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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Wow, what a complete shitbag (DPR = Dread Pirate Roberts):

    DPR sent a message to "redandwhite" stating that "FriendlyChemist"
    is "Causing me problems" and adding: "I would like to put a bounty on
    his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an
    adequate amount to motivate you to find him?"

And then

    Later that same day, redandwhite sent DPR a message quoting him a
    price of $150,000 or $300,000 "depending on how you want it done" -
    "clean" or "non-clean" 

    DPR responded: "Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high.
    Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you
    quoted the best you can do? I would like this done ASAP as he is
    talking about releasing the info on Monday. 

    DPR and redandwhite agreed upon a price of 1,670 Bitcoins - approximately
    $150k - for the job. In DPR's message confirming the deal, DPR included
    a transacation record reflecting the transfer of 1,670 Bitcoins to a
    certain Bitcoin address.

Made $80mm in commissions running a drug trafficking network, paying hundreds of thousands to have people executed, mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy.... He's looking at cartel level prison time.

View on HN

In case you are wondering why he was out for FriendlyChemist, this claims that user was extorting him for $500k by threatening to release the information of thousands of Silk Road users.

Here's the part I don't understand:

* A user friendlychemist threatens DPR.

* DPR asks friendlychemist to refer his "supplier" to DPR.

* redandwhite says he was "asked to contatct" DPR by friendlychemist and friendlychemist owes redandwhite money

* DPR asks for a hit from redandwhite on friendlychemist

That makes zero sense to me. Why would you assume those two users are not the same person or aren't at least allies?

He may have felt that taking that chance was his only option.

Or that they would simply split the money and his target would shut up (pretend to die, by disappearing off that monicker). Or if it's the same user, the money doesn't even have to be split for that. Or it's a way to send a message that he's serious.... (in a way the recipient gets).

Or may be it makes a lot of sense? May be...

* DPR was ready to pay friendlychemist upto $150K

* BUT DPR was also afraid it'd lead to more extortion

* DPR knew redandwhite was same as friendlychemist or an associate of his

Based on these assumptions, DPR's move to pay redandwhite was really DPR paying friendlychemist while also communicating the length to which he is willing to go to deal with extortionists. So by going the path he went, he paid off friendlychemist and scared him at the same time.

That's crazy. Ulbricht would have to have been the dumbest person in the world to create an electronic record of having ordered and verified the consummation of a hired killing simply to send a message. "LOL JK", he planned to tell the jury?

The guy he tried to have killed could show up and testify on his behalf and a reasonable jury might still find him guilty.

Absurd.

I think we can all see at this point that Ulbricht got played. But that doesn't exculpate him. (Not that it matters yet; he hasn't been charged with the attempted murder).

These underground market places are known for big talk, not calculated talk.

It wasn't just "big talk". It was big talk, a negotiation, and then a massive cash payment.

Shouldn't they be able to track the bitcoin payments?

http://blockchain.info/en/tx/4a0a5b6036c0da84c3eb9c2a884b6ad...

That's eerie...

It didn't make much sense.

Toy version of the conversation.

FC: Give me money so I can pay my debts. DP: Lemme talk to your creditor. RW: I'm FC's creditor, whats up. DP: I don't owe FC money. Rather I want him dead. Can you do this. RW: Sure. $250k. DP: I normally pay 80k to kill people. Split the difference?

... uh. wtf? The whole exchange really makes no sense, unless you assume that DPR knew he was talking to the same guy all along and was working on terms that would make the guy not bother him by scaring him off.

Edit: Nevermind! Apparently the 80k "hit" wasn't just a negotiation technique: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bal-sil...

I can only imagine Ulbricht reached the point... "in for a penny, in for a pound"

Or friendlychemist creates a new account called jerkyboy and rethreatens him with extortion, this time claiming to have evidence that he took out a hit on friendlychemist from his friend redandwhite ... and just keeps the whole cycle going.

Sounds like the guy was a petty criminal who wasn't as smart as he should have been if he wanted to run an underground market for criminal activity.

On page 30 it is stated that he contacted redandwhite about some fake ids a year later..

