Chuck Schumer Bashes BitCoin, Wants to Shut Down Silk Road Drug Site

“Literally, it allows buyers and users to sell illegal drugs online, including heroin, cocaine, and meth, and users do sell by hiding their identities through a program that makes them virtually untraceable,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer said at a news conference Sunday.  He wants Silk Road, a website where users can purchase drugs using bitcoin, shut down immediately.

The simple truth is that bitcoin does lend itself to this kind of transaction, but was certainly not designed to facilitate money laundering or online drug abuse. Sadly, most of the public was introduced to bitcoin through Adrian Chen, the Gawker scribe who spotlighted Silk Road. “Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.”

“It’s a certifiable one-stop shop for illegal drugs that represents the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs online that we have ever seen. It’s more brazen than anything else by lightyears.”

Bitcoin is a digital peer-to-peer currency currently trading at about $9 to one bitcoin. Schumer described the process of converting dollars to bitcoins as, “An online form of money laundering used to disguise the source of money, and to disguise who’s both selling and buying the drug.”