13 ms·
Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road
- swamp40 13y agoThis was really a fascinating article.
- rdl 13y agoI'm surprised he continues to have a relatively high profile, if he truly is responsible for running silk road. The more linkable things you do, the greater the risk of your pseudonym being compromised. I understand that he's commercially motivated to promote the site, but having a third party do that would make a lot more sense. As the site's admin, he's both a big legal and technical liability if identified; an independent promoter would not be.
- dwaltrip 13y agoMight silk road be the largest working example of agorism to date? Fascinating how they create a network where buyers can comfortably evaluate their options with the help of hundreds of reviews, and then order from the safety of their home.
- arcadeparade 13y agoWould Wikipedia or Craigslist qualify?
- citricsquid 13y agoThis article was announced before hand and there's been some debate about how it will affect the price of BTC. BTC has already been on the up in the last 48 hours so it'll be interesting to see if this compounds that growth. "I'd like forewarn everyone that in about 5 days an article will be published that is likely to generate a lot of buzz around Silk Road and attract new people to the site. New information about me, the site and many things will be discussed and I have no doubt that it will produce some controversy. I will be available to answer your questions here on the forums, and hopefully we'll have a fruitful discussion."
- bduerst 13y agoBTC exchange prices have been shown to be proportional to the amount of news that BTC receives. With Texas making it a currency, NY subpoenaing BTC superusers, and now this article, the BTC prices are going to go up for a bit. There are a handful of exchanges that allow you to short now, so you could probably make some shorts for two weeks from now.
- shrikant 13y agoThe name "Dread Pirate Roberts" is (quite cleverly, IMHO) picked up from the character from The Princess Bride [aside: go watch the film -- it's great fun!]. It is possible that this "person" is much like Satoshi Nakamoto, given that in The Princess Bride, the pirate is not actually one person, but a series of individuals who periodically pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts
- fizzbar 13y agoThe article states that exactly.
- shrikant 13y agoOh dear, you're right -- the article has two pages! I was a little puzzled to see no mention of the origin of the name at first.
- cenhyperion 13y agoOr a small group of people. If they agreed on things such as writing styles each person would be individually more anonymous.
- dmix 13y agoFor those not aware, the Forbes author of this article wrote a book on the history of cypherpunks (including the mailing list) which Dread Pirate Roberts was most likely a part of, or the very least inspired by it's members in some way: http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers/dp/0525953205/ http://www.amazon.com/This-Machine-Kills-Secrets-WikiLeakers... Having interviewed Timothy May, Cryptome founder and Phil Zimmermann is probably how he earned enough reputation to have this interview set up.
- mw6621 13y agoI think you mean Timothy May, Cypherpunks founder? AFAIK John Young runs Cryptome.
- dmix 13y agoCorrect, I wrote "Cryptome founder" as I figured that was more well known than John Young's name. Although I see now how the comma placement in my comment was confusing.
- LukeShu 13y agoIncorrect comma usage, actually. You can't omit the Oxford comma (the comma before an "and") with a list of exactly 3 items. If you do, the middle item in the list can be parsed too many different ways, as happened here.
- rabbidruster 13y agoI beg to differ. I don't see how an oxford comma would fix this confusion. In fact I think without it his statement is easier to understand. We can easily see he means three people. If he used the Oxford comma the second person would look identical to a preposition and would make your parents comment more valid.
- p4bl0 13y agoThe easiest way to fix the sentence is to put the least precise term at the end + using the oxford comma. > Having interviewed Timothy May, Phil Zimmermann, and Cryptome founder is probably how (…).
- javert 13y ago> 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?
- fragmede 13y agoHow 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?
- sirsar 13y agoLiberty Reserve got shut down. Bitcoin can't be shut down. To the laymen you referenced: https://bitcoinstore.com https://bitcoinstore.com
- jnbiche 13y agoDo you really believe that the CEO of Paypal[1] and Western Union[2] would contemplate in public the possibility of using Bitcoin as a funding mechanism if it were used exclusively by criminals? 1. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/04/30/could-paypal-be-on-horizon-for-bitcoin/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/04/30/could-paypal-be-on-ho... 2. http://mashable.com/2013/04/02/western-union-bitcoin/ http://mashable.com/2013/04/02/western-union-bitcoin/
- javert 13y ago(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.
