Bitcoin Forum

So what was the impact of Silk road both first and second version , I assume I wasen't here on the opening of Silk road 1.0 or when it closed aswell ... I don't remember what happened to the price when the 2.0 closed honestly wasen't much interested in knowing this kind of stuff , was just checking preev.com , whatever the price is .. I trade/sell/buy and GG :o

Question is not for only silk road , but Darknet in general basically . ;D

AFAIK after both the busts the price bumped. I think it dropped slightly because of the negative press but then after the publicising of it it went back up a matter of days later. I'm probably mistaken as the memory isn't what it was.

I guess when things comes to Silk road and the DARKWEB websites , people prefer to remain silence  ::)

It's a well known fact that the event that propelled Bitcoin and made it known worldwide is a Silk Road. As they say, there is no bad publicity or bad publicity, there is just a publicity. I guess that Silk Road worked the same for Bitcoin.

So yes, the first version is the one that had the major impact on the Bitcoin price. After it got closed, Bitcoin did drop some but then it recovered.

People can or may ignorate the fact that the original SilkRoad shaped Bitcoin as being the first "merchant" that has successully and solely worked with Bitcoin to run its business. It's hard reality.

I have seen the prices of Bitcoin and Litecoin go down by around 50% in a matter of minutes live after the FBI confiscated the site and placed a warning on the first page. About the second version I don't really know as I as well weren't that much interested in it as there were plenty of copycat sites launched after the original site went down. It was very hard to keep track on which site was the place to go at that time.

After the first version of Silk road went down, the price did drop quite significantly. Investors might just have the mentality that a large volume of Bitcoin was generated by silk road as the adoption rate was small then. It rebounded after that, the second silkroad didn't have much impact likely due to the already high adoption rate and there are better alternatives to silkroad.

The first bust caused btc to drop 30% I think.

I guess the media is somehow right after all on what they keep saying on the news , Bitcoin plays a big part on the Darknet marketplace these days .

Bitcoin is a very powerful tool. It has all (well, most) the benefits of a credit card, all the anonymity and finality of cash. Whether it was Satoshi's intention or not, Bitcoin is perfect for illegal activity over the internet. It's also great for porn and buying sex toys. Imagine all the people who's info leaked because of the Ashley Madison hack, I think they would have been safer if they would have used bitcoin (and a throwaway email account). For a long time, lots of the traffic was illegal stuff and people dicking around with digital money. Now it's starting to really gain traction. I am eager  to see us burst beyond $1000 again.

For a decent length of time Silk Road was the only consistent and significant real world usage of Bitcoin.

You had stuff like Alpaca socks and so on back then but it was the first thing you could point at and say it was something Bitcoin could do that nothing else could in the same way.

Dunno about SR 2.0 or how many other dark markets there are out there now but I'm sure it's still a major contributor to transaction volume.

people prefer to keep quite in this issue.

Well we can say bitcoin is a main component in darknet with its anonymity. I dont know its a positive thing for society, but I guess those darknet will be growing like bitcoin as well and vice versa, so both things are related each other.

I think Darknet Markets (and the Silk Road was the one who started the whole thing) have significant impact on BTC price. Having hundreds of thousands of customers they create a huge demand for BTC thus impacting the price. I wish BTC were more accepted apart from Darknet Markets  though.

Well I see a DPR documentry the other night and at the time of Ross's arrest silkroad had $1 billion + go through it the previous year, one market with many more out there. I think it played a massive part of the btc price as well as the hole of the darknet, it all played a big role on the price, Demand was strong. (bull market)

It used to be due to its anonymity and anyone could be very anonymous as long as they mine the coins themselves. Not so much now, mixers can't really be trusted, selling and buying of Bitcoin is a hassle process and would usually involve exposing your identity. With the rise in the merchants accepting Bitcoin, most aren't using it to buy illegal things.

Bitcoin made it to the mainstream media, partly because of its association with Silk Road.
And the media attention definitely helped the price.  :)

I think that Silk Road have contributed in the price of bitcoin because it was a big market and that this market exist and act needed money for it. This market needed a special money named bitcoin. So all the people which interact with were obligated to buy bitcoin. This without discussion has contributed that the price of bitcoin remain high. But the block of Silk Road (except one day crack) I think that haven't affected to much the price.

As about the dark I need data to discuss but I think that is the same logic as for Silk Road.

I think the SILK ROAD debacle as well as the MOUNT GOXIFICATION mode helped to destabilize the price that's for sure. Whenever there is bad news the price plummets, whenever there is good news you might see it rise a tad but always the markets work more on fear and hysteria than facts and that doesn't leave bitcoin exempt that's for sure.

Silk road may have impacted the price one way or another, but for me, the major reason why the price isn't doing pretty good is since the Gox incident. Too many people had been in doubt of bitcoin because of that event. Also take into consideration that there are traders who constantly play with the markets every single day.

I wonder why is it too much of a big deal for people to see bitcoin's association with Silk Road when in fact fiat is more heavily used in illegal activities.

In my opinion, it makes the base price. Look at DRK or DASH, as soon as some dnm's added it, it went through 0.01. The original price spike which made bitcoin shoot out of the pennies and in to the tens of dollars was thanks to dark markets.

Still wondering why so little dnm users use dash, so much safer if used properly :)

The problem with Gox was that an inside bot pumped the price.

I think silk road added value to the coins, for sure, and this created a bubble in the first exchangers that were opened (some are now closed and some owners in prison for selling the coins for people who wanted to buy drugs).

It's right. People has lost mostly the faith in bitcoin after the bankruptcy of MtGox (mostly because of the extremely going down of the price) but we must remember that the price was pumping exactly from Mt Gox. So the price went in its real value after this bankruptcy. Who has read the news has understand this and has understand even that it was not the fault of bitcoin its going down but of speculators which has "played with it. In this way the faith must be recovered (and according to me mostly it was from the bitcoiners and less from the others).

While about the connection of bitcoin with Silk Road I think that no one remember more it except this thread.

You're right, it dropped to low 70's USD then up to $130USD .... But then not long after gox began pumping