Interview with the owner of Silk Road

An interesting article will be published in the Forbes magazine issue dated September 2, 2013: the journalist was able to interview the head of the largest online stock exchange for the sale of narcotic substances and drugs - Silk Road. The operating mechanisms of the site are provided by anonymous networks with onion routing and the cryptographically protected Bitcoin currency.

This was really not without difficulty: the entrepreneur at the level of the Terrible Pirate Roberts has no right to trust either strangers, or phone lines, or instant messaging networks. It makes no sense to search for his contacts in Skype or try to arrange a personal meeting: as the site operator stated, he does not contact offline even the most trusted persons, and the offer to meet in a certain country outside the US was decisively rejected. The owner of the Silk Road is hunting at the interstate level, and he cannot afford to take risks.
')
The communication took place exclusively through the messaging system and the site's forum, which is owned by Roberts Awful Pirate. It was accessed as any other .onion site — via the Thor system. The online acquaintance of the Forbes journalist 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 nickname) lasted eight months. But the communication was not constant: at one point after the blatantly incorrect question about his real name and citizenship, the Terrible Pirate broke off contact for a month.

A man so carefully hiding from strangers does have something to fear. Over the past 2.5 years, Silk Road has grown from a modest site in the depths of the Torah network to the world's largest online trading site for heroin, amphetamines, crack, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and marijuana. A study of a student at Trinity College in Dublin showed that the site has 60,000 visits a day. Revenues from the resource of the Terrible Pirate, according to Nicholas Christine, amounted to $ 1.2 million per month in the first half of 2012. According to Forbes estimates, the exchange now makes $ 45 million a year.

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

The closure and discovery of the owners of the Silk Road is hindered by the fact that onion routing networks are used to access the site. To pay for goods, an anonymous network of Bitcoin cryptographic currency is used, which not so long ago was officially recognized by the US authorities as monetary funds subject to taxation. It is precisely the positive features of Bitcoin - the decentralization and reliance on the users' computer network as a guarantor - that made it possible to defeat the anti-drug units. Of course, Bitcoin keeps a history of all transactions, but nothing prevents you from using one of the many existing money laundering companies. Such a scheme really helps, Bitcoin fears even the FBI. The income of the Silk Road is provided by a commission on the sale of goods, which is not more than 10% and decreases as the size of transactions grows.

What is the position of the Terrible Pirate Roberts regarding what he does? The owner of the exchange has libertarian views and believes that he not only provides the desired things for small businessmen and consumers, but also brings the anarchism of the “dark network” beyond its limits and the limits of tax and other state regulators - a kind Julian Assange with a syringe: “We cannot remain in the shadows forever. We carry 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 human beings and refuse to comply when we have done nothing wrong. [...] “Silk Road” is only a means to convey ideas. Everything else is secondary. ”In information dissemination and cryptocurrency, Roberts sees the future weakening of the role of the state.

Political aplomb and the desire for advertising intensified after the appearance of the Terrible Pirate competitors at the site. The new site recommending itself to be a Facebook Myspase-like Silk Road is called Atlantis and has a real marketing budget and an executive director. On June 26 of this year, a promotional video was published on YouTube. Roberts never advertised his website openly, relying on the word of mouth of its customers, even taking the idea of Silk Road Link with the Silk Road application from its competitors. The video describes the domestic problems of a marijuana smoker, desperate to find a new dealer after the move. Having discovered the network black market in the form of the Atlantis website, the weed-lover gets what they want. The video was removed the next day by the video hosting administration, but the video managed to get almost 100 thousand views.



Roberts does observe some kind of honor code: unlike other bitcoin exchanges, child pornography, stolen things and, after experiments and due to lack of demand, firearms, that is, everything that does not fall under the concept of harmless, are not sold on his website. for other contraband. If a customer wants heroin or crack, then Roberts considers it permissible to acquire them and test the consequences of using them.

Bitcoin has helped the development of the black market in many ways, but he 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 paid attention to the site almost immediately after its creation in 2011, and once discovered the vulnerability in the security of the wallet on which the funds of the exchange were kept. But instead of taking advantage of the bug and stealing the bitcoins, the hacker contacted the owner and thus entered into his confidence. Gradually, control over the exchange passed to the new Awful pirate Roberts, but the old one was left without anything: its 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. Even then, the Terrible Pirate began to live according to his alter-ego and began to publish manifestos about the libertarian ideals of the trading platform.

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

With the advent of big money, the inevitable emergence of criminal groups that control them. Hacking is also possible, as it already happened at the end of April of this year, when Silk Road went offline for a week. The used vulnerability allowed to speak about high skill of breaking of malefactors. It happened a few weeks after the launch of "Atlantis". The exchange is also threatened by law enforcement agencies: Liberty Reserve , anonymous payments service, has recently been shut down; a few days ago, a vulnerability was discovered in the Thor network, which made it possible to detain distributors of child pornography . The future of the Silk Road remains vague and uncertain.