Bitcoin Forum

A recent series of busts has shaken the world of dark net weapons commerce. A six-month joint investigation between law enforcement in Australia and the United States, which involved law enforcement going undercover as weapons dealers,  has resulted in 17 arrests internationally.

In September 2014, the US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) identified a 33-year-old US-based dark net seller of weapons to a “worldwide client base,” according to a press release from the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

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https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/dark-net-weapons-bust-leads-17-arrests-80000-bitcoin-seizure/


These things will not help bitcoin to go mainstream, I also know you can (maybe) do these things also with all the FIAT currencies... but people like to use bitcoin....

I'm not surprised at all. Eventually almost everyone gets caught (I said almost). They definitely aren't doing enough to keep themselves safe.

Actually the only problem here is that they are getting caught, else it would be helping Bitcoin go mainstream.   ;)

This is not about making bitcoin mainstream but using bitcoin as a bad thing. People who are blind about bitcoin will now think that bitcoin is currency for criminal thing. The reason people like to use bitcoin is that it is easier and no question ask when you are doing large value transaction. In my country if you are making transaction which is large enough there will be a lot of question to be ask on what will the money use for

For hundreds of years FIAT dominated these markets and that did not stop people using FIAT in mainstream. So, why on earth, the use of bitcoin in these businesses hinder bitcoin's mainstream growth ? Rather, I think, because of bitcoin's use law enforcement are getting trails of these businesses.

I hope bitcoin will go mainstream, but I think BTC have not been made to go "mainstream" but to be a valid alternative and can maybe coexist with the actual economic system.



Exactly, but a lot of people are still associating bitcoin only to bad or better illegal things (as drug, trade of weapons, etc). So yes, it is a problem for bitcoin but the problem is not BTC itselft but always the people.



I do not know what should I reply but read above...

Like when computer is a new thing for the world and some bad guy use computer to hack the system, It was then considered that computer is a bad thing . This is happening as well for bitcoin right now


Because people will think that bitcoin is a currency for criminal and people who dont have knowledge about it will now avoid in using it that is why it will hinder bitcoin's mainstream growth

I think there are some people that are still thinking this thing so it is normal, maybe we should only wait and continue to spread 'bitcoin' to our friends and relatives (and one day the mentality will change).

It makes me laugh when people say bitcoin is a bad thing because of stories like this.
Bitcoin is used to buy weapons & drugs?
What % of weapon trading & the worldwide drug market is bitcoin involved in?
I don't have facts & figures but the answer will be absolutely minimal.

I'd say to people trying to discredit bitcoin because of the above, 'lets ban fiat because people use it to buy weapons & drugs'.
See how ridiculous that sounds?
I just can't get my head around it, as long as guns & drugs exist people will buy them with any store of value they have available to them.

I still don't get it, why do most of the people in the world believe that bitcoin is more evil compared to its fiat counterpart when in fact, illegal tradings and activity are heavily present in fiat compared to bitcoin. Funny how they throw stones in a thing that could help them and they look blindly upon a thing that's been enslaving them for almost a long time now. When will people realize the difference between the two?

It is normal for us to say bitcoin is a good thing, because we know & use it. This thing it is for everything, If you do not know a thing then you are worried by it... for example : religions, culture, politics, etc.. (everything in this life) that makes you to think a thing is a 'bad' thing, it is a normal "thought' (and these news don't really help to go mainstream).

yeah 80k, is not even 400 bitcoin, if they were planning to dump, the market would have absorbed it without a scratch

those were probably little fishes, i'm still waiting the announcement about the arrest of hackers like the one of bitstamp, or the one of bter

It seems that adding "Bitcoin" to the title of an article makes it all the more exciting and dangerous.

$2,500 for a Walther PPK/S .380 calibre pistol and a silencer! The guy didn't know how to shop, you can get a decent gun for way less.

Why aren't those guys using Monero? they would be more anonymous for their criminal shit and would leave us non-criminals that just want to enjoy the benefits of Bitcoin or the fiat scam free of negative press. How many more arrests until they learn?

The sale was made in Australia which virtually has a complete gun ban. It takes 6 months of a sport shooting club membership to be eligible to purchase a handgun that will be strictly used for sport shooting.

Quite the contrary. I doubt if LE can catch more than 10% of criminals. (which is on the level of drug bust estimates)

maybe that bitcoins they will use for an auction. Its the new model of fudding them pockets. Meow!

I think these guys enjoying giving bad press with Bitcoin with this kind of shit. Bitcoin next to negative thing = average joe ignores it and hurts BTC. I myself got scammed by the mainstream media in the early days when they said BTC was a coin for criminals, which made me ignore it, so I ended up missing the low price, all thanks to them.

That was only because Curtis Green is Afro-American.

Only $80,000? Either these guys were small time or the feds didn't get the entire stash. I'm thinking the latter.
Makes me think, when they bust criminals and get fiat, they don't post the bills up for auction... I'm wondering how long until they decide to stop auctioning off seized bitcoins.

Brash generalization, Monero being private/anonymous doesn't mean it's for illegal use only(You can also be transparent).

While on it's face this kind of headline does make bitcoin look bad (it makes it look like it is only used for trading in illegal things), I think if you read between the lines that you will see that this demonstrates that commerce can be transacted without any kind of geographical limit, and that without putting in a lot of effort, it is difficult to determine the identity of someone using bitcoin by just looking at the blockchain

Bitcoin helped some Australians be able to exercise their infringed human right to self-defense? WAH! Imprison them all!

I think bitcoin is finding its niche (and gaining a reputation) as the "go-to currency" when people need to circumvent the law.

