FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

the FBI figure of 1.2 Billion is going to be massively massively off. It's just the total number of btc ever spent multiplied by the current exchange rate. SR has been around since 2011. up until jan or feb btc had been in the doldrums having previously peaked at about 25-30 dollars. i remember it sat around for about a year and a half maybe, very slowly rising from 1-2 dollars up to 10. so this figure is counting for example a purchase for 100E made when the btc was, lets say 2 euro, as being 5000E towards this figure of 1.2 billion.
This paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139.pdf calculated that in the 6 months before july 2012 the total revenue made by the sellers on the SR was 1.2 million a month, amounting to 92,000 a month for DPR. I know the site will have grown since then, but not by so much as to bring the monthly figure up to the 10s or 20s of millions needed to make the FBI figure even remotely accurate. This was much smaller fry i think than many people realise
 
Rather strange that bitcoin prices dropped, given this means $83M of bitcoins are out of circulation now.

Seems like traders are not thinking rationally, as usual.

Also I wouldn't be at all surprised that any big time buyers who didn't use encryption on top of SR are going to be getting visits, along with any sellers who were stupid enough to leak any identifiable info.
 
Mendo_K said:
Also the $3.6m they confiscated was from the actual website, so more than likely all the buyers + sellers money + possibly some of his own
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According to all the news reports I've read, that amount was his own. There was another amount of bitcoins given for the buyers and sellers. Or rather: the substantial part of that amount was said to be on his own account.

Edit: I can't find this information now, but I'm pretty sure that's what I read. Memory is fallible, though...
 
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tyrael said:
SR is clearnet?
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Of course not. I think the point was the following. If people use the same Tor browser for browsíng darknet as well as clearnet (something one could suspect many people to do out of convenience), then their clearnet browsing is subject to MITM attacks. In fact, it's much less safe to browse clearnet through a Tor browser than through a normal clearnet browser. So a threat is you catch darknet users via their contemporaneous clearnet browsing.


tweex said:
Rather strange that bitcoin prices dropped, given this means $83M of bitcoins are out of circulation now.
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The government might trade them into dollars, which would work to depreciate the bitcoin.

Seems like traders are not thinking rationally, as usual.
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It seems rational to me. Due to the SR disaster, people demand less bitcoins. Again, this should work to depreciate the bitcoin according to standard theory.

(The latter effect--on money demand--is presumably more important quantitatively.)
 
I haven't seen anything yet on the government managing to seize his assets outside of the $3.6M.

I'm also quite dubious about the government actually being able to do anything with the seized bitcoins for quite a while.

And for everyone doubting this was the real DPR... this was quite obviously the real DPR, he just turned out to be a retard when it came to security.
 
tweex said:
I haven't seen anything yet on the government managing to seize his assets outside of the $3.6M.
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But even if they sit on them, $3.6 mil isn't a lot. Hence why I stated that the channel working through money demand is more important quantitatively.
 
The Brazilian president stated in a recent UN address that she was going to develop internet infrastructure completely independent of that dependant on the Anglo nations. Bet that will cunt the Feds RIGHT off. Hooray!

Three cheers.
 
Quote from SR fourm :

"PLUTOPETE HAS BEEN RAIDED MOVE YOUR DRUGS AND REPLACE YOUR HARD DRIVES THIS INCLUDES ANY VENDORSA WHO HAVE PLACED ORDERS IN THE LAST 24HRS AS THEY HAVE A BAG OF HIS ORDERS "

He was UK vendor.
 
Taken from The Shroomery:

Well the plot thickens.

Someone posted another legal document besides the original one that hit the news. Clearly I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but I see little reason to doubt it.

Document can be found here: PDF [archive.org]

I originally thought he was cleverly bartering with the 80k for a prior hit, but apparently that "happened" except it was an undercover (UC) staged hit on a former silk road moderator.

While the other document is on a fairly short time frame in 2013, this one is talking about communication with an undercover since April 2012 really kicking up around December 2012.

Quick Summary:
UC begins contacting DPR in April 2012 posing a major source
In December 2012 UC convinces DPR to look for a vendor who wants to buy large quantities
DPR quickly finds an existing and established vendor for UC
DPR hands off situation to a silk road employee who puts UC and Vendor in contact
Vendor agrees to buy 1 kg of cocaine from the UC through silkroad and has the kg sent to the employee's address (apparently to be re-shipped)
On January 17, 2013 Feds make UC delivery to employee and wait for him to confirm the receipt on SR (the 1kg was worth ~27k)
On January 26, 2013 DPR informs the UC that the employee was arrested by LE and has stolen funds from SR users. Asks UC to beat the employee up and return the funds.
On Jan 27, 2013 DPR asks UC to execute the employee instead due to concerns that the employee knows too much and will cooperate with LE
On Jan 29,2013 DPR agrees to pay 80,000 USD for the hit in two installments, one half immediately and the other when the job is done
In February 2013, money exchanges hands and the feds stage torture and death and provide DPR with "proof"
On March 1 2013 DPR transfers the remaining 40,000 USD to the UC

Like I hinted at earlier, it now seems like the later blackmail/hit interaction with friendly_chemist and redandwhite was almost certainly some sort of CI/UC trap, but time will tell.

