Do you see Silk Road's closure as a positive or negative?

[foggyb]

Very Very negative. The community will lose a great number of users if no one steps into fill the gap. BitCoin is all about Anarchy, Freedom and anonymity. I can't believe people in the Bitcoin community are saying this is a positive thing. I think Obama libtards have finally infiltrated the community. Sad sad day this is

Freedom is the opposite of anarchy. Freedom means everything is permitted. But not everything is beneficial. Freedom is the right and the opportunity to make correct choices.

Anarchy is the absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose. Drug abusers come to mind instantly.

[Carlton Banks]

1. Parents can breathe easy now that their kids can't get LSD posted to them from Amsterdam. Drug prohibition used to have a mechanistic benefit there, as most drug dealers know little kids have to be initiated into the "keep mouth shut" culture before they'll risk selling higher scheduled drugs to them.

Yes Carlton, everybody who ever used drugs are innocent children, who are indoctrinated to use Heroin and Crack. Law enforcement, the saviors of the world, should also crack down on any means of preserving privacy, because its just drug dealers and pedobears out there.

This isn't what I intended...

I support people who are capable of using drugs responsibly. They should not be criminalised, it's immoral. What I'm leading to is that the online agora approach takes alot of restraint away from the buyer, and that's why I used the LSD example. It's difficult to imagine a teenager saying "what the hell, may as well have a try of the top line opium", but maybe they wouldn't be so cautious as to avoid strong psychedelics, and that could turn out to be a really negative experience if they're not mindful of what the risks are.

I remember some younger kids at a party a year ago procuring amphetamines, then proceeding to ask about as to how to take it etc (it was all pasty and gluey, us older guys were as non-plussed as they were). When it didn't hit them over an hour later, they all started wanting to take more of the stuff, claiming they can't have taken enough. One of them warned the others off, saying to be patient as it was working out for him. The rest did more, and regretted it very quickly.

Some drugs just aren't responsible full stop, I don't think there's such thing as a responsible crack user, that stuff was engineered to destroy a person's will. If governments banned stuff that makes sense to ban, I'd support that. But not weed and psychedelics, they're no worse than alcohol in the damage they can do, and they're arguably more positive experiences than alcohol, too.

[Aseras]

SR going down was cutting the head off a hydra. At least 5 more have sprung up. Now they won't be lax about security. The US Govt decided to get cheap press and a easy kill, rather than mine it long term. They just fired a shot in the dark, got lucky and all the other game in the area made a run for it and knows better now.

Its like trapping pigs. you dont shoot or trap the first one you see. Otherwise they all learn they teach the kids and you never catch one again.

You setup a HUGE ASS trap. feed them all for weeks nice and fat get them comfortable and then nail the whole thing in one shot.

Sometimes the govt does this. usually they blow it.

Most of the time the idiots are the ones getting caught for obvious setups.

[xkeyscore89]

Negative.

[MagicBit15]

Positive a million times over. So happy it collapse, and bitcoin didn't. Really shows the integrity of the currency and it's use for other things POST black market. 

[darkmule]

Because established currencies like USD are never, ever used in black markets.

[skull88]

negative

Closing silk road won't stop black markets selling drugs for bitcoins, so if someone wants to link it with drugs, they will always find an example, a non-argument imo to think this is positive.
Furthermore I think all drugs should be legal, it's nobody's right to tell another person what he can use or can't use. And I actually don't sell drugs or use any besides from time to time the legal ones (alcohol, tobacco and weed). So even if it isn't useful for me, it is for others and thanks to silk road's rating system, people knew that they had something good. And not some garbage that could kill them from a shady dealer on the street.

[viboracecata]

No impact, only 26000 bitcoins frozen, in this community seems many people have bitcoins more than 20000 according to a poll result.

Even if I didn't know were they just joking on that poll.

[Timo Y]

You don't need a centralized website to do achieve what Silk Road achieved.

Apart from Bitcoin and Tor, all you need is:

1) A secure p2p messaging system
2) A p2p identity management and rating system
3) A p2p data store for storing pictures etc.
4) A distributed escrow system


All those things already exist to some extent.

1) can be achieved by Bitmessage.
2) can be achieved by a combination of Namecoin and PGP web of trust.
3) can be achieved by Freenet, Bittorrent, Rapidshare etc.
4) can be achieved by multisig transactions in combination with 2)

Now it's only a matter of packaging those building blocks into a user friendly application. Sooner or later someone is going to do it.

We have reached an age where online black markets are pretty much inevitable, so we may as well stop worrying and learn to live with them.

[justusranvier]

Now it's only a matter of packaging those building blocks into a user friendly application. Sooner or later someone is going to do it.

I think the right approach is to build protocols and software that allow anyone to create any kind of marketplace they want and link them together into a searchable distributed database.

Not every user of such a platform would make online black markets, but if it were designed properly it wouldn't be possible to stop anyone who wanted to.

[darkmule]

Not every user of such a platform would make online black markets, but if it were designed properly it wouldn't be possible to stop anyone who wanted to.

