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U.S. regulators and law enforcement officials expect risk-based anti-laundering and sanctions programs no small feat for digital-currency firms, which generally do not know their customers' counterparties.
October 2 -
Policymakers and law enforcement should work with the Bitcoin community to realize the potential benefits of censorship-resistant moneyand to develop tools and techniques to address the technologys potential misuse.
August 21
The operator of the "Silk Road Hidden Website" was charged with running a "sprawling black-market bazaar" where anonymous users paid Bitcoin digital currency for illegal drugs and phony identification documents.
U.S. prosecutors said Ross William Ulbricht, known on Silk Road as "Dread Pirate Roberts," ran the site as "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet" from January 2011 to September 2013. He tried to have one user killed for attempting to extort money from the site, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint unsealed today in Manhattan federal court.
"The site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites," the government said in a civil forfeiture complaint unsealed today. The site generated sales of about $1.2 billion and about $80 million in commissions for Silk Road, prosecutors said.
Ulbricht, 29, was charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. The government seized the website and is seeking control of millions of dollars of Bitcoins held by Silk Road.
He was arrested yesterday in San Francisco and scheduled to appear this morning in federal court there, according to Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
