Bitcoin-Based Drug Market Silk Road Thriving With $2 Million In Monthly Sales 498
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Every day or so of the last six months, Carnegie Mellon computer security professor Nicolas Christin has crawled and scraped Silk Road, the Tor- and Bitcoin-based underground online market for illegal drug sales. Now Christin has released a paper (PDF) on his findings, which show that the site's business is booming: its number of sellers, who offer everything from cocaine to ecstasy, has jumped from around 300 in February to more than 550. Its total sales now add up to around $1.9 million a month. And its operators generate more than $6,000 a day in commissions for themselves, compared with around $2,500 in February. Most surprising, perhaps, is that buyers rate the sellers on the site as relatively trustworthy, despite the fact that no real identities are used. Close to 98% of ratings on the site are positive."
For now. (Score:4, Informative)
This thing has got to be loaded with narcs.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Which country allows you to buy cocaine or ecstasy from a pharmacy?
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:5, Informative)
DUI laws stop people from drinking and driving. It used to be pretty common until it became a serious offense with serious punishments.
Making drugs illegal does not prevent their use. Nothing will do that, even in nations with a death penalty for drug crimes drugs are still sold.
Re:Why is the feedback system surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
I am betting you have never been part of a typical drug deal.
Think less what you see on TV and in movies and more mundane real life. People are doing this to make money, killing the buyers does not help with that.
Re:Fishy (Score:4, Informative)
So $2 million per month through Silk Road is not unreasonable if Gox is doing $17 million per month in transactions....
grnbrg.
Re:For now. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nice Ad Placement or DEA Honeypot (Score:5, Informative)
How exactly would your theoretical honeypot work? Only buyers need to provide anything remotely identifiable (e.g., shipping address). Do you think the DEA cares about going after kids who buy $100 worth of LSD?
Considering that arresting end users is pretty much the DEA's bread-and-butter, [drugwarfacts.org] I'd say yes, yes they do.
From above link:
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, morphine is addictive. And before it was criminalized, there were plenty of doctors, lawyers and other responsible professionals addicted to it. This interfered with their personal and professional lives no more than smoking does today. The only significant side effect of morphine addiction is constipation. If the war on drugs was renamed the war on constipation it might get the respect it deserves.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:4, Informative)
A famous study you never heard of - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/background_briefings/smoking/86599.stm [bbc.co.uk]
This kind of result is quickly covered up.
We do know that smoking is the greatest single cause of statistics. But if you want your study funded you better be prepared to come down on the side of conventional wisdom.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:4, Informative)
Even that is not going to make an addict. Where does this free drug myth come from? No dealer is giving away free drugs, it does not happen.
Nicotine is far more addictive, and still requires multiple uses to be addictive.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm too young to know whether the punishment and fines changed, but in the 1980s and 1990s the British government successfully reduced the rate of drink driving by making it socially unacceptable. They ran horrific ads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ma_Xv7rGM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyzTFdCEXWk [youtube.com]
These are more recent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsY_Co-p8Bw [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtJqw--DGl8 [youtube.com]
The stats: http://www.drinkdriving.org/drink_driving_statistics_uk.php [drinkdriving.org]
And the penalties; in case you want to compare: http://www.drinkdrivingfacts.com/drinkdriving/drink_driving_facts.aspx [drinkdrivingfacts.com]
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Most addictive naturally-occuring drug, of all drugs it's #3 IIRC behind a couple of anti-psychotics.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty easy to find plenty of evidence that h4rr4r's post is spot on. Google "Portugal decriminalization".
https://www.google.com/search?q=portugal+decriminalization [google.com]
h4rr4r speaks truth, whether or not you want to hear it.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Ecstasy might not have been invented then
MDMA was actually invented by Merck in 1912, but didn't find its way into recreational use until the 80s.
Re:And in countries where it's legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Ecstasy is slang for MDMA and nothing else. The fact that unscrupolous drug dealers and people who know as much about drugs as the average person knows about physics doesn't make it slang for anything else.
Yes, your dealer who just bought a cheap batch of pills with 2C-B + caffeine + amphetamine will tell you otherwise but that's because he's trying to sell his crappy pills. It's sort of like how if alcoholic beverages were illegal, you can bet there would be people trying to sell all sorts of crap as "whiskey", "chardonnay" and other beverages.
Ecstasy isn't "Various euphoric and stimulant drugs these days but originally MDMA", it's just slang for MDMA and nothing else. The problem is that in a lot of places demand for MDMA is a lot higher than supply and dealers will try their best to confuse customers to sell whatever they have in stock. Hell, I've heard rumors of dealers trying to push benzos as "ecstasy" when MDMA has been hard to find...