Silk road drug website busted.

Feds bust ‘Dread Pirate Roberts,’ digital buccaneer for ‘Silk Road’ drug website
Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested Tuesday in San Francisco on drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering charges - and an assassination scheme.

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BY DANIEL BEEKMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013, 12:03 PM


Screenshot of the website for “Sillk Road,” an underground drug marketplace, that has been siezed by the feds.

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The feds have busted "Dread Pirate Roberts," a shadowy digital buccaneer who allegedly owned and operated a $1.2 billion underground website for drug dealers and hackers.

Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested Tuesday in San Francisco on drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering charges — and an assassination scheme.

The website Ulbricht is accused of running, "Silk Road," has been called "the eBay of the drug trade," and the defendant has been dubbed a "digital drug lord."

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," the New York-based FBI agent who cracked the case said in an affidavit. "The site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites."

Living in San Francisco, UIbricht ran Silk Road on the "deep web," a hidden part of the Internet not indexed by standard search engines, according to a criminal complaint filed by Manhattan federal prosecutors and released Wednesday.

The site trafficked in drugs such as heroin and cocaine along with illegal services and used the controversial online currency Bitcoin, the complaint alleges.

Ulbricht calls himself an investment advisor and entrepreneur on his LinkedIn page, and is the CEO of Good Wagon Books, which "has collected tens of thousands of reusable items and found them new homes."

He said he hails from Texas and graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2006 with a degree in Physics, then attended Penn State.

"Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end," the rambling LinkedIn page proclaims. "I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."

Law enforcement agents have made more than 100 undercover purchases through Silk Road since Nov. 2011, including purchases made from and shipped to New York.

"From in or about January 2011 … the Silk Road website has served as a sprawling black-market bazaar," the complaint states.

"Silk Road has been used by several thousand drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other goods and services to well over a hundred thousand buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars."

The site, according to the complaint, has generated $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in commissions.
Ulbricht in March even solicited a Silk Road user to "execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site," the complaint alleges.

"I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you," Ulbricht wrote in a private online message, according to the complaint.
"What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him? Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position?" he asked.
When the purported hit man asked for $150,000 to $300,000, Ulbricht allegedly replied: "Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80,000."

Ulbricht had $3.4 million in his Silk Road account as of July 23, the complaint states.
The target of the hit lived in White Rock, British Columbia, according to Ulbricht, and the hit man reported to Ulbricht that the deed had been done, according to the complaint.

But Canadian authorities could find no evidence of the murder.
The feds caught Ulbricht by tracing posts he made on a Bitcoin forum in 2011 to his Gmail address and then to his LinkedIn page, the complaint explains.
The feds have also filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit seeking all the assets of Silk Road.

They said they have already snatched roughly 26,000 Bitcoins from the site, worth about $3.6 million, in the largest-ever seizure of Bitcoins.
The feds have additionally seized Silk Road itself, posting a notice to users on the site.

Silk Road had nearly 13,000 listings for controlled substances as of Sept. 23, grouped into categories such as "intoxicants," "opioids" and "stimulants."
"High Quality #4 Heroin All Rock," one listing said.

There were also listings for services: one vendor offered to hack into Facebook, Twitter and other social network accounts so that "you can read, write, upload, delete and view all personal information."
Hit men were also advertised.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/feds...8#ixzz2gay0k3ql

This is actually an amazing story. Bitcoins have essentially become a new "racket" in the internet age. This is nothing short of an absolute corning of that "racket" in a relatively short time period. When you run the numbers it really is quite amazing, 2.2 Bil worth of overall bitcoins changing hands with an 80 Mil net for people behind the site in just a small amount of time (this past July-Sept). This site has been operation for multiple years. If you conservatively estimate total net profit they're easily in the billions in just commission.

The guy they arrested and who owned the site got 10% of every sale. He must of been rolling in cash if those numbers are correct. But now it's all gone compliments of the DEA and FBI.

I'm more curious on if the TOR network encryption was cracked....that site has been up for over two years and they could never touch it. Now all of a sudden people are getting popped.

