Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction • Hacker News Board

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#71

Post by Devilboy » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:29 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #64

pedalpete wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what Natsu is suggesting is similar to what the film and music industry tried with seeding torrent sites with partial clips, or material unrelated to that which it says it was. That was thwarted by a simple comment and up-vote system.

For something that relies on physical delivery, you can do a lot more. And there are no chargebacks with bitcoins, so I'm surprised if there aren't lots of scammers. If you can convince someone to send you bitcoins, you have their money and they can't get it back.

The reason there are not a lot of scammers is because the feedback / reputation system works.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#72

Post by Natsu » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 7:59 AM UTC

Devilboy wrote: post #71

Natsu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something that relies on physical delivery, you can do a lot more. And there are no chargebacks with bitcoins, so I'm surprised if there aren't lots of scammers. If you can convince someone to send you bitcoins, you have their money and they can't get it back.

The reason there are not a lot of scammers is because the feedback / reputation system works.

I would assume it's not being spammed with false feedback at this time, either, which is rather helpful for that sort of thing.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#73

Post by analog » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 12:26 AM UTC

Cushman wrote: post #69

analog wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people don't like having everything they do tracked, just on principle. Also, drugs aren't the only black market trade.

Sure, but when there's an economic incentive to having things tracked most people put up with it. I'm not saying drugs are the only thing anyone would use bitcoin for, just the most likely thing for the average person to.

I think the cash economy is much larger than people just buying drugs.

Estimates of the size of shadow economies are between 14% and 22% of GDP in the developed world. [1] I'm just guessing that's significantly larger than the drug trade.

I disagree about the privacy issues as well, in some countries in Europe people still remember governments using records to round people up.

[1] http://www.voxeu.org/article/shadow-economies-around-world-m...