Silk Path 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 significant week for Bitcoins in the news; a whammy that is triple actually.
First, there was the arrest by the FBI of Silk path’s founder known online only by their handle ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’, but apparently known to the feds just a little more intimately as Ross William Ulbricht- as well as the seizure and turn off of this Silk Road web site itself. Silk path had been an exclusively Bitcoin gambling site, well-known to numerous being an open marketplace for illegal drugs and much more; the site’s slightly below a million registered users were often cash launderers, in line with the arrest warrant.
‘Based on my training and experience, Silk Road has emerged as the most advanced and extensive criminal marketplace on the world wide web today,’ FBI Special Agent Christopher Tarbell noted into the grievance. Tarbell added that in the past 2 1/2 years, Silk path generated some $1.3 billion worth of comparable Bitcoin trades and netted $85 million in commissions for itself, often for things as macabre as employing hitmen, searching for computer hackers or purchasing weapons that are illegal.
Major Rate Volatility Ensues
Meanwhile just a few times following the shut down of the 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 only under three hours. Continue reading