- vhf 13y agoIf anything : decentralized vs centralized currency. For the laymen : Nobody owns Bitcoin. Liberty Reserve owned Liberty Reserve. It's as simple as it gets.
- CassiusCook 13y agoIf you are struggling to pin an ideology on an enterprise like the Silk Road, consider ways in which our current rate of technological/scientific progress has been shaped and guided by the responsible use of psychedelics in the 20th century. Check out the relationships that Francis Crick, Kary Mullis, Steve Jobs and Kiyoshi Izumi had with these fascinating compounds to start. From there it is not difficult for one to rationally assert that Silk Road (and Roberts) are critical facilitators - spurring innovation by furnishing those that might conceptualize the future with a powerful means to do so.
- jere 13y ago>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.
- ihsw 13y agoNot 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.
- jere 13y ago>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.
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoJust because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you!
- tankbot 13y agoCertainly he has justification. Also, clever use of a Princess Bride quote. Inconceivable!
- chrischen 13y agoWhether it's a victimless crime or not depends on where they source the drugs. You could argue that aggressive law-enforcement is what causes reprisal violence, but that still wouldn't justify supporting it in another way.
- GuiA 13y agoWell, producing child pornography is a crime that is inherently victim-ful. (I do not include cartoon CP here) Producing drugs today happens to have victims because of social policies etc, but those aren't inherent to the act of producing the drug. There are victims in the production of certain modern day goods (like electronics, clothes, etc.) but that doesn't mean that manufacturing iPhones necessarily leads to exploited Chinese workers. (although one could make the argument that selling iPhones at the price that they are sold for today cannot be realistically achieved without having Foxconn-style factories)
- arcadeparade 13y agoTo quote Chomsky, 'ever product made in a capitalist society requires some level of coercion', from Chinese Iphones to Colombian cocaine.
- dnskw 13y agoThat is a lie though. If I pick up a rock and somebody else does as well and we both use our hands to break off pieces of the rock (private means of production) and trade parts of the broken rocks with each no coercion occurred. That is technically a capitalist society without coercion.
- Zidewinder 13y agoThat is not a capitalist society by any definition I know of. Capitalism involves things like land ownership and interest-bearing loans, things that eventually lead to significant inequality in the distribution of resources. In a capitalist society, the other guy owns all the rocks, and if you try breaking one without his permission he might call the cops and have you jailed. But he's a reasonable guy, and if you're willing to break rocks for 14 hours a day, he'll pay you ten cents per piece, and then you can buy one back from him for thirty!
- dobbsbob 13y agoThe 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 NSA can get involved. Note to future outlaws: resist the temptation to make yourself famous by giving interviews. Just look how they amped the Swartz case after he went to the media Can also now make a pretty good profile of this guy because he talks too much on his own forum and to forbes.
- sirsar 13y agoThe interviewer didn't even get the operator's first name. I think he (she? they?)'ll be fine.
- dobbsbob 13y agoWe 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
- nobodysfool 13y agoNot to mention, the dude had to have money (even before taking this over) if he said the previous owner was "well compensated".
- pests 13y agoI 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?
- junto 13y agoIf 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 Domain Name is currently Locked. This feature is provided to protect against fraudulent acquisition of the domain name, as in this status the domain name cannot be transferred or modified. Name Servers: ns1.bitdomain.biz ns2.bitdomain.biz ns3.bitdomain.biz ns4.bitdomain.biz Registrant Contact Details: N/A Link Thompson (linkthompson@tormail.org) Ave. Federico Boyd Edif. Torre, Universal Piso 8 Panama City Panamá,74678 PA Tel. +507.2638480 Administrative Contact Details: N/A Link Thompson (linkthompson@tormail.org) Ave. Federico Boyd Edif. Torre, Universal Piso 8 Panama City Panamá,74678 PA Tel. +507.2638480 Technical Contact Details: N/A Link Thompson (linkthompson@tormail.org) Ave. Federico Boyd Edif. Torre, Universal Piso 8 Panama City Panamá,74678 PA Tel. +507.2638480 Billing Contact Details: N/A Link Thompson (linkthompson@tormail.org) Ave. Federico Boyd Edif. Torre, Universal Piso 8 Panama City Panamá,74678 PA Tel. +507.2638480
- jnbiche 13y agoNo, there's likely no money trail, because he almost certainly used Bitcoins to register the domain. I mean, look at the registrar.
