How To Use Bitcoin – The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man

Bitcoin promoter pleads guilty to unlicensed use of currency | Reuters

A man who helped to promote bitcoin wants to remain in the business despite pleading guilty Thursday to indirectly helping send more than $1 million in the digital currency to users of the illicit online marketplace Silk Road, his lawyer said.

Charlie Shrem, 24, pleaded guilty at a hearing in New York federal court to one count of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business.

A co-conspirator, Robert Faiella, 54, separately pleaded guilty to operating such a business. Both men face up to five years in prison when they appear again in court in January.

"I knew that much of the business on Silk Road involved the buying and selling of narcotics," Shrem said in court. "I knew that what I was doing was wrong."

His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said that what Shrem did was an aberration and that Shrem plans to continue working in the bitcoin world if possible. Agnifilo emphasized that his client was not involved in directly supplying bitcoin to Silk Road users.

"We believe he is at least one step more removed from the heartland of illegal conduct, which is really Silk Road," the lawyer said.

The two pleaded guilty as part of a deal struck with prosecutors from the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. They had been scheduled to go on trial Sept. 22.

U.S. authorities shut down Silk Road last year, though a new version bearing the same name was launched soon thereafter. The man accused of creating and operating Silk Road using the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts," Ross William Ulbricht, is facing separate charges and is scheduled for trial in November.

Shrem stepped down from his post as vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, a trade group, soon after his arrest in January. He was previously the chief executive of BitInstant, a bitcoin exchange company.

Continued here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/us-usa-crime-bitcoin-idUSKBN0GZ2OG20140904

Cryonics. Promising dead people you are going to keep their bodies at -196 degrees indefinitely. That is like selling someone a Bridge to Total Freedom. I mean, looks like a scam from miles away.

Maybe if you could sniff all the dead people to see if any of them have freezer burn, maybe then it might be kinda legit. Like people are making a sincere effort to do something useless and probably impossible.

The hope/scam is that maybe there will be cure for freezer burn in the future.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-14/books/bk-3429_1_great-mambo-chicken

What happens if that future is idiocracy?

Then dead people stay dead.

Someone’s Threatening to Expose Bitcoin Founder Satoshi Nakamoto | WIRED

Someone has taken over the email account belonging to Bitcoin’s secretive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and says he will sell his secrets for money.

The hacker, who told WIRED his name is “Jeffrey” claims to have also obtained information on Nakamoto that could be used to unmask his identity. Jeffrey didn’t tell us much, but when we asked him how he managed to take control over the satoshin@gmx.com email address that Nakamoto had used for some of his correspondence, he wrote, “The fool used a primary gmx under his full name and had aliases set up underneath it. He’s also alive.”

In a Pastebin post, Jeffrey said he will release Satoshi’s secrets if someone pays 25 bitcoins — about $12,000 to his bitcoin address. He says he has email messages dating back to 2011.

Jeffrey wouldn’t say how he took over Nakamoto’s account and he didn’t respond to many of our questions. But it looks like he leveraged the gmx.com address to take over other Nakamoto accounts. One was used Monday to post a message to the P2P Foundation website. Another to deface an old bitcoin developer page on the Sourceforge open-source coding site.

In his P2P Foundation message, Jeffrey claimed that information about Nakamoto was already being sold online. “Apparently you didn’t configure Tor properly and your IP leaked when you used your email account sometime in 2010. You are not safe. You need to get out of where you are as soon as possible before these people harm you.”

Continued here: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/satoshi/

Feds say Bitcoin miner maker Butterfly Labs ran “systematic deception” | Ars Technica

In new civil suit, FTC alleges Butterfly Labs spent millions on massages, guns, and more.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...maker-butterfly-labs-as-systematic-deception/

FBI arrests Blake “Defcon” Benthall, alleged operator of Silk Road 2.0 | Ars Technica

The FBI announced that yesterday it arrested Blake Benthall, aka "Defcon," the alleged owner and operator of Silk Road 2.0. Benthall was apprehended in San Francisco and will be presented today in a federal court in SF before Magistrate Judge Jaqueline Scott Corley.

