Bitcoin Forum

You might be wondering what the heck is that title!

Well recently I am watching a series on the Netflix : Salvation. A series based on the political plots against hacker group and taking over the white house meanwhile an asteroid is about to hit the earth in couple of months! Pretty mind twister but coming to the title I will explain what it means.

In the above series, one of the political leader surprsingly use his bitcoin's to pay the contract killers.

Series has shown this in Season 2 EP 6 where one of the good group finds a Bitcoin Hardware Wallet (They have shown it like pendrive). Upon decrypting it, they see huge number of transaction with 1000+ BTC in it.

The episode has shown how the killer getting paid in $ 500,000 USD in no time for next target. They use it so that no one can track such huge transaction and also to hide the identity of person doing all the fishy stuff.

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I guess the Bitcoin has served the purpose of data integrity here by protecting the owner's identity and in addition to that end users identity who is getting paid.

However, this could happen in real life as well, it's illegal use of BTC for that matter.  :P


Very interesting to see BTC is getting showed up in movies/series as well. Producer must be paying the actors in BTC, lolz.  ;D

There are sites on the darknet that exist to hire contract killers for bitcoin, including joke sites listing just about every famous person along with a bounty, I didn't browse any of them, I got this information from a clearnet blog. Also realistically it depends on the target, someone wouldn't get payed $500K to target an ordinary person.

*There are sites on the darknet that exist to hire contract killers for bitcoin scam would-be clients

FTFY ;)

Most (if not all) of those sites are fake, you'll find plenty of articles on the subject matter. IIRC there's only one murder that's actually linked to a hitman that was hired via a hidden service and that one was an amateur that got caught pretty quickly.


Think about it, it's a pretty perfect scam.

You offer murder for hire, but since you're nice you only want 50% up-front. So you take 50% up-front and then... that's it. No one dies, your victim likely is kind of a dick anyway and they sure as hell won't go to the police ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Regardless of whether or not this particular instance is a scam...bitcoin can be used in criminal activity. But so can fiat. Illegal drugs and arms and people-trafficking existed long before cryptocurrencies. But you might argue that it is easier for people to commit anonymous crimes whilst using bitcoin. Arguably this is true, but we might also - fairly convincingly I think - argue that people who want to commit crime, and particularly big, organised crime, would find an avenue to do so anyway. And we also have to remember that whilst bitcoin can potentially bring anonymity, blockchain also provides a verifiable history of all transactions.

I will first advice the OP to change the title to what will befit bitcoin. There has been contract killing, money laundering and terrorism financing before bitcoin was created. Bitcoin was created to be a decentralized currency, even the money powerful centralized bodies (governments) created were unable to stop contract killing and the likes, then, why the need to talk about contract killing and the likes to be depicting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

There's a lot of tv series mentioning and involving cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin in one of their story plots such as the Black List and Homeland but the good thing is they don't specifically put any pressure on cryptocurrencies being the bad thing here but the criminals themselves doing the illegal activity I don't know if its because they are against the popular belief of crypto being the money in the dark web or they just want to focus the plot more but the good thing is they avoid creating Bitcoin/Crypto being the bad thing here. We should always remember that cryptocurrencies are just money or a mode of payment, these assets are not actually doing the crime here but the criminals themselves its just that the features and the digital existence of crypto make them more attractive for criminals to use.

There is a probability that this is happening today, as criminals is really taking advantage of bitcoin's supposedly anonymity. And maybe one day we are going to hear this kind of scenario in the media.

But then again, this is not bitcoin's use case, its just criminals has seen the potential of exploiting bitcoin. Of course this could put bitcoin in bad light and in the spot light as tools being use by criminals. The same argument though can be used against fiat as well. So nothing new, if this 'imitates real life scenario", whether bitcoin or fiat is used.

Aren't some of them some sort of automated death pool thing? It's been a while since I solicited a murder.

Ah yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

If it was straightforward darknet Craigslist ad then of course the 'killer' will be a 9yr old in Siberia.

Nothing new and its always been like this where when in talks about Bitcoin then it do always been tied up with illegal thing. In the series that you had mentioned then it do shows up on how

btc is useable on kind of transaction with ease and fast done but it also give out the negative side which is not surprising.We dont know if their actors paid in btc .lol

Sure thing that they do know about btc and an another day that it is been used nor do elaborate that it can be used in illegal manner.