>>>> So by going the path he went, he paid off friendlychemist and scared him at the same time.

And anybody else who thought they would try and blackmail money out him. It seems completely plausible scenario and kills two birds with one stone. No pun intended.

I assume redandwhite is a Hells Angels reference, which makes assassinations for hire a bit more plausible.

He was Canadian, red and white are the colors of their flag.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_and_White

Along with five other countries.

At least 7. It doesn't mention that Georgia and England (which is it's own country) as having red and white flags.

What's even more interesting is

  Although I believe the foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit
  a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who 
  have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to 
  redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any 
  record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about 
  March 31, 2013.

I formatted your post a bit better so it's readable on mobile devices, but I agree.

    32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's
    intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with
    Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of
    there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to
    redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire.
    Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White
    Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"

Since the police couldn't find a record of the alleged murder victim, I'm guessing that "redandwhite" and "friendlychemist" were the same person playing a con on DPR to get some cash.

I have been trying to fix the formatting. Sorry about that.

I just put in two spaces like the formatting guide said. But the whole thing ended being one line.

No worries, the best way I've found to do it is to manually split the lines every 10 words or so.

    So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces. 

    Is really just a collection of sentence fragments
    that all fit the same formatting. There might be 
    a better way, but I don't know it!

You could include an angle bracket.

> 32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"

Or an angle bracket, with an opening and closing asterisk.

This means you don't need to include any line breaks.

I've added (another) comment to the HN feature requests post asking for a real quote function, so that offtopic discussions like this can come to an end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6484074

until then feel free to take this for a spin: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178736

If you're an emacs user, prefix the line with the desired number of spaces then type M-q, copy back into your browser. That's my solution to formatting block quotes at least. Your long line prexixed with 3 spaces in emacs:

    So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile
    devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several
    places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces.

And your split-by-hand block quote:

    Is really just a collection of sentence fragments that all
    fit the same formatting. There might be a better way, but I
    don't know it!

Vim, FWIW: Visual mode, select the lines, hit ">"

As a Vim newb (well, ok I can use it, but I'm not well-versed in its more arcane elements), how do you select lines? C-<space> in emacs starts region selection, but I've never tried to select anything in Vim.

v starts standard visual(region selection) mode.

Shift-v starts line-by-line visual mode.

Ctrl-v starts visual column mode(which is both very cool and very useful)

http://usevim.com/2012/05/16/mouse/

set mouse=a

Or startline,endline command: 10,20d

Just use fmt(1) or par(1).

I'd venture a wild guess that DPR knew the two were the same :) He paid off friendlychemist "indirectly" but also communicated that he wouldn't mind extreme measures to make him disappear shall this occur again.

He may have also lied about having paid for a ht previously for $80k to bolster his bluff.

EDIT: Or he was watching too much breaking bad and beginning to assume Heisenberg's characteristics after feeling invincible for earning $80MM

If you keep reading, the document later details that DPR contacted this "redandwhite" person, who he contracted to kill the other person, regarding false identifications. That seems to add some doubt to your hypothesis, or at least complicates things.

It appears to fit with his persona of being a ruthless pirate, and the language also fits the big talk idea. He was paying for the problem to disappear, and he knew that, but he talked it up for fun.

However, he went too far into his fantasy, and not too smartly, and he'll pay for it.

If it was a 'clean' hit, why would there be record of a homicide? From what I've read, it sounds like a clean hit could/would be made to look like an accident.

What, like a Merc driving in to a tree and weirdly blowing up?

The US gov produced a document a while back about assassinating people - though for the life of my I can't find my copy so it's possible there wasn't anything novel enough in there to be worth keeping it. I believe they recommended causing someone to fall from a high place. I'd imagine by grasping their ankles and then tipping them over the edge; though the precise methodology for the tripping was redacted in the version I saw.

Well, I think I found the transaction in the blockchain. It's the right date and amount...

http://blockchain.info/en/tx/4a0a5b6036c0da84c3eb9c2a884b6ad...

It's almost chilling how casual DPR is in asking for a hit. A departure from a "clean" tech-whiz and marketplace-operator into a true criminal boss.

