A quiet, 29 year-old programmer from San Francisco, Ross Ulbricht, is alleged to be Silk Road's infamous Dread Pirate Roberts.
But in the vaccum left by the Silk Road site, Andy Park looked at the new sites scrambling to fill its place.
For a man whose sole objective was to protect anonimity, it's ironic that the alleged Silk Road mastermind was outed for trying to hire hit men to kill those who threatened to expose him.
Now that Silk Road has closed for business, its vendors and buyers are potentially exposed or at the very least compromised.
So, where will the illegal transactions said to be worth up to one billion dollars go?
Illegal sites are vying for Silk Road's shady business.
However, it's not just illegal drugs that popularised dark web-sites, promising untraceable and anonymous services.
- There's data services, like software and copyright piracy, and hacking and encryption tools and services.
- There's criminal offerings, like fraudulent credit card credit information, money laundering, logistics and sex services like prostitution.
- There's diamonds, gold, guns and ammo.
But of course illegal drugs, precoursers and drug making equipment formed the mainstay of the now defunct Silk Road site.
A site that euthenasia advocate Dr Phillip Nitschke says was even used by elderly Australian's to source reliable quantities of the "end-of-life" drug, Nembutal.
So, it's much more than just drugs that dark websites offer, all under the so-called security of TOR encryption software.
But as any freemarket economist will tell you, demand without supply means that market forces are like a Hydra cut of it's head and several others will grow in it's place.
The Sheep Market Place is one such website enjoying a boost in trade since Silk Road's demise. The number of products available trippled at the end of last week.
The site's not been around for long, so some are wary that it could be a sting set up by federal agents or a scam.
It also lacks the one feature that Silk Road had, an escrow function, sort of like paypal using digital currency such as bitcoins.
But Black Market Reloaded does offer that, and in addition, lists over 2000 drug-related products.
One site administrator said they received more than 3000 new users since Silk Road's closure.
Watch: The full report above.
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