Just one after the FBI seized and shut down Silk Road the Internet site known as the Amazon.com of drugs, weapons and worse it’s back month. Yup, in the annals of unlawful history, this one has to be up there in the chutzpah department; it’s like the capabilities behind the website are totally thumbing their collective noses at U.S. authorities that are federal.

Are Bitcoins and Silk Road Founders Aligned?

Even more shocking, brand new allegations connect Silk Road’s founder Ross William Ulbricht aka Dread Pirate Roberts until his FBI takedown final thirty days towards the still publicly unidentified original creator of Bitcoins, the digital money exclusively used to pay for illegal items and services on the old and now new site.

The allegations came to light after two Israeli experts one a cryptographer readied a soon-to-be-published paper that claims that the FBI seizure in fact just got their arms on around 22 percent of the $80 million in commissions Ulbricht’s web site had garnered from sales of an estimated $1.2 billion; sales on everything including assault weapons to illegal narcotics of any kind and even for hit men services for hire.

Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir will be the two researchers who possess brought these allegations to light, incorporating they on their own have actually only been able to trace one-third of the total commissions your website pulled in.

Nevertheless the story gets more fascinating; the two boffins have actually also been buying a feasible connection between Ulbricht and ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, the shrouded and never-seen creator of the Bitcoin digital currency exclusively used on the unlawful web site, largely because of its general untraceability, since it is not tied in to virtually any central banking system. Bitcoins’ value is totally determined by market demand, and lately, that demand happens to be curiously skyrocketing, with one Bitcoin being respected at over $800 and climbing recently. Just What does it all add up to?

Connecting the Dots

The two Israelis have been able to trace some paths back and have now made some connections between Silk Road and Bitcoins that are more than just business usage. They’ve been in a position to do so because although the marketplace that is actual may present anonymously, the transactions themselves are totally public. The pair created their own graph so they could track statistically how users interacted on the Silk Road site after getting their hands on a complete listing of all the Bitcoin transactions made this year.

In doing this considerable research, the scientists uncovered a single transfer log that followed Bitcoins deposited into an account now known to be Ulbricht’s. That deposit stemmed from another account, developed in January 2009, which placed the latter at early Bitcoin system time; it had all just gone public per year prior. And while the Israelis state they can’t definitively prove that that early Bitcoin account was ‘Nakamoto’s’, there is good reason to think it extremely possibly could indicate an ‘investment’ of sorts in the first Silk path web site. Does this aspect to a dark connection between Silk Road and Bitcoins?

It may. Another compelling piece of data uncovered by the Israelis had been a 1,000 Bitcoin transfer made in March of this 12 months. That amount would have translated to about $60,000; but with the current insane value surge in the cryptocurrency, it’s now about $847,000 worth at the time of transfer.

‘Such a single transfer that is large not represent the typical behavior of a buyer who opens a free account on Silk Road in order to buy some narcotics (such purchasers are required in order to make an initial deposit of tens or hundreds of dollars, and also to top the account down whenever they buy additional product). It may represent either activity that is large-scale Silk Road, or some kind of investment or partnership, but this is pure speculation,’ note the researchers.

Much more damning is that the depositor that is unidentified had some 77,600 Bitcoins apparently obtained through ‘mining’ operations; that quantity would now equal about $64 million in U.S. currency.

‘ The path that is short found suggests (but does not prove) the presence of a surprising link between the two mystical numbers of the Bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR,’ wrote Ron and Shamir. ‘DPR’ relates to Ulbrict’s Silk Road code title, Dread Pirate Roberts.

In a few methods, it turns out that Bitcoins’ perennial claim that it exists beyond the long supply of the law has proved to be correct. The researchers state the cryptographic design and veiled movement associated with the currency helps it be a great deal more difficult for police force to seize it than, say, a drug dealer’s stash of thousands concealed in a household. The duo also speculate that there could have been a second as yet undiscovered computer belonging to the Silk Road founder that the FBI have not yet had the opportunity to find.

So far, the feds, not surprisingly, have no comment on any of it. And when we know anything about anything, someone is in a production meeting in Hollywood right now, casting ‘The Long and Winding Silk path’ for a new cable series.

Silk Path 2.0: How Were They Able To Get a Revised Web Site Up Therefore Immediately After Turn Off?

How could a high-profile, illegal website seized by the Feds be up and running again a month later? Evidently, where there’s a will, there’s an easy method. A few billion bucks at stake does not hurt either.

It took hardly a minute, it seems, for the anonymous previously active Silk Road user to email former top users about the intention to obtain the site alive once again. A forum called the ‘Vendor Roundtable’ ended up being created, and on it, the framework for recreating the illicit site began.

The forum’s admin even put up a ‘Help Wanted’ ad for a ‘communication specialist’ a person who would oversee and coordinate the different pieces components associated with the rebuilding process. ‘You will be assigned work to perform considering what needs to be done,’ see the cryptic ad; no mention of what kind of money was included, evidently.

And therefore, final week, voilà! Silk Road 2.0 showed up; the only difference was in its absence, some competitive sites had cropped up to fill the void, all run using the secretive Thor server. Like its predecessor, the latest Silk path is just a cornucopia of illegal goods and services, from heroin going to males.

‘Silk path was something that had appeal,’ a shrouded and anonymous user told CNNMoney in a TV interview where even his voice was disguised. ‘That made it easy for people to carry on down that path. As long it does not matter just what it’s called. as you’re able to persuade the majority of the biggest buyers and vendors to move over to the new platform,’

Term regarding the street is in this revised version, information protection will closely be much more guarded and will even be ‘baked’ into codes. The FBI did crack the site that is last so whether or not they are able to do so on Silk Road 2.0, remains become seen. FBI Special Agent Christopher Tarbel who aided split the initial site did say that Silk Road in its original structure ended up being perhaps the greatest and most sophisticated criminal marketplace on the online world today.