Silkroad closed down. Owner Arrested.

[thehun]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html

Ross William Ulbricht, indicted for allegedly running the online contraband marketplace Silk Road, wasn't above asking for a little programming help when he needed it.

Even the finest programmers could use a little help from their friends on Stack Overflow now and then. The site, which invites users to ask and answer one another’s questions about specific coding problems, has become a global hub for software engineers, catering to pros and amateurs alike. Silk Road mastermind “Dread Pirate Roberts,” it seems, was no exception.

According to the criminal complaint against Ross William Ulbricht, the man who allegedly ran the vast online drug marketplace from his San Francisco apartment, he ventured humbly onto the site in March 2012 to ask a couple of friendly questions. The first one, it seems, was relatively innocuous, if a bit unorthodox. But a second query struck FBI investigators as rather incriminating, in retrospect: “How can I connect to a Tor ****** service using curl in php?”, the user asked. Silk Road is, of course, a Tor ****** service—perhaps the world’s most famous one at that.
But here’s the facepalm-worthy part: According to the criminal complaint, Ulbricht posted the question using his own real name. Less than one minute later, he changed his username to “frosty.” And then, one assumes, banged his head against a hard wall several times.

According to the complaint, the Stack Overflow post served as key evidence for authorities trying to link Ulbricht to Silk Road. From the complaint:

Based on forensic analysis of the Silk Road Web Server, I know that the computer code ... includes a customized PHP strip based on 'curl' that is functionally very similar to the computer code described in Ulbricht's posting on Stack Overflow, and includes several lines of code that are identical to lines of code quoted in the posting.
Oh, and the encryption key on the Silk Road server ended with the substring "frosty@frosty." Whoops.
Frosty’s account lives on at Stack Overflow, where you can inspect his code and pass judgment on his chops if you’re so inclined. And while this won’t appear anywhere in the criminal charges against Ulbricht, the court of computer-programmer opinion may duly note that he asked two questions on the site, but didn’t take the trouble to answer anyone else’s.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Really bizarre that someone so successful and so paranoid did something so utterly stupid.  Hubris?  He got away with it for 30 months so he figured he was invulnerable.  In Iraq units generally suffer higher than normal casualties in the first and last month of a deployment.  The early casualties are due to inexperience and the later ones due to overconfidence.

[wtfvanity]

Really bizarre that someone so successful and so paranoid did something so utterly stupid.  Hubris?  He got away with it for 30 months so he figured he was invulnerable.  In Iraq units generally suffer higher than normal casualties in the first and last month of a deployment.  The early casualties are due to inexperience and the later ones due to overconfidence.

There doesn't seem to be just one mistake, but a few. Seems there was a pattern of not being able to keep his identity unknown.

[Chronikka]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html

Ross William Ulbricht, indicted for allegedly running the online contraband marketplace Silk Road, wasn't above asking for a little programming help when he needed it.

Even the finest programmers could use a little help from their friends on Stack Overflow now and then. The site, which invites users to ask and answer one another’s questions about specific coding problems, has become a global hub for software engineers, catering to pros and amateurs alike. Silk Road mastermind “Dread Pirate Roberts,” it seems, was no exception.

According to the criminal complaint against Ross William Ulbricht, the man who allegedly ran the vast online drug marketplace from his San Francisco apartment, he ventured humbly onto the site in March 2012 to ask a couple of friendly questions. The first one, it seems, was relatively innocuous, if a bit unorthodox. But a second query struck FBI investigators as rather incriminating, in retrospect: “How can I connect to a Tor ****** service using curl in php?”, the user asked. Silk Road is, of course, a Tor ****** service—perhaps the world’s most famous one at that.
But here’s the facepalm-worthy part: According to the criminal complaint, Ulbricht posted the question using his own real name. Less than one minute later, he changed his username to “frosty.” And then, one assumes, banged his head against a hard wall several times.

According to the complaint, the Stack Overflow post served as key evidence for authorities trying to link Ulbricht to Silk Road. From the complaint:

Based on forensic analysis of the Silk Road Web Server, I know that the computer code ... includes a customized PHP strip based on 'curl' that is functionally very similar to the computer code described in Ulbricht's posting on Stack Overflow, and includes several lines of code that are identical to lines of code quoted in the posting.
Oh, and the encryption key on the Silk Road server ended with the substring "frosty@frosty." Whoops.
Frosty’s account lives on at Stack Overflow, where you can inspect his code and pass judgment on his chops if you’re so inclined. And while this won’t appear anywhere in the criminal charges against Ulbricht, the court of computer-programmer opinion may duly note that he asked two questions on the site, but didn’t take the trouble to answer anyone else’s.

This.

[BitCoiner2012]

So the crash was caused by good news?  lol  

or by huge sales amounts. which i believe can be confiscated wallets as written in the report. why not sell and pay off part of us govt debt?

If they held onto them for a few years, they could pay off the entire national debt with them!

You clearly don't have good comprehension of the liabilities the US government is facing...

Or I'm incredibly bullish!

Pretty bullish to aim for 100 trillion dollars.

[notme]

So the crash was caused by good news?  lol  

or by huge sales amounts. which i believe can be confiscated wallets as written in the report. why not sell and pay off part of us govt debt?

If they held onto them for a few years, they could pay off the entire national debt with them!

You clearly don't have good comprehension of the liabilities the US government is facing...

Or I'm incredibly bullish!

Pretty bullish to aim for 100 trillion dollars.

Um.... in what world does the USG owe $100 trillion?

And in what world does 26,000 BTC = 1 BTC?

