Defunct: Blake Benthall

Blake Benthall was born in Houston, Texas sometime during either 1987 or 1988. He is best known for his role as lead administrator of the second iteration of the Silk Road (Silk Road 2.0), which he was arrested consequently at age 26 when the market was seized by law enforcement as part of their “Operation Onymous” on November 6, 2014. He has often been referred to as the creator of the second Silk Road, which is false as he was later put in charge as the lead administrator by the sites’ creator, Dread Pirate Roberts 2, who was later identified as Robert White. Before being the Silk Road’s administrator, Benthall founded his first web-business at age 15, had attended the University of Florida, was a SpaceX engineer for a couple of weeks before quitting, created a tech startup to bring Linux to the iPod, and dabbled in other technology-based startups. He was also home-schooled and was a frequent church-goer who never touched drugs and had sworn-off booze, according to his friends.

About one month after Robert White launched the second Silk Road, three of the markets’ administrators were arrested by law enforcement, which prompted him to disable all deposits and withdraws on the marketplace, and later instated Defcon (Blake Benthall), a user who was very disappointed and vocal about the Silk Road’s seizure, as the sites’ lead administrator. After becoming administrator, he configured and maintained the markets’ virtual private servers