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Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

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

#51

Post by wmf »

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?

Not credibly; the transaction flow of mining looks very different from SR.

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

#52

Post by JulianMorrison »

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…

It's worse. BTC transactions are eternal and only one really expensive bit of big data shuffling away from being fully mappable as they touch named real people. So as this guy spends BTC, he's leaving footprints, narrowing the search space by connecting himself to things and to people. That metadata is very likely to be what outs him.

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

#53

Post by gwern »

junto wrote: post #20

If he setup silkroadlink.com, isn't that a money trail? WHOIS information for silkroadlink.com: * [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com] [Querying whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com] [whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com] Registration Service Provided By: BITDOMAIN.BIZ Domain Name: SILKROADLINK.COM Registration Date: 04-Jul-2013 Expiration Date: 04-Jul-2014 Status:LOCKED Note: This Dom…

Not really. Even assuming you can trace back the Bitcoin payment, it's not even clear DPR wrote the page (as opposed to hired someone to write it for him) - read it, it's written in a weird third-person with spelling errors and crap.

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

#54

Post by pests »

nobodysfool wrote: post #41
dobbsbob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention, the dude had to have money (even before taking this over) if he said the previous owner was "well compensated".

I thought the article said he worked along side of the original owner for some time before buying him out with his share? Or did I misread that part?

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

#55

Post by javert »

fragmede wrote: post #16
javert wrote: post #10

> Bitcoin-like digital currency system called Liberty Reserve No, it's really not. That's about analogous to "absinthe-like drink called Coca-Cola." Can the Bitcoin Foundation sue for defamation?

How isn't it? They're both drinks, and slightly poisonous... they're both digital currency, and as far as any laymen could tell, used exclusively by criminals. Oh sure, you can tell me about "mining" and crypto, but that's not relevant right now. What, if anything, actually sets Bitcoin apart from LIberty Reserve?

(a) LR was just a company - a company that may have engaged in all kinds of illegal things. Bitcoin is a technology based on a white paper and open source software.

(b) Bitcoin has many legitimate and legal uses.

(c) Bitcoin has unique and useful properties that are not possible with a private (LR) or fiat (e.g. USD) currency, such as having a fixed total supply.

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

#56

Post by betterunix »

nobodysfool wrote: post #41
dobbsbob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention, the dude had to have money (even before taking this over) if he said the previous owner was "well compensated".

There is no guarantee that the money is actually available to him. He probably has most / all of it tied up in Bitcoin, and is probably using only small amounts at a time via exchanges.

It is the classic mafia problem. Yes you can make lots of money on the black market, but it is useless if spending means getting caught. Hence money laundering.

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

#57

Post by gwern »

stevewillows wrote: post #35

“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.

Well, it becomes pretty obvious when you look at how SR actually operates: why don't sellers just post a list of products on a forum or wiki and buyers send them bitcoins? Because there would be no form of escrow or feedback tracking or interventions by third-parties or bonds required of sellers; with pseudonymous identities and irrevocable payments, it'd be an incredibly tempting lemon market. It's those additional features which turn it into a working marketplace.

Further reading: http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#silk-road-as-a-marketplace

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

#58

Post by gwern »

logn wrote: post #38

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 altern…

> 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.

Aside from the issue that SR has been running for almost 3 years now without anyone introducing such legislation - they already scan the outsides of all letters or packages indefinitely, and can easily search anytime they want to. The legal niceties aren't why drugs by mail still work, it's because the USPS alone handles literally billions of things a year and the screening problem (economical, not too high false positive, USPS does not benefit in any way) is really hard.

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

#59

Post by dobbsbob »

nobodysfool wrote: post #41
dobbsbob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention, the dude had to have money (even before taking this over) if he said the previous owner was "well compensated".

This was interesting too, since I always assumed one of the big vendors on the site bought him out but clearly not thanks to his helpful talking.

I bet he raised the money through a group loan, fund or he runs a coin mixing service/mining pool. something that would give you expertise in setting up secure wallets. This is why saying anything is bad unless it's for misinformation only.

DPR clearly hasn't seen the weev court docs where everything he wrote on IRC was used against him to cement a flimsy case

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

#60

Post by gwern »

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 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.

It did, and that has been pointed out literally since the start. It's one thing to know that the name suggests the ownership could change hands at any time, and quite another to have the current DPR state that this is so and when he took over.

> This guy is making a fatal mistake of talking to the press.

What makes chatting with a reporter on the SR forums any more damning or fatal than, say, a _Gawker_ article going viral years ago and inspiring US Senators to publicly condemn the site and call for its busting?

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