# Dread Pirate Roberts Dread Pirate Roberts was the pseudonym used by Ross William Ulbricht, the founder and operator of the dark web marketplace Silk Road[1]. The alias, borrowed from the 1987 film The Princess Bride, became widely known after the FBI arrested Ulbricht in October 2013 and shut the site down[2]. He was later convicted on all seven charges, including narcotics distribution, money laundering, and computer hacking[8]. ## Overview Dread Pirate Roberts, often shortened to DPR, was the handle Ross Ulbricht chose while running the Silk Road marketplace on the Tor network[1]. The pseudonym referenced the character from William Goldman's 1973 novel The Princess Bride and its 1987 film adaptation, a fictional pirate whose identity was passed from one person to the next[5]. Ulbricht picked the name to fit that mythology, suggesting the operator behind Silk Road could always be swapped out for a successor. On the site, DPR acted as both administrator and figurehead, posting essays about free markets and drug policy while collecting commissions on every sale[2]. Silk Road took Bitcoin as its only payment method and hid user identities through Tor, which made the alias a recognizable figure in early crypto and cypherpunk communities[1]. ## How It Spread The FBI investigation started in January 2011 with a user called "Altoid" who was advertising a Tor-protected black market on Bitcoin and drug forums[3]. That October, Altoid posted a job listing on BitcoinTalk asking for "an IT pro in the Bitcoin community" and left the reply address "rossulbricht at gmail dot com," which agents traced back to Ulbricht[3]. Customs officers also intercepted a package of fake IDs Ulbricht had ordered from a Canadian vendor[2]. On October 2nd, 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht and seized about $3.6 million in Bitcoin[2]. Court filings claimed Silk Road had processed more than 1.2 million transactions involving 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors, generating roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions[4]. The complaint also alleged that Ulbricht offered 1,670 bitcoins, around $150,000 at the time, to have a user named FriendlyChemist killed after being threatened with a leak of customer data[4]. On November 24th, 2013, Weizmann Institute researchers Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir published a paper estimating that most of the $80 million in commissions was still unaccounted for, and flagged a 1,000-bitcoin transfer from an early wallet believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto[6]. The New York Times covered the finding shortly after[9]. Ulbricht's trial began on January 13th, 2015[7], and on February 4th a jury convicted him on all seven counts, including running a continuing criminal enterprise[8]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Dread Pirate Roberts? Dread Pirate Roberts was the pseudonym used by Ross William Ulbricht while running the Silk Road dark web marketplace on Tor from 2011 until his arrest in October 2013[1]. ### Where did Dread Pirate Roberts come from? The name was borrowed from the fictional pirate in William Goldman's 1973 novel The Princess Bride, whose identity was passed between different people over generations[5]. ### What does Dread Pirate Roberts mean? In the Silk Road context, the name signaled that the site operator was interchangeable, since Ulbricht told users the DPR role could be handed off to a successor at any time[2]. ### How do you use Dread Pirate Roberts? The alias is not a meme template but a historical handle, still referenced in coverage of Silk Road, early Bitcoin history, and Ulbricht's ongoing legal case[8]. ### Is Dread Pirate Roberts still popular? The name is remembered mostly as a piece of internet history tied to the Silk Road bust and Ulbricht's conviction on all seven federal counts in February 2015[8]. ## References 1. [https://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160]() 2. [https://www.npr.org/2013/10/03/228763809/calif-man-charged-in-black-market-drug-scheme]() 3. [https://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-fbi-complaint/]() 4. [https://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/dread-pirate-roberts]() 6. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.1487]() 7. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/trial-of-alleged-silk-road-mastermind-begins-1421088691]() 8. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/silk-road-trial-jury-finds-ross-ulbricht-guilty-on-all-seven-counts/]() 9. [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/technology/study-suggests-link-between-dread-pirate-roberts-and-satoshi-nakamoto.html]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/dread-pirate-roberts Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library