It was self-hosted. The only real hosting service ever on the darknet was Freedom Hosting, and its operator got busted (for having customers who hosted CP.)
"Centrally controlled" is not the same thing as one guy who has a very large stake.
Bitcoin, by definition, is not "centrally controlled." It doesn't matter how many coins any entity controls, there's nothing that it could do to actually break the system or remove the inherent value of bitcoin. The fact that there are thousands and thousands of miners and nodes around the world protecting the ledger (the blockchain) is what makes bitcoin so groundbreaking.
True, and the next Silk Road owner will certainly take that point into account.
Obviously, the disappearance of such a site leaves a gaping hole on the Web:
Silk Road has proven that the demand/market is there, that people are willing to use the Web to acquire those goods, that they are willing to pay, that the whole transaction works and that this leads to a massive amount of cash.
So, make no mistake, the next Silk Road creator is certainly out there, probably technically more astute and careful, and already building.
...the next Silk Road creator is certainly out there, probably technically more astute and careful...
And almost as certainly: more experienced in the use of serious violence. The next guy won't be hiring hitters without introductions from fellow violent criminals. (Not that undercover cops have never been vouched for in such a manner, but it raises the stakes significantly.) Yay Drug War!
If they used parallel construction, then why didn't they list how they got the information about the location/IP of the Silk Road webserver? I would assume that they would have ParallelConstruction'd a reasonable way for them to have obtained that information, no?
You appear to be missing the point of parallel construction. The point is that they show a true, but-not-the-whole-truth "hand" (the parallel construction) while obscuring the full truth. That is, you spy on someone, and obtain a bunch of evidence, either illegally or that is fruit of the poisonous tree. From that knowledge, you construct a (fictitious or only partially fictitious, but plausible) story about how you gathered enough evidence to incriminate your victim, without revealing that you came across this evidence illegally. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction.
Yes, they are legally obligated to not lie about the true means of how they came to have the evidence. But if nobody can prove you're lying, they can't call you on it.
