Who launched the Silk Road marketplace in 2011?
Ross Ulbricht launched the Silk Road marketplace under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. He created the platform to function as an unregulated online black market on the Tor network.
Ross Ulbricht launched the Silk Road marketplace under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. He created the platform to function as an unregulated online black market on the Tor network.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents shut down the Silk Road website in October 2013 after locating its server in Reykjavík, Iceland. Authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht on the 1st of October 2013 inside Glen Park Library in San Francisco while he used his laptop to manage the marketplace.
The platform facilitated over 1,229,465 completed transactions between February 2011 and the 23rd of July 2013. These sales generated approximately 9,519,664 Bitcoins in total revenue plus 614,305 Bitcoins in commissions collected by the site.
The marketplace offered over 10,000 products for sale by vendors in March 2013 with seventy percent being illegal drugs grouped under categories like stimulants and psychedelics. Fake driver's licenses appeared alongside legal items such as apparel, art books, cigarettes, erotica, jewelry, and writing services.
Silk Road 2.0 launched on the 6th of November 2013 when administrators from the original site relaunched the platform under new leadership. Blake Benthall operated Silk Road 2.0 under the pseudonym Defcon until his arrest on the 6th of November 2014 in San Francisco as part of Operation Onymous.