Bitcoin Forum

Has the use of Bitcoin for illegal things such as purchasing drugs, weapons, fraudulent documents and laundering money effected its value?

EDIT: i IT* may have, but I have no idea if it has been for better or for worse.

I would say that in the early days sites like Silk Road likely has a positive impact on the price of bitcoin. I would say that this site likely cussed a lot of the early demand and press about bitcoin. Today I am not so sure about how these kinds of sites affect bitcoin.

I agree, I think that buyers on illegal drug sites probably were behind a lot of the price appreciation from 2011 up until the bubble of 2013 as it made world headlines that you could buy drugs on the internet using bitcoin as this was when the price really started to rally strongly.

Illegal use of bitcoin doesn't affect its value imo. it only affects faster adoption rate because of its continued use in fraudulence, scams, and  extortion. In truth, bitcoin's value is backed up by these shady transactions. Criminals tend to use bitcoin as a form of payment because of its anonymity. </3

Anyone who thinks BTC is anonymous is plain dull! On the internet nothing is secure! "There's no place you can hid, I'm coming on infra-red!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fISvc-yUU1A

BTC purchased the drugs, weapons, and false documents and money-laundering.
This is exactly what criminals BTC that the value of the . >:(
The BTC prices will not be affected by these factors.

You're right, I think it might affect it one day, so far I don't think it has but users who use Bitcoins to buy drugs should understand that they can not get away with it, sooner or later authorities will find out about it and they will get caught. And when it happens, it might affect its value as government will put more restrictions on bitcoins.

As the bitcoin economy expands, the use of bitcoins in illegal transactions will cease to be significant (as a proportion of the bitcoin economy). Then its value will not be affected.

In early days, the value of bitcoin increased, due to SR demand for btc.

Cash has illegal use also, don't see its value being affected.

Its value IS affected by illegal uses. Try to cash out a million dollars and you will learn the difference between pure electronic money (completely traceable and non-anonymous) and real paper banknotes in your suitcase.

I think you mean affecting

I believe that Silk road started out the initial interest in Bitcoin , but now it is harmful , as everytime something like this falls , it causes a media shitstorm against Bitcoin.
We need to convince small businesses to start accepting Bitcoin and making them believe that it is a currency for drug abusers and mobs is not a good way to start.

cash is also used for illegal purposes and also diamonds are used for money laundering as they are small and expensive

I don't think that Illegal use of Bitcoin will affect its value but I'm concern about reaction from USA and other Western governments if Bitcoin become famous like tool for money laundry.
This will be very bad for the development of Bitcoin and its global acceptance.

Illegal uses of bitcoin has both positive and negative effect on bitcoin.

Some people will buy bitcoin, probably lots, exclusively for illegal trades. Some people will misunderstand bitcoin as a currency for illicit goods and slow down adoption. Governments will clamp down on bitcoin with strict regulations against money laundering, but in turn legitimise bitcoin as an taxable asset.

Who can be sure which side is more dominant?

If BTC (or any) currency can not be used for illegal/illicit purposes it is a lousy form of currency.
If it can not be used for illicit or illegal purposes, then it is entirely controllable by the government and it is not yours; it is theirs.

According to the Roman emperor Vespasian, pecunia non olet ("money does not stink")! ;)

Remember that the bitcoin drug trade started it all. Don't forget where we came from. 8)

Unlikely, BTC is use agnostic. Utility is utility, legality does not matter unltimately

Yeah, it probably has. Bitcoin got its start buy being used to buy such things. It doesn't effect the price negtively but positvely. You can buy all these things with fiat money as well remember.

i think it effects badly even killing bitcoin in some countires.

I think this is true, especially so during bitcoin's early days when, I would think that a lot of people used it to buy illegal drugs on SR, which likely drove up the price. I also don't think it was a consistence that the price of bitcoin skyrocketed shortly after it made front page news that you could use bitcoin to buy illegal drugs anon on the internet. 

