Bitcoin Daily Digest: Silk Road Trial, ISIS, Cointerra Bankruptcy and more

1 – The Silk Road Trial The Silk Road trial continues, with Ross Ulbricht accused of turning to violence to silence a whistle-blower. The third week of Ulbricht’s trial has seen prosecutors allege that the defendant sought to have a vendor on the platform murdered because he threatened to expose the names of vendors and customers. Prosecutors began wrapping up their case against the 30 year old accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts, the alleged mastermind of The Silk Road.
‘[FBI agent Ilhwan] Yum showed the jury a pie-chart that calculated nearly 89 per cent of the 790,000 Bitcoins found in wallets on Mr Ulbricht’s computer came directly from Silk Road transactions.’
2 – Israeli paper points to Bitcoin as a funding tool for ISIS fighters Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest daily newspaper uncovered payments to the Islamic State being made through the digital currency, though the total was less than 5 BTC.
‘Due to the increasing efforts of social media websites to close ISIS-related accounts it was estimated that global jihad activists would seek refuge in the dark web,’ the analyst, Ido Wulkan, said. He cited findings of jihadists fundraising from a specific Bitcoin account, which seemed to have accrued approximately 5 bitcoins, worth at the time around US$1,000.’

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2015-01-30.