Bitcoin Forum

.. Ross Ulbricht aka. The Dread Pirate Roberts. 8)
https://i.ibb.co/wWBfj26/FreeTDPR.jpg (https://ibb.co/9Tc7SdY)
https://i.ibb.co/M9byKHW/FreeRoss.jpg (https://ibb.co/V3d0bGr)
Didn't know this film was getting done with hollywood all but shutting down mid-last year. So they must of been just doing the special effects in post-production in having it wrap up inorder to be released earlier this year.
But here it is for all to watch and see what they thought had happened during the bust of the creator of the silk road website.

Now with the boom of bitcoin in early 2021, this is prime time for them to benefit in just how much publicity all of crypto has received, since the likes of what Elon and Saylor have been doing with their contributions thrown into the hype machine since the end of 2020.

Here is the outline they had on imdb for it:
Philosophical twenty-something Ross Ulbricht creates Silk Road, a dark net website that sells narcotics, while DEA agent Rick Bowden goes undercover to...
Actors: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Yun, Jimmi Simpson, Jason Clarke, Paul Blott, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Daniel David Stewart, Kenneth Miller, Alexandra Shipp, Katie Aselton, Lexi Rabe, David DeLao, Beth Bailey, Mark Sivertsen, Will Ropp
source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7937254
trailer: https://youtu.be/LBOBuqBzn7w

Tagline: The amazon for drugs. ;D

Releasing tomorrow according to imdb date, February 19th.

They are going for a theatre release rather than releasing it on the OTT platforms? I want to see how honest their depiction of Silk Road and DPR is. Perhaps they should mention that the real reason why the FBI went after Silk Road is because the Mexican drug cartels were losing money due to competition from the dark market.. or perhaps that is too much to ask for. I hope at least they would show what happened after the arrest, including some of the rogue FBI agents stealing BTC from the silk road wallet and transferring them to their personal wallets.

I don't know why I sense that bitcoin will be shown as an evil in this movie! Probably yes! Probably not! I can see only one mention of Bitcoin in the trailer but I really hope it doesn't show bitcoin in negative light. The trailer is already popular with 62k views but the problem is, bitcoin can be shown as an evil money which connected the dots with silk road and its customers.

Not good! Especially at this time when bitcoin has started generating a lot of interest among the corporates!

It seems like it's going to be a good movie. This quote doesn't seem to hit me in a good way though: "Amazon, for drugs". We could make assumptions and that might've been the main public selling point of the Silk Road, but how sure are we that that was literally Ross Ulbricht's intention?

Don't get your hopes up lol.

The curiosity will just grow more and they'll realize that Bitcoin wasn't meant to be used that way, surely an easy to judge mind will think it was meant for evil when it's not unless those who watch read the whole whitepaper too.

That would be worth to know in the movie but I wouldn't be that surprised if there is/are alterations or the production doesn't know the whole story, just my opinion.

This movie was not produced by a big production house and given the pandemic season, I don't think that it will receive much attention within the United States. Less than 63,000 views in three weeks, despite being posted in the official YouTube channel of the Lionsgate Movies is quite disappointing for the production team. That said, I don't want to comment much about the content, before I get to watch the movie.

BTW, did the movie producers got permission from Ross Ulbricht? In the movie they are using his real name and they are claiming that the story is based on what actually happened. So if Ross hasn't given them permission, they can't really release this movie. Everyone seems to have forgotten about Ross. A pardon from Donald Trump was his last opportunity to be freed. But now it is 100% sure that he will die in prison without ever seeing the outside world again. That is the price you pay, when you go against the authorities.

After a while, everyone forgets about these guys. I hardly see anyone talking about Aaron Swartz nowadays. On the other hand, the individual who is responsible for his death (Carmen Ortiz) is now in a very powerful position.  

It seems that this is an independent release,rather than a Hollywood blockbuster with 100 million dollar budget and A-list Hollywood stars in the cast.
I guess that nobody outside the crypto industry and the tech world(cyber punks,nerds,etc)would pay attention to this movie.
The "average Joe" doesn't know who Ross Ulbricht actually is and what is Silk Road.
This movie has nothing to do with Bitcoin,so I don't know why OP posted this thread in the Bitcoin discussion forum.

