The year was 2013. A joint investigation between multiple law enforcement agencies seized the servers of the "dark web" ecommerce site known as the Silk Road, and arrested multiple suspects. The sting took years, and arrests spanned from 2011 til even after the Silk Road's takedown. Reportedly over 3000 suspicious packages tied to the Silk Road were seized.

The Silk Road was a "dark web" site where anyone could go if they wanted to "anonymously" buy LSD, pot, hash, ecstacy, or black tar heroin, to name just a few of the narcotics that were available. All you had to do was access the encrypted Tor network, point your browser to The Silk Road, and fork over some Bitcoin.

The "dark web" refers to websites and other content that exists on the internet, but is inaccessible from a standard web browser. ([read more about it on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web))

The Silk Road was located in a specific portion of the "dark web", known as onionland, which uses Tor (The Onion Router) to encrypt and anonimize traffic. Tor encrypts all data with multiple layers of encryption, hence the name, and sends the data through multiple hubs on the network to obstruct who is sending and receiving it. ([read more about it on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)))

The sting on The Silk Road all started with a tip to the DHS in mid-2011, about 6 months after the site launched. Around the same time, in June, [a story in Gawker](http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160) exposed the Silk Road to the masses, increasing traffic to the digital black market.

From the Gawker article:

>Sellers feel comfortable openly trading hardcore drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road's users with computer forensics, they'd have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user's tracks on the site. The site urges sellers to "creatively disguise" their shipments and vacuum seal any drugs that could be detected through smell. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn't accept credit cards, PayPal , or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.

([read more on Gawker](http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160))

What we're here to discuss is something else that the gawker article mentioned though.

>..not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology...

([read more on Gawker](http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160))

It took nearly two years, and the cooperation of more law enforcement agencies than I care to mention, to finally take down the Silk Road. So what took the cops so long to take down a site that anyone could access, given the right software, and a howto article? Was it that bitcoin was untraceable, as the Gawker article mentions, and some on the Silk Road seam to believe? Is Tor's encryption foolproof and their network protocol fully anonymous?

There's nothing about Bitcoin that makes it perfect for illicit activities. Likely the major stumbling block for authorities was that it was "uncharted territory".

Bitcoin is not untraceable, as the update to the Gawker article states. Every transaction is recorded on the blockchain. Your private wallet might not be tied to your identity, but every transaction you make with bitcoin is tied to your wallet. If you make a direct transfer from your bitcoin wallet to buy anything that is tied to your ID, now your ID is tied to your wallet.

>"There are ways of using Bitcoin privately," says Meiklejohn. "But if you're a casual Bitcoin user, you're probably not hiding your activity very well."

From "*[Follow The Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs On Silk Road's Black Market](https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/)*" by Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff

In the article linked above, Sarah Meiklejohn, a Computer Scientist at the University of California, manages to connect a bitcoin wallet address given to her by the reporter to a wallet address that she discovered was associated with the Silk Road using clustering.

Everything is on the blockchain. Without "laundering" your bitcoin by transferring it through accounts with no connection to yourself that deal with multiple users, your actions can be traced right back to you. Attempting to disassociate transactions and services connected to your ID from illegal activity is likely illegal as well.

Use a Coinbase account? Do any sort of trading with an exchange that requires you to submit ID? Purchase something from Newegg or any number of online retailers? Any number of activities can tie your wallet to your ID, or your address, or your IP. Are you paranoid enough to get away with illegal activity using bitcoin, if they really wanna take you down?

Thinking you're completely anonymous on the dark web is a mistake as well. There are multiple ways that cops and others can determine who you are. ([read "7 Ways the Cops Will Bust You on the Dark Web" from Motherboard](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv73pj/7-ways-the-cops-will-bust-you-on-the-dark-web)) This sting operation was only one of many cases where police have arrested people for activity on the dark web.

What about this kidnapping thing though?

It likely stretches back to 2015, when Taiwanese kidnappers managed to get their hands on $1.68 million in Bitcoin. They apparently threatened to "dig out the eyeballs or chop off the legs" of the victim. ([read more at The Cointelegraph](https://cointelegraph.com/news/taiwanese-kidnappers-receive-168m-bitcoin-ransom-from-billionaire-yuk-kwan))

Since then it has been requested by multiple kidnappers, and randsomware writers. Likely this is due to it's reputation as being anonymous. We already went over why that's not exactly correct though. While it may be possible to hide the identity of a user of bitcoin, you better be careful if you are doing anything so high profile for such a large amound of bitcoin.

So, if there's nothing special about bitcoin to make it the pirate's perfect booty, and the Silk Road was taken down all the way back in 2013, why are they still talking about Bitcoin today in reference to drugs and kidnapping? Was it that the Silk Road was one of the first places to accept Bitcoin?

While it's rather difficult to get a list of who accepted Bitcoin before the Silk Road, I actually did find [a forum post with a list of sites that accept bitcoin from July 9th, 2011](http://www.bitcointrading.com/forum/spend-bitcoins/online-stores-accepting-bitcoins/). I personally would call that a "fuckton" of sites. That's a month after the Gawker article. Likely the majority of those used Bitcoin before the Silk Road was well known, if not before it existed. Even Bitpay, a Bitcoin payment service provider for websites, was founded in May of 2011. ([read more about them at Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitPay)) What about [a forum thread from 2010 discussing web hosts that support payment via Bitcoin](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=738.0)?

My point is that there were plenty of places that accepted Bitcoin, even back in 2011. Associating Bitcoin with negative headlines every time it's mentioned is just asinine. It doesn't do Bitcoin any good, and it kinda makes it obvious that you don't really know anything about Bitcoin.

<center>https://i.imgsafe.org/79/79c9bc57fe.jpeg
*Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic ([source](https://www.flickr.com/photos/btckeychain/20401933105))*</center>

Hey guys, look, those people are using dollars! Isn't that the same kinda money they found in those palaces during the Iraq war? Huyuck!

References:
https://www.wired.com/2013/11/silk-road/
http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvn44/kidnappers-around-the-world-want-their-ransoms-paid-in-bitcoin