Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
September 18, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- According to a
recent report by Coindesk, last week the U.S. District Court in
Fresno California was finally able to seize the assets of the
notorious leader of the Dark Web market, AlphaBay.
While many continue to believe that
the Silk Road was the most profitable Dark Web enterprise in
history, this was not exactly the case. By 2017, when the Thai home
of Alexandre Cazes was raided by agents from the FBI, DEA, and the
Royal Thai Police, it was discovered that he had amassed a fortune
of more than $23 million cash and assets, including properties due
to his status as AlphaBay’s kingpin.
Like Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road
notoriety, Cazes had also reportedly held the majority on of his
assets in Cryptocurrencies that specialized in privacy features,
which would also seem to indicate that AlphaBay had been accepting
payments in the same way to avoid creating too much of a
paper trail.
In connection with all of this,
while you may know what sort of business the Silk Road was in, you
may not be familiar with AlphaBay’s specific activities. Judging by
the same Coindesk article that was referenced above, the latter was
basically an even more serious version of the Silk Road. While
Ulbricht allegedly dealt mainly in drug deals, Alphabet dealt in
everything from illegal weapons trade to stolen data.
Reportedly, AlphaBay was where
hacked driver data from Uber and hacked customer data from a
British
telecommunications company called
TalkTalk was illegally sold in 2015. It was at this point that
AlphaBay apparently became 10 times bigger than the Silk Road ever
was.
What you might logically find
yourself wondering at this point is: how is any of these
related to the Crypto market today,
beyond the currencies that Cazes was holding?
The reasonable answer may be said
to be that the saga of AlphaBay raises questions
related to how we, as a Blockchain
community, can distance the industry from its connections with such
illegal ventures. If we cannot do so soon, then it is logical to
assume that many governments will continue to strongly oppose
Cryptocurrencies because of this.
With that being said, perhaps part
of the answer toward widespread adoption by
the masses including Crypto’s
critics is to spend more time educating the world about the
benevolent use cases of Blockchain technology, above those that are
more nefarious.
In short, how can we help people
better understand how the Blockchain can positively impact our
global social welfare?
By: BGN Editorial Staff
News:
Cryptocurrency
Dark Web