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Coinbase Temporarily Disables Ross Ulbricht’s Account, Hires Silkroad Prosecutor

CoinbaseYesterday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase disabled alleged Silkroad founder Ross Ulbricht’s account. They reactivated it later, citing security concerns. After this happened, some people pointed out Coinbase just hired Silkroad prosecutor, Kathryn Haun, which exacerbated worries that Coinbase may be targeting the Ulbricht campaign.  Also read: Top German Banker Warns Cryptocurrencies Could Precipitate a Financial Crisis When people mentioned Haun

The post Coinbase Temporarily Disables Ross Ulbricht’s Account, Hires Silkroad Prosecutor appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Coinbase

Yesterday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase disabled alleged Silkroad founder Ross Ulbricht’s account. They reactivated it later, citing security concerns. After this happened, some people pointed out Coinbase just hired Silkroad prosecutor, Kathryn Haun, which exacerbated worries that Coinbase may be targeting the Ulbricht campaign. 

Also read: Top German Banker Warns Cryptocurrencies Could Precipitate a Financial Crisis

When people mentioned Haun had been hired, it caused some individuals to level verbal assaults, saying Coinbase should not hire the enemy.

It appeared the community was prepared to wage a pitched battle against the Coinbase team. However, the situation was quickly neutralized when Coinbase brought the account back online.

The Ross Ulbricht campaign tweeted about the issue when the account was shut down, saying:

And disabled the account after receiving 16.5 today. Now can’t pay lawyers.

Then today, @Free_Ross tweeted the account had been restored and everything was back in working order.

The Silkroad Prosecutor; Ulbricht’s Campaign

The timing of hiring Haun was also rather strange, but likely a coincidence. It turns out that the prosecutor was not the Federal attorney that convicted Ulbricht. Haun was the one who put the agents that stole his bitcoin behind bars.

Coinbase Temporarily Disables Ross Ulbricht's Account, Hires Silkroad Prosecutor
Ross Ulbricht

Nonetheless, it is understandable why some individuals in the community would be sensitive to this kind of issue. It leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths when federal prosecutors, who were deeply involved in a bitcoin consensual crime case, are suddenly awarded a corporate position with a deeply entrenched bitcoin exchange platform.

In the end, the story turned out to be not as bad as it initially sounded. Still, it remains to be seen what will become of Ross Ulbricht, who does not belong behind bars according to many. At least his family and friends can continue funding his campaign, and perhaps some day they will receive some semblance of justice.

Do you think Coinbase did something wrong in all of this? Do you believe Ulbricht should be freed from prison? Share your thoughts below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, ibtimes.co.uk

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The post Coinbase Temporarily Disables Ross Ulbricht’s Account, Hires Silkroad Prosecutor appeared first on Bitcoin News.

“Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace” by Nicolas Christin

Recently from Nicolas Christin at the Carnegie Mellon INI/CyLab:

We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road, an anonymous, international on- line marketplace that operates as a Tor hidden service and uses Bitcoin as its exchange currency. We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012, including daily crawls of the marketplace for nearly six months in 2012. We obtain a detailed picture of the type of goods being sold on Silk Road, and of the revenues made both by sellers and Silk Road operators. Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics. A relatively small “core” of about 60 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval, while the majority of sellers leaves (or goes “under- ground”) within a couple of weeks of their first appearance. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers to approximately USD 1.9 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 143,000 per month in commissions perceived by the Silk Road operators. We further show that the marketplace has been operating steadily, with daily sales and number of sellers overall increasing over the past few months. We discuss economic and policy implications of our analysis and results, including ethical considerations for future research in this area.

Nicolas’ Conclusion:

We have performed what we believe is the first comprehensive measurement analysis of one of the largest anonymous online marketplaces, Silk Road. We performed pilot crawls, and subsequently collected daily measurements for six months (February 3, 2012–July 24, 2012). We analyzed over 24,000 items, and parsed over 180,000 feedback messages. We were able to determine that Silk Road indeed mostly caters to drug users (although other items are also available), that it consists of a relatively international community, and that a large number of sellers do not stay active on the site for very long. We further discovered that sales volume is increasing; currently corresponding to approximately USD 1.9 million/month for the entire marketplace, corresponding to USD 143,000/month in commissions for Silk Road operators. Informed by these measurements, we discussed some of the possible policy remedies. A surprising result is the tight coupling between Silk Road and the Bitcoin market – the daily sales on Silk Road correspond to almost 20% of the average daily volume of USD-BTC exchanges on Mt.Gox, the largest exchange forum. As a result, it seems like a potentially effective intervention policy would be to destabilize the value of the Bitcoin, to create instability in the marketplace.

 

PDF here.

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