Not everything that is outlawed in some countries can be considered morally illegitimate. And the other way around.

That said, I don't think that *illegal* use of bitcoin has a great influence on price. But I say that *any* use has a great influence on price.

More use = higher prices.

ya.ya.yo!

There is no illegal use of bitcoins and there can never be.

I don't think it has a negative affect to the value. I think it has a positive one. Illegal purposes still play a big role in it and more people use the currency.

The price dropped then dramatically increased on the day of the Silk Road closure. I'm not sure what impacts Bitcoin for better or worse when it comes to illegal use.
Boggles me

No but the earlier posts were right about the fact that during 2012 and 2011 if/when btc hit the popular media it was alway "this thingy is used by criminals to make crime easier".   Nowadays the perceptions in the media have changed in that we usually don't hear this tagline about criminals.  I personally think that these sorts of perceptions do affect adoption which does in turn affect valuation.

I wouldn't say that using bitcoin for illegal purchasing of things like drugs and such would affect the value at all. It is not just bitcoin that is used to purchase these kind of things. Money we all carry in our pockets on a daily basis can be used for such things but does the value drop on those because it is used for purchasing illegal goods? Not at all.

There is no such thing as bad publicity. The earlier media reports did help expand the awareness of bitcoin.

You are indeed right about that part, but I don't think that Satoshi conceiving his brainchild would be quite happy if Bitcoin had to be honored with what is called Herostratic fame.

Yes, it was infamous earlier; but all that has been set right now.

Silk Road gave exposure to bitcoin, so people could get in touch also with the good side of bitcoin, also exposed in the media, even if with less emphasis.

Also increased the demand for bitcoins, like any other made mainly with bitcoins.

I think the illegal use of BTC is affecting the price less and less as time goes on.   In the beginning, I think it actually had a positive effect because it got people talking about it. 

I first heard of BTC because I heard about people buying drugs, IDs, etc, online "anonymously"   I was intrigued, so I researched more and that is how I first learned of BTC

It definitely help drive the first bubble to ~$30. It was all over the news as I remember. Even congressmen were mentioning BTC.

And after that came the Cyprus disaster which showed people that banks were not reliable anymore (in fact they never had been, to begin with), and can easily take away the money you trusted them with on an ad-hod basis.

But wait, if the price hasn't ever fallen below 30$ since, are you correct in calling the increase to 30$ a "bubble"?

What? The price went down to a few dollars.

Yeah I'm going with no.  There may be small minority of people who don't understand Bitcoin and they believe the negative press but I doubt that is going slow down growth significantly.  Anybody person really paying attention would realize that fiat is used in the exact same manner and way more and for far worse then Bitcoin.

If you ask me the only thing really affecting the price is trust in the system and ease of use.  These things will be approved upon and people will adapt BTC as time progresses IMO.

Ok, I think I see what you're talking about now.  But again, given that prices eventually recovered and have sustained at much more than 30$, can you really say that 30$ was a bubble?

I guess it depends on whether you define 'bubble' as something that inflates then pops and dies after or just the rapid run up followed by a big drop ignoring whether the asset survives after.

A lot of people use 'bubble' to describe the big bitcoin run ups, so I do as well. Also, people like to call the mid 2000s housing price surge a 'bubble', and it's not like the housing market in the US is ever going to completely die.

Yes bitcoin was very much a bubble at the time. The high prices of most bubbles are eventually surpassed over time as fundamentals of the underlying asset catches up to the price of the asset. 

Definitely. At that point of time, there was nothing to justify its valuation.
There is only so much of future potential (given the uncertainty) that you can squeeze into its valuation.  ;)

I simply wouldn't be here if Chuck Schumer didn't do that ridiculous Silk Road Youtube video. From right out of the Ron Paul camp, I came here and never looked back, because here are people not just threatening the US government, but actively undermining them. That was a clear proof-of-concept and I'd argue we're all indebted to Silk Road, to some extent, for Bitcoin's popularity today, an exponential expression of past adoption and evangelism.