If that's the case, it seems like LE must not have known or at least had proof of DPRs identity until the ID incident.
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My sincere condolences to everyone who was burned in one way or another due to this fucktard of a war.

I know how some of you may feel as I've lost between $300 - $5000 in a similar manner (was sold bunk and/or was robbed at gunpoint) during separate incidents in the past. On a couple of these occasions, I was severely dope sick. And after being robbed, there was nothing I could do but ride out the rest of the week in agony as I was broke. For a while afterwards, I was prepared to kill those who did what they did (particularly the second time), but I digress.

This changes nothing. I cannot be more specific, but already two heads have grown back where the first was cut off. Fear not, all is not lost.

Lastly, fuck the FBI, and the DEA, and the NSA, and any other government agency which won't leave us the hell alone.
 
No offense to the guy, but what an idiot. He had active accounts on various social media platforms, and above all, used his own private email to promote the marketplace during the early days. Actually, props to him for making them search that long but those are stupid mistakes if you're running the world's biggest drug marketplace.

Hopefully Silk Road 2.0 will be hosted in a peer-to-peer like fashion, with bitcoins distributed to those that host serverspace to the service, which is funded by the billing distributors pay for being on the site. Or something along those lines..

Morphling said:
The Brazilian president stated in a recent UN address that she was going to develop internet infrastructure completely independent of that dependant on the Anglo nations. Bet that will cunt the Feds RIGHT off. Hooray!

Three cheers.
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Like that's going to work. They might even use repurposed nuclear submarines to monitor the international internet cables, and above all, for the infrastructure to be "internet" infrastructure it has to be connected to the rest of the internet. Now, something like Lavabit within that infrastructure could be more secure, but it's not like the NSA can circumvent encryption, right?
 
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oldirtybizza said:
This has to be the only war where only one side takes casualties.
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Well said.

StoneHappyMonday said:
You need a leader not drawn in by the pitfalls of egomaniacal social media (yeah, fuck Facebook while we're at it).
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:D

So is the plan now for the government to glorify their forcing people into buying way more dangerously off the streets again/turning to dodgy RCs to fry their brains instead? How more non-drug users don't see past this is beyond me. This whole situation is just pathetic.
 
After reading them new court papers, the ones from Maryland. Basically not only did DPR fuck himself by speaking to undercover agents and getting a hit, but before that he passed on the information of some of his top vendors to the FBI so they could do business with them, which in turn got the member of staff caught.. and the vendor.. wow. What an idiot.

Note also the FBI willingly shipping KGs of Coke....
 
I don't think this was discussed earlier in this thread: do you think DPR lied in his interview for Forbes, where he claimed that he didn't found Silk Road, but got involved in it later, after helping fix some weakness in the service?
The interview is here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/
The FBI seem confident the guy they have is the same person who started SR.
 
Mandark said:
I don't think this was discussed earlier in this thread: do you think DPR lied in his interview for Forbes, where he claimed that he didn't found Silk Road, but got involved in it later, after helping fix some weakness in the service?
The interview is here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/
The FBI seem confident the guy they have is the same person who started SR.
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Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe he realized that he had left some trail early on and knew that there was a possibility some of those early on posts could be eventually linked to him if the govt thought about it or got smart enough. So maybe he thought (was hoping) if he made such comments publicly, that he wasn't the original founder then maybe it might confuse them or throw some of the heat off if it came to that.

Also Pagey...in regards to your comment about non drug users figuring out what a bad thing it is (the war on drugs) and how much safer it is to have something such as SR functioning rather to all the bad things that happen when users are forced back to the street to buy and people going back to more dangerous and questionable substances.

I truly think that most people who are not users or who have no experience with drugs, ie. Had/has a loved one who is a user or dependent/addicted have no understanding nor care to. I think most of these non users feel like well, if that danger is there maybe it will discourage users from buying/using or if they do buy off the streets and bad things happen to them then oh well that will teach those drug users not to do it or maybe the attitude is "well, that's what they get/deserve for using drugs. We see this kind of attitude all the time with doctors and such. If you suffer an injury or illness as a result of drug use or if a medical personnel knows you are a user there attitude is much different than it is to other patients. They often have no sympathy or concern.
 
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just to clarify I think it's highly unlikely that individual buyers (unless you bought massive amounts of stuff in bulk) are going to get done for this, even if you didn't use pgp. Just too many people and too much time to bother prosecuting. So people should chill with their paranoia.
 
Anyone should check out this tumblr page for a full timeline of events.


Mandark said:
I don't think this was discussed earlier in this thread: do you think DPR lied in his interview for Forbes, where he claimed that he didn't found Silk Road, but got involved in it later, after helping fix some weakness in the service?
The interview is here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/
The FBI seem confident the guy they have is the same person who started SR.
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Well, he did post a lot of questions on stackoverflow and bitcointalk asking all sorts of things which are related to running a site, but he doesn't seem very knowledgeable. Maybe he took over from someone with even less knowledge, but I guess he just started the thing.
 
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