Almost an analog for "Walter White," who also made $80mm on his calamitous journey from "honest" meth-cooker to kingpin.

"I am the one who knocks!"

I am the one who port knocks!

It's posturing. He was trying to pay someone off while making a threat at the same time.

I agree, DPR figured they were the same person.

Payed off anyways but at the same time negotiated a discount and scared the guy into not trying it again.

This is corroborated by the fact that the FBI knew the name, date and city yet couldn't match it up to a real body.

This would also explain why he mentioned the previous hit, which I imagine would not be the type of information one offers unsolicited.

Jesus christ at the amount of posturing in this thread. I don't really even know where else to go with it...

If this story is to be believed, DPR actually did pay someone $80k to kidnap, torture and kill a victim... but apparently the hitman was an FBI agent.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-s...

He asked the other account a few months later to make him a fake ID. Why would you be contacting and want to be involved with somebody who extorted you to the tune of $150k just a few months back? Not to mention he would then have to give up his physical address to have the docs sent, to someone who just a few months previous threatened to release the physical addresses of users on the site?

There's no evidence of that. This theory just comes from the Bitcoin community's desire to make DPR into a martyr. Its not as if he was particularly sophisticated in covering his tracks in the first place (a lot of the things he did were facepalm worthy). Occam's razor -- he meant to take out a hit, and was just stupid.

Yeah, 'cause it's so easy to see how he looked and what he felt as he was typing those lines... /s

Did I miss something in the article? Where did you get that information? Here's the complete text of the linked article:

  Oct 2 (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement authorities raided
  an Internet site that served as a marketplace for illegal
  drugs, including heroin and cocaine, and arrested its
  owner, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday.

  The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, known as "Dread
  Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to 
  court filings. Federal prosecutors charged Ulbricht with 
  one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, 
  computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering 
  conspiracy, according to a court filing.

All the rest of the info here has come from the criminal complaint that was posted in another comment.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ulbric...

There's some interesting stuff in there, page 21 is the murder for hire scenario and 24 is where the agent explains how they identified DPR.

There have been other posts and discussions about DPR here, I don't have a link for it but I recall a discussion about the alleged "hit".

Does anyone else feel that "FriendlyChemist" was just a set up/honeypot? (Whether US agency or foreign/Canadian)

1. Canadian spies set up "FriendlyChemist", hack into another vendor and get extortion material on DPR

2. "FriendlyChemist" tells "RedandWhite" (obviously the same person/agency) to contact DPR

3. "RedAndWhite" extorts American based DPR to pay for a murder that mysteriously does not happen in Canada

4. DPR then (stupidly?) pays "RedAndWhite" for fake ID documents from Canada, which mysteriously get stopped at the border

5. US agency arrests DPR on delivery of Fake ID's

6. There is no chance of entrapment since:

- Based on the Nature of TOR, we can never prove that "FriendlyChemist/RedAndWhite" are a police force (karma)

- They are most likely not a domestic force, but were working covertly with US agencies (cannot be subpoenaed). </pre>

It's not entrapment unless the police induce the crime to be committed. Nobody forced him to "order a hit." Attempting a murder-for-hire is not something you can be tricked into doing.

I think one could be entrapped into a murder-for-hire.

Certain government authorities know you're acquainted with someone who's previously been fingered for murder-for-hire but never convicted.

The "authorities" call you and threaten to murder your family; you naturally seek back-up from your erstwhile acquaintance. The police ensure they give you just enough information to track their threat back to a "person" of their construction.

Boom. You're up on a rap of "conspiracy to commit first degree murder" (or whatever it's actually called in your jurisdiction).

Doesn't seem so impossibly far-fetched does it?

It'd be a great movie plot. But yeah, still impossibly far-fetched. Besides that, the authorities have at that point gone way past entrapment.

Ish. I don't suppose it would be done but it seems it could be done.

I said this in the last DPR story (the interview): my bet is that he will go down for tax evasion. It's hard to prove murder, conspiracy, drug trafficking, etc., but it's easy to prove that this guy made a bunch of money and didn't pay taxes on it. He'll get federal prison time for it.

