Rogue Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, a former member of the team that eventually managed to shut down the black market website Silk Road has been arrested at his home in Laurel, Maryland.The arrest came on the day before he was supposed to be handing himself in to the police to start his prison sentence.Though Bridges helped expose the criminal activities being orchestrated by the website and identified the organisers, he became seduced by the powers invested in him.Eventually he was prosecuted on charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice after it was discovered that he had diverted $800,000 worth of bitcoins from Silk Road into his own account.During his arrest, according to court documents seen by The Guardian, officers found bags containing Bridges’ passport and a notarised copy of his passport.They also found corporate records for three offshore entities in Nevis, Belize and Mauritius.He also had several Secret Service-issued bulletproof vests which the state contends had been stolen from the government.

As reported previously in Naked Security, Bridges and DEA agent Carl Force appeared to have taken their acting roles as criminals too seriously.casa luna bitcoinBridges had helped to identify Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road who traded under the identity of “Dread Pirate Roberts”.bitcoin bowl packagesForce, also posing under cover as a criminal, made regular contact with Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) under the alias “Nob”.bitcoin b2b paymentsIn 2013, Ulbricht was arrested and charged with conspiracy to traffic drugs and in 2015 was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole.bitcoin wallet distributionDPR suspected Silk Road employee, Curtis Green, of stealing the $800,000 in bitcoins that had gone missing.litecoin paypal exchange

So DPR contacted “Nob” (Carl Force) in order to hire a hitman.Green was, in fact, a state witness and Force and Bridges faked Green’s death.samsung s5 bitcoinForce and Bridges also siphoned off bitcoin funds given to them by the government for use in the investigation.ethereal definition audioAn investigation, this time into the DEA agents, found they had set up personal accounts and the bitcoin investment funds Quantum Investments and Engedi LLC, all of which were ring-fenced and registered in their own names.litecoin wallet codeForce is currently serving a 6 and a half-year sentence, and Bridges is in custody.bitcoin block headerAccording to the government’s motion detailing his arrest, Bridges is considered a flight risk, so it’s unlikely he’ll get bail.

Ross Ulbricht is currently appealing his conviction, arguing that he did not receive a fair trial after evidence regarding the corrupt agents was improperly suppressed.His lawyers also argue that evidence favorable to Ulbricht was withheld from his defense team.Image of handcuffs courtesy of Shutterstock.It seems that nothing is going to stop Bitcoin’s price from rising after the recent scaling agreement for SegWit saw the currency’s for the first time.Since last year, the currency has increased in price by nearly $1,780 and appears set to continue reaching new price heights.Wednesday’s gains come after a recent Bitcoin scaling agreement, which was detailed in a post and published by Barry Silbert-led investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG).Titled Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017, the proposal supports upgrades to Bitcoin’s protocol, making two changes based on the original idea on SegWit2Mb.“We agree to immediately support the following parallel upgrades to the bitcoin protocol, which will be deployed simultaneously and based on the original SegWit2Mb proposal: Activate Segregated Witness at an 80% threshold, signaling at bit 4 Activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months.” The DCG, which represents 56 companies in 21 countries and accounts for 83.28 percent of hashing power, $5.1 billion monthly on chain transaction and 20.5 million Bitcoin wallets, added that it was committed to researching and developing ‘technical mechanisms to improve signalling in the Bitcoin community.’ Those in support of the scaling agreement include: Under the original proposal for SegWit it could only be activated if it reached a threshold of 95 percent.

“SegWit2Mb is the project to merge into Bitcoin a minimal patch that aims to untangle the current conflict between different political positions regarding SegWit activation vs.an increase of the on-chain blockchain space through a standard block size increase.It is not a new solution, but it should be seen more as a least common denominator.The sole objective of this proposal is to re-unite the Bitcoin community and avoid a cryptocurrency split.SegWit2Mb does not aim to be [the] best possible technical solution to solve Bitcoin technical limitations.However, this proposal does not imply a compromise to the future scalability or decentralization of Bitcoin, as a small increase in blocksize has been proven by several core and non-core developers not to affect Bitcoin value propositions.” Litecoin recently activated SegWit on its network after a 75 percent threshold had been reached within the Litecoin community.Many will be wondering, however, what is exactly is different this time and whether it will have any impact on the direction Bitcoin could be heading.

According to a report from Coindesk, some within the community believe that the commitment appears to be real this time.Marshall Long, one of the leaders behind Bitcoin Classic, which was a 2016 effort to boost Bitcoin’s block size, is reported as saying that the ‘field of communication’ has improved compared to previous efforts.Long cited the original Hong Kong Agreement as an example, which saw miners and developers agreeing to a timetable that was designed to see them activate the SegWit code upgrade and the hard fork.However, as can be seen, both of these goals were missed.“We’ve seen this before, so it has a less likely chance of turning out the same way.The recent history, the Hong Kong agreement is so fresh, something will happen good or bad.” Others, though, think this is just a rehash of old information and that more could have been done.Chaincode developer Matt Corallo said in a DCG chat group: “I’m somewhat disappointed that all of the feedback given by folks who’ve worked on the bitcoin protocol was completely ignored.

I suggest much more technically realistic ways to accomplish the same goal.” Under Bitcoin’s current model, it has a limited capacity of 1MB.Given its current backlog issues with transactions waiting to be processed on the blockchain, a solution needs to be reached.However, reaching a decision appears to be easier said than done.And yet, given the fact that Bitcoin’s growth is continuing to grow at a rapid pace – with no signs of slowing down – it begs the question: is the 2MB figure big enough to cope with Bitcoin’s scaling issues further down the line?In the end will SegWit be the solution or will it just show that more needs to be done, which takes into account that Bitcoin’s user base and daily transaction growth, are two factors that need careful consideration.At the time of writing, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU), which is touted as another possible solution, has 41 percent of the community’s support while SegWit has 33 percent, according to Coin Dance.Interestingly, even though BU has garnered the most support in the past, this recent news of a possible SegWit activation hasn’t done much to boost its numbers up.

Given the favourable upgrades to the original SegWit scaling agreement, it would be natural to think that the Bitcoin community, the mining community in particular, would be behind the solution.Of course, even though a solution has been presented with improved upgrades, it seems that not everyone will agree to the end result.Given the level of frustration among community members many simply want something to happen.ShapeShift, CEO and co-founder Erik Voorhees, which is also one of the company’s that signed the agreement, said: “I’m almost of the opinion that I don’t care what path is chosen for bitcoin.I just want something to happen.Bitcoin’s been in this deadlock for two years.I’m a supporter of SegWit.I’m a supporter of a hard fork to a larger block size.” Whereas, Bitcoin miner Chandler Guo thinks, though, that this compromise is simply a move to suggest something is happening, but that in the end no one will win.As Coindesk notes, he makes a comparison to the analogy between a beautiful girl who ends up marrying an ugly man because she was being indecisive.