Interview with Silk Road Owner

An interesting article will be published in the Forbes magazine issue dated September 2, 2013 : the journalist of the publication managed to interview the head of the Silk Way, the largest online exchange for selling drugs and drugs. The mechanisms of the site are provided by anonymous networks with onion routing and the Bitcoin cryptographically protected currency.

It really was not without difficulty: an entrepreneur at the level of the Terrible Pirate Roberts has no right to trust either strangers, or telephone lines, or instant messaging networks. It makes no sense to look for his contacts on Skype or try to arrange a personal meeting: as the site operator stated, he does not have offline contacts even with the most trusted people, and the offer to meet in a country outside the United States was strongly rejected. The owner of the Silk Road is being hunted at the interstate level, and he cannot afford to risk it.

Communication took place exclusively through the message system and forum site, which is owned by the Terrible Pirate Roberts. Access to it was carried out like to any .onion site - through the Tor system. The Forbes journalist’s online acquaintance with a man who chose a nickname after the character of the novel by William Goldman (although, rather, this name should be interpreted as nom de guerre, a combat alias) lasted eight months. But communication was not constant: at one point after a blatantly incorrect question about his real name and citizenship, a terrible pirate cut off contact for a month.

A man who is so carefully hiding from strangers really has something to fear. Over the past 2.5 years, the Silk Road has grown from a modest site deep in Torah networks to the world's largest online trading platform for heroin, amphetamines, crack, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and marijuana. A study by a student at Trinity College Dublin found that the site experiences 60,000 visits daily. The revenue from the Terrible Pirate resource, estimated by Nicholas Christine, was $ 1.2 million per month in the first half of 2012. According to Forbes, now the exchange’s revenue is $ 45 million per year.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration does not comment on the status of the investigation into this case, but in an official statement they mention that they are aware of the existence of such an active site. Senator Chuck Schumer demands an immediate closure of the exchange, regarding it as the most shameless attempt to sell drugs on the network.

The closure and discovery of the Silk Road owners is hindered by the use of onion routing networks to access the site. To pay for goods, the Bitcoin anonymous cryptographic currency network is used, which was recently officially recognizedUS authorities as taxable cash. It is the positive features of Bitcoin - decentralization and reliance on the user computer network as a guarantor - that allowed to defeat the drug control units. Of course, Bitcoin keeps a history of all transactions, but nothing prevents using one of the many existing money laundering companies. Such a scheme really helps, Bitcoin is even afraid of the FBI. The income of the Silk Road is provided by a commission on the sale of goods, which is no more than 10% and decreases as the size of transactions grows.

What is the position of the Terrible Pirate Roberts regarding what he is doing? The owner of the exchange has libertarian views and believes that he not only provides what is desired for small businessmen and consumers, but also takes the anarchism of the “dark network” beyond its borders and the limits of tax and other state regulators - a kind of Julian Assange with a syringe: “We can’t stay forever in the shade. We bring an important idea, and the time has come for the world to hear it. [...] What we do is not just drugs or “fighting the system”. We fight for our rights as people and refuse to obey when we have not done anything wrong. [...] The Silk Road is just a means to convey an idea. Everything else is secondary. ”Roberts sees the future weakening of the role of the state in the dissemination of information and cryptocurrency.

Political aplomb and the desire for advertising intensified after the appearance of the Terrible Pirate competitors at the site. The new site, which recommends itself as a “Facebook of the myspace-like Silk Road,” is called Atlantis and has a real marketing budget and an executive director. On June 26 of this year, a new site commercial was published on YouTube. Roberts never advertised his website openly, relying on word of mouth of his customers, even the idea of Silk Road Linkwith guidance on the use of the Silk Road, he took from his competitors. The video describes the everyday problems of a marijuana smoker who despaired of finding a new dealer after moving. Having discovered the online black market in the form of the Atlantis website, the lover of the weed gets what he wants. The video was deleted the next day by the administration of the video hosting, but the video managed to get almost 100 thousand views.



Roberts really follows some kind of code of honor: unlike other bitcoin exchanges, his site does not sell child pornography, stolen items and, after experiments and due to lack of demand, firearms, that is, everything that does not fall within the concept of harmless for other smuggling. If the client wants heroin or crack, then Roberts considers the freedom of their acquisition and the freedom to test the consequences of their use acceptable.

Bitcoin helped a lot in the development of the black market, but it also pushed the Terrible Pirate with the Silk Road. The fact is that the current owner of the exchange is not its founder. Its current operator drew attention to the site almost immediately after its creation in 2011, and once discovered a vulnerability in the security of the wallet on which the exchange’s money was stored. But instead of taking advantage of the bug and stealing bitcoins, the hacker contacted the owner and thus entered into his trust. Gradually, control over the exchange passed to the new Terrible Pirate Roberts, but the old one was not left without anything: his share was compensated, especially since he himself wanted to transfer this post. The new owner was announced in February 2012 at the Silk Road Forum.

In ordinary life, Roberts is modest. Of course, he does not spend large sums of money without standing out among people with similar incomes, although he can afford a much more luxurious life. The only thing he allows himself is the smoking of Indian hemp. An operator of a stock exchange of this size is well aware that in the event of his capture he faces a life sentence. Roberts agrees to sell the Silk Road for only a number of at least 10 or 11 digits.

With the advent of big money, the emergence of criminal groups that control them is inevitable. Hacks are also possible, as it already happened at the end of April this year, when the Silk Road went offline for a week. The vulnerability used allowed us to talk about a high skill of hacking attackers. This happened a few weeks after the launch of Atlantis. Law enforcement agencies also threaten the exchange: not so long ago the service of anonymous payments Liberty Reserve was closed , a few days ago a vulnerability was discovered in the Tor network, which allowed detaining distributors of child pornography . The future of the Silk Road remains vague and uncertain.