The Black Market. The Dark Corner of the internet. The Silk Road.
The Silk Road was the most popular ‘black market website’ run by the man Ross Ulbrict, a 30 year old from San Francisco. Ulbrict was arrested in October of 2013 and has been awaiting trial with charges of money laundering, hacking, conspiracy to to traffic narcotics, and allegedly killing 6 people.
What does this all have to do with BTC Weekly you ask? Well, the entire site was funded and run on the digital currency. When the FBI broke down the doors of his apartment, they seized over 26,000 Bitcoins which at the time were worth over $3 million dollars. After that they seized an additional 144,000 Bitcoins tied to Ulbricht. The trial for his charges completed yesterday 02/04/15 and he was convicted of all seven charges. He is facing 30 years to life in prison and will be sentenced 05/15/2015. The seizure of this high number of Bitcoin has since then affected the price of Bitcoin. The government has taken it upon itself to sell the Bitcoin in large blocks to the highest bidders.
Since Washington legalized medicinal marijuana, the first vending machines to dispense the flower buds made a debut Tuesday 02/03/2015. The company owning the machines called ZaZZZ created the dispenseraries. How do they work? These vending machines require a users ID and medical marijuana card. Forms of payment accepted are either cash or Bitcoin. The federal government doesn’t allow debit or credit cards to be used for the sales of marijuana since it’s still classified as an illegal drug.
Coinbase, a frequenter in BTC news as they push the envelope in the digital currency business. Yesterday morning they discovered a phishing attack that was distributed via email requesting users to accept a new user/service agreement. After clicking the ‘Accept’ it asked users to sign into their accounts to authorize their account. By doing so, it authorized a malicious application to remove ALL Bitcoin from their Coinbase wallet. Coinbase was notified about this and they shut it down instantly. They didn’t release a number of users who were affected by it but they have a list and reached out to each one individually. You’d think that alone is enough as the user would fully be at fault for doing this. Was that all Coinbase did? Nope, they said they will reimburse all affected users the full amount of Bitcoin they lost while they continue their investigation. Amazing support. It’s companies like this that keep the faith alive in the Bitcoin community!
As I finish typing this email. Bitcoin’s price per BTC-e is sitting at $214.94
Have a great week everyone!
