Bitcoin Forum

...to allow people to withdraw their coins?

Once the government identified Ross Ulbricht and had control of the Silk Road servers, why didn't they keep the site open so that people could withdraw their bitcoins? They could have blocked the ability to trade (so as to not facilitate any drug deals) and instead only allow people to log onto their accounts at the site and withdraw their funds to their own Bitcoin addresses.

This is the part I'm talking about:


Link: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/168139-fbi-unable-to-seize-600000-bitcoins-from-silk-road-operator

... because buying and selling illegal stuff is illegal??? ... Those criminals are lucky they're not caught and put in jail. Or executed in another country.

Because the officials will say the bitcoin is involved in the ilegal trades and will be confiscated. I think no users will publicly claim the stuck fund from FBI or made some complain with the high risk of exposing their identity!

OK, but those coins don't actually belong to the Government though. They belong to the users of Silk Road. If I bought some drugs and gave the dealer $5 and was caught, that $5 note as well as the wallet in my pocket that contains a few more dollar bills, some credit cards, my drivers license, etc. is still mine, is it not?

Also not all of the trading that was going on was illegal:


Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29

thanks god they didn't close bitcoin generally. in russia they wanna do it and drugs are the main reason

Funds used in criminal activity... why on earth would the US government allow criminals to take them back?

Perhaps they should consider running a decentralized Silk Road with taxpayer money in order to keep bullets from flying around in the streets.

Legalizing drugs would be an easier solution.

;)

the reason is that you handed funds to a known blackmarket, so dont expect a refund.

lesson to learn, stick to legitimate product websites in future

I don't think Bitcoin is something that can really be "closed". Although I gotta admit the fact that they chose to auction the coins instead of destroying them did give Bitcoin a certain sense of legitimacy.


As I said before, not all of it was criminal. And I don't think people who were simply buying small amounts of drugs for personal use should have their funds confiscated - although I understand that's probably more of a personal moral opinion on my part.


I posted a thread a while ago about decentralizing websites. It would work well for sites that regularly prune their content (e.g. online auction sites, imageboards, torrent lists) as well as sites that have low bandwidth and storage requirements (e.g. microblogs). A decentralized Silk Road would be perfect and definitely worthy of implementation. Unfortunately, my programming skills are nowhere near good enough to do it myself and not many other people seem interested in the idea. :(


I never actually used Silk Road myself. And besides, I only really got into Bitcoin a few months after it was seized anyway.

How would they 'let' them do that? Surely they'd have to make an announcement and obviously that's not really possible without giving the game away. Besides, they likely saw all the money there as confiscatable seeing as it was being used for illegal activities so wasn't in their interest do do what you propose.

No. It's the dealers money but seeing as he was caught with it it would likely be confiscated as profits of crime. The police obviously don't let criminals keep the money they make from illegal activities.


How would they close it 'generally'? And even if they did they would never be able to stop its use on the deep/darkweb. Banning bitcoin would just push it underground.


It would be, but the powers that be don't see it that way for several reasons. There's money to be made by keeping the war on drugs running, though any intelligent person knows you could end the war overnight by legalizing drugs. The cartels would have no power at all then.

Why do you think that the government would help people? That is nonsense that many believe. The government doesn't work for the people, they just act like they do.
Why would they take less money for themselves than they could? Actually, why would anyone take $5 out of the stash instead of taking the whole stash of $50?

By seizing the Silk road's coins, the government pocketed a lot of money from the eventual sale.

... they have been confiscated. Wording matters. You are free to claim your bitcoin back and expose your identify and activity within silkroad to the FBI.
You probably aren't going to do that. End of the useless discussion.

No one will denounce to the police station that the FBI seized his own bitcoin, are you serious  ::)? The blocked the site and all the operation because for their "rules" is illegal to sell drugs, weapon, etc...

Agreed. It would make good business sense for one to begin working on such a site, keeping recent events in mind. And even if the U.S. legalizes all drugs, a decentralized exchange could still serve people from other countries. Also, even U.S. people could simply continue selling drugs on decentralized exchanges, rather than having to open storefronts or some unknown websites. The U.S. won't legalize all drugs anytime soon though, and the closest thing to it would probably be not outlawing nanotech-induced neurotransmitter manipulation.

Which money did the U.S. government steal exactly? Was it BTC that was placed in an escrow-like fashion for drugs that were awaiting delivery? Or was it simply BTC that potential customers were storing on the site for whatever reason? That is a huge distinction. In one case they are simply stealing from people who choose to do as they wish with their own bodies. But in the other case, it's literally guilty until proven innocent.

Well this is actually expected. As a decentralized market for Bitcoin gets finalized (there are some in the works like OpenBazaar), illegal ones are sure to follow. As long as the market is open source or easily adjustable someone will make a (first) decentralized Silk Road or something similar. There is nothing stopping them.

Looks like they've taken everything that was on the website. This includes funds help by people on it I assume.

They knew good and well that they'd end up keeping the money if they did it like that.

