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wealth beyond our imagination. He existed nowhere but in his online musings. He used his rare mathematical genius to create a virtual currency the value of which went from zero to a billion dollars in a couple of years and managed for years to evade every effort to track him down and unmask him.
    He remained completely, utterly anonymous.
    Now the question everyone was wondering was: just what were the ‘other things’ he had moved on to in April 2011?

[C]yber criminals will treat bitcoin as another payment option alongside more traditional and established virtual currencies . . .
    – ‘Bitcoin virtual currency: Unique features present distinct challenges for deterring illicit activity’, FBI report, April 2012

Part Two
    The Rise

So you can download drugs from a server run on onions? You guys are full of shit.
    – Anonymous 4chan member

The New Silk Road
    D uring the first half of 2011, as its owner tinkered with the interface and relied on the Bitcointalk forum and word of mouth for advertising, Silk Road was a fraction of the size it would eventually become. The earliest known screenshot of Silk Road showed 145 transactions to date, 60 current listings, mostly of drugs, and 655 registered users. Silkroad, the owner, was a vendor selling magic mushrooms and marijuana. The site hit 1000 registered users on or around 11 April 2011.
    The members of the Bitcointalk forum had a new favourite topic as the desirability of this brazen black market for their fledgling currency was hotly debated. But even those who had no interest in drugs were fascinated by the potential provided by a commerce site that seemed to have a rational, business-savvy developer at its head. Members debated what should be sold online, other than drugs. ‘Although I’d really not like to see any kidneys and slaves on silkroad, I don’t see a point in disallowing fake ID’s and passports,’ posted ‘Modoki’. ‘Also, I think weapons should be sold (as long as they aren’t weapons of mass destruction and stuff like napalm and agent orange). Things like pistols, knifes and such I’d like to see.’
    Rumours of the website where illicit substances could be purchased spread to the online communities that would take a much greater interest in a black market for drugs – Reddit in particular. Like 4chan, Reddit is essentially a bulletin board where people can chat about anything and everything. Dubbing itself as ‘the front page of the internet’, it provides an online meeting place for every conceivable profession and hobby. Users can subscribe to ‘sub-Reddits’ dedicated to cute cat pictures or those discussing politics, cycling, Disney cartoons, lock-picking techniques or problems faced by the transgender community. Reddit has a large and active mainstream readership.
    Bitcoin aficionados started getting worried about the Silk Road anonymous marketplace, fearing it would be the downfall of the cryptocurrency. Many didn’t want it to be inextricably linked to the illegal trade in drugs. But it was apparent that the two were intertwined, with the success of one heavily dependent on the other. Silk Road needed bitcoin for anonymous trading; bitcoin’s early rise in value seemed almost entirely attributable to the business being done on Silk Road.
    Discussions became heated as fans and detractors debated the pros and cons of promoting the use of bitcoin on underground markets. The correlation between Silk Road and bitcoin was apparent, and it was very healthy for the value of bitcoin. On 15 May 2011, when Silk Road was shut down for maintenance, bitcoin immediately dropped by a couple of dollars. When Silk Road came back online on 18 May 2011, bitcoin bounced back with it.
    Once back online, Silk Road’s owner told the community in his usual cheery manner that ‘We did a big update of the site over the weekend and are happy to say that it’s back up and running!’ New features included an integrated bitcoin tumbler (a kind of laundering