“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," Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "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.”

The arrest comes roughly a year after the feds arrested Ross Ulbricht, the alleged original "Dread Pirate Roberts" and operator of Silk Road 1.0. According to the FBI, Benthall is being charged with "one count of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison; one count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison."

Source:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...n-benthall-alleged-operator-of-silk-road-2-0/

Huge raid to shut down 400-plus dark net sites | BBC News

Silk Road 2.0 and 400 other sites believed to be selling illegal items including drugs and weapons have been shut down. The sites operated on the Tor network - a part of the internet unreachable via traditional search engines.

The joint operation between 16 European countries and the US saw 17 arrests, including Blake Benthall who is said to be behind Silk Road 2.0. Experts believe the shutdown represents a breakthrough for fighting cybercrime.

Six Britons were also arrested, including a 20-year-old man from Liverpool, a 19-year-old man from New Waltham, a 30 year-old-man from Cleethorpes and a man and woman, both aged 58, from Aberdovey, Wales. All were interviewed and bailed according to the National Crime Agency.

Continued here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29950946

Closing Silk Road 2.0 Isn't Going to Stop Anyone from Selling Drugs Online | VICE

http://www.vice.com/read/silk-road-two-shut-down-mike-power-203

How the FBI Just Made Americans Less Safe By Shutting Down Silkroad 2.0 | The Free Thought Project

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi-americans-safe-shutting-silkroad-2-0/

An interesting article but a shame that the author doesn't realize that the plural of alley is "alleys" not "allies."

People also value their safety and freedom. So, when the state declares its “War on Drugs,” pushing the market for these substances into dark allies and crime ridden areas, demand wins out. The demand for safety and freedom of choice coupled with the internet, laid the groundwork for a mutually beneficial black market-based solution.
...

Now that these more peaceful channels of exchange have been taken down by the state, demand will certainly not go away. The supply chain will simply shift back into the dark allies, thus proliferating and sustaining the criminal aspect of the black market.

that's your criticism? He mispelled (hehehe) a word? I'm as big a grammar nazi as they get, yet I find that somewhat petty...why not just drop him a line and let him know. He may appreciate the correction.

Now, what about what he said. Do you agree that drugs laws are destructive?

I regard the article as conceptually very sound and thoughtful with an interesting perspective. And yes, the legislation making drug-use unlawful is appalling.

The homophone fail startled me, in such an otherwise well-crafted article.

I did search for a way to make direct contact with the author, but found nothing that I was willing to use.

I'm wondering if it was the Cupertino Effect

"Allies" has been used correctly as a plural for alley, although it has fallen out of vogue this century. I think it's particularly bad here, though, because it would be very easy to confuse it for the plural of "ally" given the context.

That is precisely the reason that the spelling bothered me.

However, I did find a way to make contact with the Author, Matt Agorist and mention the spelling.

Matt thanked me for the advice, and made the corrections.

Could be.

The author made this comment when I pointed to the spelling mistakes:

"Much appreciate the tip. Spell-check can be a son of a fun sometimes."

Silk Road 2.0 arrests, Operation Onymous: Did the FBI break Tor?

The bureau exploited a vulnerability in the anonymous Web browsing system to arrest criminals. That could leave activists and others at risk, too.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...ion_onymous_did_the_fbi_break_tor.single.html

Bitcoin slump belied by Circle’s hire of JP Morgan alum

Bitcoin is passé to many in the tech world these days, but Circle didn’t get the memo: the virtual currency firm is plowing ahead with its outsize ambitions to integrate virtual currency into the global banking system.

On Thursday, Circle announced the hiring of Paul Camp, a big name in finance circles to be its Chief Financial Officer. The move is significant since Camp’s resume includes building out the world’s biggest euro settlement platform at Deutsche Bank and, until July, running JP Morgan’s $3.4 billion transactions services shop, which provides payment infrastructure to banks and corporations.