It is not simple to create a decentralized marketplace, I'm saying a really 100% decentralized and autonomos place for selling whatever stuff you want. We should wait something ethereum ( or maybe better) to start thinking to create a fully and functional decentral. online marketplace.At the end if who will create that marketplace if he will shut down their server, he will disappear with all the bitcoin (or altcoins).

Decentralized exchanges will slowly become the norm. People are losing faith in these sorts of markets and this is exactly why. Nobody should trust unknown criminals on the shady darknet and for good reason.


Exactly. A government in reality should serve the people but in actuality they don't. They're just there to give the illusion that they do whilst they siphon off public funds ie your taxes into private pockets. Most governments operate like this sadly.

Why would FBI do that? lol
The BTC deposited there was used for illegal activities...

It's amazing how people are shameless enough to support criminals, even if they're hiding behind the computer.

*It's not like I support everything the government does; but regardless of whether the government is good or not, I won't support these criminals.

What is shameless is the government forcing people to resort to the underground blackmarket for behavior which should be none of their business and certainly not a criminal matter. The government should have no authority over what adults may or may not choose to put into their bodies. The governments actually create these markets by default by dissalowing them in the first place. Clearly people want drugs and they should be able to get them.

It's amazing how so many people confuse legislation with morality.

Ghandi's "Be the change you want to see in the world" quote comes to mind here. I'm too cheap to even buy recreational drugs, but I wouldn't be too cheap to make a donation to a nonprofit organization established to create and maintain a decentralized drug marketplace. Just on principle. For profit is fine, but I'm of course not donating to that.

I think this may apply under "civil forfeiture", basically any asset you use or intend to use on illegal activity may be seized and taken away from you
in order to prevent misuse of goods.
It is funny however that they act concerned about individual funds of users "Funds held by users of the site, however, were not so well-protected" since im sure they dont care about
user safety in any way.

cheers

Your argument is akin to saying the government is forcing terrorists to resort to underground activities in order to build bombs for suicide bombings, etc. No they're not. They're saying you shouldn't be a terrorist.

Governments do their fair share of shameless activities, but this isn't one of them. It's too bad ethics can not be determined by logic alone, so I can't argue against your point that people can put whatever they want in their bodies, except to say that I disagree. It's extremely irresponsible and selfish. For example, you have to think about how it affects your children and family.

And besides that, it certainly affects others. The smell of marijuana lingers for hours and is absolutely disgusting. Well, I think it's marijuana, I'm not really sure since I know nothing about that kind of stuff. And the areas where there are many drug addicts are quite unpleasant. It really affects the community in a negative way.

Uh, no. My moral principle is to not support criminals harming people and their families. Just because my morals differ from yours doesn't mean I'm confusing legislation with morality.

I simply feel that it's wrong both in terms of being illegal and immoral. Too much freedom is a bad thing.

These drug laws are actually a hidden in plain sight revenue generating confiscation excuse.  Laws are thus created to pay the those who confiscate property.  

mo·ral·i·ty
məˈralədē/
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Would you like to bold the other 3 words you left out?

Now, as I said in my previous post, morality/ethics isn't something you can prove with logic, there's no real objective truth in it. People have a different sense of morality, and I guess some people simply don't think that doing drugs is immoral. Perhaps some people don't think murder is wrong either, people have been killing each other for thousands of years. Personally I really can't accept either, and feel this way very strongly. But I guess my comments were overly provocative, for which I am sorry.

You're forgiven, but maybe just smoke a joint and chill with the whole interfering with people's lives thing.

What do you think about a person who strips naked in the middle of a busy area and pees in public? Should they be allowed to do whatever they want if they're not in someone else's private property?

Doing drugs not only affects their immediate family, it affects the whole community, and a lot of drugs cause the air to stink for hours, as I've mentioned in an earlier post. Even if it didn't affect others I'd still think it's wrong, but to call it interfering with people's lives is quite simply ad hominem and red herring at the same time.

Nicely said. It is a illusion, but not a good one. It's quite obvious what they are doing. The people are ignorant, weak, foolish. I'm not surprised at all.

Let's say I hold money on Bitstamp. The agencies find out that Bitstamp was doing illegal things with the money, where do they get the right to take away my money just because I was holding it there? On the other hand, were there any legal items on Silk Road?

I don't really support the idea of widespread private property outdoors in the trespassing sense. I find it to be a value that the offshoots of Europe (e.g. Canada, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, etc.) value more than the Europeans themselves. They are more likely to just freely roam around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam)

The nudity part doesn't even register with me as being worthy of discussion. But even if they were having a heroin-fueled orgy on the sidewalk, I would just walk around them and that would be that. I grew up around sex, sex toys, drugs, etc. and don't feel psychologically damaged or anything due to having that exposure. The urine you speak of would be concerning. Perhaps a decentralized urine-related ordinance in which people get allowances of x amount of emergency peeing outdoors in y amount of time? And/or perhaps allow unlimited public peeing provided that pee-collection devices are used. But private businesses could set their own rules concerning that.

Stomping out imagined bad behavior before it even exists is interfering with people's lives. If someone's imagination goes wild, that's their own personal issue and they shouldn't drag others into it (and people they don't even know at that). Pattern recognition can be a helpful tool to make sense of the world, but when it's used for making laws, that's called discrimination.