Why DPR is in trouble is not that he designed a website, but that he personally and directly facilitated illegal black market activity, publicly promoted it under his name, making it clear that this was his intention, and directly took a commission from activity he made it very clear he knew was illegal, and was illegal on purpose.

Someone who designed a p2p system that allowed the creation of online markets and either remained mum on their intentions or, for that matter, actually had no intention but to create an anonymous online market, would have much less chance of running afoul of the law.

DPR's bust (whether or not it is legit) has done one good thing, and that is to provide an example of how not to do it.  I.e. a centralized market under the control of a megalomaniacal ideologue who, moreover, directly participated in illegal activity himself and profited vastly from it.

[j68r]

Not every user of such a platform would make online black markets, but if it were designed properly it wouldn't be possible to stop anyone who wanted to.

Why DPR is in trouble is not that he designed a website, but that he personally and directly facilitated illegal black market activity, publicly promoted it under his name, making it clear that this was his intention, and directly took a commission from activity he made it very clear he knew was illegal, and was illegal on purpose.

Someone who designed a p2p system that allowed the creation of online markets and either remained mum on their intentions or, for that matter, actually had no intention but to create an anonymous online market, would have much less chance of running afoul of the law.

DPR's bust (whether or not it is legit) has done one good thing, and that is to provide an example of how not to do it.  I.e. a centralized market under the control of a megalomaniacal ideologue who, moreover, directly participated in illegal activity himself and profited vastly from it.

That's fair comment, I don't see how anyone can really dispute that unless you're in the anti establishment, all else is forgiven, folk hero camp. In the final analysis whatever happens to him is largely self inflicted.

That said I do not support the false wars on some drugs and some terror, which in truth, are really about attacking what little freedom and liberty is left. All they really achieve is a tightening and extending of the power and control the structures of the state possess over everyone's life.

What we need is someone to beat them at their own game but that game is bent and that's where they have the advantage, the crooks are in charge and free thinking people need to figure out some way to get back what has been taken away from them by the banksters on wall street and their captured government puppets.

[hayek]

It's not a black and white issue.

It's good because it shows that the bitcoin economy is not relying on SR.

It's bad because it shows that tyrants gunna tyrant. It's also bad that this had to happen for us to find out the economy doesn't rely on SR.

[Carlton Banks]

DPR's bust (whether or not it is legit) has done one good thing, and that is to provide an example of how not to do it.  I.e. a centralized market under the control of a megalomaniacal ideologue who, moreover, directly participated in illegal activity himself and profited vastly from it.

To be fair to him, he got one aspect totally right, and that was to attempt to operate as an anonymous lone wolf. I don't think anyone could successfully pull it off with other people knowing your identity, unless it was sponsored by a powerful government.

He ended up having to channel his own knowledge of what he'd achieved, precarious as it always was given his early "OpSec" mistakes. He just couldn't help talking about it all, even if it was under the guise of a latter-day pirate. Writing a stream of full blown confessions, and changing nothing but your real name is not a great way to be a cyber drug kingpin, well, long term at least.

[darkmule]

He ended up having to channel his own knowledge of what he'd achieved, precarious as it always was given his early "OpSec" mistakes. He just couldn't help talking about it all, even if it was under the guise of a latter-day pirate. Writing a stream of full blown confessions, and changing nothing but your real name is not a great way to be a cyber drug kingpin, well, long term at least.

If your sole security against capture and prosecution is anonymity, you'd best get that part of it right.  And if you're going to do that and make voluminous public statements, they'd best not be in exact accordance with things you have said under your real name.  The Unabomber got caught largely because he insisted on publishing a manifesto, which his brother recognized as being in his writing style.  Otherwise, he probably would have remained a free man indefinitely.

DPR not only made voluminous public statements on the Internet as DPR, but had made very similar statements under his real name, also to the Internet.  That combined with more blatant errors, like using an email address that actually consisted entirely of his real name and gmail, made his discovery inevitable.

[bernard75]

This might be the real DPR(or rather simply SR), but certainly not the current owner.
There have been between 2-5 owners since the Gawker article.

[tvbcof]

...
DPR not only made voluminous public statements on the Internet as DPR, but had made very similar statements under his real name, also to the Internet.  That combined with more blatant errors, like using an email address that actually consisted entirely of his real name and gmail, made his discovery inevitable.

I imagine that FBI and associates had to try fairly hard for some time to NOT catch him.  I'll wager that the calculus was that he was doing no particular harm and bringing in a lot of leads while SR was in operation.  And I suppose that the primary focus of their efforts was to get a hold of the private keys controlling his stash and figuring out who else he might be working with directly.  Probably he was making progress toward vanishing is why they eventually pulled the plug.

[cryptasm]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/09/living-with-ross-ulbricht-housemates-say-they-saw-no-clues-of-silk-road-or-the-dread-pirate-roberts/

[redtwitz]

Housemates Say They Saw No Clues Of Silk Road Or The Dread Pirate Roberts

I'm not sure what they expected. A T-Shirt?

[imrer]

It's great. Another challenge we passed. I was worried that bitcoin economy is working only due to black market but now it's ok because even if that was true, nobody can destroy it -> stable price.