How Big is Silk Road

[NothinG]

Know your market...go download tor and do some market research people.

I'm sorry if SilkRoad doesn't publicly submit their stats to the world.

[gurg2.o]

Owner of SR is pretty well off from it, like ~62 bit coin payment to become a seller

[Seal]

but what happened to the basic principles of Econ101?...Know your market...go download tor and do some market research people.

I took action on your advice and went for a visit. Pretty interesting I gotta say... some of the transactions are obviously quite large too after browsing some of the listings and recent feedback.

The one question I had to myself was: whats stopping these sellers from signing up as buyers and performing a 'fake buy' to leave themselves more positive feedback? I'm no expert on this, but wont Tor itself will prevent basic security measures other sites may use like logging account IP's etc...

[Sargasm]

but what happened to the basic principles of Econ101?...Know your market...go download tor and do some market research people.

I took action on your advice and went for a visit. Pretty interesting I gotta say... some of the transactions are obviously quite large too after browsing some of the listings and recent feedback.

The one question I had to myself was: whats stopping these sellers from signing up as buyers and performing a 'fake buy' to leave themselves more positive feedback? I'm no expert on this, but wont Tor itself will prevent basic security measures other sites may use like logging account IP's etc...

Or the Feds from doing so to start sniping off buyers?

Although, I'd suspect what they really want is to find the proprietor.

[kangasbros]

The one question I had to myself was: whats stopping these sellers from signing up as buyers and performing a 'fake buy' to leave themselves more positive feedback? I'm no expert on this, but wont Tor itself will prevent basic security measures other sites may use like logging account IP's etc...

They would pay for the review the SR fee, which is omething like 10% I guess. So yeah, you can buy yourself some positive feedback, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't make economic sense.

[PunkAs]

Hi officer.

[tonto]

but what happened to the basic principles of Econ101?...Know your market...go download tor and do some market research people.

I took action on your advice and went for a visit. Pretty interesting I gotta say... some of the transactions are obviously quite large too after browsing some of the listings and recent feedback.

The one question I had to myself was: whats stopping these sellers from signing up as buyers and performing a 'fake buy' to leave themselves more positive feedback? I'm no expert on this, but wont Tor itself will prevent basic security measures other sites may use like logging account IP's etc...

Or the Feds from doing so to start sniping off buyers?

Although, I'd suspect what they really want is to find the proprietor.

Except sniping a buyer makes no sense.  A buyer is probably buying a few pills at a time.  No real cash is exchanged.  They're just receiving pills in the mail from someone anonymously.  A lot of drug busts occur so they can get the small-time users and dealers to rat out the bigger users/dealers.  In this instance, a buyer has no idea who the seller is. 
 
You might gather what city that seller might be in, or close to, but that's it.  If someone from New York City is making drop-off mailings from the countless public mail boxes, good luck with that.  Not only that, but they have many many *other* boxes to throw it into within an hour or two drive outside NYC, not to mention stores "hey I need to mail this, can you throw it into your outgoing mail?"  No one is going to risk looking inside of it in fear of tampering with mail, etc.

[hazek]

God damn Gawker at it again. 

http://gawker.com/5879924/now-you-can-buy-guns-on-the-online-underground-marketplace

No wonder SR went down in the middle of me checking out what's new.. 

[tonto]

As a matter of fact, is being a real-life "anonymous" mail proxy illegal?  As in, I agree to open an item of mail sent to me, and then put the sealed envelope inside into the mail for the sender?
 
Since it's illegal for me to open an envelope not addressed to me, could I be prosecuted for passing along a sealed, addressed envelope, since I can't know what's inside?  I mean, there's lots of reasons for anonymity.
 
I'm sure the feds would consider that mail fraud... but I wonder

[buck92]

God damn Gawker at it again. 

http://gawker.com/5879924/now-you-can-buy-guns-on-the-online-underground-marketplace

No wonder SR went down in the middle of me checking out what's new.. 