All sellers knowingly supported the Silk Road with their money therefore all of them are criminals regardless of their products.

/thread

This thread is ending WAY too often, guys. It's already ended twice and we're only on the second page.  :(

Lets ask George Osborn THE UK CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER the second most powerful man in the UK his opinions on new laws

1, legalize all drugs
2, tax all drugs
3, tax prostitution

lol line them up George  ::)
http://atrueindependentscotland.com/george-osborne-chancellor-exchequer-drug-addict/ (http://atrueindependentscotland.com/george-osborne-chancellor-exchequer-drug-addict/)

Their opinions don't matter regardless, but if someone in the government doesn't have a lot of drug use experience, it's sort of amusing that their opinions on the topic should matter. I'm less likely to trust anyone who doesn't acknowledge that getting fucked up is super badass.

because those bitcoin were used for illegal stuff too and also the amount of money was too high, i don't see other reasons


isn't russia already out of bitcoin, i heard it got banned there

anyway they can't "close" bitcoin, bitcoin is decentralized...this is one of the beauty about bitcoin...ineluctable

Yes because while Silk Road was open for business, all drug crime on our streets stopped didn't it.

Why would they want people to withdraw their coins?  They made plenty of money by STEALING the coins and reselling them to Second Market and Tim Draper lol

Anything that government is doing isn't really helping or wasn't intended to help anyone at all. The drug war and war on terrorism is pretty much pointless. But this comes down to the same subject, and we keep going in circles.

Yes they have. It's been banned more or less. What did they achieve with this ban? Pretty much nothing. No amount of drugs was left unsold due to Bitcoin not being available in Russia.

Im not thinking drugs are the main reason Russia china clipped BTC wings.
Decentralization global movement of assets more a probability

Well, let's see. Keeping in mind that they don't even know us, which is more important to them?

a) watching out for our wellbeing
or
b) controlling the money supply

These paradoxical questions are just so hard to answer. If only I'd stayed drug free, then I might know.

C, Both of the above lol

"Anything that government is doing isn't really helping or wasn't intended to help anyone at all. The drug war and war on terrorism is pretty much pointless. But this comes down to the same subject, and we keep going in circles."

Somebody was left off the cc list ;-)

It's called "civil asset forfeiture" aka "guilty until proven inno... fuck it, you're guilty, period".

russia said that they did ban it because of child porn and other related illegal thing to the deep web, china because of large cny being converted in bitcoin and decentralization probably yes

They cannot control the crypto-currencies sp they are scared and ban them without any possible dialogue. In the next few years the cash will be abandoned and and digital payment will survive.

They seize money from 8 ys old children ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985596.0 ) , so what you expect from the "behemouth of the state" in case of an online crackhouse?

See "proceeds of crime" for relative country, you'll find during any investigation any asset found to be procured as a result of crime is susceptible to forfeiture proceedings.

I did wonder whether legit sellers on Silk Road might have case for getting their btc back if they could prove they weren't engaged in any illegal activity.

Suppose it's guilty by association with the darkmarkets...

they do wanna forbid using, trading and doing anything with bitcoin in russia! all the websites would be closed etc. and i case you trade or do whatever operations with btw-it's illegal and you get into troubles

The government doesnt opperate on a level of care like that.  Nobody really has the power in the government to slow down any process.  Once "bad" actions have taken place its all hands on deck to make things "right".

There is no "right" in criminal activity. Do you think that government will allow people to withdraw their bitcoins? After all they know people used it to buy illegal stuff? What kind of government allows criminals to 'take their money and go home'?

Not all the people were buying illegal stuff though. There was one seller from the UK who just sold headshop-types of stuff - papers, grinders etc and he wanted his coins back and should have got them if he wasn't doing anything wrong.

Edit Check out the story here http://www.coindesk.com/silk-road-seller-sues-stop-government-sale/

You don't have to have your money in a dodgy marketplace for US authorities to spirit it away. If they find your very own cash sat in your very own car, they'll help themselves to it with little to no recourse and for no justifiable reason.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/60343/hand-over-your-cash-how-us-cops-commit-highway-robbery

I'll stick to the occasional holiday there. With a brainwallet.

i think its more of making a statement that other currencies will not be allowed to compete with the USD, more so than stopping a drug site

FTFY. There is one way that government drones describe how civil asset forfeiture is _supposed_ to work, and there is the completely different way how the jackboots actually apply it in practice.

If one can accept the simple axiom that each person of whole mind owns him or herself, then logic can be applied to deduce that murder is immoral, and that dictating what another may ingest is also immoral.

If you can't accept that simple axiom, I have no desire to ever come in contact with you.

Not everyone on silk road was selling illegal things. Many vendors were just selling legal items.

Silk Road was the biggest dark market ever created. It got so much attention from the media and the general public. I don't know how hard it would be for US gov to get rid of the rest of the markets, but surely taking down the biggest one must have been a priority.

Let's face it, Ross didn't exactly make it hard for them. He was very sloppy so all it took is some good old fashioned and relativity easy detective work. What I would like to see is how the various Law Enforcement agencies tackle decentralized marketplaces.