They busted a guy who the feds called the worlds largest dealer of kiddie porn a couple months ago. He also had a site that could only be accessed using TOR according to the article i read. He was in Ireland but the US put out a warrant on him and brought him back to the states for prosecution. I hope they fry the scumbag. You don't get much lower then dealing in kiddie porn.

I think the NSA might of cracked the networks encryption a few months ago for the FBI and DEA.

I like how Forbes completely missed this reference.

Here's the criminal complaint. Apparently it had more to do with the suspect using the same email address everywhere, including when he was first shilling Silk Road under a pseudonym.

Excellent...thanks L&M.

Not the end of the world. There are a ton of other ones if u can navigate the deep net/encrypted shit. Drugs, guns, credit cards, ids, pay pal accnts, all sorts of shit.

This looks like a bigger bust than the Liberty Reserve takedown.Surprised it took in billions but then again it makes sense knowing how much customers they had.

I wonder if they are going to track down the drug dealers who sold through that site.

F*ck they shut down silk road??!! I never figured out the whole bitcon thing anyway. They'll come up with a new way for the underground to communicate regardless.

YEEE HAAA

this guys stake in it was.


http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/02/technology/silk-road-shut-down/index.html

i think they are gonna try tracing the users too. People are gonna be leaving the site by the thousands now.

this is incredible. Just curious how do you access the 'deep net'

What the hell was he thinking.

Was this guy serious? Did he really think he could control a whole drug empire from his computer? Outsourcing all the hits to random people on the internet? A gang is not like a guild in WoW, you have to meet the people that work for you, you know, at least to make sure they did what you asked them to do.
This has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

he couldn't even keep -himself- anonymous online.

bitcoins are a whole nother topic I don't feel like regurgitating on. basically, hipster money. lol

edit: is there a member introduction thread? that'd be cool. Hi everybody

probably using TOR networks lol. its really not that difficult. you can vpn into say...russia, or any other asian hosted service who do not keep logs on their customers, and wreak havok or do some black marketing.

There isn't, but welcome

When I read the complaint, I was starting to wonder if "redandwhite" was an undercover cop.

R&W was the alleged supplier of the guy who wanted to blackmail Dread, and he's the one Dread reached out to to kill him. He emailed photos of proof and got paid, but the FBI said they didn't have any evidence of a murder as described in the correspondence going down.

And then when Ross wanted forged IDs to rent out servers without getting them all traced to him, R&W was the one who agreed to get it done, but his package was intercepted.

I wasn't paying much attention at first, so my first thought was that perhaps R&W was a Fed, and I wondered why that didn't come up in the complaint. Then I read through again and realized R&W is Canadian.

How far fetched would it be for a US investigation and a Canadian sting operation to unknowingly bump into each other?

ArsTechnica has a few pretty good articles on the case and how they got him.

Here's one of them but if you read the sites frontpage there's a few good articles on the Silk Road bust.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts/

"redandwhite" translate to Hells AngelS Possibly?

And yea I'm interested on how to access these sites (NO KIDDIE PORN)...you would think more illegal gambling sites would use this method for US citizens..

It's not necessary for illegal gambling sites. They use perfectly legal pay per head sites and then you just sq up in person or via paypal.

curious why you think they are perfectly legal? and why would you sq up via paypal?

Eh, I bet a lot of people used it to get med's without prescriptions and stuff like that. As far as the kiddie porn, I hope they catch all those perverts and castrate them.

yea there were some definite sick fuks on their.

the guy who ran the sight looked kinda weird his damn self...it's always those over educated white boys that turn out to be a little strange...

Top Silk Road Drug Dealer Was Flipped By Feds

OCTOBER -One of the top narcotics dealers on Silk Road, the recently shuttered online drug bazaar, secretly began cooperating with federal agents after his Seattle-area home was raided in late-July, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The disclosure that Steven Sadler, known online as “Nod,” was flipped will likely cause significant distress for his large Silk Road customer base, which included retail and wholesale buyers of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Additionally, suppliers for Sadler, 40, will likely also be concerned that they have been exposed to law enforcement scrutiny.