Sounds bad but that is the cold reality. Snowden, Assange, Ross or anyone else who puts themselves on the line to go against the establishment inevitably end up isolated or incarcerated. Those are just the cases that gain attention. The numerous whistleblowers and truth-seekers within society/ organizations who choose to do the "right thing", almost always pay the price for not compromising with their consciences.

Just hope that the movie will actually treat him as the brilliant, idealistic kid he was who ended up playing someone else's game of intimidation and reprisal.

I'm sure it will be an interesting film!
Very much I want to watch it, Ross is an interesting man, thanks to whom bitcoin now has achieved such success!
I also really liked Nick Bilton's book about Ross Ulbricht... I recommend everyone to read it!

Snowden, Assange.etc still have a chance. They have a lot of people supporting them. That is not the case of Ross Ulbricht. Even if he has any supporters, those people are not going to come out in the open for the fear of reprisals. The FBI has put all sort of charges against Ross, such as drug trafficking, murder, money laundering, blackmail.etc. Anyone who supports him will be quickly branded as a supporter of illegal narcotics trade. Snowden and Assange doesn't carry such baggage. Snowden is living in Moscow as a fugitive, while Assange is currently fighting extradition. They are in a much better position when compared to Ross.

Where there any corroborating articles to support that claim because that is a pretty big conspiracy if there really is although I don't think that they will be putting conspiracy that makes FBI look bad to the public in a movie.

If it is Hollywood then your hopes will be for nothing, if it fits the narrative and it sells more tickets then bitcoin will be on whatever light they want it to be. I just hope that this movie will show the highlights of the story and make it follow what really happened as much as possible.

I beg to differ...

Ross Ulbricht's was a focus point on this forum for years and a lot of the forum users used his site and some of them even petitioned for his release. So it is very relevant and also information that a lot of people would want to know about... I being one of them, because I surely would want to see this movie.

We had several movies before where Bitcoin was at the center of criminal actions, but this one might help to answer some questions .. hopefully it is based on facts and not fiction. (Which I doubt, because it is all about Silkroad and Ross Ulbricht's)

OP, thank you for the heads up .... I hope this one will do justice to his story.  ;)

You do realize Ross was a part of these forums don't you? ::)
And the sole reason why he got caught was because they traced him using his forum account to an email he idiotically used for his personal use. :P
https://i.ibb.co/vmGG83F/Davis196isa-Dumba.jpg (https://ibb.co/sQGGrKf)
This was a screen to a part where an fbi agent was logged in to read his messages back to other forum members, which was inevitable to his demise.
It has got to be the most noobish move for him to make in order to get caught since he was meticulous with how he conducted his business so to not be detected for years on end.
There was a whole entire program dedicated to this case and showed exactly how they caught up to him featured On FBI Declassified.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ross-ulbricht-dread-pirate-roberts-silk-road-fbi

I suggest you watch it before stating that this doesn't belong here in the bitcoin discussions thread. Because it's whole reason for ending up the way it did and even in part to it's creation was due to the forums and it's involvement to bitcoin!
Straight facts, whether you like it or not.
It is reality and not just a movie like this production was based on..
real life events. ;D

You don't see SilkRoad and Bitcoin as having something in common? SR would have not been possible without Bitcoin, and the second wave of adoption, after the first pioneers, was SR users. Bitcoin started being in the news thanks to SR.

Seriously the FBI went after Silk Road because other drug cartels were loosing money  :D. It is a new spin of the event as i am not aware of why they went after but they were getting notorious as you were even allowed to hire hit man and when you start these you are bound to end up in jail considering you are allowing to facilitate these activities. 

If that is the case, I would suggest that people be warned about such movie.

By the way, the movie must not expose innocent/harmless Bitcoiners to harm with what it tries to potray, or get people to start turning against Bitcoin unnecessarily.
I believe the transparency of Bitcoin (which fiat doesn't offer) made things easy for the security agencies... and it's transparent to the public too. This is the kind of thing a Just society should promote not resist.

It is an independent production and therefore I am hopeful that they will portray a neutral picture of Silk Road and Ulbricht. That said, it needs to be seen how much interest it will generate among the average moviegoers. This movie should have been released at least a year ago. It would have increased the chances of Ulbricht getting a pardon from Trump. But now Trump is gone, and he was probably the only president who could have considered a pardon for Ulbricht. Also, I am a bit worried about how they are going to portray Bitcointalk.

