SilkRoad 2 Taken down by Feds

[BayAreaCoins]

Wow, he bought a freaking Tesla!

Way to stay inconspicuous.   

You can blend in fairly reasonable with a Tesla in SF. (kinda being serious... there are a bunch of them.)

[segvec]

Wow, he bought a freaking Tesla!

Way to stay inconspicuous.   

You can blend in fairly reasonable with a Tesla in SF. (kinda being serious... there are a bunch of them.)

Very true.
Not to mention, he worked for SpaceX.

[moni3z]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.
  

[alice chan]

Wow, he bought a freaking Tesla!

Way to stay inconspicuous.   

He doens't need to stay inconspicuous as it is not illegal to spend a lot of money, although when you do spend a lot of money it is difficult to determine just where all this money is coming from

[BayAreaCoins]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.
  

Preach

Probably not the best and brightest grow up to want to be drug market owners.

I bet he only does 7mo-5yrs behind bars.

[ruthless09]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.
  

Preach

Probably not the best and brightest grow up to want to be drug market owners.

I bet he only does 7mo-5yrs behind bars.

He is facing life in prison if convicted on all counts. I doubt that he will spend less then 5 years when he is facing this kind of maximum penalty

[Wary]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.

Because Natalia Poklonskaya would promptly put him behind the bars, to take over his enterprise. Why would corrupted policemen become your servants when they can become your masters?

EDIT: Behind the bars - if lucky. If unlucky - under the asphalt.

[duckydonald]

I believe  individuals shops can be shut down on OB ?

No.

??

OB can't be taken down but I'm pretty sure shops can.

I tend to agree with u on this regard. Individual OB shops can be taken down just like individual bitcoiners can be nabbed. But taking the the whole system is not possible and that is the beauty of decentralization.

openbazzar will have to throw it out there with no control, from an admin or mods, still they can get prosecuted for doing so and they might have to make sure the site dont do any thing illegal, The FBI will just get it shut down easy

[segvec]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.
  

Preach

Probably not the best and brightest grow up to want to be drug market owners.

I bet he only does 7mo-5yrs behind bars.

7mo to 5yrs? What country are you in?

[QuestionAuthority]

Why don't these blackmarket admins marry some girl who looks like Natalia Poklonskaya in Crimea for citizenship, and run their immensely illegal enterprise out of Russia while living in a Tony Montana sized palace on the beach with paid police escort and NAF bodyguards instead of driving a shitty Tesla for a few months and ending up in Oakland federal prison for the rest of your life.
  

Because most of the offspring of the San Francisco hippies of the 60s have had their minds polluted over years by listening to their parents and eating nothing but the crap they sell at Rainbow grocery in the Mission. Dehydrated goat fart protein and soybean jello will rot your brain over time.

[BawsyBoss]

I don't see this as something bad. I do wonder whether it'll affect Bitcoin at all. My guess is it won't since SR2 was not as big as the first one as far as I know.

[santaClause]

I don't see this as something bad. I do wonder whether it'll affect Bitcoin at all. My guess is it won't since SR2 was not as big as the first one as far as I know.

SR2 was much bigger then SR1. It has a lot of free press and got a lot of attention that SR1 took a very long time to get.

[MR1]

As Open Bazaar is a decentralized platform, do you think it will be possible for the USA government to seize it one day? 

[inBitweTrust]

As Open Bazaar is a decentralized platform, do you think it will be possible for the USA government to seize it one day? 

No. It has been proven time and time again that once code or speech is released on the internet it cannot be seized or completely removed. Open Bazaar is p2p so they would need to remove that code from everyone's computers.... good luck with that .

[gagalady]

As Open Bazaar is a decentralized platform, do you think it will be possible for the USA government to seize it one day? 

No. It has been proven time and time again that once code or speech is released on the internet it cannot be seized or completely removed. Open Bazaar is p2p so they would need to remove that code from everyone's computers.... good luck with that .

Can they charge the core developers with any crime?

[inBitweTrust]

Can they charge the core developers with any crime?

It would be political suicide to do so, but sure they can do anything they want as they don't even follow their own laws.

If they charged the core developers with a crime more would be attracted to this project and take over and be anonymous. If no one takes over the existing code would still work fine too.

[darkmule]

I bet he only does 7mo-5yrs behind bars.

Do the words "mandatory minimum" ring a bell?  They're pretty much up to the prosecutor, too, since they depend on what the prosecution decides to prosecute as part of a deal.  If any of these clowns gets out of prison in less than 20, they got an amazing deal (and someone else somewhere is going down hard).

[darkmule]

Can they charge the core developers with any crime?

No.  At least, assuming none of them have any involvement in any of this illegal activity.  But given what we know, they couldn't get a grand jury to indict, and as the saying goes, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.

(This is assuming they don't try something bizarre like the ITAR "crypto as a munition" export regulations that they harassed Phil Zimmerman with.  And they've shown no sign of any interest whatsoever in doing that.)

[bluemountain]

Can they charge the core developers with any crime?

It would be political suicide to do so, but sure they can do anything they want as they don't even follow their own laws.

If they charged the core developers with a crime more would be attracted to this project and take over and be anonymous. If no one takes over the existing code would still work fine too.

I don't think it would be political suicide to do so, plus the decision to charge someone should never be a political decision. If it is determined they broke the law then they should be charged.

With that being said I think it is unlikely that any crime the devs of open brazaar are charged with would be able to stick, at least with how it is marketed right now

[JLynn171]

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/the-legacy-of-the-dread-pirate-roberts/


this was  a good read for all of those interested in the founder of silk road and just a quick lil article on him and bitcoin in general.... worth reading....