SilkRoad domain Seized?

[Alonzo Ewing]

What exactly is your criticism here?  That he was an ideological crusader?  Because so was Satoshi.  That he was a drug dealer?  Fair enough; some people find that distasteful.  That he was an an-cap?  Well, so is probably 20% of the community here.  That he claimed to be a libertarian but did some unlibertarian things like buying a hitman's services, selling forged documents, etc?  Hey, that's something most people can agree on.

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

[Noitev]

If I'm a drug user or dealer, doesn't really stop much...

If I love Coca-cola and Coke suddenly vanishes from the earth, as much as I love the brand, I'll just switch to Rc-Cola and I'll still pay for it with the same currency I bought coke with.

[VolanicEruptor]

So this is what crashed BTC. One thing I'm curious about is how did that guy know the real identity of the seller who was blackmailing him? Were drug dealers signing up there with a legit name and address?

The only possibility I can think of is that he didn't hide his IP address
edit: or possibly linked as a buyer with his address not encrypted in previous purchases..

[Mike Hearn]

Oh, not everyone saw that huh.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the-dread-pirate-roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug-website-silk-road/

Roberts also has a political agenda: He sees himself not just as an enabler of street-corner pushers but also as a radical libertarian revolutionary carving out an anarchic digital space beyond the reach of the taxation and regulatory powers of the state–Julian Assange with a hypodermic needle. “We can’t stay silent forever. We have an important message, and the time is ripe for the world to hear it,” says Roberts. “What we’re doing isn’t about scoring drugs or ‘sticking it to the man.’ It’s about standing up for our rights as human beings and refusing to submit when we’ve done no wrong.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/

We don’t allow the sale of anything that’s main purpose is to harm innocent people, or that it was necessary to harm innocent people to bring it to market. For example, anything stolen is forbidden, counterfeit money and coupons which are used to defraud people, hitmen aren’t allowed, and neither is child pornography. No substance on Silk Road falls under those guidelines.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collected-quotations-of-the-dread-pirate-roberts-founder-of-the-drug-site-silk-road-and-radical-libertarian/4/

“I keep hearing this argument come up when people talk about drug prohibition: legalize, regulate and tax it. On the surface it sounds like a good idea. No more drug war, more tax revenue, government regulators can make sure it is safe. Makes sense, right?

I can’t help but think something is wrong though. Feels like the bastards that have been screwing everyone over all this time still win in this scenario. Now all that money can go to the state and to their cronies, right?

Here’s the rub: the drug war is an acute symptom of a deeper problem, and that problem is the state. If they “legalize, regulate and tax” it, it’s just one more part of society under their thumb, another productive sector that they can leech off of.

If prohibition is lifted, most people here will go away. You’ll go back to your lives and get your drugs from whatever state certified dispensaries are properly licensed to sell to you. Drug use will be as interesting as smoking and drinking.

Here’s my point: Silk Road is about something much bigger than thumbing your nose at the man and getting your drugs anyway. It’s about taking back our liberty and our dignity and demanding justice. If prohibition is lifted, and the drug industry is placed under the yoke of the state, then we won in a small way, but lost in a big way. Right now, drugs are ours. They aren’t tainted by the government. We the people control their manufacture, distribution and consumption. We should be looking to expand that control, taking back our power, no giving what is ours to the very people that have been our enemies all along.

[justusranvier]

That he was an an-cap?  Well, so is probably 20% of the community here.

That also includes Jeffery Tucker, Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Stefan Molyneux, and quite a few others. Maybe Mike Hearn can publicly debate them sometime, if he's got something more than insults to bring to the table.

[VolanicEruptor]

wow.. he's against hitmen?  What a hypocrite piece of shit..

[Raoul Duke]

Negative rep'd altoid https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=3905

 

WTF dude. Will I need to request theymos to lock his account to avoid THAT type of trolling?