The upshot is that a global finance bigwig thinks that bitcoin is ready for primetime — or, perhaps, that Circle paid him enough to make him believe that he does.

Continued here:
https://gigaom.com/2014/12/10/bitcoin-slump-belied-by-circles-hire-of-jp-morgan-alum/

After Silk Road Raid, the Dark Net Is 'Darker Than Ever' | Motherboard



http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-silk-road-raid-the-dark-net-is-darker-than-ever

Hackers Steal $5 Million in Bitcoin

Bitstamp announced the breach of a European Bitcoin exchange on Monday and temporarily shut down services to investigate the attack. Around 19,000 Bitcoin ($5.1 million) was stolen by the hackers, but Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodric assured users that most Bitstamp data is in “cold files” or offline data.

http://theantimedia.org/hackers-steal-5-million-in-bitcoin/

'Silk Road Reloaded' Just Launched on a Network More Secret than Tor | Motherboard

A new anonymous online drug market has emerged, but instead of using the now infamous Tor network, it uses the little known "I2P" alternative.

"Silk Road Reload​ed" launched today, and is only accessible by downloading the special I2P software, or by configuring your computer in a certain way to connect to I2P web pages, called 'eepsites', and which end in the suffix .i2p.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/silk-road-reloaded-i2p

Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR | Ars Technica

Ulbricht made the site, left, and was "lured back" to be the "ultimate fall guy."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...k-road-but-says-he-isnt-dread-pirate-roberts/

Undercover Agent Reveals How He Helped The FBI Trap Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht | WIRED

By Andy Greenberg

Nothing about the identification and arrest of Ross Ulbricht in the science fiction section of a San Franciso public library in October of 2013 was left to chance. When the FBI grabbed his laptop and put him in cuffs, the prosecution in Ulbricht’s case has said he was chatting online with an undercover agent who had infiltrated the staff of Silk Road, the massive online drug market Ulbricht is accused of creating. Now that undercover agent has told his story for the first time. And he’s revealed that just before his fateful conversation with Silk Road’s kingpin, he had been watching Ulbricht from less than a block away.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/silk-road-trial-undercover-dhs-fbi-trap-ross-ulbricht/

Here's the author on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a_greenberg

Defense bombshell in Silk Road trial: Mt. Gox owner “set up” Ulbricht | Ars Technica

After the lunch break Thursday in the Silk Road trial, defendant Ross Ulbricht took off his jacket. Minutes later, his lawyer Joshua Dratel took off the gloves.

In just over an hour of staccato cross-examination, Dratel's strategy became clear: he was going to pursue a line of questioning suggesting that the man who really controlled Silk Road wasn't his young client, but Mark Karpeles, the wealthy former owner of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange.

If Karpeles could use Silk Road, a free-wheeling drug market, to jack up the price of bitcoin, he could become incredibly rich. It was a currency he had more invested in than anyone else. Until it was shut down, the great majority of bitcoin trades went through his Mt. Gox currency exchange.

Continued here:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...lk-road-trial-mt-gox-founder-set-up-ulbricht/

Alleged “right hand man” to Silk Road 2.0 leader arrested in Seattle | Ars Technica

"You're not going to find much of a bigger fish than me," Brian Farrell told feds.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-to-silk-road-2-0-leader-arrested-in-seattle/

Coinbase Opens First Licensed Bitcoin Exchange in the US | WIRED

San Francisco bitcoin startup Coinbase has opened what it calls the country’s first licensed bitcoin exchange.

“With this launch,” reads a blog post from the company, “our goal is to bring increased stability to the bitcoin ecosystem.”

Coinbase already offered what amounted to an online bitcoin exchange, a service that let you trade the digital currency for dollars and other fiat currencies. But the new Coinbase Exchange represents a much wider effort to bring added legitimacy to bitcoin, a system that has often operated outside of government regulations. Last week, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced a regulated exchange in New York called Gemini.