Sadler’s cooperation was disclosed at a brief U.S. District Court hearing earlier this month, according to an official audiotape of the proceeding before Magistrate Judge Brian Tsuchida.

The hastily arranged court appearance for Sadler (seen at right) was prompted by the FBI’s arrest a day earlier of Ross Ulbricht, who has been charged with being the mastermind behind the Silk Road site, which operated on the “darknet" (or “deep web”). Simultaneous to Ulrich’s bust, federal investigators shut down the two-year-old site, which relied on the anonymizing tool Tor to shield both vendors and patrons.

During the October 2 hearing, federal prosecutor Thomas Woods told Tsuchida that “Mr. Sadler has been cooperating, working for the government for the past two months.” Referring to “unusual circumstances,” Woods noted that “through reasons unrelated to” Sadler, his cooperation “abruptly came to an end this morning.” Sadler’s lawyer told Tsuchida that her client was in “constant communication with the government.”

While Woods did not further detail Sadler’s cooperation, it appears likely that he would have been required to assist agents in the analysis of his computer data, customer lists, or financial records. In similar cases, agents have also assumed the identity of cooperators and, posing as the arrested individual, carried on online interactions with hoodwinked customers and suppliers.

Woods--who did not mention Ulbricht’s October 1 arrest or the subsequent shuttering of Silk Road--did not seek Sadler’s detention on a criminal complaint charging him and coconspirator Jenna White with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine (a felony charge carrying a maximum 20-year prison term).

As part of his bond conditions, Sadler--who has an extensive recent history of drug abuse--was ordered not to use any controlled substances while on pretrial release. He admitted violating those terms about ten days later by using Suboxone, an opiate inhibitor, that was prescribed to a roommate. He also acknowledged using methamphetamine the morning of his October 2 arraignment and heroin one day earlier.

According to his Silk Road vendor profile, Sadler’s sterling customer feedback included more than 1400 reviews posted over a four-month period earlier this year. Sadler, who purchased a Silk Road vendor account in June 2012, was “ranked in the top 1% of sellers,” according to the criminal complaint.

Sadler agreed to cooperate with federal investigators after his Bellevue apartment was raided July 31 by postal inspectors and Department of Homeland Security agents. Investigators seized heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, a .45 caliber pistol, cash, and “vacuum and heat-sealing equipment” from Sadler’s residence, according to court records.

Agents nabbed Sadler after a year-long investigation that focused on narcotics being sent to customers nationwide from the Seattle area. The drug shipments were contained in Express Mail packages sent by Sadler and White from nearly 40 separate post offices. In addition to interdicting suspect packages, federal agents attached tracking devices to autos used by Sadler and White, and made undercover purchases on Silk Road from “Nod.”



Investigators also were aided by a confidential informant who agreed to cooperate after agents seized several packages mailed to her by Silk Road heroin dealers. In a TSG interview, the woman--a business owner in her thirties--said she had made several heroin purchases from “Nod” and allowed investigators to take over her Silk Road account to make undercover drug purchases.

A self-described “junkie” who has been clean since May, the informant said she helped a postal inspector navigate Silk Road and explained how to fund an account with Bitcoin, the virtual currency used for purchases. When an undercover drug purchase failed to arrive, a postal inspector--apparently sensing a rip-off--sent the woman an e-mail seeking advice as to how to address the missing Express Mail parcel with the narcotics seller. When the informant referred to the package “going missing,” the inspector replied, “I know the package is not missing, I work for the post office…hahaha. They just have not sent it.”

In addition to identifying Express Mail packages containing narcotics, postal inspectors last year also seized a parcel sent by Sadler that contained $3200. The package, which was opened after a drug-detection dog “alerted to the presence of narcotics,” was addressed to Michael Shapiro, a 28-year-old California man.

The cash shipment was headed for a $6 million dollar Bel Air home (7400-square-feet with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms) owned by Shapiro’s in-laws. Pictured at left, Shapiro declined to answer TSG questions about the package sent to him by Sadler. Until about a month again, Shapiro worked for the National Football League as an ad operations manager in the NFL’s Culver City office.