The 3 bubbles or overjoys if you want to call them (people getting giddy at their computer pressing F5 every 3 seconds) happened at $30, $265 and that last run to $1200.  So far this year despite dropping to 1/2 and then going backup up 50% we have not seen bubble.  The good and bad news seems to be canceling each other out realtime.

What is happening in fact is STABILITY!

Bitcoin is accepted by more people and this can only lead to a more stable market for bitcoin .... I wonder where all the people that said that BTC is not stable vanished!

... What? You just quoted someone talking about a 50% decline followed by a 50% increase in price over six months. Do please give me an example of any widely-used currency or commodity which has jumped around like that and called stable, because all I can think of in wide(ish) use which dwarfed bitcoin's volatility is the Zimbabwean dollar.

Well ... check this chart https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price .... I would say the period from jan 2014 till now it was pretty much stable

january 2014 price 579 usd .... price nou 591 usd ....


now let's check Gold on bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/XAUUSD:CUR   (click on 1Y)


You can even compare it to EUR/USD http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EURUSD:CUR


so you just can't compare 14 mil coins with 1.29 trilion $

How much U.S. currency is in circulation?
There was approximately $1.29 trillion in circulation as of July 2, 2014, of which $1.24 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes.
(source: http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm )
Or with €956 billion.
(Source: http://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/circulation/html/index.en.html )

so yes ...I think BTC is becoming more stable each day

which is the end objective... a currency which does not get inflated away.

I think all kinds of money whether virtually or physically have been being used illegally.
The higher the demand, the higher the value.

I agree that the senator demanding that Silk Road be taken down defiantly increased the public awareness and adaptation of bitcoin. It also indirectly proved just how safe it is to use bitcoin (and TOR) as it took years and massive amounts of government resources to shut down Silk Road and catch Ross.

Well bad guys are doing this daily with cash

Plus, eventually the government got lucky.

I think that Ross made mistakes, and the Government got lucky, but these facts adds to the fact that bitcoin is good for transacting anonymously (even though bitcoin is psydo anon)

I think it was more Ross making mistakes early on that caused him to get caught. I doubt that he ever imagined that Silk Road would have been as successful as it was. The success of silk road caused him to become a target for attacks from not only the government but also from people trying to scam and steal from him. The point is that it took a lot of resources to track down his identity, so it would really not be possible to track down the "average joe" because it wouldn't be worth what it would take to track him down.

Right that since transacting in BTC is anonymous, it can be used by the bad guys on its maximum.  :P

As time has gone on, there has been less and less talk of the illegal uses of Bitcoin.   I think this is because it has gotten a lot of legitimacy as the larger corporations are starting to recognize and accept it as a means of payment...

Yeah, I rarely see this brought up in mainstream articles these days. While two or three years ago no journalist would ever leave the fact that people buy drugs online with Bitcoin out of an article.

It's good to see the media not focus on such a small part of Bitcoin.

Cash has illegal use also. Don't think it affect the value much.

Illegal use of USD affecting its value?

Yes, it creates more demand for USD driving the price up. ;)

Back with Silkroad V1 it did affect bitcoin but now it doesn't.

Exactly! Same is true for anything of course.

So illegal use of Bitcoin does after all drive its exchange value up? :)

Utility of anything drives it's value up as it it increases it's (potential) usefulness.

Yes, but this is just one side of the coin, right? What if this utility is banned? Things suddenly become rather complicated, don't they?

Only if the banning takes away the utility. If the US bans breathing out tomorrow I doubt anyone in the US will be holding their breath indefinitely.

Bitcoin allows you to get access to many things, some of them obviously being illegal. Since it has a competitive edge before fiat in reaching illegal things (less risk being caught and whatnot), this presumably adds up to its utility. So the only way to prevent this is to ban Bitcoin? ;)

A few years ago this was the case, but these days BTC is used for so many legit purposes that it doesn't really matter. I think most of the value these days is determined by the supply/demand.
 

Illegal use of bitcoin will not affect its value but the news often highlight that Bitcoin is the problem. Thats what causing the value to drop...

It could give it bad press and hurt it in the short term, but in the long run there is nothing that can stop it. The same reasons it is great for criminals are the reasons its good for the average user.

All currencies are being used for illegal purchasing which is quite common and that has never affected any other currencies so I do not believe that if bitcoin is being used for illegal purchases it will affect it's value no. You are going to get illegal purchases with all currencies just because this is a new currency just starting out does not mean to say it's going to be affected.

Not really, They only were the first to discover some advantages. I am the firm beleiver that Bitcoin would have been successful either way!

Might have taken more time, but yes, it would have been successful.

It's funny how some people complain the only thing that gives Bitcoin value is it's use for illegal tranactions.  Now their complaints are the the illegal usage of Bitcoin is having a negative impact on the price of Bitcoin.  You just can't win but I do like how fudsters spread fud in the form of a question these days..   ::)

There is no winning with trolls. Best would be to just ignore them, but many simpler minded newbies take their words for granted. Sadly

it's actually one of the things that give btc value, but without big company like google/facebook/youtube/amazon i don't think btc can't go that far

Well, it's considered to be *pretty* anonymous. Given some work, and enough people, it's still quite possible to trace a transaction back (even if you use multiple addresses). Blockchain sleuthing is something one of my friend likes to do in his spare time, actually o_o

It is very easy for NSA and FBI to find out your identity if you do doggy thing with bitcoin.

If you make mistakes yes. But I bet most people are not caught because they trace transactions, rather they make mistakes by posting info on the internet. DPR was caught that way too!

But would it be worth the effort involved?
Even after Silk Road has been shut down, is the FBI going after individuals who purchased small quantities of pot?
No, because it is probably not worth it.

They will want to make an example to discourage drug users from buying illegal substance online.

People have been busted buying and selling drugs with bitcoin a few times already.

To answer the OP, absolutely it has AFFECTED it's value, but the question is to what extent?  I think it has probably increased the price of BTC because people would be likely to use it for things like SR, so they have to buy it to get their drugs, so the price goes up.  Maybe in the future it's not a good thing and could actually hurt it's value, especially if the government takes aim at it because of the negative stuff.

True. They might want to make an example of some people. But would they try and go after all of them?
Since most of the silk road bitcoins went to Mt Gox/other exchanges, the Fed could theoretically subpoena the exchanges, and get all their addresses. But are they doing it?

I think it is, but it is probably increasing it's value as people buy large quantities of bitcoin so they can stay anon.

Many people think bitcoin is anonymous and use bitcoin for illegal activities.Bitcoin transaction aren't monitored by particular authorities doesn't mean no one is doing so,committing Btc related illegal stuffs could throw you inside bars anytime.

I think not only illegal use of bitcoin affecting its value but also legal use can affecting its value, so the more people are use bitcoin, the more can be affecting its value, it depends on how often bitcoin is used for transaction ...
hopefully it is used only for legally

You should probably separate btc from the crime. Committing illegal stuff (with any mode of transfer) could throw you behind bars.

I think it will affect in some extent becuase of more serious limitation by govenment.

Law enforcement generally likes to go after the "big fish" when it comes to drug trade so they can make an example of them. There are really too many people that commit drug related crimes to try to prosecute all of them (the court system would be overloaded). Sometimes smaller users of drugs will get caught in this in order for the government to catch the bigger fish.

It may have positive and negative effects. Like the silk road when it was operating the price went up

Yup Silk Road type places actually make BTC really useful.

the whole silk road event was a bad thing for bitcoin, because federal just dumped all btc seized

They didn't dump all bitcoins as far as I know, only a small part of what they had seized (DPR's coins are intact). And I wouldn't call the auction for selling that part as dumping either (they were not sold on an exchange that could negatively impact the price).

