Bitcoin Forum

College kids being able to ANONYMOUSLY buy weed with a Visa/MasterCard .... Is that a "killer app" for Bitcoin?

1.  Kid buys Bitcoin with Visa online.
2.  Delivery Man accepts Bitcoin as payment.

Not to mention...

3.  Delivery Man can then keep it in Bitcoin as an investment, or
4.  "Cash Out" daily or weekly in a completely separate transaction with a local Cash-for-Bitcoin dealer..., or eventually even
5.  Send payments to distant suppliers without transporting cash, Or...
6. Travel abroud and take their Bitcoin with them via Internet... and "cash out" little by little to live on.

What make you thinks teen use weeds?

Dude!  Stop talking!  Don't you know that Big Sister is listening!?

Based on the thread subject spelling, I bet I know what inspired this post...  ;)

See the heroin store (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.0;all) thread for a discussion along similar lines.

My own opinion is that the US government loves to point to a technology, and make arguments in court along the lines of "the majority of uses are illegal / infringing / evil / etc., therefore, any use of that technology strongly implies illegality"  I'm not making a political statement about drugs or gambling; that's just the practical reality one finds with today's law enforcement.

The best way to make bitcoins a success is to convince legitimate, tax-paying, paperwork-filing merchants to accept bitcoins, and customers to pay them in bitcoins.  Similar to how bitcoin's network remains intact: as long as >50% of the network is not evil, we need >50% of well known merchants to be upstanding citizens in their respective jurisdictions.

One day, inevitably, law enforcement will have a bitcoin-related case, and having evidence of bitcoin's beneficial nature will be powerful and useful.  Concrete example:  presenting bitcoin as a way for donors to charities to remain anonymous is a powerful, positive argument for bitcoin.

If the bitcoin "brand" is generally considered to be a den of thieves, scam artists, tax evaders, and criminals, it gains increased law enforcement attention, and will be marginalized away from the general public.  I want bitcoin to be as broadly successful as possible.

http://44eeao3qvv2wz3vv.onion/

College "kids", not teens.   But yeah, about 80-90% of the college kids I've known smoke weed.   Probably more of them smoke weed than drink beer.... from my personal observations.


Don't assume...  The typo I can blame on the virtual keyboard of my Android phone... and accidentally pressing Enter instead of Backspace... It posted mid-typo.

Actually, I don't smoke.... (anything).  :)


Yeah.   You make lots more sense than my question does.  :)

I suppose that there will be plenty of natural attraction anyway...   Attraction that certainly won't need our help....  Like how the porn industry was naturally attracted to the internet, when it was invented...   No one needed to ask them to sign up.  :)


I don't know how to visit a Tor site (if that's that this link is).

http://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en

You can add tor2web.com:
http://44eeao3qvv2wz3vv.tor2web.com/

This is not secure, but it allows you to view Tor hidden services without installing Tor.

SMF needs the correct hostname in the url in order to work properly

Credit cards are not really anonymous. They'd be better off buying Bitcoins with cash from someone they trust and then moving the Bitcoins for illicit items.

This would only obfuscate the trail of funds. It wouldn't make it impossible to get caught.

If they are going to go through that much trouble they might be better off just buying illicit items with cash in person (or perhaps by mail).

Yeah, I really don't see the advantage of bitcoin over cash for in-person transactions.  I think the killer app is somehow micro-payment related.

or transfering money over long distances, where other means are not very efficient

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/realtime/ (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/realtime/)

I would advise against doing that.

"Not only do we put our hands down your pants, but we also spy on your transactions in realtime."  >:(

Haven't you heard about The Bernanke?

Cash is physical.  You gotta carry notes, get change, etc.  I can get torn, degraded, takes up space, etc.

bitcoins can have all the convenience of a credit card or debit card:  just bump your phone against a reader, and you've purchased something with digital cash.

In the context of the title of this thread, the advantage of bitcoin for in person transactions is that if the cops are waiting for a deal to go down so that they can swoop in and confiscate everything to pad their budgets, it's much harder to take the bitcoins once the transaction is gone.  Particularly if the wallet.dat is encrypted on a remote server, overseas.

Confiscation is a good point I hadn't thought of.

But my original point was CREDIT.  As far as I know, pot dealers don't take credit cards...  nor do they sell on convenient credit terms.

