
After Silk Road - 0cool
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/03/after-silk-road/
======
jrochkind1
> _While I don’t support what went on on the Silk Road – the hacking services
> and illegal gun trading alone made it more like the Wild West than Utopia,
> not to mention the alleged murder-for-hire plots – I do support its right to
> exist. No government should be able to shut down a conglomeration of like-
> minded people who wish to do business anonymously. We cannot judge the pot
> dealer or the LSD buyer any more than they can judge our habits and
> predilections. The morality of this can be debated but the right to an
> anonymous exchange cannot._

This makes no sense at all. Why the heck can't the 'right' to an anonymous
exchange facilitating illegal activities 'be debated'? Just cause the author
says so, apparently. Why does he think no government should be able to shut-
down a 'conglomeration of like-minded people' (what?) who want to buy and sell
weapons, computer intrusions, and murders? I don't know, he doesn't say, it's
just obvious, right?

He doesn't 'support' people selling murder on an anonymous exchange, but does
'support' 'the right' to have an anonymous exchange where you sell murder? He
thinks you can debate 'the morality' of 'this' (what?), but you can't 'judge'
the people doing the thing whose morality you are debating, and in fact
apparently can't (can't? ethically?) judge anything that can be described as a
'habit or predilection'?

What does all that even mean? It's just nonsense put together into sentences.

There might be some ethical defense of Silk Road that makes sense, but that
sure wasn't it. This is what passes for thought on the techno-libertarian
internet? Really, tech crunch?

~~~
GeorgeOrr
If I and others want to get together and communicate without divulging our
identities, to each other or to third parties, that is our right in a free
society. It's not anyone elses business. Not yours, not the NSA's and not the
FBI's

Certainly you can gainsay that, as you do. So if that's what you mean by it
can be debated, point taken.

But I'd agree with the author that it can't be debated - if you are referring
to a free society. Unless we adopt an Orwellian New speak version of the word
free.

~~~
netrus
Exchange of money and goods is not "communication" in the sense of "free
speech" or "privacy". The state needs to protect my freedom to not be killed
by a hitman, be threatened by guns etc.

I am all in for legalizing drugs, but don't pretend that all weapon trade,
offering hacking services or other nasty stuff needs to be protected in a free
society. Freedom of speech is about inconvenient opinions, not about
"everything you can do by communicating with others".

~~~
rayiner
> Freedom of speech is about inconvenient opinions, not about "everything you
> can do by communicating with others".

Wonderful distinction!

~~~
GeorgeOrr
Who gets to make the distinction, or decide what Free Speech is really
"about?"

If the answer is anyone but the people engaging in the speech, isn't that a
little dangerous?

------
sycren
I find it surprising that instead of shutting it down they didn't turn it into
a huge honey trap.

~~~
Afforess
Why? DPR was a much bigger criminal threat than most of the users that went on
the SR. You don't let the head of the cabal get away to nab the underlings,
that's just plain stupid.

~~~
CodeCube
See, I don't know ... DPR was definitely a big fish, but only in a certain
context. He obviously had the technical chops (and moral compass) to set
things up the way he did, but at the end of the day, all he did was facilitate
business for other (IMO) much bigger fish.

I'm not in any way justifying his actions or anything like that. But I too was
surprised that they just shut it down instead of just assuming control and
going after what could have turned out to be cartels (assuming it wasn't just
small time growers, etc.).

~~~
wmf
DPR allegedly made over $80M from Silk Road; did any single SR vendor make
more than that? When measured financially he's a pretty big fish.

~~~
rentnorove
I'd imagine there were a relatively small number of well-rated suppliers
servicing the majority of trade, and fewer still producers. If DPR was in fact
taking a ~10% cut, those suppliers would have stood to make considerable sums
of money given the profit margins involved.

~~~
wmf
In retrospect there's a simpler way to state this. If one vendor had over 10%
market share on SR then they probably earned more than DPR. Obviously there
are between zero and nine such vendors.

------
GeorgeOrr
Good article, it's nice to start looking forward. And to remain optimistic.

I was never actually a customer, but it clearly filled a need many had. It
would be a shame if the void it left isn't filled.

But as covered in this article, it is far more likely that it will be filled
and in fact improved on.

The more they tighten their grip ...

------
gesman
There is already a race underway for the new winner in this hungry, insatiable
market.

It's a cat and mouse game where mouse have an distinct edge.

