Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 133 posts

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#31

Post by simantel »

chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

As someone who doesn't know much about Bitcoins: Could he just say he mined a bunch of Bitcoins a few years ago and is now cashing out?

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#32

Post by dobbsbob »

sirsar wrote: post #18
dobbsbob wrote: post #17

The name Dread Pirate Roberts should've given away the fact the site is supposed to be handed down to different operators if you read/watched Princess Bride. This guy is making a fatal mistake of talking to the press. History shows all blackmarket admins like Max Vision go down shortly after press articles come out with interviews. Now he went from guy running a drug site to "subverting the US with propaganda" so the…

The interviewer didn't even get the operator's first name. I think he (she? they?)'ll be fine.

We know he found a wallet bug so that immediately gives away what level of competency/expertise to look for on the bitcoin forums which he undoubtedly posts there too. How he discovered the site is relevant and will give away how long he has been on bitcointalk since the orig dpr advertised there. We know his book recommendations from the forum which he prob recommended on clearnet in the past, or attached to his FB profile. Theres dozens of other ID markers he's left which I don't think is misinfo, mainly his Libertarian arguments which again he prob repeated elsewhere. Stylometry analysis incoming.

#1 rule to stay out of jail by thegrugq: stop talking

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#33

Post by chrissnell »

simantel wrote: post #31
chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

As someone who doesn't know much about Bitcoins: Could he just say he mined a bunch of Bitcoins a few years ago and is now cashing out?

Sure, but only up to a point. How are you going to explain how you mined a billion dollars worth of Bitcoins? What equipment did you use for that? Do you have receipts? How did you pay for /that/ equipment?

I agree with the previous reply that he might find a nation to shelter him but the US government is going to do anything they can to get at him there. Look at the success we've had in shutting down al Qaeda's financial arms and seizing their assets worldwide. If the US government can't get at his money directly, it will assert tremendous pressure on someone who can.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#34

Post by mrb »

Interesting. I have had a theory that DPR is Satoshi (who invented Bitcoin): https://plus.google.com/100577178258662783679/posts/76UcUX4P...

But now DPR claims he inherited the site from someone else. DPR could be trying to disassociate himself from the "Satoshi" identity :)

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#35

Post by stevewillows »

“Silk Road doesn’t really sell drugs. It sells insurance and financial products,” says Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor Nicolas Christin. “It doesn’t really matter whether you’re selling T-shirts or cocaine. The business model is to commoditize security.”

I thought this was an interesting look at it. In a sense Silk Road is like the Pirate Bay in that it doesn't hold the items it generates traffic from.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#36

Post by ihsw »

jere wrote: post #13

>If Roberts is paranoid, it’s because very powerful people really are out to get him. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Not at all, paranoia is simply a mistrust without justification. One can be cautionary and paranoid at the same time.

There are formalized medical definitions of paranoia being a mental condition, but many words have informal definitions that complement their formal definitions.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#37

Post by shabble »

chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

I imagine in a year or three he'll settle down and live like a king in Patagonia :)

Regarding the money exfiltration, from what I recall, there are several money laundering "consultants" active on SR, there was a relatively recent interview[1] with someone who goes by StExo there. As with any illegal market, there are parties of varying levels of sophistication, from the guy who sells $100/week of weed to large organised groups with tens of members, drop houses, front companies, etc.

The (comparatively simple) problem faced by SR is converting BTC to hard currency. The harder part that both large SR vendors and physical drug traffickers have to contend with is obscuring the source and getting it onto the books as legitimate income they can pay tax on and pay themselves wages/dividends/whatever with.

But that isn't a new problem, and organised crime has clearly been doing it at scale for a while, and I can quite imagine professionals in the financial and business sectors who specialise in getting away with it.

[1] http://weirderweb.com/tag/stexo/

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#38

Post by logn »

I'm pretty sure the government is delighted by Silk Road so that they can finally justify searching all physical mail in some very advanced way. HN, you're always asking for startup ideas, why not just get totally evil and invent technology to scan physical mail at scale and hook it into PRISM? You'd stand to make at least millions if you did it right. Oh, and part of doing it right is making sure there's some alternate not-so-evil use case you can demo, like idk, automatically adding grandma's birthday cards to your facebook feed and automatically depositing her checks into your checking account.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#39

Post by Ihmahr »

chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

Given that he is a libertarian and a freedom fighter and all that, he could be donating a lot of his coins.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#40

Post by jere »

ihsw wrote: post #36
jere wrote: post #13

>If Roberts is paranoid, it’s because very powerful people really are out to get him. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Not at all, paranoia is simply a mistrust without justification. One can be cautionary and paranoid at the same time. There are formalized medical definitions of paranoia being a mental condition, but many words have informal definitions that complement their formal definitions.

>Not at all, paranoia is simply a mistrust without justification.

So does he or doesn't he have justification to be mistrustful? The quoted sentence claims the former.

>many words have informal definitions that complement their formal definitions.

Yea, I wouldn't have made the post without checking the informal definition first.

Post reply on HN