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The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

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Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#21

Post by forgottenpass »

ForHackernews wrote: post #14
codesuela wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escrow, funds are only released once the buyer confirms that he received the shipment. If you have a ton of outstanding orders, you are going to have a lot of funds frozen in escrow.

I thought the whole point of bitcoin was that it was peer-to-peer with no chargebacks or centralized middlemen?

The bitcoin model alone doesn't fit buying drugs online. The purpose of escrow is a mutually agreeable middleman to facilitate a transaction, especially when parties that do not trust each-other can not exchange goods and payment in person.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#22

Post by emodendroket »

pakled_engineer wrote: post #11

Brokering narcotics and everything else to the entire world is an unsustainable business you have no safe country to flee to if caught or outed. Surprised these black markets don't just focus on one foreign market from their stronghold in Abkhazia or something.

Judging by the DPR trial these guys are not generally criminal masterminds.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#24

Post by fin0c »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

I don't understand why vendors would keep a lot of bitcoins on the site, instead of withdrawing them as quickly as possible. This guy apparently had 300BTC/$85k on there! http://np.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2zeuxo/compla...

Apparently Evo admins stopped processing withdrawals a week ago. Vendors wouldn't be able to transfer money to a local wallet even if they wanted to. Disabling autowithdrawals should have been a sign of impending doom.

That said, some people probably just leave money in their accounts anyway due to convenience/laziness.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#25

Post by Lawtonfogle »

>While other sites followed the original Silk Road’s ethos of selling only victimless contraband

While human sacrifices may not be a literal ingredient of drugs, calling it victimless ignores a whole lot of problems caused by drugs. Buying pot from your friend who grows it is victimless. But fueling any black market, even one that avoids identity theft, means you are supporting the marketplace that provides service to drug traffickers of the sort that kill people or that delivers highly addictive drugs that ruin far more than just their user's own life. Yes, bad government laws have made these problems much worse and are preventing truly safe victimless market places that uses locally grown and produced drugs sold in moderation, but the black market is not victimless.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#26

Post by Igglyboo »

tlrobinson wrote: post #15

So why haven't markets that utilize Bitcoin escrow transactions taken off yet?

Evolution did use escrow, except that they were the middle man between buyer and seller. Even with escrow you still have to put your trust in someone else.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#27

Post by gwern »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #13

"NSWGreat described confronting Evolution’s two pseudonymous owners, Verto and Kimble, who he or she says then admitted they were closing the market and stealing its funds. “I am so sorry, but Verto and Kimble have f–ked us all. " With no chat logs, all we go by is this guy's word? What are the odds he was in on the heist? Also, this reminds me of when Max Butler did a brute force take over of all the carders markets…

> With no chat logs, all we go by is this guy's word?

You mean, besides the market & forum being down since 8PM yesterday, withdrawals failing since at least Saturday, no communication from the operators, at least one other employee saying it's an exit scam, and blockchain movements of large amounts of funds?

> What are the odds he was in on the heist?

We can't rule out a scenario like NSWGreat expected to receive a cut, but it's clear that when he went public, he helped some people save money by not continuing to deposit funds.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#28

Post by gwern »

amyjess wrote: post #8

There are people on reddit raising funds to doxx the people who ran Evolution. Jesus... a whole lot of shadowbans are going to happen once the admins wake up. Maybe even some subreddit bans.

Nothing's going to happen. This happens every time a big market like Sheep goes down - a lot of people who knew better start talking big online and huffing and puffing and bluffing, along with the occasional scam 'send me BTC and I'll track down the admins!'

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#29

Post by tlrobinson »

Igglyboo wrote: post #26
tlrobinson wrote: post #15

So why haven't markets that utilize Bitcoin escrow transactions taken off yet?

Evolution did use escrow, except that they were the middle man between buyer and seller. Even with escrow you still have to put your trust in someone else.

Even with escrow you still have to put your trust in someone else.

Not with Bitcoin. With multi-sig transactions you don't have to trust the escrow agent to not steal your money (assuming you're confident the escrow agent is not also the other party in the transaction): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_2:_Escrow_and_d...

As dshankar pointed out, Evolution supported these types of transactions but they were not widely used, presumably because they are more difficult than normal transactions.

Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished

#30

Post by ertdfgcb »

dshankar wrote: post #19
tlrobinson wrote: post #15

So why haven't markets that utilize Bitcoin escrow transactions taken off yet?

"The site gained users’ trust by offering a feature known as “multi-signature transactions,” designed to prevent exactly the sort of bitcoin theft its administrators are now accused of." Seems like the site's differentiating feature was multiparty escrow transactions but weren't used often due to hassle?

Pretty much, yeah. It was available but not very many people used it.
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