collected in Bitcoins. There was, however, an often unspoken irony in the success of Silk Road, and of Bitcoin for that matter. The site and the currency, which aimed to circumvent the power of the government, were largely built on technology that had been created by the government or through research sponsored by tax money. The Internet itself was an outgrowth of several government research programs, and the Tor network that served as a backbone of Silk Road had been created by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Bitcoin, meanwhile, relied on advances in cryptography that had been built thanks
...more