Continued here:
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/coinbase-opens-first-licensed-bitcoin-exchange-u-s/

Investigators Used a Simple Google Search to Link Ross Ulbricht to Silk Road | VICE News

Last week, prosecutors outlined in painstaking detail a collection of chat logs, journals, and expense reports found on Ross Ulbricht's laptop that allegedly prove he was the mastermind behind the dark web site Silk Road. But jurors in the case still had no idea how federal investigators came to suspect Ulbricht in the first place.

On Monday, the court found out: The feds used Google.

After nearly two years of federal investigations into the site — which prosecutors allege facilitated $1.2 billion in sales, mostly of illicit drugs — IRS special agent Gary Alford decided to try finding early traces of it on the open web.

Alford testified Monday that in June 2013 he was "looking for the first mentions of the Silk Road website on the internet," dated prior to its launch in February 2011. Someone "would have to tell you about it," and "where to go on the hidden internet," Alford reasoned.

The agent entered "'silk road' .onion" into Google, using the site extension for the Tor network that Silk Road utilized, along with bitcoin, to maintain user anonymity. One result caught his eye — a post on bitcointalk.org that quoted a since-deleted message dated January 29, 2011, written by a user called "Altoid."

"Has anyone seen the Silk Road yet?" Altoid asked, linking to a web page on silkroad420.wordpress.com that explained how to access the marketplace via Tor. "It's kind of an anonymous amazon.com. I don't think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff," the user wrote.

Alford clicked on Altoid's profile and found more posts. In October 2011, the user posted a job listing on the cryptocurrency-focused forum. "I'm looking for the best and brightest IT pro in the bitcoin community to be the lead developer in a venture-backed bitcoin startup company," the message said.

"If interested, please send your answers to the following questions to rossulbricht at gmail dot com."

With three clicks, Alford had his man.

Continued here:
https://news.vice.com/article/inves...gle-search-to-link-ross-ulbricht-to-silk-road

Silk Road prosecutors complete their bizarre murder-for-hire story | Ars Technica

"It wouldn't be suspicious. He would just leave one day and not come home."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...complete-their-bizarre-murder-for-hire-story/

Accused Silk Road operator never abandoned website, U.S. tells jury | Reuters

A U.S. prosecutor sought on Tuesday to dissuade jurors from believing that the man who created the underground website Silk Road and is facing drug trafficking charges abandoned the venture long before it was shut down.

Ross Ulbricht, who is on trial in Manhattan federal court, has acknowledged creating Silk Road, where drugs and other goods could be bought with bitcoins. But his lawyer said he sold the website and was the victim of a set-up by its actual operator.

During closing arguments, a prosecutor called that claim "absurd" in light of the "mountain of evidence" seized from Silk Road servers and Ulbricht's laptop showing he ran the website from start to finish, using the alias Dread Pirate Roberts.

"He built it, he grew it, he operated it from start to bottom until the end, when he was arrested logged into the website as its mastermind," said the prosecutor, Serrin Turner.

But Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht's lawyer, said files linking the defendant to the website were planted through hacking by the real Dread Pirate Roberts, who lured him back in at the end.

"It was easy to reconstruct this in a way that would frame Mr. Ulbricht," Dratel said.

Continued here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/03/us-usa-bitcoin-trial-idUSKBN0L729620150203

Silk Road trial updates from Ars Technica can be found here:

http://arstechnica.com/series/the-silk-road-trial/

Ross Ulbricht Didn't Create Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts. This Guy Did | WIRED

More than 14 months after his arrest, Ross Ulbricht has been convicted of being the Dread Pirate Roberts, the masked figure who ran the Silk Road’s unprecedented online supermarket for drugs. But the man who first created that mask—and in many ways served as Silk Road’s mastermind just as much as Ulbricht—remains a mysterious figure, and one who by all appearances walked away unscathed from his involvement in the Silk Road’s billion-dollar drug operation.

