a lot of the early bitcoin miners were losing out on money when it was valued at less than a dollar for several years but gotta give people credit for sticking around for so long. i remember when i got into the game it was going up to like a thousand but didn't stay there long and eventually the value dropped so much i ended up panic selling. lost a bunch of money there. and now it's back up in the $1000 range.
but yeah, i never got involved with silk road or anything like that but i did read about it a bit lol