Silk Path Founder Arrested While Bitcoins Plummet
Bitcoins are in the news, between the shut 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 path’s founder known online only by his handle ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’, but apparently understood to the feds just a little more intimately as Ross William Ulbricht- therefore the seizure and shut down of the Silk Road web site itself. Silk Road ended up being an exclusively Bitcoin gambling site, well-known to numerous as an available market for illegal drugs and much more; the web site’s just below a million registered users were usually cash launderers, according to the arrest warrant.
‘Based on my training and experience, Silk Road has emerged as the most advanced and extensive marketplace that is criminal the online world 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 employing hitmen, seeking out computer hackers or purchasing illegal weapons.
Major Rate Volatility Ensues
Meanwhile merely a few days following the shut down of the web site by the feds and the arrest of Ulbricht Bitcoins themselves went through some Cat-5 volatility, as soon as the rates for the digital currency dropped from $139 per Bitcoin to $109.71 per Bitcoin in just under three hours.