As Ulbricht’s trial unfolded over the last month, one character appeared again and again in the chat logs prosecutors pulled from the laptop seized from Ulbricht at the time of his arrest: a man calling himself Variety Jones, and later, Cimon.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/ross-ulbricht-didnt-create-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-guy/

http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/decentralized-autonomous-society-transcript

Convicted Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht demands trial do-over | Ars Technica

On trial's eve, prosecutors disclosed information of an "alternative perpetrator."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...stermind-ross-ulbricht-demands-trial-do-over/

https://medium.com/@nweaver/the-dread-pirate-ulbricht-s-hail-mary-3b6c49455045

Darknet "Evolution Market" Goes Down, Admins Steal All Funds | Animal New York

Evolution Market, the darknet black market site that sold everything from stolen credit cards to hard drugs, is gone. The site won’t load, and all the bitcoins are gone as well. Evolution staff members announced the pseudonymous administrators “Kimble” and “Verto” have taken all the bitcoins and run. Many merchants and buyers are despairing, and the merchants are reckoning that there were 12 million USD worth of bitcoins stolen.

Continued here:
http://animalnewyork.com/2015/darknet-evolution-market-goes-admins-steal-funds/

Deep Web Drug Market Disappeared suddenly Overnight, $12 Million in Bitcoin Missing | Hacker News

The largest Deep Web drugs marketplace disappeared suddenly overnight from the Internet. But unlike Silk Road, there is no indication that the law enforcement took down the Evolution marketplace.

The Darknet’s most popular markets for drugs and bespoke carjacking services is mysteriously offline Wednesday with rumours circulating over the Internet that its own administrators may have just scammed its huge user base and stole $12 Millions in Bitcoin.

Continued here:
http://thehackernews.com/2015/03/evolution-drug-market-bitcoin.html

Drug Dealers and Drug Users Just Got Swindled Out of £8m by the Internet's Biggest Illegal Marketplace | Vice UK

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dark-net-evolution-scam-394

The Dark Web's Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished | Wired

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/evolution-disappeared-bitcoin-scam-dark-web

One of the Darknet’s Biggest Markets May Have Just Stolen All Its Users' Bitcoin | Motherboard

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/on...ets-may-have-just-stole-all-its-users-bitcoin

Darknet Market Evolution Unreachable, Funds Stolen | CryptoCoinsNews

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/darknet-market-evolution-unreachable-funds-stolen/

Sorry guys, but I would NEVER use Bitcoin.
~*Seriously*~

First bitcoin-based security starts trading on Nasdaq Stockholm | RT Business

Bitcoin Tracker One (BTO), the first tracker certificate that uses the bitcoin digital currency as the underlying asset, started trading at Nasdaq Stockholm Monday. This gives the opportunity to invest in bitcoin without holding the coins themselves. It will also be a way to get access to the returns of the underlying asset, US dollar per bitcoin, with less investor fees.

BTO is the world’s first “bitcoin tracker” to be traded on a regulated exchange.The bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology will be used by the Nasdaq OMX group to facilitate the trading of shares on its US stock market.

The security was launched by XBT Provider AB in April and will be traded in Swedish krona (SEK). The provider is the part of the KNC Group, the global technology leader in the bitcoin space.

The launch of BTO trading could be a head start on other exchanges around the world using similar bitcoin-based securities, said financial experts in Sweden.

Continued here:
http://rt.com/business/259621-bitcoin-nasdaq-trading-investment/

Cryptome ‏@Cryptomeorg 18 seconds ago
USG to Vacate Two Charges at Ross Ulbricht Sentencing
http://cryptome.org/2015/05/ulbricht-258-259.pdf

Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison | Ars Technica

The Silk Road taken, from drug kingpin to the penitentiary.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...nd-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/

Sunk: How Ross Ulbricht ended up in prison for life | Ars Technica

Inside the trial that brought down a darknet pirate.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/sunk-how-ross-ulbricht-ended-up-in-prison-for-life/