worth thirty million dollars, belonging to Ulbricht. Here you can see some of Ulbricht’s false IDs, probably ordered on his website and paid in bitcoins. In May 2015, he was handed five prison sentences to be served concurrently, including two for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and ordered to forfeit nearly two million dollars. Silk Road was born again a month later with the help of Blake Benthall, a.k.a. Defcon. He was arrested by the FBI, Europol and Eurojust one year later in San Francisco. A few days later, Diabolus Market changed its name into “Silk Road 3 – Reloaded” in order to capitalise on the brand. As you can see, it never ends, and there are dozens of generalist or specialized black markets emerging all the time. Even if darknets still look very underground and almost fictitious for most people, they allow the circulation of extraordinary amounts of money.
Bitcoin All of this has been possible by the invention and popularisation of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a decentralised and virtual cryptocurrency that allows anonymous online transactions. Since its creation in 2009, its value has steadily grown, and it was even perceived as a safe-haven asset during the financial crisis. For example, its value exceeded the price of gold in 2013. Bitcoin is now a big deal. There are even bitcoin cash machines in Japan. A lot of people have made huge investments in Bitcoin, like the Winklevoss brothers, those somewhat creepy twins who took Mark Zuckerberg to court over the ownership of Facebook. 73