Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “As alleged, Blake Benthall attempted to resurrect Silk Road, a secret website that law enforcement seized last year, by running Silk Road 2.0, a nearly identical criminal enterprise. Let’s be clear – this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”Bitcoin is not protection from the government. In fact, Bitcoin is a very trackable means of exchange. Anyone who thinks that Bitcoin use on a web site will protect them from the government is greatly mistaken. Further, given the nature of web site dark markets, it is very easy for government agents to monitor and infiltrate such operations, something they appeared to have done at Silk Road 2.0 from the start.
Friday, November 7, 2014
US Government Taunts Underground Bitcoin Operators and Users
In the press release announcing the shutdown of Silk Road 2.0 and the arrest of its operator, Blake Benthall, the US government issued a press release that appeared to taunt users of underground, dark, Bitcoin markets offering illegal products for sale. From the release:
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They are just playing an endless and useless 'guac-a-mole' game with our tax money.
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"There's Already A Silk Road 3.0" http://www.businessinsider.com/theres-already-a-silk-road-30-2014-11
The Blockchain has been proven very stable and anti fragile, the more is attacked the stronger it gets. Governments can try to put barriers, but can't ban mathematics, can't kill decentralized systems, only can affect individual companies, but never bitcoin/blockchain itself. And it has been proven also very safe: Centralized companies/entities (Silk Road, MtGox, NeoBee, Butterfly, etc) fail due to their own corruption and/or incompetence, and can be a scam or a ‘ponzi’, like in any other area. The Blockchain (the system) remains untouched because it is decentralized and 'antifragile', evolving and becoming ever stronger.
Decentralized systems is what will substitute the current crumbling centralized ones, power transfer to the people from the few ones where currently it is concentrated, they can try to fight it, but can't kill it. The Blockchain is here to stay, as it was the internet when it was born and fought by the ones controlling and monopolizing information.
Decentralized/peer-to-peer systems are the way to empower the people and bypass banks and all centralized financial institutions, the path to re-set the control from the few to the many, are the future for everything. The potential implications of the development of distributed consensus technologies is revolutionary.
We have now an open source peer to peer decentralized digital currency. It is very safe, since is cryptographically secured by a distributed global mathematical algorithm and public decentralized open source ledger, a revolutionary disruptive technology called 'Blockchain'.https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain
Bitcoin was unrelated to the FBI'S apprehension of the defendant.
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