Silk Road Busted; Founder Arrested

[Fedaykin]

.. a "dark net" site using the anonymity tool Tor to facilitate th sale and purchase of drugs.

In related news, Bitcoin price plummets since the bulk its usefulness just evaporated.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/2/47...ndicted-in-new

[Fedaykin]

Also means the FBI now is in possession of likely the majority of all Bitcoins as, apparently, in order to buy things on Silk Road you had to fund a payment account managed by Silk Road...

[Pony Boy]

That's what he gets for pissing off Gemma and Jax Teller.

[B-Large]

I have no idea that is about...

[Fedaykin]

I have no idea that is about...

There's an anonymozing network called Tor. I won't go into the details, but it's an effective way for a person to be truly anonymous on the internet. It prevents your internet traffic from being traced, logged or otherwise spied on.

The Silk Road is an online black market website that only operates inside that network, and provides the ability for people to buy and sell things without having their internet traffic be traceable.

You can only access the Silk Road if you are using the Tor anonymizer.

This website is primarily engaged in the commerce of illegal items, such as drugs, pirated material (books, movies, porn), etc. And even the "legal" items on the page are sold illegally (see: black market). And, you can only buy things there with Bitcoins, that are a digital currency that can be used anonymously.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28...ity_network%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Ro...marketplace%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

[Arkie]

In related news, Bitcoin price plummets since the bulk its usefulness just evaporated.

Bitcoin prices went down for a day. The Silk Road bust actually helped bitcoins popularity on Google trends. Now more people know about cryptocurrency. The cryptos are controlled by math and science instead of politicians. They are traded through a P2P network, completely transparent with no central points of authority to "control". Bitcoins are now worth more than they were before the Silk Road bust.

Also means the FBI now is in possession of likely the majority of all Bitcoins as, apparently, in order to buy things on Silk Road you had to fund a payment account managed by Silk Road...

The FBI is not in possession of the majority of all bitcoins. Not even close. 26,000/21,000,000 = 0.1% of the bitcoin supply! Why are you trying to scare people away from bitcoin? Do you favor the centralized monopoly of money? The FBI seized 26,000 bitcoins ($3.6 million) from Silk Road, but they couldn't take any from the founder's personal stash of $80 million in bitcoins. That's the security of this currency. The FBI can't even take it even though they can see it through the "public key", they can't be transferred without the other user's "private key". I guess they could torture him until he turns over his private key.

[gyldenlove]

Bitcoin prices went down for a day. The Silk Road bust actually helped bitcoins popularity on Google trends. Now more people know about cryptocurrency. The cryptos are controlled by math and science instead of politicians. They are traded through a P2P network, completely transparent with no central points of authority to "control". Bitcoins are now worth more than they were before the Silk Road bust.



The FBI is not in possession of the majority of all bitcoins. Not even close. 26,000/21,000,000 = 0.1% of the bitcoin supply! Why are you trying to scare people away from bitcoin? Do you favor the centralized monopoly of money? The FBI seized 26,000 bitcoins ($3.6 million) from Silk Road, but they couldn't take any from the founder's personal stash of $80 million in bitcoins. That's the security of this currency. The FBI can't even take it even though they can see it through the "public key", they can't be transferred without the other user's "private key". I guess they could torture him until he turns over his private key.

Another 600.000 bitcoins are currently locked up in the Silk Road founders personal purse which the FBI hasn't opened yet, but the currency is out of circulation. The NSA could break the encryption or they can just wait for iterative software to crack it.