A Heroin Store

[nanaimogold]

LOL

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Maybe such a store will become viable and sustainable once we have electronic digital heroin. 

It already exists and it's free. It's called Facebook.

For some people it's facebook, for other it's World Of Warcraft. For me it is called "Minecraft".
I have never played a game which would make me more dependant. I could play it for weeks without noticing external world

I suppose heroin addiction cannot be much worse.

[FatherMcGruder]

For me it is called "Minecraft".
I have never played a game which would make me more dependant. I could play it for weeks without noticing external world

I suppose heroin addiction cannot be much worse.

How much would Minecraft have to cost for you to stop playing it? Now, how much would heroin have to cost?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

For me it is called "Minecraft".
I have never played a game which would make me more dependant. I could play it for weeks without noticing external world

I suppose heroin addiction cannot be much worse.

How much would Minecraft have to cost for you to stop playing it? Now, how much would heroin have to cost?

It doesn't have to cost anything.

I have recently discovered that i have very strong will if i want to. Especially if i see that an addiction is destroying my body - this is the reason i don't smoke cigarettes even though i stay often in the same rooms with people who smoke and nicotine is present in my blood anyway.

The problem with computer-related addictions is that they don't break down your body & mind - especially if you do some sports & care about your physical condition as well. So you don't have necessary incentive to drop such addictions. Also, I'm an IT specialist, so i guess i will be addicted to some game or other computer - related activity forever. that is no big problemthough, as I don't need to do it all the time - I can take longer breaks and it's fine.

[FatherMcGruder]

It doesn't have to cost anything.

I have recently discovered that i have very strong will if i want to. Especially if i see that an addiction is destroying my body - this is the reason i don't smoke cigarettes even though i stay often in the same rooms with people who smoke and nicotine is present in my blood anyway.

The problem with computer-related addictions is that they don't break down your body & mind - especially if you do some sports & care about your physical condition as well. So you don't have necessary incentive to drop such addictions. Also, I'm an IT specialist, so i guess i will be addicted to some game or other computer - related activity forever. that is no big problemthough, as I don't need to do it all the time - I can take longer breaks and it's fine.

I wasn't really talking about your circumstances specifically. My point is, and I recognize that we've gone well off topic, that an addict's problem isn't necessarily the addiction itself, but rather the cost of his addiction. Therefore, it's kind of unfair to compare an addiction to a video game to that of a narcotic. I would guess that a decent heroin addiction in the United States might cost an addict at least hundreds of dollars a month just on the drug itself. Now add the cost of neglecting obligations and the risks of consuming tainted product or getting pinched. I can't imagine that any video game addiction would entail similar costs.

/pedant

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I wasn't really talking about your circumstances specifically. My point is, and I recognize that we've gone well off topic, that an addict's problem isn't necessarily the addiction itself, but rather the cost of his addiction. Therefore, it's kind of unfair to compare an addiction to a video game to that of a narcotic. I would guess that a decent heroin addiction in the United States might cost an addict at least hundreds of dollars a month just on the drug itself. Now add the cost of neglecting obligations and the risks of consuming tainted product or getting pinched. I can't imagine that any video game addiction would entail similar costs.

/pedant

Yeah you're right - when taking into account all costs of heroin addiction, including non-money costs such as health problems, family problems, social problems, then heroin has waaaay higher costs than anything else (but actually only because it is illegal & unclean/tainted).

[casascius]

Someone much earlier in the thread mentioned geocaching as a way to execute a trade.

I thought of another way.  There's this group of people who do this thing called "geohashing" (google it).  Basically they take a hash of the date plus some figure not known until that day (in their case, they use MD5 and the NYSE closing price) and compute a lat/long with it.  And they meet up (whenever possible) at that place.

Something like this - merely the idea of a pseudorandomly selected meeting place - could make a trading system viable, nobody would need to go to any known specific place... (that is, after the algorithm being refined so it chooses places people can actually go inconspicuously, rather than in the middle of some farmer's field).

Further, it could be arranged so that the pseudorandom location generator had some sort of duress input, whereby a drug user turned informant by force could simply give a duress input that would break the function of the algorithm and leave the cops showing up to a random place all alone...

Just random ideas, I don't see them as viable all by themselves without major refinement

[FatherMcGruder]

Someone much earlier in the thread mentioned geocaching as a way to execute a trade.

I thought of another way.  There's this group of people who do this thing called "geohashing" (google it).  Basically they take a hash of the date plus some figure not known until that day (in their case, they use MD5 and the NYSE closing price) and compute a lat/long with it.  And they meet up (whenever possible) at that place.

Something like this - merely the idea of a pseudorandomly selected meeting place - could make a trading system viable, nobody would need to go to any known specific place... (that is, after the algorithm being refined so it chooses places people can actually go inconspicuously, rather than in the middle of some farmer's field).

Further, it could be arranged so that the pseudorandom location generator had some sort of duress input, whereby a drug user turned informant by force could simply give a duress input that would break the function of the algorithm and leave the cops showing up to a random place all alone...

Just random ideas, I don't see them as viable all by themselves without major refinement

http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Main_Page

[acrylicist]

Someone much earlier in the thread mentioned geocaching as a way to execute a trade.

I thought of another way.  There's this group of people who do this thing called "geohashing" (google it).  Basically they take a hash of the date plus some figure not known until that day (in their case, they use MD5 and the NYSE closing price) and compute a lat/long with it.  And they meet up (whenever possible) at that place.

Something like this - merely the idea of a pseudorandomly selected meeting place - could make a trading system viable, nobody would need to go to any known specific place... (that is, after the algorithm being refined so it chooses places people can actually go inconspicuously, rather than in the middle of some farmer's field).