The problem with bitcoin is that almost everyone including normal people, investors and even some of the core dev team still believe bitcoin is usuable for criminals or protects them.

Bitcoin is not and was never usefull for criminals or designed for them. Everyone just gets it wrong.
Over 400 darknet markets have been taken down and many other cyber criminals just because of bitcoin and not their infrastructure.

Its also not anymous. Its not anarchistic and its not to destroy banks and govermnets. The goal was never any of them.

Sadly all this things the current anarchistic BTC dev team is trying to achieve. To protect and allow criminal activites. But they don't have a bloody clue about anything.

BTC is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is desgined to be cash and money. BTC is also not cash nor money.

Bitcoin was designed to make everyones life better and make criminal acitivies harder and more and more less possible and to end corruption.
Corruption which causes the daily wars, hate and problems which affects and harms everyone every single day.

Beside that everyday tens of billions of dollars in fiat are used, earned and spend for highly criminal activities. From the streets up to the banks. Without anyone noticing or anyone doing or can doing anything against it.

You can't do that on a transperent distributed and protected by economics ledger or blockchain.

And everyone is crying about bitcoin but doesn't get that it is the opposite of illegal and it doesn't allow criminal activities.

Wow, I am so amazed by this. It really excites me to know that there is an upcoming film that highlights the use of bitcoin. I just hope that they would not make such a bad image for bitcoin in that movie which may mislead all people who know close to nothing about it. But nevertheless, I am so excited to see this movie. I hope this movie gets to be available here in my country soon.

I already watched the movie and I talked about it few days ago in other SilkRoad topic, that means imdb release date is wrong :)
Not a bad movie to watch especially if you are interested in Bitcoin history, but I think they added to many fantasy elements and they presented Ross character as some kind of lunatic.

Anyone knows what is Ross Ulbricht bitcointalk account?
Maybe silkroad (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=3984.0)?

This post is interesting, Silk road and Bitcointalk. How it played a role in its rise and fall. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4437773.0)

If it shows the main character in a badlight, then surely it has to show Bitcoin in a bad light? You can't be talking about one guy and make him the sort of villain but who uses good tools;)

And yeah I know this is hollywood so don't believe 90% of what you see portrayed on the screen. It's all for drama and making money, truth is not really important;)

They may or may not be intentionally putting Bitcoin in the bad light, but from one of the main quotes from the trailer alone: "Amazon, but for drugs" and bitcoin being one of the main currencies of the platform? It's almost guaranteed lol. Not to mention that putting bitcoin/crypto as a hacker/drugs thing is what's going to mostly make people interested I assume. Probably only a minority would be interested in "bitcoin for payments/SoV" in a movie.

Release date was not wrong, as always movie leaked few days before that on torrents, but official release was indeed February 19th.

I watched it too, and it's kinda meh. As you said, too many fictional things added, but that was kinda expected since this is not documentary. The only good thing about the movie is that some people may dig deeper and check what really happened. Imho, this whole subject deserves much better film, with bigger budget and more serious director. Someone like David Fincher would do much better job, and would fit this perfectly. What we got is essentially made-for-TV low budget film with zero character development.


They didn't really mention bitcoin much so I don't think that will have any impact on people's perception. Maybe if movie was released 5 years ago, but not now when everyone and their grandma knows about bitcoin.

Hope that this will be documentary film more or less

Well movie was ready and finished in 2020 for Tribeca Film Festival but it was postponed because of covid pandemic, and I would not say it is low budget movie but I don't know exactly what was the actual budget.
Lionsgate released it and they have some solid actors like Jason Clarke and Jimmi Simpson, there are some ok reviews on imdb and rotten tomatoes and I would say movie is watchable, and interesting for people who don't know anything about SlikRoad.
Like I said before, funny part in movie for me was when they create Bitcoin wallet with mobile phone and ID card for DEA detective  :D

Just an idea of mine, maybe Roger Ver could be sponsor for some better and more realistic movie and do something good with his money, and we know he still supports Ross very much.
Other Bitcoin whales could also do the same and paint more realistic picture of Ross, Silkroad and Bitcoin.