That is true. Those people can use bitcoin for illegal means but it doesn't mean that it will be the major use case of bitcoin. We don't have to focus our attention on the negative side of it. But unfortunately, the media are blowing up the situation whenever bitcoin or crypto is used in illegal activities. They can always see those kind of scenarios in fiat but sometimes they want to hype the same scenario when it comes to crypto. This is the reason why those noncrypto users have bad impression towards crypto. But in time, they will learn that crypto is not all about these illegal activities.

And if I  remember correctly there was another murder when the guy ordering the killing was so pissed off he got scammed he decided to do the killing himself and did not even denied it in court.
I doubt anyone would use the darknet to offer his services for real, this is not Uber to get better ratings, scamming gullible morons is far easier than risking your life.

That aside, I don't doubt that cryptos can be used for such payments, they can break the payment chain, the hitman avoid contact with the guy ordering by not taking cash, there are no bank transfers any anything, and what's more important, it's damn hard to prove you have actually paid for that and that he received that money from you. But the numbers of contract killers hired this way would be insignificant and not though the darkweb.



And you think that sticking your head in the sand is the solution?
Bitcoin can be used for good things and bad things, just like eveything else, ignoring won't make them go away.

Lol this should be the other way around. Bitcoin's anonymity in transactions supposed to protect a person's personal and financial information from criminals.
It's not for the criminals to protect their identity.
Too much misuses of Bitcoin leads to slow adaption rate.

This has happened in real life maybe, but It doesn't make any sense for not knowing your gunman's basic identity. He could run away with your dirty money without killing anybody.

I'm not really surprised. In fact, I've seen a couple of movies where bitcoin was used for illegal purposes. I've also seen movies where bitcoin was also used in a legal context for payment for a service or product. At the end of the day, It just boils down to how each person decides how to use bitcoin's features. Even fiat currencies are used for similar purposes on daily basis. Talking about real life, Bitcoin might already being used for similar operations same way its used for making purchases and legit transactions.

True, and fiat money doesn't really differentiate from Bitcoin this way as fiat is also being used in illegal transactions and services way more than Bitcoin but in a much more difficult process. Bitcoin's purpose just depends on how people see it. Others see it as a business while others see it as real money worth holding and using to be used in the future when adoption grows significantly.

Nope, it isn't that way. You sniped the ending part of my comment which explicitly disposed such reports as being subjective. BTW, illegal stuff is also done with Fiat, and I believe so it was with cowries. How old is crime? And how old is Bitcoin? I guess you have the clearer picture now. The SM (may be the press in general) is just out to destroy the reputation of Bitcoin. It's obvious that some institutions are making them do that, and I have chosen not to listen to such reports.

Meaning bitcoin has influence already even in the movie production. They had already seen the way bitcoin could be use in the future(not only talking about paying contract for killing) as anonymous fully trusted and secure way of doing it. It even a p2p transaction without third party involve.

Anyway, even though btc has been use in the movie that way but for sure it is still good for bitcoin. Good or bad publicity still a publicity for bitcoin.

bitcoin has been featuring in movies and TV series for a long time now. from small and simple cases where some dude says he will buy bitcoin to get rich (eg. Frank in Shameless trying to fool welfare into giving him money promising to invest it in bitcoin and become a billionaire not needing welfare again) to movies focusing on bitcoin as something only used by criminals (eg. Dope where they use it to sell drugs).

Yeah,but in order to access the darknet,you have to use Tor and most of the Tor nodes are tracked by the FBI. ;D
It's true,only amateurs would hire an assassin via the darknet and pay him with Bitcoins.
Anyway,this Netflix series is just BS.The script writers wanted the whole "hiring a hitman and paying him secretly" process to sound cool and "high tech".The "average Joe",who is watching this series,wouldn't know that Bitcoin isn't that anonymous and hard to track,but the viewer wouldn't care about this fact.
Again,Bitcoin gets tagged as a "currency used by the criminals". >:(

It seems that some people have just discovered darknet. Yes, contract killers could also be found on dark web.
And yes, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be misused for illegal activities and that is nothing new. But so can fiat money and nobody is making such drama because of it.
Of course Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general became popular for illegal activities because it's still harder to track transactions and reveal true identity than when it comes to fiat money.

We have already many movies that uses Bitcoin as payments,so i think nothings new here?

Yeah it is interesting and proudly when we as bitcoiner saw something like this in movies but nothing changes so far.

still bitcoin does not been accepted worldwide .

anyway thanks for sharing i will watch the series later tonight.