While Sadler’s narcotics operation was headquartered in his Bellevue apartment, investigators reported that an undercover cocaine buy in mid-June was mailed to a cooperating informant from West Hollywood, California. Around that time, “Nod” sent a message to the informant’s Silk Road account reporting that he was sending the coke “from the road.”

Sadler and White were named earlier this month in a five-count indictment charging them with conspiracy to distribute narcotics, distribution of cocaine and heroin, and possession of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. They pleaded not guilty to the felony charges during an arraignment last Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. (6 pages)

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/silk-road-dealer-cooperating-567432

I saw that, and I was curious what they mean with "reasons unrelated to Sadler". Do they use that sort of language if the CW's job is finished and they're still on track for a lighter sentence?

Or is it a polite/evasive way of saying the deal is ruined?

Silk Road 2.0 rises from the ashes - with improvements
Devin Coldewey NBC News





The new login page pokes fun at the FBI's seizure boilerplate.
Just five weeks after the shutdown of the Silk Road and the arrest of the man who allegedly ran it, the world's most notorious Internet black marketplace for drugs and other contraband is back online. There's a new Dread Pirate Roberts (the pseudonym and title by which the site's administrator is known), and he has already made some serious changes to the site.

The news arrived via several avenues, most surprisingly from a public Twitter account that appears to genuinely belong to the new head of the Silk Road operation. It announced that the site was live at about noon ET and shortly after reported seeing 1,000 connections per second.

But it's not just the same site copied and pasted onto new servers. In an introductory post on the site, Dread Pirate Roberts listed a number of changes: "a complete security overhaul," for one thing, and insurance against users losing their Bitcoins (the online-only "crypto-currency" in which business is transacted there) should the FBI descend on the Silk Road again. The login page cheekily poked fun at the Bureau's standard seizure page.

It's also a kinder, gentler Silk Road. "We have already committed a large percentage of our revenues to good causes, charities, and organizations who support our cause or have similar interests," read one portion of the post. And while the previous head of the site infamously is alleged to have hired the occasional hitman, the new one made assurances on Twitter that "Silk Road while under my watch will never harm a soul. If we did, then we are no better than the thugs on the street."

While the sentiment might be admirable, one might reasonably question why such communications are being made publicly at all, considering the high-profile demise of the previous site and the guarantee of attention from various law enforcement agencies.

Dread Pirate Roberts has an answer for that as well:

It is up to us to embrace this newfound exposure in mainstream media, rather than hide from it ... it would be impossible for the Silk Road to stay off the radar — it is therefore our responsibility to make sure that our mark on the radar is the right one.

Other posts in the forums by staff and administrators offered advice on keeping anonymous, described ways the site would support the anonymous Tor network that protects it, and enumerated other changes to the way things would operate.

silkroad
Silk Road
The usual drugs are for sale, along with other illegal or controlled items.
But one thing is the same: You can still select from a large selection of illegal merchandise, from fake passports to pill-pressing machines to, yes, just about any drug you could want.

Whether the new Silk Road will prove more resilient than the old one will only be shown in time, but the new leader and staff certainly don't lack for confidence.

NBC News has reached out the FBI for any comment and will update this story should they respond.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Speaking of Silk Road i read recently about this one guy who bought $27 in bitcoins back in 2009....and they are now worth...get this...$886k.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/29/bitcoin-forgotten-currency-norway-oslo-home

shows what a uneducated online hustler I would be... I didn't even know a bitcoin was a real coin...like actual currency.. I just thought it was like a router that converted currency/exchange values and protected identities...