There will be some action and suspense to make it interesting for people who don't know what it's about and decide to see it because it's a new release.
Makes me wonder if they'll show that agents who caught him were dirty. Not many filmmakers show things as they are and rather prefer to add their own biased views.

This is exactly what they have in full print on the screen for the opening scene:
"This was made of a true story... except for the parts we made up." ;)

So of course they added and replaced some parts of what happened to make it more appealing to the general audience which are not into crypto or technical in what was involved.

For Christ's sake, they even took out that Ross used Bitcointalk forums to get caught by the fbi agent pretending to be another forum user. ::)
They showed them using the forum of silkroad as that's what was from my previous screencap of that agent with the earpiece but they replaced the interactions he have had with the agent on this forum with just a messenger type platform instead.

Here are the screencaps of those pm's from the fbi declassified documentary they had released on this case at the beginning of the year.
https://i.ibb.co/j8WJY00/IMG2020-Bah.jpg (https://ibb.co/TwbWGjj)
https://i.ibb.co/Wz1fTTg/IMG2020-Lo-L.jpg (https://ibb.co/fN7Hcc4)

Ross Ulbricht had multiple accounts here in the forum and altoid (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3905) was one of his main account and from what i understand some of the posts are deleted .

---

Will watch the movie, i wish everyone can sign the petition for his release Freeross (https://freeross.org/) because the sentence he got cannot be justified considering he never sold drugs, all he did was host a site and the biggest drug sellers on the site got a maximum sentence of 10 years and below.

Just started watching this move around 30 minutes back, and so far it looks pretty unbiased. It is really surprising. The FBI would have wanted the movie makers to paint Ross as an evil individual who cared only about money. But the producers are trying to be as honest as they can with the subject. Still, some 1 hour 20 minutes remaining in the movie, and I don't want to make my final judgment yet.

Here are some of the quotes from the movie:

I watched this movie last night. I guess I'm a bit let down because American Kingping (the book about Ross, and Silk Road) really focused more on the relationship between Ross and Variety Jones.

I'm really not sure the movie is all that great tbh.  Between Variety Jones and the IRS agent who found Ross' email using a google search about Silk Road both missing. It makes it hard to really enjoy it.

#freeross

This will help us explain bitcoin to other people who have been remained ignorant until this time. You know, movies like this would be beneficial if they don't cherry-pick about a certain bad incident,s or else this movie won't help at all. I mean, If it's all about the bad side of Bitcoin which we all know it's not totally that bad, then this will add gasoline to the fire of their ignorance. I need to add this film later to my next watch list so that I can post some honest reviews about the movie. After all, we need to give them some compliments if they do the job right this time.

There is a documentary about SilkRoad called Deep Web (2015). I do enjoyed that one.

If you think it is unbiased then i will watch the move, usually these kind of theme usually will be boring and mostly fictional but if it is an almost accurate portrait of Silk Road then i will watch the movie.
Let me ask you this, how to watch this movie, is it available in Netflix or other similar apps.

How would you rate it? Worth watching or a waste of time? From 1 to 10?

I read a lot about the case but I need to find some time to take on the book. That's going to be a must read for me, but I'm ready to skip the movie if the reviews aren't good enough.

read the book. movie is prob 6/10 tbh.

I don't think that it is available in any of the OTT platforms yet, since the producers went for a theatre release. From what I have heard, the movie was released in a total of 100 theatres within the US and the weekend collection was a modest $47,000. Silk Road managed to beat second week collections of Fear of Rain in terms of collection, although the latter was released in 120 theatres.

I you really want to watch the movie legally, then you can visit VOD websites such as Vudu or Redbox.

Took me 2-3 days to find enough spare time to complete watching this movie. I am impressed with the filmmakers for giving an accurate picture of Ross Ulbricht. Ross was not a drug peddler or a scammer. He never cared about money. All he wanted was to stand up for his Libertarian political beliefs and create marketplace where anything can be purchased anonymously. This is not the picture FBI want you to believe. The FBI want you to believe that Ross was a hardcore criminal, who wanted to flood the US with drugs.

