News:

this is a news item (test)

Main Menu

SILK ROAD ~ ANONYMOUS MARKETPLACE SHUT DOWN

Started by M O'D, October 03, 2013, 08:59:00 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

M O'D

So it came to pass that the criminal agents of that which calls itself 'government' 'shut down' the free trading market place known as the 'Silk Road'.

As one door closes, so another will open: expect a more ingenious, more secure trading platform to emerge.  Interesting that the 'Feds' claimed to have seized the guy's Bitcoins.  on what grounds did they steal them and what will they do with them?


QuoteSeizure and arrest

Image placed on Silk Road after arrest of Ross William Ulbricht.
On October 2, 2013, Ross William Ulbricht, identified by the FBI as the owner of Silk Road under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" (after the fictional character from The Princess Bride), was arrested in San Francisco. He was reportedly in possession of 26,000 bitcoins with an estimated market value of $3.6 million USD.

The formerly sealed complaint from the U.S. Attorney says that, "As of July 23, 2013, there were approximately 957,079 registered user accounts reflected on the server." This information comes from an image of the "Silk Road Web Server" made by the FBI on that date. The criminal complaint revealed a number of additional statistics about Silk Road's popularity, previously unknown.

According to country-location information provided by these users upon registering, 30 percent represented they were from the United States, 27 percent chose to be "undeclared," and beyond that, in descending order of prevalence: the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, France, Russia, Italy, and the Netherlands.

During the 60-day period from May 24 to July 23, there were 1,217,218 messages sent over Silk Road's private messaging system.

From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013, there were 1,229,465 transactions completed on the site.

These transactions involved 146,946 unique buyer accounts, and 3,877 unique vendor accounts.

The total revenue generated from transactions was 9,519,664 bitcoins. Commissions collected from the sales by Silk Road amounted to 614,305 bitcoins.

The complaint also says that law enforcement officials have detailed information on the "use of certain Bitcoin wallets in the operation of Silk Road's escrow system."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)


"Obituary for Silk Road"

Quote

The Silk Road Marketplace, 2.5 years old, died Wednesday from mortal wounds inflicted by the mafia state.

Silk Road was born on February 2011 in the formally anonymous Tor network to the late Dread Pirate Roberts. Silk Road provided a safe platform for consenting adults to perform mutual trades of plants and other plant derivatives.

Silk Road was an advocate of self-ownership and an active member of a voluntary society free from government coercion.  It pioneered the crypto-commerce space and the utility of the digital currency Bitcoin, and was a strong supporter of the US Postal Service.

In just shy of three years of community service, they facilitated over $1.2 billion in satisfied trades with astonishingly few complaints by participants.

Silk Road is survived by nearly one million grieving patrons, many of whom had their money stolen upon its death. It is also survived by countless Bitcoin supporters who experienced a dramatic drop in the value of their savings.

In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that supporters contribute to the development of the peer-to-peer darknets, I2P and Meshnet, the anonymous altcoin Anoncoin, or your preferred organization to end the war on drugs.

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/10/obituary-for-silk-road.html
All Rights Reserved - Without Prejudice
Without Recourse - Non-Assumpsit
Errors & Omissions Excepted

M O'D

How can the police seize Bitcoins?
FBI seized $3.6m Bitcoin fortune of the alleged Silk Road mastermind – but how can you seize a currency that doesn't exist?
Quote

Silk Road Bitcoin haul, worth around $3.6m, represents the largest single seizure of the currency. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP
When the FBI seized alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht's 26,000 Bitcoin fortune on Tuesday, it raised the simple question: how can you seize a currency that does not exist?

The Bitcoin haul, worth around $3.6m, represents the largest single seizure of the currency, which exists entirely online.

Jon Matonis, executive director of the lobby group the Bitcoin Foundation, said that in order for the authorities to "seize" Silk Road's Bitcoins, it would need access to either its servers and/or to the passwords that protected those Bitcoins.

The agency could have accessed those passwords with or without Ulbricht's cooperation, said Jerry Brito, director of George Mason University's Technology Police Program.

"Basically they would have to get the private keys to the suspect's Bitcoin addresses. (Think of it essentially like getting the password to an account.)," Brito wrote on his blog.

"They could either get that with his cooperation or if he had stored it somewhere now accessible to the authorities. Once they have the private keys, they would be able to transfer the Bitcoins and I imagine that they would transfer them to a Bitcoin address that only they control."

The disclosure of keys to encrypted files is an increasingly important, and controversial, tool used by law enforcement agencies around the world. In 2009 a UK citizen was jailed for nine months after refusing to hand over the keys to decode his encrypted files.

In the US, lawyers have argued that forcing someone to hand over their encryption keys violates the Fifth Amendment right to protection from self-incrimination. The privacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently defending a Colorado woman accused of a mortgage scam. The Department of Justice had demanded that she decrypt her laptop as part of their investigations.

Users of Silk Road, which enabled the trade of illegal drugs through the web, are said to have traded some 9.5m Bitcoins since the site launched in 2011.

Bitcoin saw its value drop by 15% to $118 after news of Ulbricht's arrest broke. The value had increased to $126 by 6pm, but Brito said the association of the currency with anonymous drug trade could harm its value.

Matonis attempted to downplay the damage that the historic seizure could do to Bitcoin. "This is a drugs story not really a bitcoin story," he said. "My understanding is that Bitcoin was not a factor in the apprehension."

Typically Bitcoins are acquired by purchasing them from a bitcoin "exchanger", for cash. Once those Bitcoins are acquired they are kept in a "Bitcoin wallet" which is designated by a complex string of letters and a numbers. A user can then withdraw those Bitcoins by sending them back to an exchanger in return for cash.

The FBI's acquiring of 26,000 Bitcoins raises another question: what will the agency do with its haul? "It will be interesting to see what the authorities do with those assets," Matonis said. "Will they sell them through a licensed exchange and will we be able to track the sale?"

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/02/bitcoin-silk-road-how-to-seize
All Rights Reserved - Without Prejudice
Without Recourse - Non-Assumpsit
Errors & Omissions Excepted