Topic: 2013-08-14 Forbes: Dread Pirate Roberts, the Man Behind the Silk Road (Read 2926 times)

Are you pulling a joke, or are you a complete asshole?

Honestly, the internet is full of fucking idiots.

Just a hint...

He's an Aussie

Well this discussion seems to have taken quite the turn! This seems more appropriate for an SR forum or maybe a drug forum, but probably not a bitcoin forum.

I meant khat as a mild drug and that ketamine and amphetamine as in-between, but possibly on the softer rather than the harder side. I know that khat, caffeine and amphetamine are stimulants and that ketamine is a dissosiative.

The reason ketamine is not wildly used as a tranquillizer for humans anymore is that some people would report bad trips. What happens is that your consciousness is disassociated with your senses more and more depending on your dose. For most people that's perfectly fine, but if you have some serious issues buried deep down, you could potentially revisit them while being operated on in hospital, and wake up traumatized. However, for most people it is a pleasant experience to dissociate oneself from one's senses. Things will become distant, strange, and as you say, not real.

From a philosophical, if not practical, standpoint however, reality is not real. Just a perception of ones senses and hence not an "objective reality" like many of us are taught and like to believe.

But hopefully, in the future, one will not have to be stigmatised from going out of control with drug use and can easily seek help if things get out of hand. Though many people who use a large amount of different drugs keep their use within control. As far as I understand however, opiates are the hardest to quit.

This chart from The Lancet is a very simplified overview over harm and dependence of some drugs. Though I'm thinking culture has a lot more to do with it than this chart makes it seem:

You don't have to have faith in me.

What is ketamine's medicinal purpose? It's a tranquilizer. You cannot argue with that. Do veterinarians give it to horses to make them trip? Or do they do it to immobilize them and stop pain?

I have a great deal more faith in my experiences of the typical ketamine user than I have of someone trying to convince me of theirs, but we'll leave it at that

Never trust a pirate.   

I have direct experience with oxycodone (percs), heroin, acid, shrooms, and ketamine and I can say that ketamine is more similar to an opiate than psychedelic. And someone who "communicat[es] telepathically with different realms" is just high out of their mind. I'm sure that a lot of drugs would do the same thing to them.

Mind you, recreational users probably don't use it as a painkiller, but that's what it is. It's a sedative and a painkiller.

Take some time with some ket-heads, then tell me the same. I have direct experience of these people, it is not used as any form of painkiller by those that use it, they spend most of their time talking about how big (or small) the world suddenly appears, or how they've been communicating telepathically with different realms, or how they're no longer convinced that reality is "real".

Ketamine is an animal tranquilizer. It's a painkiller as well. It's more similar to morphine or other opiates than acid, shrooms or other psychedelics.

I do have some sympathy for the "free market sorts it through" perspective, but in the case of drugs like crack, it's more akin to survival of the fittest. It's pretty much one way ticket to a very quick death, and I mean the direct medical effects, not anything cultural or circumstantial. Can you avoid the temptation? If not, then early death and heartache it is. It's more like solvent abuse IMO, and I doubt that's a Silk Road category.

As an aside, I think you may have the wrong idea about both khat and ketamine: khat is a natural amphetamine style stimulant that's popular with Somalis (where the khat plant is indigenous), whereas ketamine is more appropriately grouped with your psychedelics (it is often referred to as a "dissociative", whatever that may entail).

SR never sold firearms. It was an entirely different site called the Armory (although they may have been run by the same person?).

Also, I'm guessing the majority of money comes from hard drugs simply because they're more expensive. Grams of cocaine are 100+ and grams of heroin are 200+ and that's much less doses than if people spent that money on weed or psychedelics.

Well it says in the article that they did sell guns for a while, I was just commenting on how the article portrayed DPR and SR. The article also talks about the flood gates, but not as much of flood gates of illicit goods necessarily but as a means to circumvent the state and taxation, as well as hard-to-comply regulation.

