Bitcoin Forum

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Life after Silk Road: how the darknet drugs market is booming

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/30/life-after-silk-road-how-the-darknet-drugs-market-is-booming (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/30/life-after-silk-road-how-the-darknet-drugs-market-is-booming)

<< Buying drugs and weapons online is far easier since the closure of Silk Road in 2013, after a dozen new sites have taken its place. >>

Good.  I am so sick of this communist B.S. where people don't even own their own bodies.

But i dont know how the people keep buying into those scam markets, not only alot of people lost btcs in the silkroad closure but many were scammed on the other two markets.

Actually, Silk road II was hacked, lost a lot of bitcoins, promised to pay back and already paid 80% of their debt back or, at least, they are claiming that.

they want cheap drugs

they risk it

I lost 0.18BTC myself when sheep marketplace went down :D

Spendulus, what was the point of quoting the above guys post? what are you trying to prove man

You are right.  I wrote into the post instead of below it.  Here is correction.

The essence of the scam is where Dread Pirate (or his current replacements) says "Give me your bitcoins and I'll hold them for you until you want to buy something from my bad-ass site".

This is different from sending a seller your bitcoins directly, and it is different than a transaction involving escrow.

Ah didn't see it. Apologize for any malfeance on my part. I thought you were just quoting his text on having money on a black marketplace just for posterity.

one major benefit of darknet drug markets: consistency. a vendor has to keep up with his reputation on purity, so people are less likely to get bad stuff that they might OD on. not to mention it would weaken the drug cartels.

I don't have any personal qualms about people buying whatever they want online. In the case of something going wrong however you have no recourse to recover your bit coin.

i don't support child pornography or selling illegal firearms/weapons.. those don't really have a net positive effect, but the the darknet drugs do have a help. history has shown that you can't defeat drugs, but what you can do is.. not make things worse.

You will never eradicate all of it. Child porn will always be out there for the sickos that want to find it. Firearms are simply tools with no morality to them.

i'm not talking about eradication though.. i just don't support those two things like i do with drug trade.

I hear there are some vigilante groups sprang up in Mexico, fighting the drug gangs that have taken over and terrorized their land.  These groups use illegal firearms, and they shoot them.  They don't just wave them around.

Well, just a note.  There are some people who would disagree with you on drugs, and disagree with you on firearms.

I guess though they might AGREE with you on the darknet drugs as and if it eroded the cartal power base.  But that's evidence of a wider problem, as Mexico can't even get the Ebay economy functioning across it's borders.  In other words, Mexico can't operate "darknet drug sales", because it can't even trade simple crap with Ebay with US consumers.  Thus a corrupt country, with corruption at the borders regarding goods in and out, destroys not just simple everyday cases of free trade, but also the specific issue you cite of the "benefits of darknet drugs", and assists the drug cartals in their power grabs.

Neither are we any better with the "war against drugs" and the agencies founded and funded with such an ill defined mission profile.

Ofcourse once people have seen how easy it is to buy drugs from anywhere anonymously with bitcoins.
They dont want to go back to the old way, Once the toothpaste is out of the tube it cant go back!
Atleast drugdealers are honest about there product online, because there are alot of reviewers that can say you have a bad product.
And the violence on the streets is must be also decreasing because of that, but there will always be some people that dont like this like big cartels in Mexico.
There income is lower because of this so they want to change that.

we're not talking about mexico as a consumer of drugs though. we are talking about it as being an exporter of it.

Right, I understand that.  What I am saying is that you are not likely to see "darknet drug trade" from that direction, because trade is fundamentally all screwed up down there.  That's the vacuum that the drug cartals filled.

I wonder if we'll see the big cartels doing DOS on Silk road or denouncing their owners to the police (or doing worst) in order to end online competition.

Anonymity might be helpful not only against the police.

I don't think so

there's one advantage of getting drugs from dealers instead of online

you get the stuff right away instead of waiting for 30 days or so

there will always be people who want the stuff right away

dealers will remain

Personal disclaimer:  I haven't done any drugs in a long time during which the world has gotten way crazier and weirder than it ever looked when I was high, so why should I change things?

LOL

...so who said the cartels were not working with the DEA/other alphabet?  As I recall at the core of the Fast and Furious gun running program was moving heavy weapons to one cartel instead of another.

I just actually read this wich is very on topic:
http://www.coindesk.com/study-silk-road-may-have-reduced-drug-violence/ (http://www.coindesk.com/study-silk-road-may-have-reduced-drug-violence/)


Yes there will probably will always be dealers, even with silkroad.
I mean I live in The Netherlands where I can buy weed at a coffeeshop, but I still buy at a dealer.
Just because I know them personal, and they are closer, faster and cheaper then the coffeshop
But I hope the really bad drugdealers (those prepared to kill for drugs/money) will die because of silkroad (probably not)
Because you have some really good and nice drugdealers, that also just want to make money and not harm anyone (mostly Marijuana dealers)

I couldn't care less for any kind of drugs, but if I had to buy in a street, I guess that could be an adventure.

Anyway, everyone knows about himself. I have serious doubts about the legitimacy and wiseness of State control of these things.

I guess because at the core of the "war on drugs" and various laws on the subject, there is or once was a genuine desire to improve the health and well being of society, other avenues that seemingly present good outcomes should be carefully examined.

EG, these claims that buying from SilkRoadies are safer than the street.

Then again, I always thought SR was just a giant DEA honeypot, but what do I know...

The regulation on drugs remember me the American alcohol prohibition. It was a complete failure and developed organized crime, like the mafia.

But it seems we can't learn from our past mistakes. The only lesson we learn from history is that history repeats it self time and time, we just forget it and do it all again.

As long as drugs are prohibited the rewards fr operating this type of market are going to be greater than the risk of running them. At least I can imagine that's how people who have the will and capability of running such a market are going to see it.

And after reading how careless DPR was and how his actions lead to his arrest, I can't help but think anyone who attempts to do a similar project in the future will be appropriately cautious with their identity. I'd say it's far more likely that a site would go down due to a hack or a theft than due to law enforcement, despite their success with the original silk road.

It seems Silk Road II already has more drugs for sale than Silk Road I ever had: www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/30/silk-road_n_5241316.html

The cops must feel pretty frustrated. It's like fighting the mythical hydra, you cut one head, but instantly two new emerge.

i don't know, the original SR was down for some time, and the wasn't any true contender except for the current SR 2.0.. i wonder if they caught the new SR 2.0 guys, whether a new service similar to SR 2.0 would erect.

So what's the prediction how this all shakes out after 10 or 20 years?

It seems pretty clear that we won't have to wait that much to see a change in policy about drugs, from a repressive policy to a therapeutic and tolerant one.

Even Clinton, that kept the Bush war on drugs, is backing down: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/12/03/bill-clinton-jimmy-carter-slam-war-on-drugs-in-new-documentary

If we keep this way, soon certain states will end as failed states. Mexico seems to be going this path.

Yeh they are backing off the war on drugs, they found a new one with the war on terror.
And they are already stopping to fight marijuana in the US, so that's great.

Did you see the movie Kid Cannabis?
There was a boy killed, and the killer only got 6 years or something.
And the boy that was running drugs from canada to The US got more then 10 years.
That in my eyes is really crazy, for just a plant that is growing in the nature.

those people are former presidents, not people who are part of the establishment. i don't think the war on drugs is going to change.. the government likes to put minorities in jail, maybe because there's a capitalistic business model built around it.

The war on drugs is just an arms race between law enforcement and criminals. The people that die and get maimed are often not involved with either. I don't partake in drugs or anything illicit but I do think silk road 2 actually helps keep things more peaceful.

The war on drugs was a scam from the start, do people honestly think their governments care if you take narcotics or not?

All they care about is making sure the little guys don't eat into the CIA's profit margins.

The first thing a government care for is its reelection. So, I guess sending almost 1% of the population to prison pays votes.

