Recently, I said I wouldn’t be surprised the next time Bitcoin was mentioned in a major film or TV show; I retract my previous statement.
“The state may try to ban our tools, but if we never use them for fear of them being banned, then we have already lost, no? Personally, I don’t think they can be effectively banned at this point. Iran and China, for example, are actively trying and failing.” ― Ross Ulbricht, AKA Dread Pirate Roberts
The new 2021 film about the dark web website The Silk Road that was shut down by the United States Federal Government grossly highlights Bitcoin’s dark past, back before the days of having gone mainstream and being regulated by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) with a variety of centralized exchanges to cash out to FIAT. Ross William Ulbricht, age 36, known to the site’s users as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was the website’s creator. The film was based on the Rolling Stone article “Dead End on Silk Road: Internet Crime Kingpin Ross Ulbricht’s Big Fall ” by David Kushner.
In October of 2013, Ulbricht was arrested, and his laptop, unencrypted due to being open, was seized by federal agents. After refusing a plea deal for ten years in prison, he was convicted of Money Laundering, Computer Hacking, and Conspiracy to Traffic Narcotics. He is currently serving a double life sentence with an additional 40 years and no possibility of parole. Ulbricht, a self-described libertarian, is centered in the new 2021 film, “Silk Road.”
The Silk Road used Bitcoin (BTC) as its currency of choice. I’ve often depicted people involved in “the initial criminal element of crypto,” and this type of conduct is largely what I was referring to. Ulbricht is paraded through the film as a genius and a revolutionary. Still, the truth is that he was using his beliefs as a way to benefit via monetary gain through criminality after washing out as a day trader and video game developer. Countless people overdosed and went to prison due to the distribution of narcotics and the methods he used to commit these crimes. The browser required to visit the .onion domain was TOR.
I would like to discuss the security of TOR, which is “The Onion Router,” a well-known “secure” browser created by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory employees. First of all, TOR has had security vulnerabilities in which identities and IP addresses were traced, leading to arrests and convictions in Operation Onymous - they patched the software, but further attacks using the same type of method are still a possibility. I’ve never trusted TOR, and it is known for being quite slow - I recommend a good VPN (From a country not based in the United States or allied countries due to violations of constitutional rights in federal courts and seizures) in combination with clever behaviors, instead. However, TOR can still be considered quite secure for those who know how to navigate a hard climate in the dark web. It is built into some Linux distributions as a standard and has been for some time.
What I would like to say about Ross Ulbricht: I, too, am a Libertarian (surprised?), and for those who do not know what that means, it means that I believe in freedom. Do not confuse this philosophy as a leftist viewpoint; it’s entirely off the “typical” political spectrum and can be interpreted from both far-left and far-right political views. I voted for Biden, but that does not mean I admire everything he stands for; in all elections in the United States, we are given a choice between the lesser of two evils. Knowing this about me, I have to say I am incredibly disappointed in the direction that Ulbricht took. He was a brilliant student with a strong future in all respects, and he squandered it to make money illegally - I regret that he was too arrogant about his intellect to take the plea, as he had expressed interest in reforming his life during the trial; he would probably be looking at parole by now - another tragic loss of life from someone who could have offered a lot to the world.
Despite being in recovery, I believe that all drugs should be legal but regulated for purity and heavily taxed so that money can go to rehabilitation and education focusing on prevention. People who want to do drugs will always do drugs, one way or another. I will have eight years in recovery in April of this year, and I have been to countless rehabs and related facilities. I managed to stop, I saw the entire “machine of addiction” from the addict to the dealer to the supplier to the manufacturer to big pharma and the California Riveria, and the Florida Model - insurance scams used to lure people into rehabs by paying for their PPO insurance deductible for illegal kickbacks. You may have gotten cold-called by someone asking if you have any addicts in your home needing help with treatment - this is one technique they use to find people, but it is done in person, as well.