So basically, a stupid guy used bitcoin from his own wallet to pay the contract killer, and then left it around for people to trace it? And if it costs that much money, then the guys who received the money would have a really hard time trying to sell their bitcoin without being identified, don't you think?;)

To OP,

Hiring contract killer via dark web is a reality and not a myth. Couple of weeks back I wrote about the illegal things ongoing with bitcoin and I mentioned the same there. You can do all sort of illegal things with bitcoin like arms dealing, drugs, contract killers, child pornogragy and what not! Dark web is crawling with such disgusting stuff and all powered by mostly bitcoin. Monero is catching up fast though!

I am sad because again bitcoin has tagged as a money system to do illegal things!

I bet most contract killing happens using fiat, or involves a conspiracy to steal fiat. It was meantioned earlier in the thread that most of what you see on the darkweb are scams.

I could go in the dark web and offer any sort of thing for money. You'd know it's a scam if I asked for something like 50% payment up front completely anonymously. The last and only time I checked and saw such a thing that's how it was set up.

It listed different prices for a regular person, law enforcement, politicians et cetera.

It's also very possible that these sites are set up by law enforcement and there will be an attempt to trace the funds or an attempt to deanonymize the user. You can never be sure what exploit the government has found to look through tor, maybe they have something and they are just waiting to catch enough people before going forward with arrests.

Whoa. The biggest point in the whole movie's that these group of good guys actually managed to decrypt Bitcoin! I mean, how else did they access the wallet, yeah? Or are we saying some hardware maker's at fault? Did the rich man use McAfee's wallet? Haha.

Saw a similar film clip in Malay about Bitcoin too, cept the guy actually had the pendrive inside a suitcase hahaha.;)

To be honest with you I think it was used for such thing for a very long time now I have read it before that there are some site in the darknet or deep web that would accept Bitcoin for such service.
There are also some service like hacking and other things so it was how Bitcoin is being used down there so it isn't really surprising or eye opening at all.

In my opinion not only Bitcoin can be used for bad things, fiat or gold also can be used for bad things. So I'm not surprised that Bitcoin
in the Netflix series entitled Salvation is used for pay contracts killers. Because Bitcoin can be used for good or bad things depending on
the people who use it. Although the possibility is small in the real world contracts killer asking for payment with Bitcoin, they would definitely
prefer to be paid with cash money. I am very happy now many films that mention Bitcoin, indirectly this can help increase the popularity
of Bitcoin.

Trying to understand exactly what the movie is trying to show about Bitcoin.
Did it show the good sides of Bitcoin which is clearly better than fiat currencies, or it just painting it in bad light?
 In my opinion, people shouldn't be proud or pleased when something like that happens. Before you know it many people will begin to see a harmless/good thing as bad based on movies like that and not based on fact.   You could even convince people to hate or avoid banana by showing them images of criminals eating banana in order to survive during their crime activities.. . Keep repeating similar pictures/videos , they start hating banana and writing/talking only evil about it. And a good thing is craftily made bad just like that

99% scams but 1% true and yes, they can be found. However, what I found out is that most don´t reject orders for celebtrities, politicians or otherwise exposed people. Not sure if fake or not, but that site I stumbled upon also offered options for the way the victim shall be passed on. Not sure if it was real though, but prices for an average person were around 50K USD. A broken leg or some bludgeoning were available for about 10K. Again could have been fake but it sounds "reasonable".

The largest price for a head for a hitman is 10k dollars, the so called political assasination are conducted by conspirators that does not like that politician. Hitman for hire on the net is very hard to find because they are marketed as urban legends.

I didn't know the story of the movie but base on your explanation, it shows that Bitcoin can be use in good and at the same time bad ways.

Well, I believe that many are using Bitcoin to hire some killers in the dark web though I don't have evidence to prove it but I know that some people here know it already. Bitcoin to hire killers is being used for a long time already I think and now that Bitcoin is becoming more popular, the chances of it to be use in different crimes will grow more.

With regards to the movie, this is a huge advertisement of Bitcoin if many watched it already.

I heard many rumors that bitcoins are often used for similar purposes and not only. But this way you can use any resource, either for good or for bad purposes. This is a human factor, there are always two sides of the coin. Therefore, what was shown in the series is just one of the many cases of using bitcoin for both bad and good purposes.

