Buyers and sellers could conduct all sales through the use of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that offered a certain degree of anonymity. Silk Road held all buyers’ Bitcoin in escrow until the order had been received and a hedging mechanism that allowed sellers to opt for the value of Bitcoins held in escrow to be fixed to their value in US$ at the time of the sale in order to mitigate against the volatility of the value of Bitcoin. Any changes in the price of Bitcoin during transit of the items were covered by ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’.
During the FBI investigation and subsequent trial of Silk Road administrators, it was determined that between February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013, the market had conducted and completed approximately 1,229,465 transactions on the site, with the total revenue generated from these sales estimated at around 9,519,664 Bitcoins, equivalent to roughly $183 million. This involved 146,946 customers and 3,877 vendors.
The total commission collected by Silk Road and ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ was believed to amount to 614,305 Bitcoins, roughly $11.8 million. According to information provided by users when signing up to the illegal service, around 30% originated from the United States, a further 27% chose not to declare their country of origin, and the remaining users were from every corner of the globe including, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, France, Russia, Italy and the Netherlands.
On March 13, 2012, the website opened the Vendor Roundtable, a part of the forum that was only accessible to Silk Road sellers. Over the two years it was in operation, Silk Road became the eBay of online drug dealing, with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of vendors. The dealers sold MDMA, mephedrone, nitrous oxide, ketamine, weed, cocaine and much more, and people from all over the world were able to buy any type of drugs. But everything that flowed through Silk Road, did so under the watchful eye of the creator, founder and owner who attempted to remain both anonymous and one step-ahead of the FBI.