Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested :)

[V10lator]

Yes, though most sellers are from the US and UK.

Is there something like a top 5?
I would like to know if germany has many sellers/trades.

@silkroad: Too bad. Hopefully you get more resources soon.

@all:
One more question: How does the shipping work? If the seller has my adress it's not really anonym, is it?


P.S. Can't somebody stop that "I'm selling (my) account(s)"?
P.P.S. If somebody don't want to sell an account but want to give it for free: PN me.

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[Bind]

Yes there are gernam and eu sellers.

Category sales can be paginated by seller feedback, newest listed, lowest price, and highest price.

Generally shipping is very discrete.

You have to have some address to ship to. How you accomplish setting that up is up to you.

[Breathe]

So when will registration be opened? And are there any/many sellers in Aus?

[divergenta]

I'm willing to sell my account, for the right price...

[Breathe]

ok, can't make new accounts.

you can if you visit the site using TOR

I tried using ToR and it just took me to a login page with reCaptcha below it.

[wtf]

edit: no longer available

[Goldenmaw]

This thread got Q real quick.

[Iceman2504]

I first heard of silkroad when the site was down.
When I checked again today it was back, spent a couple of hours getting TOR to work with my firewall and now found out there's no obvious way to make an account.
Could anyone pm me and point me in the right direction? 

[Goldenmaw]

FFS.  This is bitcoin.org, and this thread was intended for the discussion regarding Silkroad and its relationship with Bitcoin, not a subforum for account begging.

I'm no moderator, hell, I'm the smallest of small fries around here, but I think this is extremely bad publicity for Bitcoin, this happening here.

[BitterTea]

FFS.  This is bitcoin.org, and this thread was intended for the discussion regarding Silkroad and its relationship with Bitcoin, not a subforum for account begging.

I'm no moderator, hell, I'm the smallest of small fries around here, but I think this is extremely bad publicity for Bitcoin, this happening here.

I love your fake humility. You did say that the public image of Bitcoin must be protected by whatever means necessary, right!?

[realjimmy]

PM me if you need an account with a user id in the 1000s.

[Goldenmaw]

FFS.  This is bitcoin.org, and this thread was intended for the discussion regarding Silkroad and its relationship with Bitcoin, not a subforum for account begging.

I'm no moderator, hell, I'm the smallest of small fries around here, but I think this is extremely bad publicity for Bitcoin, this happening here.

I love your fake humility. You did say that the public image of Bitcoin must be protected by whatever means necessary, right!?

No, I don't remember saying that.  Can you point me to it?  If I said that, I will refute what I said here and now, because that is a very bad thing to say.  Whatever means necessary includes killing everybody's pet dog, blowing up the moon, and forcibly sterilizing every male human.  It's a hell of a clause.

[BitterTea]

FFS.  This is bitcoin.org, and this thread was intended for the discussion regarding Silkroad and its relationship with Bitcoin, not a subforum for account begging.

I'm no moderator, hell, I'm the smallest of small fries around here, but I think this is extremely bad publicity for Bitcoin, this happening here.

I love your fake humility. You did say that the public image of Bitcoin must be protected by whatever means necessary, right!?

No, I don't remember saying that.  Can you point me to it?  If I said that, I will refute what I said here and now, because that is a very bad thing to say.  Whatever means necessary includes killing everybody's pet dog, blowing up the moon, and forcibly sterilizing every male human.  It's a hell of a clause.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12723.msg176257#msg176257

[Goldenmaw]

Ah, you're quite right, Tea.  I retract that statement.  I clearly didn't think it through.  Thank you for finding that for me.  There is nothing good about that kind of extremism.

[mewantsbitcoins]

If it is not obvious and you are completely brain dead, this post is for you
DON'T BUY OR TAKE ACCOUNT FROM A STRANGER!!!

[shroomer]

Goldenmaw,

I live in an average European country. Anything except legal tender is illegal here for sellers to accept as a form of payment. There have been several attempts to create e-currencies, but all of them have been shut down by the authorities. Shops won't accept anything but legal tender because the laws forbid it. I don't know laws of other European countries, but I have never heard of a single European e-currency, so my guess is that the laws are the same in most, if not all of them.

In US, every attempt to create e-currency in the open ended by accusation of money laundering or something else, and the currency has been shut down, like e-gold. Even those who accept the alternatives to dollar risk made up criminal charges. And in US it's not even illegal to create alternative currencies (I believe). But the state won't accept the alternative, because it's a threat to its very existence. If shops start excepting Bitcoins, The Man will simply ban it and will be done with it. They can't stop Bitcoin technically, but they can do it legally, and they will if necessary.

Face it, Bitcoin has almost zero chance to become part of "white economy". Black market is its only chance. For Bitcoin to succeed, it has to be backed by a real economy, because right now it's mostly a speculative game, and once we run out of new buyers and Bitcoin flatlines, everybody will start cashing out the profits and Bitcoin will fall like a penny stock. As they say, what goes up by an escalator will come down by an elevator.

In developed countries black economy is about 20% of the whole market. It's much bigger in developing countries. World economy is about 60 trillion dollars (not counting the financial derivatives, which are much bigger), which makes black market at least 12 trillion. Now, mind you, most of it is not dealing with illegal stuff like drugs and guns and so on. It's merely tax evasion, e.g. selling things without accounting. I have been part of it since 2005, when I decided to stop paying unreasonable about 70% taxes, state spying on me, restricting my freedoms, increasing budget deficits and building socialism. I still pay 20% VAT (I spend most of the money I make) and health insurance, which I do consider to be a fair tax for what I get, but that's all. My only protection are still reasonable bank privacy laws, which prevent the tax man from mining banking data for people with income but no tax payments. Lots of people do that, under their real names, issuing fake or no invoices, and getting paid to their bank accounts.