~~~
jerf
Actually, I think the cat & mouse metaphor is fairly apt. The cat actually has
a powerful set of advantages... but the mice have numbers, persistence, and in
violation of the metaphor, a lot of learning capability. This will not be the
first market the feds will manage to destroy, but it will get harder each
time.

I am neither applauding nor deploring this; just predicting it.

(One of the things the mice may learn is that the slightest identity leak can
give them away. One mis-click on a Facebook login or something and that could
well be that. If I were a mouse, I would be working on building something like
an encrypted VM image that _only_ contains "safe" software on it, like
browsers configured with TOR or whatever, and make sure to do all my business
in that VM, and _only_ my business in that VM, while maintaining a "normal"
identity on the outside of the VM. The best way to prevent identity leakage is
not to share it at all. And I would _not_ install clipboard sharing between VM
and host, and I would _not_ enable shared windows; I would deliberately leave
the VM console up, and distinctly less than full screen, so it is very visibly
obvious that I am either in or not in the VM. I would not use any of the
conveniences designed to blur that line.)

~~~
finnw
It is probably cheaper to use a dedicated (physical) machine.

~~~
jerf
You mean safer?

~~~
finnw
I did mean cheaper (i.e. a low-end machine being cheaper to buy than the time
it would take to install and configure the VM.) But yes, it is probably safer
as well.

~~~
jerf
I think you're badly overestimating the difficulty of VMs. This next Friday,
we're planning on providing VMs to students to compete in a local programming
contest, and we fully expect that for most of them the bulk of the effort
involved will simply be the downloading of all the relevant bits (as in,
literal bits). After that, it's just "vagrant up" and off they go. If you
haven't fiddled with them in a few years (which is what that sounds like),
there's been a lot of advances since then. They're almost trivial now.

------
wcfields
Could someone explain how Silk Road handled it's transactions?

I've been reading on it and it seems they kept in escrowe the Bitcoins until
the package had been marked as "Shipped"?

Was there a central wallet that one would send/receive coins from or was it
flushed on the in/out through random wallets? Can the blockchain be traced to
DRP's primary wallets?

~~~
berberous
Check out the criminal indictment if you are interested, they explain it a
bit.

From memory (which may be wrong), it sounded like he had something like 11
internal hot wallets, but while the coins were in escrow he used a database to
link what user had what amount of coins. The government seized those 11
wallets, and based on the average daily holdings, now have like $3mm worth of
BTC which they transferred to a single wallet (if you google, you can find the
public record of that govt controlled wallet).

The indictment also explains that Silk Road used a "tumbler", which would
route the BTC's through a series of random wallets so that it was not possible
to match a user's initial sending of BTC to Silk Road with the eventual
withdrawal by a seller of BTC's to another wallet or exchange.

~~~
veridies
What can the government do with seized BTC? They don't serve any purpose as
evidence, obviously (since all the transaction info is public record). Can
they be auctioned off? Sold?

~~~
dragonwriter
> What can the government do with seized BTC? They don't serve any purpose as
> evidence, obviously (since all the transaction info is public record). Can
> they be auctioned off? Sold?

Government seized real and tangible personal property is regularly either used
by government or auctioned off, so I don't see why bitcoins would be any
different.

------
GunlogAlm
Is Atlantis still around? I can see that growing to replace Silk Road, Black
Market Reloaded I admittedly know little about.

~~~
ledge
While Atlantis has disappeared, there are three other hidden services
currently vying for marketshare:

BMR: 5onwnspjvuk7cwvk.onion/index.php

Sheep: sheep5u64fi457aw.onion/manager/login

Deepbay: deepbay4xr3sw2va.onion/

P.S. federal agents, I don't use recreational drugs (anymore), I'm simply a
longtime occasional reader of the SR forum... so please don't come kicking
down my door.

~~~
betterunix
"P.S. federal agents, I don't use recreational drugs (anymore), I'm simply a
longtime occasional reader of the SR forum... so please don't come kicking
down my door."

Saying this will not make a difference. Given the general lack of consequences
when paramilitary raids occur against innocent people, and the strong
financial incentives for attacking people and seizing their property, you
would not be safe even if you had never been near illegal drugs in your entire
life.

~~~
ledge
I know, it was a joke :)

I've actually had my home raided before... not fun. Fortunately I no longer
live in America.

