industry. But this story is not done yet. It's just the beginning. The next generation of Silk Roads is on the way and they'll be smarter, stealthier, and even more efficient at disrupting the drugs business. Bitcoin's future… Bitcoin is a key technology in this tale of potential business disruption. Its ability to enable a large market with relatively friction-less payments has attracted the attention of a legion of entrepreneurs with ideas for other applications. Bitcoin has benefited greatly from its nefarious affiliations. Businessweek's Joshua Brustein reports that the Silk Road bust is good thing for the virtual currency. He quotes several entrepreneurs saying it removes a negative perception. However, Bitcoin's future has nothing to do with drugs. It's as if the future of cash was in doubt because its anonymity allowed people to buy drugs, and worse. Bitcoin's value dipped after the bust but it recovered quickly showing that most Bitcoin backers knew that the drug connection is a red herring and were happy to buy them at a discount from dumb sellers. The burgeoning interest in the currency is due to its unique properties, especially its property of scarcity. Abundance destroys monetary value but scarcity attracts it and retains it. That's why De Beers warehouses huge quantities of diamonds so that they remain scarce and maintain their market value despite the fact that diamonds really aren't all that scarce, thanks to new sources and new mining techniques. There isn't a warehouse full of Bitcoins being kept out of the market to maintain a high value because it would be impossible. But De Beers could decimate the value of all diamonds at any time, by having a 50%-off warehouse sale. A government couldn't use Bitcoins for quantitative easing, for example. "Printing money" is impossible with Bitcoins. In the digital world of the Internet everything is easy to copy. But not Bitcoins. It's these qualities that make it interesting.... and valuable.
Wesley Posted October 18, 2013 Posted October 18, 2013 Why Bitcoin Boomed During the Government Shutdown http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/why-bitcoin-boomed-during-the-government-shutdown By Alec Liu Just two weeks after the Feds shuttered the Silk Road, the notorious online drug bazaar, bitcoin prices have touched a five-month high—with a single bitcoin fetching nearly $156 each on Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox. Bitcoin’s resiliency can no longer be denied, especially as the digital currency continued its ascendancy even against the backdrop of a US government in utter disarray. At the 11th hour of the crisis, President Obama signed a bill that ended the partial government shutdown and, more importantly, raised the debt ceiling, an arbitrary limit on the amount of money the country can borrow that would have been surpassed today. If Congress had failed to reach a deal and the US was unable to pay its bills, the results might have been catastrophic, eclipsing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers five years ago, the domino that could trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. “We could be looking at a 10 percent decline in GDP, and a 5 point rise in unemployment,” The New York Times economist Paul Krugman wrote of the immediate consequences of a potential US default. Moreover, the sudden impact on US debt, deemed the safest financial asset in existence, would cascade across the globe fueling a crisis in confidence that would call into question the status of the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world. While a last ditch effort was always expected, the political farce precipitating in Washington is a stark reminder of the tenuous nature of our current financial system, where a group of ideologues could essentially hold the state of the world economy hostage simply because they felt like it. For bitcoin’s advocates, it’s simply another argument for the cryptocurrency’s relevance. Unlike fiat money, which is managed by governments, bitcoin’s decentralized model means that no one actually controls it, keeping it out of the hands of opportunistic politicians. Similar to the events in Cyprus earlier this year, when the threat of direct withdrawals from citizen savings account led to a surge in the virtual currency’s interest, some believe the current uncertainty in the conventional system is fueling bitcoin’s recent rise even though the ecosystem has yet to find its “killer app.” “The more stupid things governments do, the more attractive bitcoin becomes,” said Roger Ver, the director of Business Development at BitInstant, and long time bitcoin evangelist. “Bitcoin's strengths come from its nature. Governments can't inflate it or seize it at will.” As further evidence, Ver points to this chart demonstrating how various asset classes have performed this year: Governments could, of course, outlaw bitcoin outright, a longstanding fear within the community that appears to have abated as authorities have adopted an approach of acceptance and regulation. This hasn’t always been the case. The seizure of funds of Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange, five months ago for apparent regulatory violations shook the system, shutting down a key source of funding that sent prices crashing. And two weeks ago, the Silk Road crackdown was expected to blow another major dent in bitcoin’s armor. But prices quickly rebounded following a minor flash crash, perhaps to the surprise of casual observers as the underground dark web marketplace was widely considered bitcoin’s first true killer app. The Silk Road could not have existed without the hard-to-trace digital currency. And most people might have never heard of bitcoin if not for the novelty of buying drugs online. The link, however, has always been a double edged sword, providing the movement purpose but also plenty of bad press. That bitcoin has survived the shutdown not only unscathed but stronger than ever is unsurprising to Ver. “Bitcoin is unaffected by the Silk Road shutdown because of the numerous competitors that already exist,” he told Motherboard, citing the Black Market Reloaded as an example. And so for bitcoin, the Silk Road’s demise is only good news. It’s unlikely that the alternative markets already filling the gap will ever achieve the same level of brand recognition, allowing bitcoin to shed what has always been a PR headache, even as the demand for illegal goods online inevitably grows. For Ver, this means only one thing. “Bitcoin will continue to gain more and more popularity around the world as people quickly figure out that it is superior to government issued money.”
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