Thanks to the publication of just one article on Silk Road, the cryptocurrency has almost doubled - from $ 18 to more than $ 30. That's what else the portal helped bitcoin.
ATM hacking allowances, cocaine energy and excellent crystal meth — all this and much more was part of the wide range of Silk Road sites (“Silk Road”). In the open spaces of the portal one could even hire a killer - there would be money.
What began as a libertarian's dream ended in prison, but this does not mean that Silk Road left behind only a negative mark. If you put aside dubious ethical issues, Silk Road has become a key link to the final adoption of cryptocurrencies, in particular Bitcoin (Bitcoin). Without exaggeration, the platform has helped pave the way for the entire industry.
A few years after his arrest (and protracted silence), the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, finally contacted, recording Twitter from prison. He comments on the “strange course” of his life and thanks those who supported him. If you personally knew Ulbricht before he embarked on the Silk Road, you would be shocked to see him behind bars. Now let's follow in the footsteps of Ulbricht and learn about the history of Silk Road.
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Before the creation of Silk Road, Texas-born Ross Ulbricht was engaged in completely different things: he conducted intraday trading on the stock exchange, founded a video game production company, and eventually started working with his neighbor Donnie Palmertri in the online store for used books Good Wagon Books. In the end, Palmertri moved to Dallas, and Ulbricht remained in charge. However, his time at the helm was short - a couple of months later the Good Wagon book warehouse collapsed, and with it the company itself.
Ulbricht was not particularly upset - now nothing prevented him from working on the long-awaited Silk Road project. As a libertarian, Ulbricht wanted to establish a truly free market that officials could not take in hand.
Silk Road was an online trading platform that existed in the depths of the darknet. By installing the Tor browser, you could make anonymous purchases there, paying with Bitcoins.
In this parallel reality, there were only a few rules: no child pornography, fraud and sales of what could harm other people. Otherwise it was a completely open market. And although the project was conceived with good intentions, the site quickly grew into something more and unpredictable.
Ulbricht named its market in honor of the historic trade routes that stretched from Europe to Africa and East Asia. For several months in a row, he single-handedly managed the site under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts (“The Terrible Pirate Roberts”), while maintaining his anonymity.
Gawker Article
For quite a while he acted alone. The site flourished from the very beginning, providing Ulbricht with good money for a comfortable life in Australia with her sister. The platform has not yet gained such momentum to threaten a healthy balance between work and personal life. That all changed in June 2011.
That summer, Gawker reporter opened the Ross website and wrote about what he saw. The article, which now has more than three million views, has put Silk Road in the spotlight. At the peak of popularity, about a million users were registered on the site, and the cost of monthly transactions varied from 2 to 7 million dollars.
From the launch of Silk Road to its closure in 2013, the cost of bitcoin has grown from an incomplete $ 1 to $ 130. Thanks to the Gawker article alone, the currency soared almost doubled - from $ 18 to more than $ 30.
Inspired by the massive rise in traffic, Ulbricht worked to improve the platform and attracted a small staff. He moved the site to a scalable server, built an escrow service and improved the rating system of buyers and sellers. He also worked on community building in collaboration with other groups, such as the book club, to discuss key ideas.
However, while the underground was investigating Silk Road, the investigation on the other side of the screen also did not lag behind.
On the tail
Following the publication of Gawker, US Senator Charles Schumer publicly urged the Drug Enforcement Administration (DUA) and the Department of Justice to close Silk Road. Several agencies have taken appropriate measures. The Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI’s cybercrime unit, and several UBN affiliates have all got down to business in their own way.
The “utopian” market began to crumble with the arrest of Curtis Green, an elderly Mormon from Utah who helped Ulbricht do business. Green was detained by Special Agent Karl Mark IV of the KFU Division. From the side of the unit, a “drug dealer” under the pseudonym of Nob, who rose high in the Silk Road rating, worked on the site under cover.
During the capture and interrogation of Green, an FBI cyber brigade was able to identify the Silk Road server. Reddit published information about the leakage of IP-addresses of Silk Road, which allowed to establish the location of the server in Iceland. From there, the experts began to track the difficult path already to the Ulbricht computer itself.
A search led them to a cafe in San Francisco - the city where Ulbricht settled in to continue his project. But at that time, cyber crime specialists did not have enough data to figure out who was hiding under the guise of the Terrible Pirate Roberts, or where exactly he dwells.
Unaware of his alter ego, national security agents looked into Ulbricht's house in San Francisco to investigate the origin of the sham of fake IDs they confiscated at the Canadian border. Fake IDs were supposed to come to his address. After the interrogation, the agents simply left, the time of the arrest has not yet come.
Arrest
Finally, the FBI cyber brigade discovered a number of Silk Road-related messages on the forum that sent security personnel to Ulbricht’s personal email. A scan of the federal database showed the National Security Report on fake IDs and recent data on Ulbricht's residence, which was located just around the corner from a cafe with a key IP address.
The investigation team continued spying on Ulbricht in an attempt to gather enough evidence to close the site and arrest. October 1 2013, the case was ready.
FBI team members traced Ulbricht to the San Francisco Library, where they seized his laptop, searched and eventually arrested. At that very moment, the Silk Road administrator's account was opened on the laptop - which was the missing piece of the puzzle. The FBI has managed to prove that Ulbricht is the main one.
Приговор
Ulbricht was convicted of seven articles, including money laundering, the spread of drugs and the organization of a criminal community to carry out "continuous criminal activity." He is currently serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
As the king of the darknet, Ulbricht rotated millions of dollars a month in a month, getting almost 80 million dollars in net income from his position. He was also accused of trying to organize contract killings of his opponents, but these cases were never considered.
During the arrest, the FBI seized 144 000 bitcoins. At that time, the entire amount was estimated at 28,5 million dollars, but now their value would be over a billion dollars. About a third of the money the US Marshals Service put up for auction - one person bought everything, Tim Draper.
Some libertarians and supporters of cryptocurrency now perceive Ulbricht in the form of a martyr and raise him to the rank of savior. But not everyone thinks so. Many believe that he is responsible for the most egregious crimes in the history of mankind.
Whatever opinion you hold, the scale of its influence on our world is undeniable. If it were not for the territory of freedom and drugs created by Ulbricht, Bitcoin and blockchain technology could never have found their way into our everyday reality.