[TERA]

I had sold most of my btc yesterday when the trend was failing but still held some and lost money thanks to some trolls on here posting "the news is fake" , "look at the shadows and the camel", "DPR is making a joke about the government shut down", etc. Fuck you!

[notme]

I had sold most of my btc yesterday when the trend was failing but still held some and lost money thanks to some trolls on here posting "the news is fake" , "look at the shadows and the camel", "DPR is making a joke about the government shut down", etc. Fuck you!

Don't blame the forum.  Take responsibility for your actions and stop being gullible enough to trade based on random forum posts.

[teletobi]

I had sold most of my btc yesterday when the trend was failing but still held some and lost money thanks to some trolls on here posting "the news is fake" , "look at the shadows and the camel", "DPR is making a joke about the government shut down", etc. Fuck you!

Don't blame the forum.  Take responsibility for your actions and stop being gullible enough to trade based on random forum posts.

+1!

[Pumpkin]

This is the buying opportunity we've all been waiting for.

Last chance to get BTC below $100

Damn those 2 guys are smart.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Um.... in what world does the USG owe $100 trillion?

It is called unfunded liabilities.  Many of the US future obligations are "off the books".  The "national debt" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Any corporation offering retirement or retirees for healthcare would be required to project the lifetime cost, reduce that to NPV and reflect that as a liability.  Not doing so is criminal, literally criminal charges.   However the US govt gets to play by different accounting rules.  Since a retiree in 2040 doesn't cost the govt anything "yet" it is $0 liability on the US govt books.  The fact that inevitably 2040 will come and that retiree will stop working, paying taxes, and will collect SS and Medicare for the next 20-40 years only matters in the real world.

[Pumpkin]

Um.... in what world does the USG owe $100 trillion?

It is called unfunded liabilities.  Many of the US future obligations are "off the books".  The "national debt" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Any corporation offering retirement or retirees for healthcare would be required to project the lifetime cost, reduce that to NPV and reflect that as a liability.  Not doing so is criminal, literally criminal charges.   However the US govt gets to play by different accounting rules.  Since a retiree in 2040 doesn't cost the govt anything "yet" it is $0 liability on the US govt books.  The fact that inevitably 2040 will come and that retiree will stop working, paying taxes, and will collect SS and Medicare for the next 20-40 years only matters in the real world.

A great example of this would be the recent Poland private pension fund confiscation.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-06/poland-confiscates-half-private-pension-funds-cut-sovereign-debt-load

They did some *magic* and reduced their government debt from 53% GDP to 45% GDP. The magic is of course increasing unfunded liabilities, but those are off the books. They're still there though and will hit the economy extremely hard in the future.

This proves that the official government debt numbers are not to be trusted. You need to calculate in unfunded liabilities.

[YipYip]

Sub 100 is clearly possible, maybe I should have said that with crazy crash I mean sub $60 xD
But I don't think it will be for long.
I'm no oracle though, we will see ^^

Exactly - at 60 I'll start to buy. Cant wait.

AGreed ill come in at 61

[Hazard]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

[Chronikka]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

Its not the collapse of bitcoin like some people are making it out to be but its obviously not neutral. The sharp market sell off should be enough to tell you its more negative than positive. I imagine what will happen is that SR replacements will pop up but will begin to only accept alt coins in order to stay off the government's radar. Some users of bitcoin will take their business to whatever coin becomes the new black market coin, which will amount to a BTC sell off.

[BitCoiner2012]

Um.... in what world does the USG owe $100 trillion?

It is called unfunded liabilities.  Many of the US future obligations are "off the books".  The "national debt" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Any corporation offering retirement or retirees for healthcare would be required to project the lifetime cost, reduce that to NPV and reflect that as a liability.  Not doing so is criminal, literally criminal charges.   However the US govt gets to play by different accounting rules.  Since a retiree in 2040 doesn't cost the govt anything "yet" it is $0 liability on the US govt books.  The fact that inevitably 2040 will come and that retiree will stop working, paying taxes, and will collect SS and Medicare for the next 20-40 years only matters in the real world.

I would reply to your question Notme, but it was done very appropriately here.

[Hazard]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

Its not the collapse of bitcoin like some people are making it out to be but its obviously not neutral. The sharp market sell off should be enough to tell you its more negative than positive. I imagine what will happen is that SR replacements will pop up but will begin to only accept alt coins in order to stay off the government's radar. Some users of bitcoin will take their business to whatever coin becomes the new black market coin, which will amount to a BTC sell off.

Allow me to rephrase, long term neutral. It did trigger this panic selloff, but nothing related to the value of bitcoin has been signifcantly affected.

[zubelutte]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

You cant be serious it is neutral news

[Hazard]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

You cant be serious it is neutral news

Longterm neutral. There's a lot of baseless panic selling, but silk road didn't really have that huge of an effect on the value of bitcoin. People are blowing things out of proportion.

[Chronikka]

This is mostly neutral news for the value of bitcoin. This is actually an amazing buying opportunity right now.

http://cryptolife.net/silk-road-takedown-bitcoin-great-buy-right-now/

You cant be serious it is neutral news

Longterm neutral. There's a lot of baseless panic selling, but silk road didn't really have that huge of an effect on the value of bitcoin. People are blowing things out of proportion.

Agreed people are making it feel too much like doomsday. Had this happened last year the effect probably would have been much higher but Bitcoin has progressed massively in the past year or so. The bitcoin network is no longer dominated by SR transactions like it used to be.

That being said, 600k BTC passed through SR. There are less than 12 million BTC in existence today (Even less so back when SR was at its peak) so you can see how much SR meant to the community