Perhaps I don't understand Bitcoin well enough, but wouldn't these guys out themselves the instant they try and spend them because of the public transaction history?
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
#32>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 t…
The drug cartels brutally murder thousands and commit many other crimes -- they are as brutal as ISIS in many ways -- they undermine and oppress entire countries and ruin large parts of American cities. Many organizations such as the Taliban and Hezbollah fund themselves via the drug trade.
Some people boycott companies over political issues; how many of them still buy drugs? Every user I know, to whom I've mentioned this issue, insists their drugs come from a friend who produces it at home. But somehow the drug cartels earn billions and have worldwide distribution networks.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#33Perhaps I don't understand Bitcoin well enough, but wouldn't these guys out themselves the instant they try and spend them because of the public transaction history?
There are tumbler services, no idea how well they work or how many are compromised but in theory it seems like it could work.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the whole point of bitcoin was that it was peer-to-peer with no chargebacks or centralized middlemen?
A side benefit, but I wouldn't say the whole point. There are some cases where middlemen are necessary - the difference being that they're a lot more avoidable with BTC than they are in meatspace. (Credit cards, authorities who rob people carrying large amounts of cash, and so on.)
I'm not positive that bitcoins offer much more protection from robbery than cash, given the situation here.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#35>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 t…
Applying your logic, purchasing anything from US, Saudia Arabia or Russian companies is "supporting the marketplace that provides service to" government officials and politicians "of the sort that kill", abuse and torture people.
Do you agree?
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#36Aaaand its gone... and I bet with gazillions of the user's bitcoins (this is becoming a classic)
Although it takes a certain amount of guts to steal from drug dealers. They don't generally bother with suing you in court to recover their funds :-)
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#37Perhaps I don't understand Bitcoin well enough, but wouldn't these guys out themselves the instant they try and spend them because of the public transaction history?
It depends on how bitcoin flowed through their system. If funds flowed through a small number of addresses, the stolen bitcoin could have ended up in dozens of addresses that are difficult to distinguish from the seller addresses (short of enumerating the great majority of addresses used by sellers).
It could also already be in cash.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#38>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 t…
Applying your logic, purchasing anything from US, Saudia Arabia or Russian companies is "supporting the marketplace that provides service to" government officials and politicians "of the sort that kill", abuse and torture people. Do you agree?
If you cast your logic-net wide enough, you can make all sorts of connections & correlations. Anything and everything indirectly funds anything and everything else.
You can't decide to shutdown all USA companies; or if you did you'd cause a lot more problems than you'd solve. But you can shutdown a website selling illegal drugs. And that would arguably solve more problems than it would cause.... arguably, maybe. I could cast the logic net even wider. The whole earth would be better off without humans probably. Do we want to have that debate? No. Humans, for better or worse, are here. The USA and its companies/corps are here and exist. That's gonna be a thing for the foreseeable future. A drug website is more reasonable to talk about if it should exist or not.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#39>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 t…
The drug cartels brutally murder thousands and commit many other crimes -- they are as brutal as ISIS in many ways -- they undermine and oppress entire countries and ruin large parts of American cities. Many organizations such as the Taliban and Hezbollah fund themselves via the drug trade. Some people boycott companies over political issues; how many of them still buy drugs? Every user I know, to whom I've mentioned…
Prohibition laws created the drug cartels. You don't see distillers killing each others in turf wars, quite simply because it would be highly destructive to their possibility of operating on the right side of the law.
To end the "wars" regarding drugs, you must end the war on drugs. Legalize everything. It won't eliminate drug abuse, just like legalizing alcohol didn't eradicate alcohol abuse, but it removes all the compounding effects caused by the substances being illegal by themselves.
Besides, legalizing is, from a moral perspective, the only right way to act.
Re: The Dark Web’s Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished
#40I 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...
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.
Bitcoin allows transactions that only become valid once 2 of 3 people sign them. If the three people are buyer, seller, and arbitrator, you can have escrow without trusting a third party. There have already been commercial services along those lines.
Seems to me that any dark service that doesn't do it that way probably shouldn't be trusted.