On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
1–10 of 150 posts
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#2So...just like real life drug/arms dealers? Shocking.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#3So...just like real life drug/arms dealers? Shocking.
No....
You buy from a dealer in a club or somewhere else -- there is no reputation.
I feel like you didn't get the whole gist of the article?
Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon?
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#4What are the latest dark net markets these days anyway and have they gone Monero native yet?
2-of-3 multisig will at least provide software level trust of the escrow process. The reviews on quality of goods would still be important though, but from an enforcement side it will be exponentially more expensive to take down one of these sites.
Prior DNM busts typically also got the warchest of everything held in escrow, making it more worthwhile to try and nab cryptocurrency. They were also aided by transparency blockchains to determine social graphs, which Monero makes almost impossible.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#5So...just like real life drug/arms dealers? Shocking.
No.... You buy from a dealer in a club or somewhere else -- there is no reputation. I feel like you didn't get the whole gist of the article? Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon?
Higher up the chain reputation is still everything, they don't deal with anybody who has 'paper' floating around showing they colluded with the authorities at some point. It's common for gangs to distribute paperwork on each other that gets leaked from investigations/court proceedings/prisons. There is no escrow in real life either, so reputation is the sole currency to set up exchanges with any criminal above selling baggies at a nightclub.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#6It is somewhat amusing that the cocaine in the stock photo costs 0.13BTC at a price of $27. I know people who have bought weed for the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's bitcoin (even post crash).
The comment about eBay is interesting - that negative feedback is scarce because people don't bother if they're unhappy. I think one aspect is that it's more difficult to leave a negative review, and if you've ever sold on eBay then you're probably more reluctant to neg other sellers. I'm certainly willing to wait for a seller to sort things out rather than give them a negative, because of the stigma not having 100% can bring you.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#7So...just like real life drug/arms dealers? Shocking.
No.... You buy from a dealer in a club or somewhere else -- there is no reputation. I feel like you didn't get the whole gist of the article? Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon?
> Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon?
Locals who know the owner of that cargo van will quite often prefer that source, as evidenced at least by the very fact that the van is still there selling toaster ovens. That's a form of reputation-based purchase, too.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
No.... You buy from a dealer in a club or somewhere else -- there is no reputation. I feel like you didn't get the whole gist of the article? Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon?
> Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon? Locals who know the owner of that cargo van will quite often prefer that source, as evidenced at least by the very fact that the van is still there selling toaster ovens. That's a form of reputation-based purchase, too.
i think the point of specifying that it's being sold from a van is that the merchant is transient and not tied to any local reputation framework
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would you buy a toaster oven from someones cargo van on the side of the road in a shady street or prefer to purchase it form Amazon? Locals who know the owner of that cargo van will quite often prefer that source, as evidenced at least by the very fact that the van is still there selling toaster ovens. That's a form of reputation-based purchase, too.
i think the point of specifying that it's being sold from a van is that the merchant is transient and not tied to any local reputation framework
Could be, but sadly it wasn't explicit. I interpreted it the way I did, because plenty of semi-permanent merchants I've seen do their business from vans, for reasons most likely involving location permits.
Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything
#10It's kinda funny to notice that in the article the writer is describing the stereotype of a drug dealer being untrusted, yet based on my experience and what I've seen, I would rather trust an online drug dealer than for example my bank or the people running our government. That's kinda fucked up right there, won't you say ?