The website called Silk Road, launched back in 2011, has been a virtual ‘black market’ for anything from child pornography to illegal drugs and firearms to hitmen–all under a thick cloud of anonymity for both users and the site’s own creator. Throw in an alleged murder, millions of dollars, a possible life sentence in jail, and you have a real-life scandal that people will definitely be talking about.
The site worked it’s ‘magic’ by blocking IP addresses (and making it ‘virtually impossible’ to trace users back to physical computers) using Tor services, ensure that anyone using or hosting the Silk Road was nameless, faceless, and nearly untraceable. Goods and services were exchanged exclusively using bitcoin, an online form of currency that, you guessed it, is also all but 100% anonymous. As of today, a single bitcoin is worth over $200 USD.
The Silk Road created a highly sophisticated open market for unregulated exchanges, and needless to say, there was a LOT of money ‘changing hands’–or accounts, in this case.
Authorities like the FBI, DHS and IRS soon caught wind of the Silk Road and had been entrenched in a multi-year investigation into the site that finally came to a head in October of 2013, when authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, the alleged “kingpin” of the site (with possible murder charges still pending).
He was found guilty of 7 different charges amidst a mountain of evidence against him, but his lawyers are pushing to get an appeal. Even despite this government “win,” there are already a handful of competitor sites up-and-running. So what happens now? Get the whole story here:
