Bitcoin Forum

Australian Woman Charged Over Purchase of Drugs With Bitcoin on Dark Web
32-year-old woman from Brisbane was charged with buying drugs on a “dark web” portal.
On Friday the Australian Border Force (ABF) announced the arrest of the woman suspected to have imported MDMA (aka Ecstasy), as well as opioids Fentanyl and Oxycodone.

Fentanyl is believed to be between 50 and 100 times more potent than Morphine, making it


Read More: https://bitzamp.com/australian-woman-charged-over-purchase-of-drugs-with-bitcoin-on-dark-web/ (https://bitzamp.com/australian-woman-charged-over-purchase-of-drugs-with-bitcoin-on-dark-web/)

The Australian woman has been charged with buying drugs. It doesn’t matter if she bought them with bitcoins, Australian dollars or Qantas air miles. It doesn’t matter whether she bought them in person, on the clear net or on the dark net. Once in a while, you do get these sensationalist headlines

This just proves that Bitcoin isn't as well suited for illicit activities as it once was, now that government agencies understand it well enough to be able to employ chain analysis.

I'm not saying it can't be used for illegal activities anymore, but it's probably time for governments to acknowledge that the connection between Bitcoin and crime has decreased significantly. It's just tiring hearing it being brought up over and over.

I think it's relevant when writing an article intended to be seen by Bitcoin users, because arrests of criminals using Bitcoin could say a lot about BTC.

It's useful for Bitcoin users to see how much merchant use there is on the darknet in the same way that it's useful to keep track of legitimate merchants, because it could show how many people buy Bitcoin and it could show what Bitcoin's main purposes are to people. 

Arrests related to Bitcoin could indicate how Bitcoin's use on the darknet is likely to change, especially if some of these arrests are made through blockchain analysis.

In any case, it's definitely not "sensationalist" as the information is not made to appear more dramatic than it is, and the information is accurate.

True enough! This is a common case of one-sided confinement of terms. Like for example, when someone is committing illegal causes or transactions like that of drugs and uses Bitcoin as a medium of payment, trolls would always connote the same as DUE TO Bitcoin when in fact it being due to Bitcoin is merely incidental to what really is the main cause of the problem. Like this one here, we all know drugs have been a major problem across borders even sans cryptocurrencies. So you see, you cannot directly link cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to drugs because they are two distinct issues we are currently dealt with.

I'm surprised there are still markets that use BTC as the medium for illegal transactions.  This is about 5 years too late.  It's been about that long since Silk Road 1.0 and 2.0 were taken down.  Was under the impression that these criminals moved to more privacy centric coins for this type of activity (IE: Monero). 

BTC is poor to use for illegal activity since the chain is public.  The only thing private is the user's information. 

However as other commenters have pointed out, it's easy to perform chain analysis to figure out who owns what wallet and what the transactions are for. 

It may be useful for the crypto/Bitcoin users to know this however this kind of news may make the non-Bitcoin users think that Bitcoin is used for illegal means. There's a possibility for it to be used for illegal means such as any medium like fiat, gold etc. but narrow minded people may assume that using Bitcoin equates to illegal activity. We can't deny that there's still the presence of the dark web and illegal activities are being done with Bitcoin up to the present but let's not hope this kind of thinking will spread.

For people who are not familiar with Bitcoin, the association of illegal drugs to Bitcoin is quite obvious just reading the headline. Well, this is the mainstream media and the association is made just because Bitcoin is still something novel and not as old as the US Dollar or any fiat money for that matter. Had that woman used her credit card then maybe even if that can be mentioned on the news it will not create any curiosity at all. In the end, we will just assume that a bad publicity remains a publicity.

It is obvious that the currency of the dark net is bitcoin not fiat money. And that does not have to do with the purpose of bitcoin. She was arrested because she bought drugs which is illegal. Moreover, she also would get arrested if she bough it with fiat money because again, it is illegal. It does not matter which currency you have used to buy drugs as long as it is illegal from the first place. Personally, I am against her arrest. Let the girl do whatever she wants.

this case has nothing to do with bitcoin, the stress should be put on buying drugs itself

These events can happen with the help of any type of currency . Its not necessarily true that the drug exchange can only occur with bitcoin .
It is just that bitcoin is in "limelight" and any such event related to it is going to create a hustle and chaos . The dark web activities does not only includes the usage of bitcoin , many other entities are involved in t too . But no one talks about them , as they are not that prominent .