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15 October 2013updated 22 Oct 2020 3:55pm

Bitcoin may be let loose now Silk Road has been shut down

Now that Silk Road has closed without any discernible damage to Bitcoin's value, maybe we can accept it's here to stay.

By Ian Steadman

You can’t kill Bitcoin. It will not die. The Silk Road shutdown is the second event to challenge its stability and it’s come through with barely a scratch. And, despite the libertarian beliefs of many of its advocates, in part that’s due to Bitcoin going legit in the eyes of the law.

To recap, Silk Road was an online marketplace where users could buy and sell (almost) anything. Mostly that meant drugs, and in the criminal complaint filed by the FBI against its alleged owner/operator Ross Ulbricht it lists 1,229,465 transactions between 6 February and 23 July 2013 – or 7,362 transactions a day – all of which were conducted using Bitcoin.

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