It's not an actual currency that you can hold in your hand. basically what happens is people set up number crunching machines that sit there for hours on end creating a very large digital signature unique to one file or "bitcoin". usually the value given to it is the cost of the electricity used by the computer during the process of creating the bitcoin. anybody can create a bitcoin with their computer. Of course the average computer it would take a long time just to make one, the idea behind it is that it is an anonymous currency not controlled by any single government entity that can be used anywhere. there is no actual value there except for what we give it. if you ask me? don't run out to the bank and grab your money to start investing in bitcoins. besides them being practically worthless, sooner or later some government is going to get pissed off and shut it down(or atleast attempt to)



that is, unless I made myself look like an ass and you already know this.

just thought I would add to the topic.

And after seeing that I gave them less than six months. Then I read this:



For future reference, should we credit the phrase "Make money, not headlines" to George Anastasia? It's probably older than his books.

I would bet half the people on that new site are law enforcement guys...posing as both buyers and sellers. It's cool to check the place out but i would be real careful about doing actual business on it these days. Too much heat from all the publicity.

Beware of all the scammers too. Make sure if you do buy anything to use an escrow account. I read this one real trustworthy weed dealer built up a good reputation then told his customers to not use the escrow. He then over the weekend took off with anywhere from $150k to $250k in bitcoins. Then he had the balls to post on a forum that he was sorry he did it but he needed the money more then they did. lol!

So the boss got sent away with a few Capos and soldiers. The ranks have been replenished, and the organization is back up and running! lol

you didn't make an ass out of yourself, I thought that was what a bitcoin was, but if you look at the article posted by Giacarlo about the guy buying an apartment off the bitcoin investment it kind of looks like the people are cashing in actual coins... that kind of threw me off lolll

PaPrincess...they have exchange places where you can cash out of Bitcoins and turn it into real currency.

Don't feel bad...alot of people talk about bitcoins but i doubt they really understand how they work.

Ever hear of bitcoin mining? Some people make cash off of doing it but from what i read large companies are taking it over. You need alot of cpu power from what i understand of it.

Oh hey, it's the first would-be murder victim.

Bitcoin could soon be approved for campaign donations


The Federal Election Cjommission (FEC) is moving to allow Bitcoin donations as a campaign contribution in national races. Under the rules, Bitcoin donations would be considered "in-kind contributions" rather than direct money contributions, because the digital currency isn't the official currency of any nation and doesn't entitle holders to the ability to exchange it for cash like a check or money order might. The rules were proposed in a draft yesterday, and according to The Hill, they'll likely be approved later this month.

BITCOIN DONATIONS WILL BE TREATED A LOT LIKE STOCK

Despite Bitcoin's complexity, the rules governing it wouldn't be particularly complicated. The FEC proposes that Bitcoin acts much like stock does: it doesn't have an inherent value, its value often fluctuates, and it can sit around for any amount of time before it's traded in for cash. Like stocks, deciding how much a Bitcoin donation is worth will require looking to its exchanges. The value of a stock donation is based off of its exchange's closing value, but since Bitcoin exchanges don't close, the FEC proposes using the valuation given the very moment the donation is

Bitcoin may not be used for disbursements, however — they'll have to be turned into cash first under the rules. And like other contributions, Bitcoin donations would still be subject to individual limits. Donations in excess would be allowed to be paid back in either Bitcoin or a cash equivalent, however. The rules are fairly straightforward and should allow proponents of the digital currency — libertarians in particular, according to The Hill — to begin using it as 2014 midterm elections approach.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5080774/fec-to-allow-bitcoin-contributions-in-political-campaigns

Who in their right mind would give a stranger money over the internet? Wtf?

Exactly what I was thinking. What's to stop a guy from selling 200K worth of "coke" and ship him laundry detergent?

Usually they use escrow accounts. The money isn't released to the seller until the buyer says he received it and it was what it was supposed to be. The scammers try to get the buyer to forgo escrow but thats usually the sign of a scammer.

Was on the Black Market Reloaded site the other day. Shit loads of drugs, guns (AK47'S,Glocks etc) explosives, fake id,counterfeit money and prostitutes some who claimed to be 15 years old. Thats the kind of shit that will attract the attention of just about every law enforcement agency. I was just looking...no way i would ever order anything off any of those sites.

This is what I love about this whole Silk Road thing. Not only are they stupid criminals, but they're so insufferably pretentious you can't help but smile when the FBI gets them.