- bitteralmond 13y agoLooks like a bogus address with only a real email in Tor-land. Domain is paid with Bitcoin through bitdomain.biz, so that's a dead end too.
- victorhn 13y agoIf i bought a domain trough bitdomain.biz and somehow i have problems with it (like getting stolen the password, somebody else claiming it), how can they verify that i am the person that bought originally the domain.
- chrissnell 13y agoThe 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 to catch on and follow the money trail.
- sspiff 13y agoDepends on the country you live in, and whether you're willing to relocate to spend your money. A lot of countries will look the other way if you invest a reasonable amount of money into developing their economy or people. There are also many, many ways of laundering your money.
- simantel 13y agoAs 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?
- chrissnell 13y agoSure, 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.
- w-ll 13y agoWell if there asking him questions chances are already following transactions, and its very easy to tell if coins have been mined and maybe shuffled around a few times vs coins with long blockchain history.
- 13y ago
- mrb 13y agoInteresting. I have had a theory that DPR is Satoshi (who invented Bitcoin): https://plus.google.com/100577178258662783679/posts/76UcUX4Py2c 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 :)
- dobbsbob 13y agoThe original DPR was pretty naive, he was selling on his own site with his girlfriend and didn't make any bones about people knowing. He had to hire a lot of help in the early days when the site took off because he didn't know what he was doing, Satoshi would know. I still remember the SR job ads for database admins and other positions. I always assumed dozens of feds signed up for them.
- clarkm 13y agoSatoshi would never give an interview like this. He hated drawing unnecessary attention to Bitcoin.
- stevewillows 13y ago“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.
- gwern 13y agoWell, 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 http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#silk-road-as-a-marketplace
- wiredd 13y agoInteresting link, particularly the part about ways law enforcement might try to shut down SR. One approach police might take is to set up shop as sellers, and then instead of running a scam, actually ship the illicit goods and have the police show up right after the mailman. If I understand correctly, the buyer's address must go to the seller instead of the SR admins. This might be considered entrapment, but if the buyer seeks out SR themselves and gets unlucky in their choice of seller, entrapment might be hard to argue.
- gwern 13y agoYes, that's one approach, but I think it'd be a major logistical challenge to coordinate with every single local police department whose zip code you happen to be shipping to. Easier to just scam customers and not deliver. :)
- stevewillows 13y ago
- logn 13y agoI'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.
- tankbot 13y agoI don't have the links handy, but it's well know that mail has been photographed for years and it seems likely that PRISM or some gov database is already ingesting this information. Seems like an easy step to upgrade the camera to something that attempts to scan contents.
- michaelt 13y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-ma... “In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be, ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”
- superuser2 13y agoEnvelopes have been photographed for years. The worry is that they'll start scanning package contents.
- jlgreco 13y agoJust have to photograph them at higher wavelengths. 390-700nm is fine and all, but somewhere around 10nm or so should do the trick... Perhaps there could be a market on SR for little pieces of x-ray sensitive photographic film. Customers could pay providers a slight premium to include the film in the shipment. If the customer discovers that the film was exposed, they know that they've fallen onto somebodies radar.
- jluxenberg 13y agoContrary to the article, the AMA on Reddit has not been deleted http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fwi48/im_the_ceo_of_an_online_underground_black_market/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fwi48/im_the_ceo_of_a...
- zaphar 13y agoThe article stated some comments had been deleted, not the whole AMA.
- KSS42 13y agoThis passage bugged me : ".. was grossing $1.2 million a month in the first half of 2012. Since then the site has doubled its product listings, and revenue now hits an annual run-rate of $30 million to $45 million by FORBES’ estimate." I guess 1.2M/month -> (30M - 45M)/yr makes the growth like much higher than : 1.2M/month -> (2.5 - 3.75M)/month 14.4M/yr -> (30M - 45M)/yr Maybe he should have written revenue increasing is from 1.2M/month to 45,000,0000 per year.
- marincounty 13y agoMaybe the author made the whole thing up?
- robinhouston 13y agoSilk Road is an interesting indicator of whether online privacy can be maintained against a powerful and determined adversary. If it’s still running in five years time, that will suggest that it may be possible. I would bet that it won’t.
- werid 13y ago> Then, last month, the FBI exploited a vulnerability in Tor to capture the alleged administrator of a child pornography site in Ireland. Freedom hosting now reduced to being simply a child pornography site.