...eventually earned Roberts a pirate's treasure. By 2013, Silk Road had nearly one million user accounts. In the 2.5 years the site operated, it facilitated 1.2 million transactions worth 9.5 million Bitcoins—or about $1.2 billion in total money exchanged. (Bitcoin values varied widely over this period.) Roberts picked up a cool $80 million in commissions.
No surprise, then, that the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the FBI all joined forces to track down Roberts and the largest sellers on his marketplace. In November 2011, after coming under pressure from Congress, the agencies began the hunt and quickly found that Roberts had been right—encryption, Tor, and "tumbled" Bitcoins were a potent combination to crack....