They dumped the coins. We should be thankful that the buyer is still holding the coins and didn't try to make a quick buck by flippping them over.

there is a proof of that? last time i checked i read that they dumped all of them

One (http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/bitbeat-who-won-the-fbis-bitcoin-auction/) of the first results from Google. Quoting below the relevant part:


You could actually have done it yourself, couldn't you?

I guess what you have to ask yourself is have drugs being illegal effected the value on the black market?  Is downloading music, movies etc illegally any less popular?  The answer is no it makes no difference or it makes the price higher.

The government only sold 30k of the more then 120k of the btc that was seized. The 30k that were sold were auctioned off and someone named tim draper won the auction who is planning on selling/distributing them in places where it is difficult to buy bitcoin today.

TL;DR no the government did not dump all the SR coins on the market

Yes, in the beginning the first market for Bitcoin besides pizza were for gambling and drug sites such as the Silk road along with other legitimate reasons that said it wasn't such a bad thing since it started in that segment and grew from there to the early mainstream usage we are witnessing now.

I would not consider gambling sites to be an illegal use. The only thing that would make gambling illegal is your physical location verses the location of the website, which is a mere technicality. Gambling in most places of the world is legal, it is just that in many places the government has monopoly over the gambling.

Well there is the legal grey area around online gambling websites, I recall Satoshidice having issues with US users of its site a while back but allowing other gambling jurisdictions to use it.
So I considered it sort of illegal but not illegal in that case, but what I meant is that some of the earliest uses came from there and it grew to more mainstream uses over time.

It is legal in most states to gamble, but only as long as you gamble via the state sponsored lottery. You are generally not able to send money across state lines to gamble anything. You are correct that satochi dice has had some problems in that they do not allow people with US IP's to access their site (if you use TOR or a VPN from overseas then you will be fine).

It affects the adoption rate I guess. Or even the value. I for once was scared away from BTC back in the good ol 0.1$ per coin days. Fuck my life, if I really looked into it instead of being scared away by how Bitcoin was used by criminals, I would be filthy rich by now. Oh fuck the fucking thing.

I don't think that Illegal use of Bitcoin will affect its value but I'm concern about reaction from USA and other Western governments if Bitcoin become famous like tool for money laundry. This will be very bad for the development of Bitcoin and its global acceptance.

Cash has illegal use and it didn't affect its value.

Bitcoin will have the same issue as cash when it comes to illegal use.

I would say that gambling sites are generally illegal in the United States. Although the reason for being as such is nothing more then a technicality. It is illegal to gamble across states lines because states want to be able to heavily regulate and tax casino operations.

States try and tax as much as they can. Even Amazon collects state sales tax in a large number of states. :D
Tough to implement that model in online casinos though....

for me this also helps in gaining popularity

Maybe not from illegal activities.. Bitcoin will decrease its value if scams will be tolerated

bad publicity is still a publicity

 
FIAT money should be illegal.

Depends on whose using it

No it isnt, its how people using it, not how you use it that matters.

No it didn't. And if you look at the market trend you find exactly that.
It just happened that Silk Road and BMR appeared around 2011's bubble. But later that year you got BTC back at 2 USD, a drop from 30 to 2 and it remained as so with SR at full steam.
The biggest bubble so far came after SR arrests, BMR breakdown, SM theft and, a couple of months early, Atlantis closure. In the end none of those markets had any impact on the bitcoin value, maybe helped on introduce bitcoin and make it known for some people.
To the very best they increased the transactions flow; customer -> cash > bitcoin ---> dealer -> bitcoin > cash

Yes bitcoin was very much a bubble at the time. The high prices of most bubbles are eventually surpassed over time as fundamentals of the underlying asset catches up to the price of the asset.

That means if you use your money to buy porn videos is that ok?

For me it will affect positively. Not negatively.

Kindly elaborate this one?

