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"All told, the site has generated sales revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins and collected commissions from these sales totaling over 600,000 Bitcoins. Al

"All told, the site has generated sales revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins and collected commissions from these sales totaling over 600,000 Bitcoins. Although the value of Bitcoins has varied significantly during the site's lifetime, these figures are roughly equivalent today to approximately $1.2 billion in sales and approximately $80 million in commissions." Incidentally exactly how much Walter White made... That's a strange coincidence, or perhaps one of the clerks that gets paid to make up statistics for drug related criminal complaints is a breaking bad fan...

acallahan 13y ago
I think you should flag this as breaking bad spoilers - not everyone has finished watching the show
- atlbeer 13y ago
  That's a year and a half old info. It can't be a spoiler forever.
  - pyre 13y ago
    I don't think that the actual amount was mentioned until the last run of episodes. Prior to that I only remember it being a huge pile of cash that they had "stopped counting."
    - pavel_lishin 13y ago
      I don't think that an amount of money constitutes a spoiler, unless that very specific amount has something to do with a specific plot point. ("Ouch, my cancer! If only I had $80,000,001 exactly!")
      - BlackDeath3 13y ago
        I always err on the side of "it's a spoiler". If it's not in the show's trailer, I treat it like a spoiler. I know that I'm personally much more sensitive to spoilers than a lot of other people, so it always annoys me how somebody says something thinking they're not spoiling anything without fully thinking through the implications of what it is they're saying. It's almost arrogance, really, to simply assume that you know what will and will not spoil some given experience for another person.
  - samstave 13y ago
    Have you seen Titanic? It sinks. Seen JFK? He dies.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      WHAT???? More spoilers!!
    - pavel_lishin 13y ago
      Jesus dies. The Zebra did it.
  - hansjorg 13y ago
    The anti-spoiler crowd are pretty demanding. A large and vocal group fought hard to introduce prominent spoiler warnings on Wikipedia. There was a time when every other literary work there had a warning that the article might be discussing the subject at hand.
    - javajosh 13y ago
      It's a strange phenomena, and I'm not entirely convinced that it doesn't imply poor quality entertainment. Good quality entertainment is eminently re-watchable. How many times have I seen "Groundhog Day", or read "Lord of the Rings"? The fact that I know exactly what happens doesn't seem to diminish my enjoyment at all. In fact, it seems like with every re-experience I pick up some new detail or insight. OTOH I can totally understand spoiler alerts with respect to sport and sporting-type events (like politics). It usually does seem to diminish the pleasure of watching a game when you know the outcome.
      - reinmen 13y ago
        i think there are two different qualities to entertainment/art: -one is the structural quality, which remains with every repetition. -another is the novel quality, which is basically the (un)pleasant surprise of something new or unexpected, which obviously is heavily diminished by repetition. i believe aristotle's catharsis to be based on this quality. i agree with you that entertainment/art that only possesses the latter quality is poor quality entertainment. it does not follow that entertainment/art with both qualities does not lose at least some of its value when the spectator is exposed to spoilers.
ealloc 13y ago
So this means the FBI now owns 600,000 bitcoins (5% of all bitcoins)? Probably more, since they also control the (presumably large number of) bitcoin stored in accounts on Silk road. Seems like this could lead either to the legitimation or deligitimation of bitcoin as the FBI must assess their worth. It also gives the FBI the ability to mess with bitcoin markets if they choose, by flooding supply.
- MichaelApproved 13y ago
  These numbers are over the lifetime of the site. I bet many of the bitcoins earned were sold/exchanged. It also includes revenue numbers which was paid out to sellers.
batbomb 13y ago
If it's the same person, there's a Ross Ulbricht who has a BS in Physics from UT, and would be 29. Best friends with this guy[1], who lives in SF (from Austin), and declares himself as best friends. https://twitter.com/RJPinnell https://twitter.com/RJPinnell http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html
- kanzure 13y ago
  I have emails from both of these individuals in my inbox from a few years ago.
grbalaffa 13y ago
> revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins According to this that's close to the current total supply of all bitcoins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.p... The graph shows the supply in 2013 at around 9.5 million, same number as what the article claims.
- nullc 13y ago
  At the moment: "total_amount" : 11784364.79571183 Though some of that is lost forever, of course.
- leoedin 13y ago
  It's worth remembering that the "Revenue" number would count bitcoins twice if they were used in two transactions. If bitcoins used to buy something on the site were then used by the seller to buy something else, the revenue would be twice the total bitcoins used.