The reason for this is simple: Consumers have no inclination to add additional steps into their purchase payment flow. "Hey, have you heard about bitcoin? Let me tell you about this cool extra step you can take to buy things."

However, when it comes to drugs, paying hitmen, cyber crime, hacking ransoms, and gun smuggling it has genuine utility. It's actually useful.

Tell that to the FBI agent that got caught laundering DPR's stolen Bitcoins from blockchain analysis/blockchain tracking.

i agree.  i can't remember the last time i saw an auction for u.s. currency. 
so far the us gov has made the best move by selling at auction. 
they may keep any coins they seize at this price though :-) 
who knows.

I don't understand how these people are getting their coins seized. They can't have had the properly/safely stored or backed up. Pretty stupid keeping them where you live or conduct your business from if you're doing something dodgy.

 
Don't talk stupid. Maybe? Of course you can buy guns with cash both online, on the street or at gun shops.

Some people will not take extra work to read the meaning of this articles because people like to base things just on the headlines. Thats what make news especially about celebrity are the most popular news. If some people see the headlines they will thing that bitcoin is a tool to help criminals

When I was in school, I met an Australian student at a US gun range who told me that he unintentionally smuggled about 20 rounds of loose .22 LR ammunition in his carry on bag on one of his trips back to Australia. Somehow it wasn't detected by Airport security. His carry on backpack was also his gun range bag, and this was a long time ago before 9/11 so I believed him then.

Anyway he claims to have sold the 20 rounds of .22 LR (with a cost of 40 cents based on Walmart prices back then) for 200 AUD in Australia to some shady character.

Is .22 rimfire really Unobtaniuim in Australia?

It's not just .22 - it's everything. I've visited friends in Queensland several times in the last few years and yeah it ain't easy to own guns or buy ammo there. They have some pretty fucked up laws about gun ownership where you have to prove a genuine need and a genuine reason to own a gun. You don't just walk into your local Walmart and buy a few boxes of ammo either. They came to visit us in the U.S. one summer and we took them shooting. They were amazed at how many guns we are allowed to own and how much .223 remington we were able to shoot through in one weekend. I remember Curt saying we could take over the entire country of Australia with just the two ammo cans we brought camping with us. lol

Prohibition leads to black market and the growth of criminal gangs. If the Australian idiots think that they have dismantled the entire weapons black market by arresting a few small-timers, then they are wrong. The big players will never get caught. In this particular case, the vendor was caught just because of his US connections.

Although there will probably always be illegal guns in Australia the strict anti-gun laws and busts by the authorities will keep the number of illegal guns in circulation to a very small number. It's very rare that I hear of gun crime being a major problem there. If the big players somehow start buying and using guns too often they will draw attention to themselves because guns are so rarely used there. They will eventually get caught because there are so few gun crimes to investigate that the authorities can throw huge amounts of resources against them.

That is just because, as of now a vast majority of the Australians originate from nations with very low crime rate (such as the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Ireland, Greece.etc). Just wait until the third world population climbs to over 10% (quite possible, as Australia receives tens of thousands of "refugees" every year from countries such as Somalia and Afghanistan).

IMO this kind of publicity does more harm than anything else. people who hear about bitcoin for the first time this way or maybe someone who have heard of bitcoin but doesn't really know what it is, is going to know bitcoin as a means for illegal activities.

Precisely this reminds me of the past prohibition of alcohol in usa, and we know what happened there. Though I also suppose guns and alcohol are two very different things(Alcohol is restricted to the person, guns are not i.e guns can cause harm to others, while alcohol usually just causes harm to oneself)

Alcohol can influence oneself to harm others.
Guns cannot.

Some police officers are a perfect example that guns can influence oneself to harm others, so imagine what a crook would do(Don't even need to imagine, just read the news). It makes you feel "invincible" and above the average pop.

Nope, qualified immunity (effectively indistinguishable from "absolute power" which corrupts absolutely) influences them to harm others. Crooks, on the other hand, feel invincible when the government disarms all their mentally-sound, sober, law-abiding victims for them.

Fiat is not as digitally assessable as bitcoin and lots of these deals happen digitally so they have to use bitcoin.

It's no as if they have to use bitcoin since majority of these deals happen digitally; they do so because unlike bank transfers, cash payments; using bitcoins as a method of transaction is way more secure and preferable as it only gives transaction ids, or at the most wallet addresses to third party observers which makes them if not impossible then really difficult to trace back to the owners...
No wonder people try to launder their money through cryptocurrencies.
These kind of acts doesn't strengthen the bitcoin community but become a threat as to whether bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies would be allowed to survive...

I really laugh when people say " bitcoin is not worth anything,  it is only a joke" .

But why it is used for these illegal and expensive things  ::), really insane... and those people should "be silent" because they do not know what they are saying.

I believe their police force (and military) is pretty well armed, so I doubt you could actually take over the entire country with two people and a few cans of ammo lol.

Australia is very unique in that it is physically isolated from the rest of the world, making it difficult to smuggle anything into the country. In the US for example you could either cross the boarder via Mexico or make the short boat trip into the US from it's southern water boarder if you were to smuggle something into the US. With Australia on the other hand you will generally need to have the contraband transported on a major transportation carrier (and be subject to potential searches) which is going to be more difficult and more expensive.

AUS is also unique in that they are a very peaceful country. If that has anything to do with their strict gun laws is up for debate

Drive home safe everybody.

http://www.thelocal.ch/20150208/hsbc-swiss-bank-helped-terrorists-and-criminals