Thus, Visa --> Bitcoin
Bitcoin --> weed

The first transaction is not anonymous (the credit card)...  but all you bought is Bitcoin. 

The second transaction -- with a completely different party -- is anonymous.  And, presumably,  that's the transaction you'd want to remain anonymous. 

Since you gotta physically meet the guy anyway, cash probably is easier.   However, since you don't have $200 on you....  and all you have is that credit card mom and dad got for you "in case of emergency".....   This method lets you buy weed ON CREDIT.

You all seem to assume that bitcoins will remain legal :P

I'm just assuming that they are legal right now.

The term "confiscation" reminds me of another important application for Bitcoin.  

Try traveling by air carrying more than US $10,000.   When security personnel find it, the police will (1) confiscate it, and (2) use it as "evidence" that you must be smuggling drugs or something.

Try carrying bags of gold and silver coins out of the country.

It seems to me that this is one very important application for Bitcoin.

the more of this dubiouss and even illegal ideas float around in this forum the sooner it will be just called illegal by governments and then the party is over.

I don't think most people here want that. But fine, if a handful of people want to destroy the work Satoshi has started more than 1.5 years ago and hundreds of people here have developed further, even try to make a living from Bitcoins, that's probably unavoidable (as noone can rule anything here behind the decentralization)

blaa blaa shutdown forum. we just open a new one elsewhere. lol

Yep, probably a very important application.
Probably a very good reason for outlawing bitcoins altogether too I guess.


How about chilling down for a second, sit down, have a puff?
Yes, bitcoins make money laundering, drug trade, etc. much much easier.
It's a fact, not an opinion that should be silenced because of fear.

By the way, a better method for drug selling is a stashes in random places and not send stuff by mail.

Good idea, but I don't really see that scale very well

Yeah, when they call it illegal it'll be over, like drugs, prostitution, murder, and fraud.

I agree with the concern, if bitcoin is loudly and largely touted for illegal activities, and is for that reason cracked down on, it won't eliminate bitcoin, but it will probably kill any chance of it having mainstream success, and therefore achieving greater things in the long term.

It would be very surprising to see legislation passed making bitcoin illegal.

IMO, bitcoin should remain an underground currency. While there are legitimate use for bitcoins, their security features will attract many "non-legitimate" users.. (i.e. M.O.M. services)

So far...  in the US, there are no "illegal ideas".  

It may be illegal to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc.   But ideas, are still legal here.   So far.

And, although I don't smoke...

Although pot is illegal...    It is something that has been proven to be safer than many many legal substances.   Thus, the majority of Americans think it should be legal.

Also -- like it or not -- it does represent a SIZABLE economy... all its own.

Just sayin'...    ;)

But, I do agree.  We should NOT publicly promote these uses.   ( They won't need our help anyway. )

I was just musing "aloud" about how someone in that business might make use of Bitcoin...   (I'm still not that convinced that it would be better/easier than plain old cash, for most of their purposes.)

And thus doom bitcoin to be forever marginalized.

I would rather see a large audience using bitcoin.  I want to free the world from the constraints of central banking and fractional reserve banking.

But that's not gonna happen if the majority of visible bitcoin purchases are for illegal or grey market goods and services.

Wider distribution and use of bitcoin means wider distribution and use of freedom.

Now there's an illegal idea for ya.

By the way, a side thought:  if the "weed industry" were to suddenly embrace bitcoin...  What would that do to the value of a bitcoin?

There is a vanishingly small group of people who think that things should be illegal because they can kill or hurt you. There is no push for making bleach illegal, but a few ounces can kill you. The reason for making pot illegal is so that police and drug dealers will make more money. The reason of safety is a smoke screen given by liars.

Better motivation? :)

That has probably happened in some limited degree, but if even 10% of such trades were done in bitcoin, the value of one would easily be over $2. 

1. This will never work.
It is quite easy to track down any drug store by conventional means - by tracking the physical sent packages instead of coins themselves.

2. (Yeah, i know, that i can't stop anybody from doing anything, but I'm just stating my opinion) Why do You people try so hard to kill bitcoin so quickly before it has a chance to get more audience ?
I mean if You try to do every possible "dark businesses" such as drugs, prostitution, weapons through bitcoin, then You will quickly kill its mainstream adoption. Bitcoin will never become mainstream this way because governments will use all possible means to destroy it, the same as they are doing with wikileaks.
Why not stay low profile for year or 2, and then hit it will full power ?

