Silk Road
When people think about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin in general, the first thought of many is that they are dealing with something in the world of illegality, something that is used to trade weapons and drugs, a payment instrument that is impossible to track and with which the great interests of the criminal world have made an indestructible pact.
Nothing could be more false.
Whenever we think about this, we subconsciously associate Bitcoin with what was the "luckiest" and "most famous" online store of illegal material and services in the world, we talk about Silk Road. Born from an idea of Ross Ulbricht, this shop has linked its payment method, Bitcoin, to the world of organized crime, fomenting the belief of the untraceability of our favorite cryptocurrency.
Silk Road was an e-commerce site that worked through the TOR browser. This e-commerce was specialized in drugs and everything that revolved around the world of illegal activity and goods.
TOR is a protocol through which it is possible to encrypt the data and paths of internet traffic through servers that make it impossible to trace the IP addresses of the computers used in order to be able to reach a site in total anonymity. In this way, by creating his online store on a Tor site, Ulbricht would be in complete anonymity, having his IP hidden.
The payment system of SilkRoad was bitcoin, chosen precisely for its anonymity and confidentiality within the network.
Now, we know very well that Bitcoin is pseudonym and not anonymous.
And that all transactions are tracked in the Blockchain.
Definitely a tool not really suitable for making illegal transactions disappear.
Maybe the usual briefcases full of cash were better ...
However Silk Road was launched in February 2011, after three months of development, the Silk Road business was drugs, pornography, counterfeit products, fake documents and weapons, although the administrators prohibited the sale of goods and services intended to harm other people. The main operators were based in the United States and Great Britain and the main products sold were MDMA, heroin, LSD and cannabis
On October 3, 2013, Silk Road was closed by the FBI with the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the site. The FBI also seized a large number of Bitcoins. On May 30, 2015, he was sentenced to life in first instance for crimes of conspiracy, cyber fraud, distribution of false identities, money laundering, drug trafficking, internet drug trafficking and conspiracy to trade drugs.
In early November 2013, it was announced that it would reopen and was then definitively closed on November 6, 2014
This was briefly the story of Silk Road and how Bitcoin became a tool fo criminal activity.
Now, it is likely that Bitcoin has been used to launder money but it is a tool not fit for purpose, basically like using a Formula 1 to go shopping.
