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Ross William Ulbricht is known under the pseudonym — Dread Pirate Roberts and currently he is serving life imprisonment in the United States, without the right for parole.



Ulbricht was one of the first who realized the potential of combining Bitcoin and the Tor network, he created Silk Road (the anonymous trading platform), where it was possible to trade everything, except for those things that in his opinion could harm people, but at the same time, the main purpose with which it was created is the drug trade.

  How this can be combined?
 
According to the creator, site was supposed to relieve the drug trade from violence. People could make an order and receive the goods by mail. There was no need for buyers to visit dangerous places, also in street vendors and gang’s showdown. And actually — it worked, the police noted that with the appearance of Silk Road, the number of violent crimes related to drug trafficking has decreased. Also, Ulbricht was fond of libertarianism, whose ideas also embodied his site, he believed that all power is based on violence, in cryptography violence is useless, it is not capable of solving a mathematical problem, so with its help people get freedom from the authorities in which they are free to do what they want. Dread Pirate Roberts constantly wrote on the forum different manifestos, libertarian and philosophical computations.

In total there was $ 1.2 billion turnovers through the site. He had access to the bitcoins of the users and could escape with them at any time, but he did not do it, so he was trusted. There are many people who consider him as a hero, as well as those who consider him a criminal.

Dread Pirate Roberts is a fictional character from the novel "The Princess Bride", the choice fell on this pseudonym because in the novel it was constantly transferred from one person to another.

In addition to accusations of drug trafficking, hacking attacks and money laundering, Ulrich was also accused of attempting to order murders of people who could disclose information threatening Silk Road, one of these murders was directed against the administrator of this site, which was caught by the FBI and he was forced to cooperate (FBI agent wormed into the trust to this administrator, according to legend, he wanted to sell a consignment of drugs in 10 kg. as a result, this agent managed to get the address of the administrator). The murder was ordered from the profile of Dread Pirate Roberts, but the executor was also an FBI agent. As evidence of the execution of the order, fabricated photographs were provided, after which payment was obtained in bitcoins, in the equivalent of $ 80,000. As a result, no one of the orders was executed, and no one was killed. Ulbricht said that some admins also had access to Dread Pirate Roberts account and allegedly these orders were made by them, as a result his guilt was not proven.

In the history of Ulbricht's correspondence with the site's administrators, it was possible to read that he sometimes joked over users of his site who became addicted.

Ulbricht was hunted down and caught by the FBI, he was detained in the public library, from which he went online, he was logged in by the name of Dread Pirate Roberts. Also in his laptop was found bitcoins for 3 million dollars.

After the closure of the Silk Road site, many similar ones began to appear, and instead of one trading platform, dozens appeared, the authorities are still fighting with them.