Just to recap, the system itself was pretty much foolproof; Silk Road was brought down because of human error on part of Ulbricht (unless you think TOR was cracked, in which case the Silk Road model is useless anyway), so let's make an online newsletter that will give users the opportunity to give up all sorts of info on their personal lives.

Silk road is boring now... I got back on and nothing even the slightest bit underground anymore.

but they're so insufferably pretentious you can't help but smile when the FBI gets them.

LOLLL!

"Douchebag" is too vague.

My question is why Forbes loves this so much...or maybe it's Bitcoin-love. You tell me.

Speaking of BitCoins, the value of them is skyrocketing. It was over $1,200 per bitcoin the other day but has settled back down to a little under $1k. Still i'm pretty sure just a few weeks ago they were valued around 3 hundred...thats a pretty hefty profit. Personally i don't trust them and i think the bubble will burst and alot of people will lose their money...but right now people are making some serious cash. And Bit Coin mining is a pretty big thing now with big businesses getting involved.

And check out this poor idiot who threw out his hard drive with 7.5 million dollars of bit coins on it. Unless he somehow finds that drive he's screwed...big time.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/...msnhp&pos=6

loll!!! one way to look at it is at least he was smart enough to notice the bitcoin was worth that much... but in general I am happy to see all market's moving in general. As far as the key there are ways he can figure it out if he is intuitive enough, basically the key is going to be a certain length/serial number, unless all the keys/passwords/ data encryption are completely different in the coding of the bitcoin software architecture, or whatever it is they use to value it, I am sure there is some type of program that can generate this key... kind of like that little kid in terminator 2 that stole money out of the atm using that device... LOLLL little bad ass boys... I remember I had a crush on him when seeing that movie... ha ha ha!!!

Going into more detail about that Forbes story I posted, Vice expanded upon the story somewhat:

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/did-one...ct-bitcoin-scam

So a Silk Road clone by the name of "Sheep Marketplace" began having problems with withdraws for a few weeks, then suddenly shut down after claiming to have been robbed of 5k Bitcoins. They claimed they would get the users' 'coins back to them, but that didn't happen.

This article adds that shortly before the shutdown some big Czech sellers had a big sale and offered drugs they had never sold before (with stock photos no less). Since the owners of Sheep were apparently also Czech, the theory is that they were either the same people as the site's owners or otherwise in cahoots with them, and so they made a final little trick to get as much money out of Sheep's users as possible.

From what I've read, the community suspects Sheep was always a scam. To me, the timing raises the possibility that, between the sudden influx of new ex-Silk Road users and Bitcoin exploding, they might've just gotten greedy and changed track.

But this article raises another possibility: some hacker claimed to have discovered the real name of Sheep's owner (it's in the article - not naming him here because I don't know the site's policies on this sort of thing) and gave their info to the FBI on November 2. If they got wind of this, that would be as good a reason to cash out as any.

Anyway, I was waiting for an excuse to post this, and today I noticed:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-12...-causing-drop-1

Baidu, the Chinese search engine that kicked off the new bubble by taking Bitcoin, has stopped since China just banned their banks from handling it. Too unstable.

And, perhaps ironically, that may have popped the bubble. Prices dropped 20%, and probably will go down further.

Something I've been wondering is if someone with enough coins could crash the market single-handedly by simply trying to cash out all their coins at once. Despite what people who worked to get it on Wiki's highest-valued currency page (RIP) told me, I don't think the 'Bitcoin economy' is large enough to handle a large hoard suddenly going on the market without dramatically bringing down the value (maybe even to double digits again.)

And that reminded me of Sheep. Sure, cashing out all at once would bring in less cash than gradually selling off their hoard, but what if Sheep's owner thinks the price is going down anyway?

Mind you, I don't even really want to see this happen. Since Bitcoin's been getting attention you can bet a few amateur speculators would see their Christmas ruined by a crash.

Silk Road: Online Drug Lords and Cyber-whackings http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/online-drug-lords-and-cyber-whackings