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Using Silk Road

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Re: Using Silk Road

#71

Post by jemka »

powertower wrote: post #57
sruser wrote: post #17

(throwaway account) I've spent over $50,000 USD on SR in the past year, and I'm happy to answer any questions people have about the site or community.

What opiates are you mostly buying? Unless you are ordering Heroin, which is very expensive on SR, at that spending rate you are probably buying Oxys or Opanas. This might surprise some, but there are much simpler and better-priced places to get those online than SR / with 24h turn-around, overnight UPS - that won't involve an eventual FBI/DEA reverse sting - which is were SR is heading with all this attention.

>there are much simpler and better-priced places to get those online than SR

for example?

Re: Using Silk Road

#72

Post by pjscott »

cageface wrote: post #68
OGinparadise wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic. apples and oranges. This is illegal and their take is maybe enough to pay one criminal lawyer for a month.

Criminal lawyers make 1.2 million in a month?

Silk Road's cut of the transactions is a lot less than $1.2 million.

Re: Using Silk Road

#73

Post by olefoo »

schrodinger wrote: post #67
rorrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything…

To me the problem is the delivery system. Everything is completely untraceable up until the very second you enter your home address. Is there really a feasible way to evade this liability? Maybe there is a market for truly anonymous "po boxes" or something? How else do you keep the last step anonymous?

Your options are:

1. A layer of indirection a.k.a. finding someone who will receive mail for you without giving up your name.

2. Owning the distribution channel, and using addresses that are downstream of you while diverting your packages to their intended destination.

Note that if the USPS is involved, both of these are federal crimes...

Re: Using Silk Road

#74

Post by A1kmm »

I think the easiest attack on SR would not be one of the attacks mentioned in the article (although similar to their second attack, but focused on legal implications instead of fraud), but rather:

a. Law enforcement creates a large number of vendor and customer accounts. Due to the pseudonymity, they can create as many as they like and they can't be linked (they may need to create them over time to avoid making the pattern too obvious).

b. The fake customer accounts buy from the fake vendor accounts and leave positive comments, building up a reputation for the fake vendors. This would give money to the operators of SR for fees, but aside from fees there would be no loss for the operators.

c. Eventually, the number of fake vendors could be sufficient that it makes up most of the volume of SR.

d. The fake customers buy from some real vendors and claim that the goods never arrived or that they got arrested and it looks like the vendor tipped the police off.

e. Any real customer who buys from a fake vendor gets their details sent to their local police.

f. Most vendors, real and fake, accumulate comments saying that they tipped people off to the police, with no way to tell which vendors are real vendors with mostly genuine good feedback and a few forged complaints of being police run, and which have a few real complaints of being police run and mostly forged good feedback.

g. Police forces issue press releases announcing how many people they have caught buying things on SR, and buying becomes a highly risky proposition.

Re: Using Silk Road

#75

Post by waterlesscloud »

olefoo wrote: post #65
rorrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything…

There is a certain point where their bandwidth will exceed the noise threshold and it will be trivial to trace the location of their servers and of their offices, tor or no tor. And if they are simultaneously the subject of renewed enforcement interest... """ Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hu…

I would imagine if your income was high enough you could spread the bandwidth around enough to stay under the radar for a long time.

I would think tracing the flow of bitcoins to them might be more productive, though that could be spread around quite a bit too.

You're right, though. There's some level at which they'd get nailed.

Re: Using Silk Road

#76

Post by rorrr »

olefoo wrote: post #65
rorrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything…

There is a certain point where their bandwidth will exceed the noise threshold and it will be trivial to trace the location of their servers and of their offices, tor or no tor. And if they are simultaneously the subject of renewed enforcement interest... """ Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hu…

> and it will be trivial to trace the location of their servers and of their offices

You're very naive if you think that SilkRoad is not running on servers rented anonymously with bitcoins, in a country outside of US/European jurisdiction.

Re: Using Silk Road

#77

Post by jaggederest »

schrodinger wrote: post #67
rorrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything…

To me the problem is the delivery system. Everything is completely untraceable up until the very second you enter your home address. Is there really a feasible way to evade this liability? Maybe there is a market for truly anonymous "po boxes" or something? How else do you keep the last step anonymous?

If I was going to do this kind of thing, which I'm not since none of these grey market items has much appeal to me, I would go online and find a listing of houses which are vacant (foreclosures, or for-sale houses) and use their address. You would not be able to use USPS, though, since those places have their mail stopped. I don't believe this directly violates any laws but IANAL.

Alternately, if you were alert enough at your mail fraud you could find a neighbor who is out of the house during the day and use their name and address, and intercept the package from their mailbox. This is, of course, a felony.

Re: Using Silk Road

#79

Post by rorrr »

schrodinger wrote: post #67
rorrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything…

To me the problem is the delivery system. Everything is completely untraceable up until the very second you enter your home address. Is there really a feasible way to evade this liability? Maybe there is a market for truly anonymous "po boxes" or something? How else do you keep the last step anonymous?

Private PO Boxes exist already.

NZ: https://www.privatebox.co.nz

Canada: https://www.bufferbox.com/

Re: Using Silk Road

#80

Post by chc »

Alex3917 wrote: post #59
mkr-hn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a new word

Just a caveat though, jacques_chester is using the term in a way that's metaphorical, but not correct according to the literal definition. That is, if he now understands someone else's point of view then that implies there's still a 'he' to have understood something, which means that he couldn't actually be in a state of non-dual consciousness by definition.

I thought satori was the Japanese Zen term for what is commonly called "enlightenment" or "awakening" in most forms of Buddhism in America. Is it meaningfully distinct besides being primarily used in a Zen context?
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