One inaccuracy I noticed was that the rogue FBI agent (Shaun Bridges, depicted as "Rick Bowden" in the movie) is being portrayed as a family man, who stole money from Ross to fund the school education of his daughter. A robbery is a robbery, no matter what. But tell me who need $800,000 for the payment of school fees? Tell me the name of the school which charges this much as tuition fee.

But apart from a few minor inaccuracies, the movie was more or less unbiased.

I was worried that the movie would miss this important aspect of the “DPR persona”. Here’s an interview with him published in Forbes Magazine, https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/?sh=6d2562b05732

He was a believer of a true free market, with very minimal state interference.



For drama, and to not make the Man of the State look like a typical fiend. Haha.

Where/how did you watch the movie? Online?

I've signed the petition a while ago. I don't do drugs, it's just not my thing. But I don't think people should get imprisoned for doing or distributing them either. Especially Ross seems like a good human being who just wanted to make an engaging use case for cryptos and wanted people to enjoy their freedoms which they, I believe, deserve to enjoy. I really hope they release him soon...
As for the movie, the trailer doesn't look like it's going to dive deep into the character of Ross Ulbricht, Austrian school of Economics and all that. And the top review on imdb is currently the one that gives this movie 1/10 for inaccuracies and unfair treatment of the situation.

I regards to the bolded part, I think there are certain places where the use of dangerous weapons should be limited or prevented.. places where there is high possibility of abuse of such weapons especially for mass killings/destructions and serious crimes. In places where they are allowed, the users should be willing to take responsibility for their misused/abused
By the way, I would prefer a society where non-lethal weapons that are as effective and fast as certain lethal weapons are mostly allowed.

Never?  Are you some sort of puritanical zealot?  Your unqualified use of absolute statements is adorable, but misguided.  Any form of transferable value can be useful for people looking to break the law.  If I've met people who have used Bitcoin for buying recreational substances on the darkweb, then your argument must be false.  You're living in a dream world if you think no one has ever done that. 



Oh right, I remember now, you're one of those faketoshi-worshipping forkcoiners.  Best of luck with your feeble attempts to spread Craig Scammer Wright propaganda.



It neither allows nor disallows criminal behaviour.  It remains neutral.  You can't ascribe morality to it, despite your best efforts.

That is a given, we know that bitcoin is going to be portrayed in a bad light, after all if it was not because of the existence of a decentralized currency that is pseudonymous then Silk Road would have been impossible.

However we must remember that no publicity is bad publicity, if there are people not aware that something like bitcoin exists this is a great and cheap way for those people to discover bitcoin, and whether they want to come to this market because of curiosity or their desire to make money this plays in our favour regardless of how bitcoin is portrayed.

I have watched the movie and it is not as bad as the IMDB ratings would indicate. I found the portrayal of Ross Ulbricht more or less neutral. You can't expect anymore than this from the Hollywood, or else the FBI won't allow the movie to be released. And I disagree with the second part. Now we should strive for positive publicity. Because nowadays Bitcoin is well known all across the globe and the majority of the world population have heard about BTC.

In my opinion, it’s debatable. Criminals/malicious actors would always have access to dangerous weapons regardless of State Restrictions, or not. Then why not give the normal citizens fair access to the same weapons for self-defense?

It’s like Bitcoin, the state can “weaponize” the financial system against you. Bitcoin is the equalizer.

It was let's say, an interesting take on the events which took place from all the documentaries and shows I have watched trying to unravel what had transpired over the course of the silk road and it's undeniable demise on that faithful day in a San Francisco library where the takedown took place.

After watching it I didn't see them slander on bitcoin but kind of half heartedly just said "This is bitcoin and this is what we are going to use as our untraceable payment gateway so to not get caught!"
But it didn't necessarily, atleast to me, try their hardest to make the audience believe bitcoin was and is evil.
They simply put forward it was the process used to get to their final product out to their customers inorder so to fulfill those business transactions.
It could of been another form of payment put in place of the film and the audience wouldn't have batted an eye to it.

With the release of this film done and dusted and I believe available on most streaming media channels as of now.
Those who have viewed the film, what are your thoughts to their depiction of Ross and the events which ensued to his inevitable arrest by the end?
As I would imagine there have been several people who were and still are on these forums who have had direct contact thrown back and forth. But those would have probably been surrendered to the fbi during the case and enviable trial of the dreaded pirate roberts.