acallahan 13y ago

I think you should flag this as breaking bad spoilers - not everyone has finished watching the show

atlbeer 13y ago
That's a year and a half old info. It can't be a spoiler forever.
- pyre 13y ago
  I don't think that the actual amount was mentioned until the last run of episodes. Prior to that I only remember it being a huge pile of cash that they had "stopped counting."
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    I don't think that an amount of money constitutes a spoiler, unless that very specific amount has something to do with a specific plot point. ("Ouch, my cancer! If only I had $80,000,001 exactly!")
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      I always err on the side of "it's a spoiler". If it's not in the show's trailer, I treat it like a spoiler. I know that I'm personally much more sensitive to spoilers than a lot of other people, so it always annoys me how somebody says something thinking they're not spoiling anything without fully thinking through the implications of what it is they're saying. It's almost arrogance, really, to simply assume that you know what will and will not spoil some given experience for another person.
- samstave 13y ago
  Have you seen Titanic? It sinks. Seen JFK? He dies.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    WHAT???? More spoilers!!
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    Jesus dies. The Zebra did it.
- hansjorg 13y ago
  The anti-spoiler crowd are pretty demanding. A large and vocal group fought hard to introduce prominent spoiler warnings on Wikipedia. There was a time when every other literary work there had a warning that the article might be discussing the subject at hand.
  - javajosh 13y ago
    It's a strange phenomena, and I'm not entirely convinced that it doesn't imply poor quality entertainment. Good quality entertainment is eminently re-watchable. How many times have I seen "Groundhog Day", or read "Lord of the Rings"? The fact that I know exactly what happens doesn't seem to diminish my enjoyment at all. In fact, it seems like with every re-experience I pick up some new detail or insight. OTOH I can totally understand spoiler alerts with respect to sport and sporting-type events (like politics). It usually does seem to diminish the pleasure of watching a game when you know the outcome.
    - reinmen 13y ago
      i think there are two different qualities to entertainment/art: -one is the structural quality, which remains with every repetition. -another is the novel quality, which is basically the (un)pleasant surprise of something new or unexpected, which obviously is heavily diminished by repetition. i believe aristotle's catharsis to be based on this quality. i agree with you that entertainment/art that only possesses the latter quality is poor quality entertainment. it does not follow that entertainment/art with both qualities does not lose at least some of its value when the spectator is exposed to spoilers.

ealloc 13y ago

So this means the FBI now owns 600,000 bitcoins (5% of all bitcoins)? Probably more, since they also control the (presumably large number of) bitcoin stored in accounts on Silk road. Seems like this could lead either to the legitimation or deligitimation of bitcoin as the FBI must assess their worth. It also gives the FBI the ability to mess with bitcoin markets if they choose, by flooding supply.

MichaelApproved 13y ago
These numbers are over the lifetime of the site. I bet many of the bitcoins earned were sold/exchanged. It also includes revenue numbers which was paid out to sellers.

batbomb 13y ago

If it's the same person, there's a Ross Ulbricht who has a BS in Physics from UT, and would be 29. Best friends with this guy[1], who lives in SF (from Austin), and declares himself as best friends. https://twitter.com/RJPinnell https://twitter.com/RJPinnell http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html

kanzure 13y ago
I have emails from both of these individuals in my inbox from a few years ago.

grbalaffa 13y ago

> revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins According to this that's close to the current total supply of all bitcoins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.p... The graph shows the supply in 2013 at around 9.5 million, same number as what the article claims.

nullc 13y ago
At the moment: "total_amount" : 11784364.79571183 Though some of that is lost forever, of course.
leoedin 13y ago
It's worth remembering that the "Revenue" number would count bitcoins twice if they were used in two transactions. If bitcoins used to buy something on the site were then used by the seller to buy something else, the revenue would be twice the total bitcoins used.