There is no such thing as bad advertisement.

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
— Lady Bracknell, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

Correct.. It doesnt matter as long as people talks about BTC then its good for BTC.

Just like bad publicity is still a publicity. :)

Yeah, it probably increases price lol.

How much commerce was done on SR? It was a lot. IIRC Ross was guaranteeing the fiat value of bitcoin transactions held in escrow. So if the seller was willing to give a refund then the refund would be given in terms of dollars instead of bitcoin. This likely not only got more people to buy on SR but also got people into bitcoin.

Who cares? all that matters is adoption, how you use money is your responsability.

The Silk Road issue made a great publicity, bitcoin became more popular and widely acceptable around the world. Any kind of exposure is good for bitcoin.

Thanks to Silk Road bitcoin hit the mainstream news, news is news anyway.

I think people were actually using bitcoin in order to buys illegal drugs in ways they thought were less risky in terms of potential legal consequences.

are illegal uses of dollars affecting it's value?

i don't think so

if anything, it increases it.

money is worthless if it can't be used to do whatever you want with it.

I agree.
Value of bitcoin depends on Market, buying/selling and demand of this currency.
If people thinks they can make profit with bitcoin, ir use it for buying digital goods/services, value of bitcoin will rise.
Otherwise, value of bitcoin will go down.

Nope. Just trader affecting the prices..

Yes, it generated curiosity among people. More people discovered bitcoin because of the publicity surrounding this.

I don't think any publicity is necessarily good for bitcoin. I think that all the illegal uses of bitcoin have somewhat given it a bad name (although I also think this is slowly going away). I would argue that the illegal uses of bitcoin in it's very early days is what got it off of it's feed and allowed it to grow

I think govts have laid off pushing the media stuff about illicit goods and BTC, and have focused on the money laundering angle. I think they think it suits them better for the larger scale.

since 2012 yes
since 2013 yes
since 2014 hell yes

with silk road and easy way to transfer money of course the price increased with higher usage

and then oooohhh shit

silk road gets busted and mtgox crumbles down goes the price. The main goods and services used for bitcoin disappears

this is me speculating above

but wait 2014 and more and more businesses start using bitcoin now over 60000 - look out 2015


just as illegal activities have utilised bitcoin it is now time for the legal options to give it a try, can you imagine the price rise then (maybe speculating)

Just as there is illegal use of bitcoin so is there illegal use of your countries national dollar for drugs, guns and anything else illicit

all types of currency are used for illegal activity

Does the use of dollar affected the value of dollar? NO. More bitcoin to spend, the more it goes popular.

You have a point there. I think using bitcoin as a tool for illegal ways will make it more popular.

Bitcoin is used as payment for illegal activities, but is dollar. So what then?

I really dont know if it affects its value. The only thing that should be done is to capture those who run illegal activities but bitcoin should not be affected by the anything.

Maybe the proportion of BTC used for illegal activities is more than dollar. That is why we need more legal entities to accept BTC.

Any use is good for BTC.

All that matters is it getting used, the rest doesnt matter.

Exactly

If a significant portion of bitcoin related commerce is for illegal uses then anyone who is associated with bitcoin or that owns bitcoin would be somewhat associated with illegal activity (it would be implied they are somehow involved). If it is only a small percentage of the overall level of commerce then people who use and own bitcoin would likely not be implied to be associated with illegal activity

ditto

I doubt if a significant portion of bitcoin related commerce is for illegal uses.

Ross had accumulated ~144K bitcoin from commissions from SR in only ~2 years. He likely paid the site expenses and his living expenses out of the site commissions so the 144k bitcoin is the site profit (after Ross's living expenses).

I think it is safe to say that SR was a significant portion of bitcoin related commerce up until it was shut down

Which one is the largest site accepting BTC?

This is a great example as to how much bitcoin related commerce was/is taking place on illegal dark market websites. Other examples would include the fact that SR2 was hacked back early this year and well over $4 million was stolen