[FrictionlessCoin]

According to DPR:

'All that being said, my primary motivation is not personal wealth, but making a difference. As corny as it sounds, I just want to look back on my life and know that I did something worthwhile that helped people. It’s fulfilling to me. If you don’t know this joy, you may hear my words as insincere and as a way to manipulate, but I know they are true and resonate with some of you. There is nothing wrong with living your life to maximize your own pleasure, so long as you aren’t hurting anyone in the process, but you will miss out on higher levels of happiness if your focus is always on yourself. It’s paradoxical, but the less you focus on your own happiness and focus on others’, the happier you’ll be. Try it out, you can always go back to being selfish."

Hmmmmm?!

He wasn't in it for the money, but to make a difference?

 

[Severian]

wow.. he's against hitmen?  What a hypocrite piece of shit..

Indeed.

That's assuming the government's story is on the up and up, an assumption that can no longer be made from the outset.

[Rampion]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

LOL, this is public domain, everything Mike listed was sold on SR, and much more (stolen identities, stolen CC numbers, etc. etc.). Note that he said "experimented with selling weaponry", because SR sold firearms for a short while only. They stopped doing so because the sales volume was too small to justify maintaining "the armory" as they called it. The source for the former is the SR site, and for the latter DPR itself, who explained thoroughly why he stopped selling weapons in SR's forum... Which by the way was a very interesting read, I never was a user myself of SR, I'm not really interested in things that can get you to rot in jail, but I dug in SR's forums just out of curiosity because it was a fascinating underworld ecosystem.

[QuestionAuthority]

So, I wonder what Barry Silbert thinks about this news. Will it stop his SecondMarket project?

[Mike Hearn]

That's assuming the government's story is on the up and up, an assumption that can no longer be made from the outset.

Why would they invent such a thing? They have plenty of evidence to put him away for narcotics anyway. Plus, this guy doesn't live in Yemen, he isn't going to get drone striked. He lives in San Francisco and will go before a judge. If his defence says, "we'd like to see the evidence of this alleged conversation" and the prosecution say, "uhhh well your honour, we sort of made that whole thing up" then the case collapses and the guy walks.

They aren't going to risk their entire case to invent evidence they don't need.

DPR was a guy who talked a good talk, and suckered a lot of people into believing he was some kind of saintly martyr. In fact he was the kind of guy who orders assassinations. That isn't so unbelievable if you read the rest of what he wrote.

[mootinator]

Geez, I missed all the panic selling again because working?

Lame.

[IncreaseMyT]

So, I wonder what Barry Silbert thinks about this news. Will it stop his SecondMarket project?

I bet they knew it was coming, and organized for a buy

[johnyj]

How did they manage to seize the bitcoins?  

[Severian]

Why would they invent such a thing?

Government agents lie all the time, many times to protect operational security. Government and LE has been the source of so many lies, disinformation and untruths that it's prudent to be skeptical of any claims made in the beginning of a bust.

[QuestionAuthority]

So, I wonder what Barry Silbert thinks about this news. Will it stop his SecondMarket project?

I bet they knew it was coming, and organized for a buy

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what happened. He wanted this right before convincing a bunch of investors to dump boatloads of cash into Bitcoin.

[Ipsum]

Of course drug dealers don't want drugs legalized. DPR claimed he wasn't just a simple dealer but rather some ideological crusader for a better tomorrow (by which he meant: anarcho-capitalism, his idea of utopia). He wasn't only selling drugs remember, but also malware, forged documents, he experimented with selling weaponry, etc ...

Source?

Source not needed.  One only had to visit SR to see this.

I don't think DPR was the one selling all of that. All of that was available on his marketplace. A little different, no?

Sure, and the South American cartels are simply 'facilitating' the movement of narcotics between growers and end users by the same, ultimately irrelevant, logic.

What DPR was actually doing was taking money from drug buyers, and then drop-shipping the drugs using his network of suppliers as the supplier-shippers. He'd then pay the supplier-shipper for their service once he confirmed his clients (SilkRoad users) got the narcotics they had paid SilkRoad for.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

WTF! This must have happened sometime when I was driving through Chattanooga, TN.

[Severian]

I would if someone blackmailed me and I thought I would get away with it. You guys would not? Seriously

I think the lesson here is to avoid being blackmailable.