What's the FBI gonna do with a seized currency that the US govt. doesn't even recognize?  Can Bitcoin still deem  Ulbricht the rightful owner of the currency?  Many interesting questions raised...

One obvious weakness in the silk road model was that the purchaser's address was necessarily known to the purveyors.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.

Seeking the mastermind behind it, investigators began picking up clues: an anonymous posting to a website devoted to hallucinogenic mushrooms, recurring references to libertarian economics and early hints left on public sites including Google and LinkedIn.

A big break came in July, when a routine inspection of inbound mail from Canada turned up a parcel containing several counterfeit IDs -- each with a different name and all featuring the photograph of the same man.

We've been watching carefully to try to learn if there are any flaws with Tor that we need to correct. So far, nothing about this case makes us think that there are new ways to compromise Tor (the software or the network). The FBI says that their suspect made mistakes in operational security, and was found through actual detective work. Remember: Tor does not anonymize individuals when they use their legal name on a public forum, use a VPN with logs that are subject to a subpoena, or provide personal information to other services.

A comment on the comment:

The complaint says that the server running Silk Road was imaged and forensically examined in late July. This was done surreptitiously by the hosting provider at the request of the FBI via local authorities and the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. They used the server's ssh config to find the VPN server he was logging in from and the VPN server's last login record to find a cafe near his house. They were able to correlate the location based on Google's records of the email account that was previously used to solicit users and help on the BitCoin forums, which he accessed from home the same day he logged into the VPN server. Other information on the Silk Road hidden server was used to correlate with openly sourced information to get the probable cause needed to arrest him.