Bitcoin History Part 15: Silk Road Is Born

Silk Road launched in February 2011 as the darknet’s first bitcoin-based marketplace. Within four months, it would be the darknet’s most notorious site whose reputation extended all the way to the U.S. Senate. The origins of the drugs marketplace can be traced back further, however, to a philosophical thread on the Bitcointalk forum. It was only later that the significance of this thread would be fully appreciated.

Also read: Bitcoin History Part 14: The 1,000 BTC Poker Game

‘A Heroin Store’

“As a Libertarian, the thing I love most about the Bitcoin project is the chance that it could be truly disruptive,” wrote early Bitcointalk user ‘teppy.’ It was June 2010, and Bitcoin was still very much in its infancy, with its potential use cases still being figured out. “I think that drug prohibition is one of the most socially harmful things that the US has ever done, and so I would like to do a thought experiment about how a heroin store might…