He'll go down for it all.

They'll stack the charges so high you a helicopter to see over 'em. He'll either plead it out and get fifty or fight it and get life. His choice.

>He'll either plead it out and get fifty or fight it and get life. His choice.

If the federales have all of his assets, he ain't fighting nothing.

Well he certainly won't go down for murder, seeing as how there's no evidence that the "victim" ever existed in the first place.

Conspiracy to murder is punishable with life in prison.

As someone who's never participated in a bounty what is the difference between a "clean" vs. "non-clean" hit?

I would infer clean means no trace, where non-clean means just do it, don't worry about cleaning up.

But wouldn't the hitman want to clean up since... they did it?

Depends how they did it. Shoot someone with an unregistered or stolen rifle from long distance, capture your brass, destroy the rifle and brass. Obviously a murder, if it were done that way. Very little effort involved, and what've the cops really got then?

You'd probably create more evidence trying to make it look like an accident than you'd clear up just by doing it some easier way.

> or stolen

That would be hazardous in my opinion. Now you have two places where you can place the preparator.

It really depends on where you are. There are vast rural areas in USA, for instance, in which there are many rifles the theft of which wouldn't even be noticed for weeks. Just don't take them during the month before deer season.

I would imagine a 'clean hit' is one made to look like an accident and a 'non-clean' one doesn't take the same precautions?

The police couldn't find a record of the alleged murder victim, so I'm guessing that "redandwhite" and "friendlychemist" were the same person, just playing a con on DPR to get some cash.

Wouldn't "non-clean" be cheaper then, if fewer precautions are being taken?

I took it to mean fast and relatively painless versus protracted suffering, i.e. "non-clean", messy.

I suspect doing a "clean" hit requires more skill and experience.

i was thinking the exact same thing ...

I'm just assuming it was sloppy grammar, similar to "We have two sizes, large and small, they go for $5 or $10."

Without the 'respectively', it's ambiguous whether the clean or non-clean were the cheaper of the two alternatives.

Or that he got the $300K clean for the $150k price and thus there's no trace?

That would be a very risky con. DPR had friendlychemist's real name and could have hired a different hitman.

Perhaps the name was fake?

That can't happen on the internet; it's against the law.

If Person A has known motive to kill Person B, in a "non-clean" hit Person A will immediately come under suspicion. If the hit is "clean", anything could have happened and it's a lot harder to establish it as a murder and therefore Person A has a much lower risk of being brought into the case.

considering non-clean is twice the price of clean, I would guess non-clean includes "sending a message"/torture before the death.

My guess is that "clean" includes disposal of the body and other evidence. Like in movies where people call up the "cleaner" after a murder to make the bodies disappear (e.g., "Victor the Cleaner" in Point of No Return).

Non-clean example: Pull up next to their vehicle at a traffic light, put a few bullets in their head and drive off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Guerin#Murder

Clean: Traffic accident, apparent suicide, etc.

"the unsocial network" .. this movie is going to be big.

I understand the psychology behind being shocked at this and everything thinking he deserves jail time, but given the War on Drugs and the way the US Justice System works with respect to drug charges, I would imagine that that one violent crime charge is likely to be a drop in the bucket in comparison to all the victimless crime charges for drugs.

However, what I am surprised by is the fact that there wasn't really any focus on his facilitation of arms trafficking. I would imagine that those activities are more likely to cause actual harm to society that we should be worried about.

Yeah, this is absolutely stunning stuff. No doubt plenty will immediately cry foul and say that he's been set up, but let's wait and see what the investigation shows.

Further proof libertarian ideals are naive bunk. Once we take all the rules away, suddenly even the gentlest nerd becomes Walter White.

Libertarian ideals don't include shutting down the police.

s/Libertarian ideals/Stereotypical Libertarian ideals in the general sense, as characterized by an emphasis on individual rights, and a decrease in power or control of the state or societal systems over individual financial or personal actions or rights./

Supposing this story is true, no one got hurt except for people who went looking for trouble. That doesn't sound so bad itself.

Reading this makes me glad I never had any dealings with this guy or his business.

Are we talking about walter white?