I have not watched this film at current but surely will be willing to watch it very soon due to vast events connected with Silk Road an unregulated market place which eventually became a place for drug dealings using decentralised currency Bitcoin.But was it the main aim of Ross Ulbricht? He was one who proposed the idea of Silk road and soon it became illicit activities center hub.The DEA agent Rick Bowden eventually pin down Ross for his crimes.It will be interesting to watch how the main actors Nick Robinson (Ross) and Jason Clarke (Rick) would portray the character to general public as sometimes villians portray positive vibes to the user.So it would be interesting to watch how Tiller Russel directed the movie and series of events happened after 2011.

IMHO, the movie sucks.  They even start it out saying that most of what they portray is made up.  It's a ridiculous movie that barely touches the truth.

Ross Ulbricht https://i.imgur.com/kqEAgNS.png ^{[1 (https://twitter.com/RealRossU/status/1366798043123748865)]}It looks like Ross is doing well since he uses Twitter regularly, ^{[I'll try to find out his opinion on this film]}. The film itself, by the way, is pretty good, despite some inaccuracies, and if you do not take into account drugs, then Claude Shannon would highly appreciate his work, (If he was alive). After all, who knows what value Bitcoin would have now had it not been for the Silk Road.

Interesting what you have said about what Ross would be saying about a film about what has claimed is life is living like now in prison.
Wasn't he sposse to be one of the ones trump was going to pardon if he did stay in office? :-[
But I fully agree with your last statement;
Bitcoin would not be where it is today without having the silk road paving it's path to greatness.
Thank you Sir Dreaded Pirate Roberts!
I commend you where ever you end up in this world. ;D

I really liked the book about the cyber criminal, but didn't like this movie, which I expected more from! It's very strange that Dread Pirate Roberts' helpers are not covered in the movie...
Also the movie didn't cover the main reason for catching Ross Ulbricht - his E-mail...
In general the plot seemed to me to be as compressed as possible...

Awh the old and simple times of Bitcoin  ;D

You will be disappointed if you expect something out of a movie that has a limited time that they need to fit all the more important parts, the reason that they might not have added the helpers is that it doesn't evoke any sensational feeling in the movie.

That surely can't be counted as a negative thing about the movie, cause you ought to know that even when a movie, book, etc wants to convey or portray a real event or something of that sort, every bit of it can't be non-fictional, the director or author must bring in fictional/made up events as well, and mix them with the true story, making it thus more entertaining and appealing to watch.

Having said that, by the comments in this thread, it's clear quite a lot of people do not appreciate the movie for one personal reason or the other which is clearly understandable and subjective, I'll take out time to see the movie so I'd give my own review on it.

https://i.ibb.co/dfdL6kT/BTC-Twitter-Hacker.jpg (https://ibb.co/2FDsPc9)
source: https://www.engadget.com/twitter-bitcoin-hacker-three-years-prison-055216121.html

So this kid who hacked into all those twitter accounts to cyphen out $173k worth in bitcoins and comprimising a massive social media platform costing them millions in a PR mess only gets 3 years in prison while Dread pirate roberts gets life?
Ahhh okay. ::)

You forget that the US justice system treats ordinary proceedings differently and proceedings that are of a political nature. And the Ross Ulbricht case was one of those times when the government wanted to show strength in the fight against drugs. Although in most cases such a "war on drugs" does not give visible results, I believe this high-profile case promised someone high-ranking positions (in the sense that, covering one channel for the distribution of prohibited substances, another immediately appears). So Ross, by and large, is just a hostage of the situation.

Prohibition is government criminal enterprise.
Without prohibition there would be no drug cartels.
The Silk Road story is proof of FBI criminal activity.
The war on drugs is us goverment war crime against all humanity.
The social damage done globally over the past 50+ years is impossible to calculate.

In case of Graham Ivan Clark, I guess the punishment was just. He was 17-years old at the time of the crime and spending 3 years behind bars is going to be a harrowing experience for him. On the other hand, Ross Ulbricht got two consecutive life terms (plus another 40 years) without any chance of parole, for setting up an online market place. As icopress explained, the decision to handout such a harsh punishment was a political decision.