For God's sake, at least give it a some time before starting half-legal or illegal buisnesses. Maybe by then we will be strong enough and achieve enough critical mass that we can't be stopped anymore...

But this is all pointless, i don't even know why the hell I am even typing this... Well, at least i have said it.

Agreed.

Welcome to the selfish, paradoxical, self-destructive idiocy of "crypto-anarchism."

The way bitcoin is designed gives incentives to "dark businesses". Since bitcoin users are approximately rational, there is no use to appeal to somebodies ethics. This is an issue of the bitcoin architecture (e.g. give (negative) incentives or make it even more anonymous and robust against governments).

Satoshi had essentially gave his words that we're going to stay low, at least for the time being.

In my opinion, this is the wise decision. There is no need to risk battle for high risk gain when we will obtain that anyway.

Plus, you also have to remember to factor in monetary inflation and federal reserve's policy. When the government does collapse, it will be incredibly m00t. Time is on our side, as long as we grow.

I wish that were to be the case, but in current legal environment in America, that is simply no longer the case, particularly for computer technology.

Dimitri Skylarov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Skylarov) was arrested for "divulging" an "important trade secret" used for the encryption of e-books.  The "super secret cryptographic system" used for that encryption?  ROT-13 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT-13).  I am not kidding, where ROT13 was considered to be a "dangerous munition" and "illegal for export" and this guy spent several months in jail for merely presenting a paper about this algorithm at a major cryptology conference.

There was also the story of DeCSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS), where it is still illegal for websites in New York State to publish or display the contents of this particular program or to engage in its distribution.  This was a federal court ruling, but it only applied to the circuit courts over New York and not the rest of America and unfortunately was never appealed.  The software was released under the GPL, so the only rationale for its prohibition on distribution is strictly because the idea itself is illegal to spread.

There have also been many attempts to kill any publication or discussion on how to build a nuclear bomb.  This isn't saying that you are building the bomb, but if you publish the details on how to make one it has been routinely taken to some courts.  This has been particularly true about Hydrogen bomb more than ordinary fission bombs, even if you can document every single piece of information was derived from public sources of information (aka you didn't "steal" the documents from a leak like Wikileaks).

Since we are on the subject of cryptography, any sort of "strong" cryptography is illegal to "export" from America due to restrictions placed upon it by ITAR regulations.  If anything, Bitcoins itself may qualify as that sort of "strong encryption", as the makers of the PGP algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation) found out the hard way.

I wish that you could freely talk about ideas, but unfortunately law enforcement bullies tend to take a different view of the concept for some strange reason.  Freedom of speech is unfortunately a "right" that is sometimes ignored.

No, because bitcoin doesn't actually employ encryption of data, but strong digital hashing/signing of data.  The distinction is important, even if it might be difficult to show that in a court of lawyers who don't have any background in higher mathmatics.

Why would a customer borrow money under contract to pay for an intermediary money to pay to a vendor to sell into cash when he is standing in the doorway. Simply hand the man cash money.

Please stop the public association of Bitcoin with crime. Who's side are you on anyway?

Bitcoin may be suitable for large transactions of contraband, but not yet for small time handshake deals. That would require a good smart phone app.

Of course, were I a dealer, I'd never except anything but Bitcoin. ;)

Something worth noting - if the government wants something shut down its usually them who do the illegal behaviour and find a useful idiot they can frame. If someone contacts you and wants you to do something illegal for bitcoins its most likely the feds. Dont fall for the bait unless you want them to use you as an excuse for ever more draconian body cavity searches on the public at large.

Read the book The confessions of an economic hitman to see how things go down. Video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8)

http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/06/he-would-walk-up-to-one-of-my (http://reason.com/bjavascript:void(0);log/2010/12/06/he-would-walk-up-to-one-of-my)

Just a story I found which demonstrates my last post .

Also this-

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/151348 (http://www.dailypaul.com/node/151348)


I think if anyone shows up here advocating these types of things they should be ostrasized. My own views on things are unimportant.  ;)

Good lord..... What this tells you about the people who fall for it is that if they can't smell a fed who is that obvious then how are they going to blow anything up without the fed's help?

http://www.salon.com/news/terrorism/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/11/28/fbi

Its for the children?

I dont know how you stop the fbi sending itself bitcoins though  :D