http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/could-the-silk-road-closure-be-good-for-bitcoin.htmlBy the time the F.B.I. shut down Silk Road—an online black market for illegal drugs, computer-hacking tools, and even contract killings earlier this week, the site had nearly a million registered users. The Web site refused all forms of payment except Bitcoin, a digital currency “designed to be as anonymous as cash,” according to a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York against Ross Ulbricht, the site’s alleged creator and administrator. And at the time of the shutdown, Silk Road had processed sales totaling more than nine and a half million bitcoins—worth about 1.2 billion dollars at the time of the Ulbricht’s arrest in San Francisco on Tuesday, though the currency’s value has fluctuated widely.