If the article on drugs being sold on SR brought some heat, wait until some senator hears about guns with scratched off serial numbers being sold anonymously on the internet...I can picture it now, someone capitol hill is sitting in front of their computer, jizzing their pants while reading this article, imagining all the grandstanding that could come out of all this.

I believe it is time to think about what would happen if SR suddenly disappeared from the web, would Bitcoin crash and burn along with it (or at least crash temporarily)? After all the June gawker article on SR was the beginning of the speculative bubble, bitcoin has been in. Since SR is the single largest entity actually using bitcoins for commerce (the rest is mostly speculative) what would happen if it disappeared? Anyone have thoughts?

[MoonShadow]

As a matter of fact, is being a real-life "anonymous" mail proxy illegal?  As in, I agree to open an item of mail sent to me, and then put the sealed envelope inside into the mail for the sender?
 
Since it's illegal for me to open an envelope not addressed to me, could I be prosecuted for passing along a sealed, addressed envelope, since I can't know what's inside?  I mean, there's lots of reasons for anonymity.
 
I'm sure the feds would consider that mail fraud... but I wonder

Yes, post mail relays are illegal, but how would you be found out?  If you were to open an evelope addressed to you, only to find another smaller evelope inside (sealed, addressed and stamped) what would you do with it?

[buck92]

but what happened to the basic principles of Econ101?...Know your market...go download tor and do some market research people.

I took action on your advice and went for a visit. Pretty interesting I gotta say... some of the transactions are obviously quite large too after browsing some of the listings and recent feedback.

The one question I had to myself was: whats stopping these sellers from signing up as buyers and performing a 'fake buy' to leave themselves more positive feedback? I'm no expert on this, but wont Tor itself will prevent basic security measures other sites may use like logging account IP's etc...

There is a forum community at SR who work together to try to root out the scamers through reviews and interactions with the actual vendors who themselves visit the forums to cultivate good relations. Also it costs money to buy a vendor account on SR which further deters scamers. Then there is the feedback system where buyers rate and leave comments on their transaction.

As far as the 'fake buy' feedback you are asking about, you can tell pretty easily as you can see along with the feedback what item the buyer purchased. Most of the time what happens is the vendor creates low cost listings or cheap digital listings (downloadable pron for example) where the vendor is able to build up feedback without having to pay large amounts of commission to SR. If a vendor wanted to make a fake account with legitimate looking transactions they would have to make a large investment as SR takes a cut from everything.

[Kluge]

God damn Gawker at it again. 

http://gawker.com/5879924/now-you-can-buy-guns-on-the-online-underground-marketplace

No wonder SR went down in the middle of me checking out what's new.. 

Whaaaaat..... "Dbush" is a SR drug/gun seller. He writes this to Gawker staff:

""Every single citizen should have enough firepower that the government fears the citizens. The people should not fear the government," he said.

Dbush said he tries not to sell guns to people who want to kill civilians or commit crimes. But most importantly, he won't sell to people who are anti-American or anti-Israel. "I would try to keep their money if I found out this was the case. Maybe send it 2 the US Israeli lobby 2 help gain more support for Israel," he wrote."

[buck92]

God damn Gawker at it again. 

http://gawker.com/5879924/now-you-can-buy-guns-on-the-online-underground-marketplace

No wonder SR went down in the middle of me checking out what's new.. 

Whaaaaat..... "Dbush" is a SR drug/gun seller. He writes this to Gawker staff:

""Every single citizen should have enough firepower that the government fears the citizens. The people should not fear the government," he said.

Dbush said he tries not to sell guns to people who want to kill civilians or commit crimes. But most importantly, he won't sell to people who are anti-American or anti-Israel. "I would try to keep their money if I found out this was the case. Maybe send it 2 the US Israeli lobby 2 help gain more support for Israel," he wrote."

Yeah a lot of yellow journalism in the writers articles. I believe the writer is looking at SR as his golden ticket to make a name for himself.

If you want an indication of how much of a joke this guy (and gawker as well) is just look at the article he wrote prior to the one in June on SR. The title of the article is "The Legend of Dov's Dong" and is a hard hitting journalistic piece on American Apparel's founder and CEO's dick...