I agree that crack cocaine is a pretty ridiculous drug. But in a free marketplace people would quickly realise that and just try out one of the myriad of "better" drugs instead. As far as I understand crack cocaine is something that you can earn money by selling if you first push it to consumer, get them addicted, and then sell more to them. But with SR, if you get some poor sod hooked to the stuff, they would just buy it from some of the other dealers on SR and you wouldn't profit.

Regardless it would be really interesting to see how much of SRs turnover is weed/psychedelics/empathogens/khat as well as other milder drugs (and maybe also things like Amphetamine and Ketamine). As opposed to what proportion of the turnover is in the heavier, more addictive substances like tobacco, heroin, alcohol and cocaine and crack-cocaine.

I like how Forbes makes a big deal about how they communicated with him, despite the fact that literally anyone with a computer could go on the SR forums and talk to him.

SR also sells crack cocaine and heroin, and previously did sell firearms and weapons, so the "no guns yet" statement is spectacularly ill informed. So the idea that Silk Road can be looked at as totally benign is pretty ridiculous, there's an argument that they opened the floodgates for Tor based illicit marketplaces of all descriptions. I would defend the rights of people wishing to experiment with many illegal drugs, and also to regularly consume some of them. But crack cocaine would still be harmful even if it were legal, guaranteed pure and free from gang violence and social stigma, and with no benefits for the user, other than to get stupifyingly exhilarated.

Not guilty, I'm afraid. They've demonstrated a fair amount of ignorance for the most part, but at least they've been improving. They'd get an aggregated C+ grade from me. Mostly bolstered by Jon Matonis' pretty much impeccable coverage.

quoting, this is even more informative than the article

For those of you suspecting Forbes for having evil intentions about this, I have another take.

Through the work of journalists like Greenberg and Hill, Forbes is carving out a nice little niche for themselves. They are not simply copying the eternally copied stories but making their own original and well-informed articles. I think they are doing this to make money, they are positioning themselves to know as much as possible about Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin really takes off and reduces traditional finance, then Forbes will be set to be able to continue. Maybe they actually are forward-thinking and want to start covering the winning team, rather than only focussing on the sinking ship.

Also, why is it so negative for Bitcoin to be associated with SR? This article is very well balanced and in fact it seems to me unbiased, unlike most of the other articles out there. Besides, more and more people are starting to think the war on drugs should end, even two US states have legalised cannabis. Then you have Portugal, Urugay and the Netherlands. For a growing number of people this is puts Bitcoin in a positive light. Like the part about no guns yet makes SR look good.

They can try 

Forbes goes back to the 1900 teens employed by William Randolph Hearst. He was a financial columnist at the time the Money Trust (bankers) and foundations bought up all the major newspapers. He was put there by Hearst - I believe - at the behest of the financial interests that got the Federal Reserve and Revenue Acts of 1913 enacted to give positive light to the new legislation. I believe this because in 1933 Hearst was defaulting on a loan... and the bankers extended it instead of forclosing like they did with everyone else who could not pay up. One of the biggest property, business and land grabs in all of human history, and the bankers were relentless and non-caring about it to, and the banks just let him go so he would not lose his land held in collateral. Bullshit. He was repaid a debt for a lot of work conditioning the public for decades.

Hearst and Forbes were also both heavily involved in investment banking and politics.

Make no mistake about it... Forbes relies on the traditional financial/economic systems for their quality of life, wealth and power. Bitcoin represents the end of all of that. They are scared and this is a blow on the battlefield.

It's a hit-piece to associate drugs/terrorism to Bitcoin...

Here's What It's Like To Buy Drugs On Three Anonymous Online Black Markets

Bitcoin gets the FBI, Homeland treatment

Bitcoin Investigation: Is this the end of virtual currency?

They want to tax it and control it.

Congress is talking about it right now.

So you're saying I shouldn't publish my illustrated step-by-step tutorial designed to teach people in the sex work industry how to use Bitcoin?

Agreed. This attention is not good for bitcoin at the moment. Even if you don't care about using bitcoin "legitimately" within the existing financial paradigm, this still doesn't help anybody except for SR vendors.

government has power if you give it power. i think it's time for a paradigm shift

DPR probably thinks he is uncatchable, which may be true or not.  Personally, I think this is a very bad time to start pissing governmental people off, since the regulatory framework is starting to be put in place.  Wish he had just kept himself in the shadows...

