On October 2, 2013, Ross William Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested in one of the libraries in San Francisco. FBI agents seized his laptop, which was registered to Silk Road — one of the largest darknet platforms.
Silk Road is often compared to eBay or Amazon, but only for illegal goods. The platform was launched in 2011 and was initially conceived by Ulbricht as an experiment: a young programmer wanted to create an anonymous marketplace that would not be controlled by the government. This platform became a manifestation of Ulbricht's libertarian views. Here, one could trade anonymously, paying with bitcoins.
Over time, in addition to legal goods, banned goods and services began to appear on the platform. Silk Road earned from commissions, which amounted to up to 10% of the transaction amount. As payments were made in bitcoins, this contributed to the growing popularity of the first cryptocurrency.
Ulbricht's shadow platform had a huge impact on the spread of bitcoins as a means of payment. For example, immediately after the arrest of Dread Pirate Roberts, the BTC price fell from $120 to $70 in an hour.
By July 2013, the platform's turnover amounted to about $1.2 billion, and the total volume of commissions reached $80 million. Almost a million people used Silk Road. Before Ulbricht's arrest, the rise in the bitcoin price was largely related to the popularity of this platform.
To understand how significantly Silk Road influenced the establishment of Bitcoin as a means of payment, it is enough to look at the prosecution materials against Ulbricht — they mention payments totaling 9.5 million BTC.
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