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My thought is, why hasn't this happened sooner? Why was such a widely known website allowed to roam free as such? What are your thoughts of side reports of this benefiting bitcoin?
My thoughts on silkroad is I didn't really care that it existed. There are many more damaging websites out there that are still running for some reason. As far as benefiting bitcoin? I know a few people that use it as a foreign exchange to avoid the expensive exchange banks. But only time will tell.
My thought is, why hasn't this happened sooner? Why was such a widely known website allowed to roam free as such?
Because it wasn't a website, it was a destination on a "section" (for lack of a better word that wouldn't overwhelm with technobabble) of the Internet that uses a protocol designed to be anonymous and untraceable. You can't shut down what you can't find. It took major effort to figure out who was behind Silk Road.
Is it me or was this entire operation and arrest seemingly based on allegations and assumptions?
I personally couldn't care less. If the site had a million registered users, that goes to show you government should just legalize the them thing. I never done drugs and never will but I still do not understand, or should say, cannot rationalize why selling/buying drugs is illegal!
Think about it, if it has nothing to do with you, why would you even be concerned? I mean if people are inclined to be addicted to some substance and/or sell it, they will do it sooner or later or do something equally damaging to themselves and to those who are also in the same environment.
Laws controlling gun sales is one thing, drugs is another. Instead of regular missiles and bombs, if US dropped burning giant weed balls in the middle east, all them wars would probably have been over within days.
It was more than drugs that they were (allegedly) selling.
Fascinating how they tracked the guy who (allegedly) ran it. He used his real name in several places, used incriminating wifi hot spots near his residence, and posted technical questions to stackoverflow.com (a programming Q/A site) that would raise suspicion.
Interesting how Bitcoin took a hit when that site was seized. People were making anonymous purchases with that form of currency.
Fascinating how they tracked the guy who (allegedly) ran it. He used his real name in several places, used incriminating wifi hot spots near his residence, and posted technical questions to stackoverflow.com (a programming Q/A site) that would raise suspicion.
Thats how most if not all hackers wind up getting caught. Single biggest mistake is to comingle your anonymous persona with your real life one. To stay hidden and untrackable is actually not that difficult, it just requires the right setup, and most importantly the discipline to never use that to access anything dealing with your real life identity nor using it anywhere around your actual home/work. Cameras are making it more difficult but its still not to hard, if you pay attention.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bo
It was one of the few places that accepted Bitcoin for purchases. You can't spend those at Amazon.
I am no bitcoin advocate, but thats just wrong. You can us Bitcoin to pay for nearly anything, its also the fastest and cheapest way to transfer money p2p around the world.
Here is a partial list of places to spend bitcoins
Mostly the places you can spend bitcoins are gonna be companies that provide online services but you can purchase loaded cards that spend anywhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by futbol
It had been speculated that people sought out Bitcoins for anonymous transactions but I was skeptical... until now.
I dont know that this was spectulation really, its an obvious function of bitcoin. Lots of services available solely dealing with transferring and converting bitcoins anonymously. Most if not all the exchanges "wash" transactions. Its a function that was built in from the very beginning.
All the above said, bitcoin is not something to be keeping large amounts of money in. Nor is it something you should use to conduct transactions anonymously. Turns out its not actually that anonymous. To stop people from copying bitcoins and spending them in multiple places your unique identifier is attached to that coin, an exchange then appends the unique identifier of the person you are paying to. This is like a long custody chain that gets verified everytime you spend a bitcoin. That way if you try to spend the bitcoin again to somebody else the exchange blocks it because you aren't the owner of that bitcoin. Where bitcoin loses its anonymity is the ability of a government agency to peruse its vast collection of metadata from facebook, google, etc, and tie a real person to that anonymous unique identifier. This has been proven by researchers with access to far less data than a government agency would have. I suspect all those folks that have used silk road are sweating bullets right now.
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