The first purchase ever made with Bitcoin was two large pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins (worth $474,420,000 today). Shortly after that, there came a new website called the Silk Road which was an anonymous marketplace where people could sell and buy any drug without worrying about government detection. This also allowed buyers and sellers to profit off of each other without having to interact with each other which was a big benefit.

Silk Road was created by Ross Ulbricht in 2011. He had had the idea before but there was no way the website could work because there was no way to anonymously send money. That changed when Bitcoin was created. When Ross heard about Bitcoin, he saw that his idea of creating an anonymous marketplace was now possible.

This not only brought attention to Bitcoin, but it also showed that Bitcoin could actually be used as a currency. People were now using Bitcoin to purchase things online. This caused others to launch marketplaces online powered by Bitcoin. The only difference was that these marketplaces were selling legal products.

Ross built the site using tor to keep himself hidden. He also went by the name “Dread Pirate Roberts” online. He built the website based on Liberterian ideas, and he believed that the government should not have the right to tell anyone what they can and can’t put in their bodies. He wanted to end the war on drugs. He had a lot of people working for him to help keep the site going one of the most important ones went by the name Variety Jones (real name Roger Thomas Clark). Variety Jones was an advisor to Ross, and he approached Ross saying that no one who knew Variety Jones in real life would ever even dream of crossing him, and if one did dream of crossing him, they would apologize when they woke up for even having that dream.

Variety Jones helped Ross stay hidden from the authorities. He gave him advice on how to encrypt his laptop and fend of hackers. Multiple agencies were after him and started arresting dealers and taking over their accounts to try to communicate with the Dread Pirate Roberts. One agent went by the name Nob and pretended to be a huge drug smuggler and started talking to Dread quite often. The NOB account was ran by DEA agent Carl Force who after years of talking with Dread and getting nowhere started using his connection with dread to sell information about the case.

An IRS Agent named Gary Alford was the first person to connect Ross to Dread Pirate Roberts. He noticed that Silk Road was first mentioned on a forum by a man with the username Altoid. He asked the forum to send him the email address used for Altoid. They sent him frosty@frosty.com back. He, at first, thought this lead might be a dead end until he saw that there was another email used before it was deleted and replaced with frosty@frosty.com. The email that was deleted was rossulbricht@gmail.com.

After awhile, they began watching Ross. They noticed that Dread Pirate Roberts became active when Ross was on his computer and inactive when Ross was off his computer. They then devised a plan to arrest him. They had to make sure to arrest Ross with his computer open. If he was able to close his computer, the computer would be encrypted and they would never be able to prove Ross was Dread.

One day while Ross was working on Silk Road in a public library, he noticed a married couple right in front of his arguing about something. He became a little concerned about the couple and took his hands away from the computer and leaned forward a bit. Once he did, the woman arguing snatched his computer while someone else came behind him and arrested him. The arguing couple was undercover FBI. They had him with the computer logged into the Dread Pirate Roberts account.

Ross Ulbricht ended up with a prison sentence of two counts of life imprisonment + 40 years. The only way he will ever get out of prison is if a president pardons him. Donald Trump had said he was considering doing so, but he did not.

The prison sentence is very controversial. Many believe that the sentence is excessive, and some wonder if it would have been so long if he had not directly talked against the government while being Dread Pirate Roberts.

At the website freeross.com, one will see a petition to get Ross out of prison with over half a million signatures. The website is ran by the family and has more information about the case.

Silk Road is an important part of Bitcoin’s history whether people like it or not. Not only did it expose people to Bitcoin, but it also showed that it could be used as a currency.

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