I don't know how smart this is for DPR to do.


Think about it....

We already know the "State" is freaking pissed that people can buy/sell anything through SR....now you throw this in a national magazine, its like spitting in their faces, kicking the hornets nest, etc....


Just saying.

Free publicity for SR?

Thanks, guys. I was even more clueless than I realized. So we're pretty sure that it really is DPR and that he gave the interview (mainly) for the publicity, right?

How about the Forbes part? What do you think they want from these recent BTC/drug articles? Why are they doing them, and why in the mid-August media lull?

I'm too chastened to float another hypothesis right now but maybe I can counter or endorse someone else's.         

Mutter, mutter - it really is DPR but why the heck would he want to draw attention to BTC like that if it's his "secret ingredient"? Something still seems weird.

He signed a warning before it was printed:

Good point - you're right.

Doesn't DPR communicate on SR?  Then he could call out their bullshit, no?  I think it is genuine.

Whoa whoa, who you calling a drug dealer? If anything he's an enabler  .

Among the many weird possibilities with this weird story is that Forbes just made the whole thing up. I don't think there would be any letters to the editor from DPR pointing out errata, and if there were one could never know if they were genuine.

The situation gives Forbes the perfect opportunity to say anything at all and attribute it to DPR.

For whatever reason, they didn't use the situation to say SR is collapsing or is Under the Eagle Eye of The Authorities, quite the opposite memes in fact. The main agenda seems to have been to reinforce a link between BTC and SR in their readers' minds - but why? Is it "evil BTC is used only by evil druggies" or is it "you can get anything you want with BTC, even naughty things"?

Weird apparent digression about how people were persuaded to use something by forbidding its use:

"... the king gave Parmentier some acreage for the growing of potatoes. Walls were put up and a guard established to protect the garden. The air of mystery aroused people’s curiosity, which was doubled when guards accepted bribes to allow people to dig up potatoes. All of this staging encouraged people to look at the humble tuber from a new perspective."

https://nobility.org/2012/10/15/recipe-louis-xvi-marie-antoinette-potato/

Machiavellian or clumsy - time will tell. There is an art in stumbling gracelessly toward one's goals, in looking like a fool while shaping reality all the while.

What does Forbes want? At first thought, they want only the status quo where they have a perch near the top. Perhaps it is as simple as that, perhaps not.

I look forward to the next chapter. More clues needed - I'm clueless.           

« When I ask for his name and nationality, he’s so spooked that he refuses to answer any other questions and we lose contact for a month. »

Unfuckingbelievable.   You gotta be seriously dumb to ask a drug dealer his name.

Sigh. With friends like this who needs enemies? .. and right as the NY and Senate investigations start. I wish DPR had just lurked in the shadows for all time.

Here is the entire interview, not just the article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/

" When I ask for his name and nationality, he’s so spooked that he refuses to answer any other questions and we lose contact for a month. "

Or maybe he just decided not to waste his time on a bunch of idiots....  

What was the next question? "Can we meet at the nearest police station?"

Well-written though.

LOL Forbes !

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the-dread-pirate-roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug-website-silk-road/

"“Meeting in person is out of the question,” he says. “I don’t meet in person even with my closest advisors.”"

"All my communications with Roberts are routed exclusively through the messaging system and forums of the website he owns and manages, the Silk Road."

"Roberts also has a political agenda: He sees himself not just as an enabler of street-corner pushers but also as a radical libertarian revolutionary carving out an anarchic digital space beyond the reach of the taxation and regulatory powers of the state"

"THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS isn’t shy about naming Silk Road’s active ingredient: The cryptographic digital currency known as Bitcoin. “We’ve won the State’s War on Drugs because of Bitcoin,” he writes."

"“We’re talking about the potential for a monumental shift in the power structure of the world,” Roberts writes. “The people now can control the flow and distribution of information and the flow of money. Sector by sector the State is being cut out of the equation and power is being returned to the individual.”"