Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

111–115 of 115 posts

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

#111
post #24

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.

> * Vendors wouldn't be able to transfer money to a local wallet even if they wanted to.*

So this guy made $85k in a week? Or do we suspect that he was one of the lazy ones?

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those not getting the reference http://www.gballard.net/lifes_lessons/girl_rattlesnake/

While I understand the point of the fable, I don't get this version at all. Snakes don't rely on lures or deception; they sneak up on their small prey and try to keep out of the way of larger animals. I feel particularly well disposed towards rattlesnakes because they advertise that they don't want to be messed with. Rather like sharks, I feel like hey get a bad rap. Of course the author has rather obvious religious…

Don't be fooled; that story is many centuries old. Snakes are traditionally villainous because they can kill you; I doubt there was ever more to it.

Fun fact: monkeys have been observed to scream in fear on seeing a piece of rubber hose lying on the ground. There are good historical reasons for people to hate snakes.

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

#113

Not to add insult to injury, but these people posting on Reddit complaining about the money they have lost are opening themselves up to massive prison sentences. Reddit is a US site; all it takes to arrest everyone posting is to subpoena Reddit, get their IP's/emails/whatever, then raid their houses looking for drugs and whatever other contraband the police can find. Complaining publicly that you lost money on a site…

I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds a little dicey to me. I think for getting search warrants, you need probable cause to believe that somebody has a specific amount of a specific drug or other contraband, ideally in a specific place. Claiming on an anonymous website that you lost some amount of money on a site known for trafficking mostly contraband sounds more like a fishing expedition - you have no way to tell if they were lying entirely, or what they supposedly lost money on, or if it's actually illegal in their jurisdiction. You generally can't, or at least aren't supposed to be able to, get a warrant based on a hunch that somebody is doing something illegal.

This is perhaps cause to open an investigation on somebody, but I'd think they'd have to actually contact these people and complete a sale for something illegal to move forward with legal action. Which would probably not be worth the trouble for most agencies capable of doing that sort of thing, unless they had reason to believe that you were a pretty big fish.

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

#114

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

That is a good question. The Marketplace/TMP introduced full multisig support, but while admired for this, the users never materialized. For a while now, the trend has been against multisig, if anything; it seems that for all the moaning about exit scams, using multisig in Electrum is just too darn inconvenient compared to a centralized escrow market.

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

#115
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> * Vendors wouldn't be able to transfer money to a local wallet even if they wanted to.* So this guy made $85k in a week? Or do we suspect that he was one of the lazy ones?

maybe not 85k a week, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to amass close to that amount of money in the span of 2-3 weeks
Post reply on HN