I went through several of these rehabs in Florida and California, and I know women were raped and bodies were dumped after imposter “interventionists” that recruited addicts for rehabs for commission gave the addicts drugs in heavy doses. This practice is often necessary to get into rehabs if the addict had been clean for a few days - they need to fail a drug screen for insurance to cover them; I would know. It was often used as a way to convince addicts into going in the first place; free packs of cigarettes were offered daily as incentives to keep addicts there - I haven’t smoked since. The problem is, they weren’t all good-hearted interventionists, and many would overdose, rendering them dead or easy prey for sexual predators. Big pharma makes a killing off of addiction and only perpetuates the cycle with drugs like Suboxone and Methadone.
Going back to the film, the language used by Ulbricht’s character (played by Nick Robinson) is hard not to agree with if you are for freedom/liberty. He would discuss matters on freedom routinely and was brilliant in this regard. In the film, he is quoted as saying, “America has lost its compass, if you want to fall in love with someone who doesn’t look like you or have sex with someone who does, that is your inalienable right.” and he’s quite right, and he was quite often.
This type of intelligent speech was routinely displayed from Ulbricht to the Silk Road community, written at a post-graduate level. Sadly, it seems he only ended up using it as a marketing ploy to sell more drugs. Ulbricht went as far as ordering assassinations on associates, which were a farce that never occurred, so he couldn’t be convicted. However, it was still taken into consideration during his conviction as Ulbricht was convinced they had occurred. The DEA agent (portrayed by actor Jason Clarke in the film) responsible was also charged with multiple high-crimes and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison - he was dirty, and I find it sickening that he is portrayed as a “bad good guy” by an actor I like in this film.
The movie states Ulbricht was up to $75,000 USD in two minutes, which is on par with 1.2 million dollars a day in Bitcoin volume. The price of Bitcoin at the time was substantially lower. When Ulbricht was convicted, his net worth was estimated to be $28,500,000 USD, no doubt in Bitcoin, which would be worth far, far more today. Satoshi always said a dead wallet is a good wallet for Bitcoin. Bitcoin could not be washed “cheaply and easily” in this era, and a substantial portion of the money would go to laundering using various techniques.
The Official Movie Trailer (The Film is now available on YouTube Videos):
I have far more to say on the matters I’ve gone over today, and I will likely end up writing more on the topics later on. The most important take-away for me was that Bitcoin can be used for both good and bad, and of course, those two things are heavily open to interpretation. I remember the day The Silk Road website was shut down, as well as Overgrow and a handful of others. Let this be a lesson to those who tried to start a revolution with some half-baked ideas - proper implementation must be done head-on with the highest levels of government, not through the onion router (script kiddies...) selling drugs.
We now have the exposure and credibility of the wealthiest man in the world, PayPal, Google, credit card companies, and other conglomerates, to take crypto away from illegal behaviors. It won’t happen without legislation and many legal battles. Still, I believe that the masses will eventually accept decentralized finance as superior to FIAT. As social order forces action, once we have the majority, we can erase the world’s debt by enriching everyone with equal opportunities and be granted true financial & economic freedom. Ulbricht was focused on monetary gains; he should have been focused on economic progress.
Let us not be defined by our pasts but by what we have learned from them.
P.s. - Anyone defending Ulbricht's crimes is a pleb. He wasn't the first to create this type of website, he was the first to go big and sloppy and get caught. Find a new idol.
As always, comments, suggestions, and friendly debates are highly encouraged.
Stay smart & Stay safe.
-Thomas Wolf
Cryptowriter is conducting podcasts that can be found on YouTube, Spotify, Anchor, PocketCasts, and more to come.
DISCLAIMER
I am not a certified financial, tax, or legal advisor, analyst, or planner. The above information should not be considered advice but as an opinion intended to share information and ideas for entertainment and independent research purposes. Cryptowriter and its writers are not responsible for any losses or damages incurred as a result of misinterpreting personal opinions for professional advice.
This article was originally published on Voice.com
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