Further, it could be arranged so that the pseudorandom location generator had some sort of duress input, whereby a drug user turned informant by force could simply give a duress input that would break the function of the algorithm and leave the cops showing up to a random place all alone...

Just random ideas, I don't see them as viable all by themselves without major refinement

You'd have to hire mules to make deliveries to locations and dozens of red herring mules to wonder around the city randomly to default surveillance. It would be quite effective and have a even stranger side effect of spreading out the potential area that law enforcement would need to monitor. No more "drug districts."  Now search and replace "heroin" with "resistance orders" and now you've got a courier system for a revolution.

How soon will it be before its illegal to own a GPS? 


 

[Nefario]

Very interesting thread.  I was thinking bitcoin and geocaching would be useful for drug crops futures contracts. The contract would say which country it will be in, and once the date for delivery of the crop has arrived the contract owner would receive the gps location (probably berried in the desert or in a forest). This would be useful for wholesale of the product with the last mile covered by the dealer friend network. It would also make it easier for planning production of the drugs.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

(probably berried in the desert or in a forest)

Somehow, I'm seeing tremendous increase of popularity of forest sightseeing

What an awesome thread!  You guys have a ton of great ideas.  Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?  It's kind of like an anonymous amazon.com.  I don't think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff.  They basically use bitcoin and tor to broker anonymous transactions.  It's at http://tydgccykixpbu6uz.onion.  Those not familiar with Tor can go to silkroad420.wordpress.com for instructions on how to access the .onion site.

Let me know what you guys think

So here we go, first Bitcoin drug store.
We're going into deep water faster than i thought then.

I wonder how long will it take for govs to start investigating Bitcoin.

[grondilu]

I wonder how long will it take for govs to start investigating Bitcoin.

Well, if we want bitcoin to be immune from government intervention, at some point we will need such a test.  We won't know if bitcoin is governmentproof until government actually tries to stop it.

I'm afraid it's a bit early though.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I'm afraid it's a bit early though.

Exactly my thinking.
But once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back.

Now we just wait and see how will the future unfold.

[sirius]

What an awesome thread!  You guys have a ton of great ideas.  Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?  It's kind of like an anonymous amazon.com.  I don't think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff.  They basically use bitcoin and tor to broker anonymous transactions.  It's at http://tydgccykixpbu6uz.onion.  Those not familiar with Tor can go to silkroad420.wordpress.com for instructions on how to access the .onion site.

This has big publicity potential and could increase the user base. It's just a bit difficult for them to build reputation as most people don't want to publicly admit they bought from there. Maybe private recommendations will do. Or people can say "I know somebody who successfully bought from them".

[n0m4d]

Anybody investigate the idea of reputation and middlemen/mules?

I could see a Tor hosted site (or a distributed trust ring, like bitcoin itself) that essentially links a bitcoin address, a PGP key, and a list of transactions completed/failed...

You route your goods - whatever they are (how about firearms - since it seems like some of you are so freaked out about drugs - HAH) through a chain of trusted mules.

The transfers start small, maybe shipping test packages with micropayments for each step in the route.

Like onion routing for the real world - exit nodes can go last mile from the postal service to a GPS dead drop.

I'd be interested in forking this topic to get away from drugs, guns, etc - whatever the contraband is.  The point is there is a "cost" with flaunting the law, and with something assuring anonymity (if done right) there is a way to arbitrage between the legal and extralegal networks.

[casascius]

You route your goods - whatever they are (how about firearms - since it seems like some of you are so freaked out about drugs - HAH) through a chain of trusted mules.

What if someone steals the goods?  Unlike on Tor, one can't "encrypt" the goods.

What if the last-mile-system were simply to produce an random but extremely specific rendezvous point that wouldn't be suspicious in and of itself.  A specific time - in 30 or 60 second increments - would prevent the need for anybody to loiter at the drop point.  They'd loiter somewhere semi-nearby, and approach at the exact time.  You'd have a 2 person flash mob that simply passed something in hand, and disappeared.

e.g. "Meet at gas pump #3 at the Texaco on 1234 W. Main St at 7:37:30 pm".

"Meet in the baking goods aisle #17 at Kroger 5678 S. First St at 6:24:00pm".

"Meet in the mens room at East 50th Burger King 9:15:30 pm".

"Meet at xyz parking stall in the North Haven Mall parking lot at 8:29:00 pm".

[FatherMcGruder]

What an awesome thread!  You guys have a ton of great ideas.  Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?  It's kind of like an anonymous amazon.com.  I don't think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff.  They basically use bitcoin and tor to broker anonymous transactions.  It's at http://tydgccykixpbu6uz.onion.  Those not familiar with Tor can go to silkroad420.wordpress.com for instructions on how to access the .onion site.

Let me know what you guys think

Cool. How do we know it's not a honey pot or just a rip off? Perhaps who ever runs it should reduce prices to attract customers and build its reputation.

[Anonymous]

The obvious answer is that bitcoin is perfect for bribing police and politicians.

tl;dr make the cops your drug mules.

[n0m4d]

I moved discussion of my physical-layer mixmaster network to a new topic http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3088.0.

I am willing to put my USD where my mouth is to kick it off, and eat postage for awhile.

[n0m4d]

You route your goods - whatever they are (how about firearms - since it seems like some of you are so freaked out about drugs - HAH) through a chain of trusted mules.

What if someone steals the goods?  Unlike on Tor, one can't "encrypt" the goods.

That is an excellent point.  I have a few theories on how to deal with trying to game the system.

A1) Individuals get tied to a anonymous reputation - perhaps leveraging a GPG trust web.
B2) Anonymous auditing - costs bitcoin to perform.
C3) Starting small - the network can start initially as a remixer for postcards, legal goods of small value, etc.  As trust networks develop, those nodes can start charging postage.