A huge part of those inmates were arrested for drug associated crimes. I don't have the figures, but arresting and condemning all those people and building, managing and paying for all those prisons might be more than what the Federal government pays in social security.

It's a gradual process.  I can't recall how many times several of the states have had a checkbox on the ballot to legalize weed, someone libertarian would know.  At least a half dozen times.  Now 2 have done it and Congress is clearly in favor of allowing state level decision making on this.

Still there are complex problems.  Think about the border traffic and the inland Mexican drug gangs if the four border states legalized stuff.

Filling prisons with any non violent offenders is just a waste. We also punish them for the rest of their lives by limiting them socially and economically.

well yeah, most of us here already know that per capita, america imprisons more of its citizens than any other developed nation in the world. same goes with capital punishment.

Yes putting people in prison for just growing or selling a plant that grows in the nature is just crazy!
Sometimes killers serve less time then people convicted with drugs cases (in the US ofcourse)

I think killers should be punished heavily, but most of the time they are off easy especially where I live in Holland.
The prison sentences are so low, it's like a paradise for criminals, also our prisons are much better then the American prisons.
And weed should be legalized worldwide it's a goddamn plant, look at alcohol man made it and it kills and hurt people everyday.
But they still allow it worldwide just because they can tax it, and also keeps the people happy.

i may sound crazy, but my theory is that government doesn't want people using drugs, especially psychadelics (which is what marijuana is).. because it ends up with people questioning government and the establishment. it's why nixon had to battle the hippies, so he could operate the war in vietnam.

Yes that may very well be the case, When I was younger I always was a little obeying person of society.
Maybe when i started to smoke weed I started to rebell, but I really remember I was really able to think different when I used shrooms.
It was like my mind was on a totally different level it was thinking so much different then I normally would.
It was more like a eye opener, the way i was thinking with shrooms, it was pretty crazy.

^ but also to be fair, the people in the 60's were out of control. constant orgies, groups hanging around partying.. and even charles manson. i think the 60's hippie movement was cool, but it was far from perfect.

what marijuana, mushrooms, et alia psychedelia do is temporarily alter/expand the way one can perceive, often in a way never before experienced given the conditioning that has previously beset them. This can allow an individual to question the reality which they thought they were in, and occasionally, some wake up. once this happens, one is able to gain perspective that may allow them to see the matrix for what it is.

alcohol, nicotine, some other legal drugs like caffeine and amphetamines on the other hand don't quite do this.

in any case, like beetcoin astutely observed, a lack of discipline usually leads to dependency/ruin/loss of Self.

but that's what life is, a big learning process for the all of us


edit: fun story about Christmas, Santa, and shrooms  (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/atlantean_conspiracy/atlantean_conspiracy45.htm)

That's a mythical image, not the reality.  Likely the writer that best captured those times was Hunter Thompson, but he did specialize in documenting the very image that didn't represent the common reality, but the more exciting, dangerous and lunatic fringe, which did make for exciting writing.

Typically a party might have had mostly beer, a few joints being passed around.  Users tended to group with like users; you'd see four or five gather to smoke weed commonly.

It was difficult to be around people using weed without, over the course of time, being around people doing heroin or speed.  People did in fact move from weed to hard drugs or acid.  Hallucinatory drugs had a period of popularity that subsided to a lower level that continues today.  The perception of weed as a "gateway drug", and the attribution of cause and effect was likely incorrect...since forced into illegality, pushers worked with various products.  When a person went to get weed, he met someone who was happy to give him some free heroin to try out.  Dangerous times for many...

Original research on the LSD etc indicated there might be some good uses for them, and I agree with that.  The shutting down of research into this area was a mistake, maybe that will open back up.

Drug abuse, excepting or including the fraction which is self medication, is going to be around forever.

Now, where's the SilkRoad of prostitution?  (Silk Sheets?)  ;)

Like they have already claimed you can shut down 1 market but you can't stop the idea and 10s of new markets will appear.

user reviews and ratings?

Well it looks like the hydra comparison comes into play here
Chop one head off and a few more come in to take its place