The Dread Pirate Roberts can never die, only the actors who play him. Say hello to Silk Road 2.0, run by a new DPR, launched on the deep web and offering all the delicious (and mostly illegal) drugs and contraband you could want.
The original Silk Road was shut down in October, with its alleged owner and operator – Ross Ulbricht – arrested. He’s currently in New York, awaiting trial, but since the site’s closure there were claims that a group of Silk Road administrators had the site’s source code and were going to re-launch it. Mashable scooped an interview with the new DPR:
We don’t know this person’s real name, location, age, gender or that there aren’t multiple people behind the digital black mask. The new Dread Pirate Roberts could be anyone. The new Silk Road could be a well-orchestrated scam; the new Dread Pirate Roberts could be the old Dread Pirate Roberts, though he or she insists that’s not the case.
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Roberts himself is presumed to have been an active member of the original Silk Road. Based on his forum posts and our private communications, the new Roberts matches his predecessor in portraying Silk Road as a sort of libertarian utopia rather than a black market in the darkest corner of the web. He also has the same flare for symbolism.
He certainly does. Here’s one of several similarly braggadoccio tweets he’s been sending over the last few days:
12,500 people have just shown the FBI you cannot kill the idea behind #Silkroad
Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas from just £49— Dread Pirate Roberts (@DreadPirateSR) November 7, 2013
Functionally, the site is almost identical to the first Silk Road. You need Tor to access it, purchases are made with bitcoins, and vendors list their wares for buyers to choose from in the same way with the site taking a small percentage cut of the money that trades hands. At least 170 vendors from the last site have confirmed their identities via encrypted messages to the new DPR and set up shop so far, with more expected.
Of course, nobody knows who the new DPR is, and considering the fallout from the last Silk Road’s closure is still ongoing – with arrests of vendors in the US and Europe and the complete destruction of the trust that gave traders and buyers confidence to use the site – it is worth questioning the wisdom of setting up a duplicate.
Or, of trusting an unknown not to make the basic mistakes that Ulbricht is accused of having made in setting up the first Silk Road. It’s hard to tell if that whiff in the air is weed or snake oil.
However, regardless of Silk Road 2.0’s success or failure (or similarly, for competitors like Sheep Marketplace and Black Market Reloaded) it’s obvious that law enforcement bodies are going to have to a problem keeping on top of absolutely everything on the deep web, black market-wise. As US Senator Tom Carper – the chairmain of the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, no less – has said, on hearing of Silk Road 2.0’s launch:
This new website – launched barely a month after Federal agents shut down the original Silk Road – underscores the inescapable reality that technology is dynamic and ever-evolving and that government policy needs to adapt accordingly. Rather than play ‘whack-a-mole’ with the latest website, currency, or other method criminals are using in an effort to evade the law, we need to develop thoughtful, nimble and sensible federal policies that protect the public without stifling innovation and economic growth. Our committee intends to have that conversation – among others – at our hearing this month on virtual currency.
We’ve speculated that the closure of Silk Road made Bitcoin stronger before by breaking its link with the dark web and forcing governments to take it seriously as a commodity-slash-currency, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. And, if you haven’t been watching, the price of a bitcoin broke $300 for the first time this week. Things are looking frothy again for the digital currency.
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