We don't know if that is happen in real life or not, but I guess it is happen without we know. If the killer can accept bitcoin, that can give them a hiding place for the money, and they don't have to withdraw all of the bitcoin they had, but they only need to withdraw for their expenses. But that movie can be a way to attract more people who curious about bitcoin, and they will search for more news about bitcoin. But I wonder why the movie show bitcoin for the illegal transaction than to make for a good transaction such as donating the bitcoin for some charities without the charities know the sender. That will be good for people out there so they don't think that bitcoin is only used for the illegal activity or crime.

Maybe, it is possibly happening right now but the media is focused on this pandemic that's why the happenings like that wasn't given an opportunity to be broadcast. Not all people are knowledgeable on what bitcoin is, and what are the benefits of it to us. If that really happened and this "bitcoin for contract killing scenario" was broadcasted, it will have a negative impact on bitcoin community.


Yeah, if any currency was used in "contract killing scenarios" like this, it will have a bad reputation to community and to the people who have a lot of money both cryptocurrency or fiat. That will make us hard to promote bitcoin by making good transactions, due to these illegal transactions like the OP was watched in Netflix.

For such a dark world, the governments of many countries do not yet consider Bitcoin safe for their country. It is used not only for murder but also as a payment system for various illegal acts. It will continue to do so until it goes under a government and hopes for a healthy system. I am wondering when it will go under a government and get rid of all these immoral acts.

As long as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency are used as a mode of payment,  it is not a surprised that it will be used for such crimes like how they use fiat money to pay for their criminal biddings..  Though I believe fiat money is harder to trace than Bitcoin since Bitcoin transaction can be seen in a transparent blockchain, and especially if the fiat money transaction is p2p.

I saw that kind of advertisement before when I visited the dark web, that was a long time ago, maybe 3 years already IIRC. I was just curios that time but it was really a scary web,  after that I didn't visit again. Well, with that set up, that's really a scam, unless you can find an escrow to hold the money and just release it when the job is done, but it's still hard to verify the reputation of the escrow as the transaction itself in the first place is illegal, hence you can't complain  if anything does not go with the expectation. 

Neither with fiat or crypto it is really hard to be traced up since these kind of transactions will be most likely to be done for it hard to be traced. Even if you do talk about transparent blockchain, you wouldnt
able to spot which one or which tx do involve those illegal transactions.So its still pointless on tracking it out and come to think that coins can easily be mixed out via tumblers out there.
If illegal stuffs can happen on fiat then how much more on crypto? This isnt something new on where people do make use of its main features to make themselves undetectable.

Offering escrow services for contract killings seems like a good way to scam a few more coins out on top of your "retainer":

"I understand if you don't trust me, even though I only take 50% in advance, but here this guy is a trusted escrow that can hold the coins for just a small fee!"




Talking of which, since we're already on the topic of cryptocurrencies and crime in the media -- has anyone here watched Westworld? In season 3 they introduce an app called RICO, which is essentially Uber for crime. According to the creators it's in part inspired by "the idea of the blockchain" so it's probably the first (fictional) dApp that made it into mainstream science fiction. Pretty neat in my opinion.

Of course it does, fiat has been for a very long time that's how the rich people communicate. I don't believe in darkweb when you hire a killer or something to commit a crime, I don't really believe on those thing, that only exists on movies. Any proof we've got that these things exists? Those are just scam, trust nobody, even me  ;)

Seeing cryptocurrency on  movie has an impact both positive and negative, it depends on the viewer of the movie. Mostly cryptocurrencies are used to smuggle goods, pay terrorists, and any under the table transaction.
There's two impact that will vary on the understanding of the viewer. Crypto are for crime and Crypto is a great technology.

Bitcoin can easily be used for assassination payments, but it wouldn't happen on darknet markets, because like others have pointed out, it will always be a scam. Either the killer will scam their client, or the client will refuse to pay the killer. Most of the time hitmen get hired via personal connections, so there's some level of trust, and if some party gets scammed, they now how to find the scammer. But when people try to hire a hitman without connections, they'll often stumble on undercover police officers, who might even fake the killing of the victim to arrest them.

Op has mentioned the story that's been narrated for the web series. This is truly happening in the real world. There are specific website functioning for the same. I came across this on an YouTube video on which top websites doing crime accepting cryptocurrencies. In that it is mentioned about the price being quoted for each and every crime separately. These were also a reason to cause bad image for cryptocurrencies.