He paid someone to kill an extortionist that had threatened to release incriminating info on a lot of users. As far as the law goes it's the same as him killing his child's first grade teacher over a bad grade but when you extort someone operating a drug dealing network, what do you expect?

If DPR actually paid to have someone killed, it would surprise everyone who knew anything about him. He's thought to be a libertarian and totally against the use of force.

That hypocrisy grabbed me too. The complaint, when talking about his background makes special note of this;

After going to Penn St for a grad degree in materials science,

    "Ulbrecht states that his 'goals' subsequently 'shifted'.  Ulbricht
    elaborates, obliquely, that he has since focused on "creating an 
    "economic simulation" designed to "give people a first-hand experience
    of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of
    force" by "institutions and governments."

Seems like he found out exactly what would happen; the use of force would be wielded more readily by private actors instead.

What do you mean by "more readily"?

The monopoly on the use of force by Government agents keeps private actors (or at least it attempts to) from employing violence on their own terms. Absent that monopoly, private agents will fill the void.

You wouldn't be able to build up the necessary military force without expending massive amounts of money and drawing negative attention to yourself. Investors would not want to be involved with a company creating a PR nightmare and wasting their money on evil. Customers would boycott, the company's stock price would drop, and they wouldn't be able to carry out their plans anyway.

This is a happy supposition, but I don't think it's borne out by historical evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County,_USA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Military_exp...

You seem to be assuming that the allegations are true. The understanding that most people have had is that DPR is a pure freedom fighter. If you take away those allegations, all that's left are fake "crimes" that aren't really crimes at all, just things that government doesn't like.

Edit: but I'm waiting and reading with an open mind.

I think it's reasonable to believe that he started out a pure (ish) freedom fighter and got corrupted by the fact that he had made 10's of millions of dollars off his little experiment.

Where did the understanding that DPR is a pure freedom fighter come from? DPR?

PR and wishful thinking.

Why did you include in the fact that he's a libertarian? Libertarians are not against the use of force (unless it's through the state).

A lot of libertarian writing on force starts from a more general "non-aggression principle", and derives the wrongness of state violence as just one special case.

I'm not sure this proposed hit was unjustified. Threatening to do something which would end up with 1000's of people caged for years seems like a valid reason to respond with force.

Doesn't that reasoning also justify a reverse-hit because DPR is threatening to do something that would result in killing someone which is far worse?

I think it is an arbitrary comparison. Possibly 10,000+ years in jail and who knows how many shankings vs maybe 50 of no existence for one person. You are right that, in a basic scenario, killing is a disproportionate response to a lesser crime, but this is an active threat versus a past event and who knows what jail would bring for these hundreds of people who could be convicted.

I'm not sure of the details of this situation but just following libertarian legal reasoning there may be another way to justify it. The logically consistent libertarian position on abortion is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Block's theory of evictionism is basically that a mother's right to remove a fetus is stronger than the fetus' right to be in the womb, yet the mother is not permitted to kill the fetus straight off exactly.

If there was developed some technology such as a pig fetus used to carry the child to term then that technology would have to be employed. Would there be some other reliably effective means to stop this snitch besides killing him?

> I think it is an arbitrary comparison. Possibly 10,000+ years in jail and who knows how many shankings vs maybe 50 of no existence for one person. You are right that, in a basic scenario, killing is a disproportionate response to a lesser crime, but this is an active threat versus a past event and who knows what jail would bring for these hundreds of people who could be convicted.

If you are simply arguing the most utilitarian point of view for the sum of the actors involved, surely paying him off is the most moral thing to do. $300K to prevent 10,000+ years of jail and shankings versus killing someone. $300k is much less than the life of one person.

You think the most moral outcome is one person who threatens a thousand with years of caging getting $300K? Are there any situations where you don't think one should be rewarded for making massive threats?...

It's more moral than killing someone over a threat based on the pure conjecture that carrying out the threat will result in a punishment by a 3rd party.

Isn't the real threat the 3rd party that would be doing the jailing? Why is freely communicating what some people did a grounds for murder? He's not the one that is doing the locking people up -- it just so happens to be more convenient to murder him then to take on the justice system. Convenience does not make it the moral course of action.