As the states are tightening their surveillance and taxing the hell out of us, Bitcoin will become more attractive to people like me. If only 10% of black market moves to Bitcoin, we can have 1 trillion dollar economy, enough to make Bitcoin stable currency and a good store of value, too.

Now, the Silk Road.

Drug dealing can be very dirty business, witness the mexican drug cartel. Silk Road is different, many small individual sellers catering directly to their clients. It makes drug dealing into what it should be, a victimless consensual "crime". I have absolutely no problem with that, given, as I said, that Bitcoin's chances on official market are almost nil. I have even put on offer my small stash of psychedelic mushrooms and made two sales. If I manage to sell them all, I will turn that into regular business and start growing some pot, too.

What you are missing is that Bitcoin won't be attacked because of Silk Road. It will be attacked because of being viable and better alternative to fiat legal tender. Silk Road will serve only as an excuse for attacking Bitcoin. Shut down the Silk Road, and they will come with another excuse, like money laundering (which Bitcoin can do very well and easily).

Silk Road is currently probably the single largest Bitcoin market. It's little more black then the rest of Bitcoin's black market, but the difference is not really qualitative.

So, stop fighting it and embrace it instead. Besides, with unregulated currency, there's really nothing you can do about Silk Road except endlessly complain about it on the forum. It may make you feel better about yourself, but maybe there are bigger causes than that  

[Goldenmaw]

Shroomer,

Interesting and well articulated argument.  It could very well happen like that - it all depends on whether or not our government decides embracing Bitcoin will prove a technological and financial advantage over other countries.  If you search the forums, you'll notice that a lot the high profile Bitcoin developers are working with our government right now to determine if there is a potential solution.  Gavin was invited to a confidential technological summit with the CIA.  God knows how that went/is going.  I think the possibility of a white market solution is more likely than you think, but only with both parties working to find compromise.  If compromise is reached, Bitcoins will quickly proliferate as a form of accepted payment - if it isn't, it will spiral into black market territory exclusively, as you said.  I'm not embracing a damned thing until I know what sides the dice land.  And I will complain about the damage Silkroad does to Bitcoin's chance of widespread acceptance for as long as Bitcoin is the quasi-official Silkroad forum.

As for bigger causes...  What would those be, exactly?

Edit:  I should also like to point out that the ability of the united states government to track Bitcoin mining and transactions remains an unknown factor at this point.  In my country, we sure do love the sucker-punch.  If they've got a system for monitoring Bitcoin activity - and the cooperation of the dev team almost guarantees this will come about eventually, if it hasn't already - it'll be a disaster on the black market scale as well.

[poppoob]

I really need an account on here as well I just read about it and am very interested!!

[Goldenmaw]

[shroomer]

Goldenmaw,

my main profession is not drug dealing,  I am an investor and a trader. All of my trading is based on fundamentals and I spend several hours every day, sometimes even during weekends, analyzing the markets and economical situation. I don't claim that I know it all, but given that I am consistently making money, I would say that I understand at least something about markets and economy.

US or any other western government can not accept deflationary currency as a legal alternative to fiat paper. It would be the same as commiting suicide. They are going to commit it anyway, but using the inflationary way, because unlike the deflation, (hyper)inflation does not kill the government and the TBTF banks (because they sit right at the business end of the printing press and get the money before the market prices in the extra zeros). Deflation today = Great Depression on steroids and US are scared to death by possibility of Second Great Depression. Great Depression is one of the most remembered events in US history, perhaps even more than WWII. It's not going to happen, and I don't need a crystal ball to predict this. If Bitcoin was legally accepted, everybody would move their inflating and increasingly risky paper assets into quickly appreciating Bitcoins, stock market would crash, real estate market too, banks would crash because they would run out of liquidity, FED would have to print like crazy to "save" the dollar, only to cause further Bitcoin appreciation, black market would flourish etc. Not going to happen. Remember that dollar is still world reserve currency and every weakening of it lowers chances of US government to get more debt and maintain it's already low credibility. No debt or loss of confidence = game over. They won't toy with such idea as accepting Bitcoin. If CIA is interested in Bitcoin, it's not because of possibility of it's acceptance by US Treasury of FED. Otherwise Gavin would be talking to Treasury or The Bernank.

Everybody, not just CIA, can monitor all Bitcoin activity. It's all logged and publicaly available. However, as I said, laundering Bitcoins is easy, using mixes. You only have to mix the money with other people's Bitcoins and put many transaction between you and the drug dealing, and you get plausible deniability, or even complete anonymity. Soon most Bitcoins will be "tainted" by drug deals and other black market operations, just like most dollar bills are tainted by cocain. At that point it's game over for law enforcement. This is not really an issue, unless the dealer is completely stupid and withdraws the Bitcoins from Silk Road directly to his bank accouts, in which case he deserves to be busted.

Bigger causes? Well, things are going to get very ugly soon as US and European economies will eventually crash (I don't know when, but certainly during this decade), so perhaps stop fighting for a good image of Bitcoin, because that's not going to happen. Maybe gold will be able to maintain good image. Freedom from state opression and crappy fiat money that are destroing our wealth through inflation and debt sounds like a worthy cause to me. It's not going to be pretty. US Founding Fathers have been killing for it. We don't have to do even that, all we have to do is to stop kidding ourselves. Sorry for sounding bit melodramatic here, but that's just what the situation is.

Also, people, listen to dunk, there really are no invites, the SR will reopen eventually once they move to a bigger server that can handle the load. Just wait for it.