Silk Road Founder Arrested While Bitcoins Plummet
Bitcoins are in the news, between the closed down of Silk Road,a plummet in exchange rates, and a new site that is live-streaming.
It’s been a serious week for Bitcoins in the news; a triple whammy, actually.
First, there was the arrest by the FBI of Silk Road’s founder known online only by their handle ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’, but apparently understood to the feds just a little more intimately as Ross William Ulbricht- and the seizure and power down of this Silk Road web site itself. Silk path ended up being an exclusively Bitcoin site that is gambling well-known to many being an available marketplace for illegal drugs and more; the site’s slightly below a million registered users were usually cash launderers, in line with the arrest warrant.
‘Based on my training and experience, Silk Road has emerged as the absolute most advanced and extensive marketplace that is criminal the web today,’ FBI Special Agent Christopher Tarbell noted in the issue. Tarbell added that within the past 2 1/2 years, Silk path generated some $1.3 billion worth of equivalent Bitcoin trades and netted $85 million in commissions for itself, frequently for things as macabre as hiring hitmen, looking for computer hackers or purchasing weapons that are illegal.
Major Rate Volatility Ensues
Meanwhile only a few times after the shut down of the web site by the feds and the arrest of Ulbricht Bitcoins themselves went through some Cat-5 volatility, when the rates for the currency that is digital from $139 per Bitcoin to $109.71 per Bitcoin in just under three hours. (more…)