> Block's theory of evictionism is basically that a mother's right to remove a fetus is stronger than the fetus' right to be in the womb, yet the mother is not permitted to kill the fetus straight off exactly

I adore libertarians, I really do, for all the energy and earnestness they bring to their theory of government. But I can't take them very seriously, and this sort of thing is exactly why.

I know that people who cling to government and democracy mean well, but when they eschew logic and waste my time with non-arguments like this it is terribly annoying.

It's justified to murder people for threatening to publish secret information that might get people into trouble?

And I thought the journalist that got his laptop seized at an airport was harshly treated...

Good job for Ed and Bradly that the evil government arn't libertarian then

The "non-aggression principle" is basically a propaganda con by libertarians, though.

The way this works is that they take their own favorite definition of personal property, and then re-define the word "aggression" as: "anything that violates my definition of personal property, and nothing else".

So, when a land owner shoots somebody who mis-stepped onto his land without warning, that is not aggression according to libertarians - if you really take them seriously.

Obviously, when you point that out to a libertarian, an endless game of shifting definition starts, much like how many discussions about the existence of god go with theists.

If you're interested in a well-argued and entertainingly written outsiders' perspective on this, I recommend Matt Bruenig. Here's a starting point: http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism

I certainly wouldn't endorse it, just pointing to it as an attempt to avoid the circularity of defining violence as "what the state does" and then defining "a state" as "the organization with a monopoly on violence".

I do think it nonetheless ends up pretty entangled in the ideas invented by the modern centralized state, especially the ideas of "property ownership" and "a contract", which are supposed to exist in a sort of ethereal global-variable state separate from any facts in the physical world or local interactions. The modern state enables that fiction by maintaining a central property register backed by a cadastral survey, and a set of courts that enforce the abstract idea of a contract. Minarchists are perhaps more open about this dependence than anarcho-capitalists are, by just directly asserting that the state should exist solely to operate and enforce a property register and contract law.

I think you're talking about anarcho-capitalists, not necessarily libertarians.

I agree that it's a baffling world view though.

You're probably right, there's definitely a spectrum of libertarianism.

And it's not as if libertarians are entirely crazy. It's healthy to have some baseline skepticism towards authority. But it's also healthy to have some baseline skepticism towards market solutions. As usual, the best answer(s) are somewhere in compromise and in the middle.

I guess that ideas like the "non-aggression principle" are so alluring to some because they have a sort of superficial "intellectual purity" which that kind of compromising answer lacks.

You are spreading FUD and misinformation. Shame on you. The non-aggression principle does not work like the laws of physics, so just because someone steps on your land, it does not give you the right to shoot them. You are arguing from absurdity. The non-aggression principle is about not committing force, fraud or coercion against another human being. It's really that simple. You may use force when someone is directly threatening your life. That's how it's been discussed in the forums and videos I've been exposed to. Stop holding principles regarding morality to the same standard as the laws of physics.

I should point out that you're conflating anarcho-libertarians with old-school statist libertarians. Most people who self-identify as libertarian believe in a state to protect property, prosecute crime, etc.

Even the self-described anarcho-capitalist libertarians of my acquaintance usually see the use of force as legitimate, as long as it's a non-governmental actor such as a private police force, mutual defense pact, enforcer of contracts, publicly traded corporation, etc. The people who take on the somewhat more difficult task of imagining a society without the organized use of force at all tend to call themselves anarchists, in my experience.

Uh, yes they are. The coercive basis of government power is why most libertarians are skeptical of the state.

I'd guess that he might be willing to kill people in the case that there are threats to his personal security. He also had aspirations for his site to bring about a libertarian revolution and may have thought that threats to the integrity of the site were worth killing for.

He still made the armory.

Yeah well us libertarians are as prone as anybody to start rationalizing. Wouldn't surprise me.

Typically, libertarians argue against the initiation of force. Someone who commits extortion against you has arguably thrown the first punch.

Perhaps he is only opposed to a monopoly on the use of force. Violence for pay is just part of the market dynamic, right?

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