"Silk Road" and approx $3.6m in BitCoin seized by FBI

[FlyingJesus]

idk how many of you will have been aware of its existence but the biggest deep web market Silk Road has been taken down and its owner arrested on multiple charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering of around $1.2bn, and even conspiracy to murder with the alleged hiring of an assassin. It was a hidden site apparently used mostly for the sale of drugs using the e-currency BitCoin (which I assume will take a huge nosedive now) with estimates of $1.22m worth of the currency traded each month.

Seen a lot of comments saying it's an attack on privacy to shut it down but if the owner really is guilty of all the above then it can't really be said that he was just trying to run a private community - web anonymity doesn't mean you can order people killed.

Story from BBC here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24373759)

[MKR&*42]

Yeah saw this earlier, I mean fair enough the charges are fair if it's for money laundering and plotting a murder - but I don't support the closing down of the website at all. It actually gave people a method of buying drugs that didn't involve you going to some random street corner and potentially buying something mixed with a load of weird ****, but this is all in the name of "protecting the people!1!1!!!!" by restricting personal freedom.

Score one for society's benefit the government.

[Jaiisun]

web anonymity doesn't mean you can order people killed.
Very true! Amazingly, too many people don't seem to realise that!

[Zak]

I'd never heard of the site. It was cool reading the story though.

[FlyingJesus]

Yeah saw this earlier, I mean fair enough the charges are fair if it's for money laundering and plotting a murder - but I don't support the closing down of the website at all. It actually gave people a method of buying drugs that didn't involve you going to some random street corner and potentially buying something mixed with a load of weird ****, but this is all in the name of "protecting the people!1!1!!!!" by restricting personal freedom.

Score one for society's benefit the government.

But the site is run and monitored by Ulbricht and a certain cut from sales goes direct to him, so if they're freezing his assets then the site has to be taken down at least temporarily :P think the bigger problem for users (rather than not being able to buy drugs, since there are other markets on the deep web for that anyway) is that it appears there were a lot of people with a lot of money in those accounts, and since BitCoin is a genuine currency this could constitute theft on the part of the feds

[Stephen]

I lost 0.0022 btc :'(

Have to admit that what got him arrested was the most failest of fails ever
fancy advertising the website and then 8 months later posting on another website with the exact same username asking for an it guy obviously for his ONLINE DRUG MARKET with the email "rossulbricht AT gmail.com"

atleast SMP and BMR can learn from his epic fail and also realise that the government haven't got any secret pro way to catch them unless they **** up like ulbricht

Just sad to see the reputation built by hundreds of vendors lost
plus the migration to the other black market sites is gonna be a scam haven, especially if people make accounts using trusted vendor names

also about the hit he paid on that guy who was gonna leak details.. When you're in this kind of business and you and hundreds of your clients could be exposed (and arrested) you can totally understand

[FlyingJesus]

Yeah think I lost about the same lol, BMR already calling itself SR's successor but I'm not sure what to trust in after the stories about Atlantis :P