2012-08-07 slashdot.org - Bitcoin-Based Drug Market Silk Road Thriving With $2 M

[julz]

Bitcoin-Based Drug Market Silk Road Thriving With $2 Million In Monthly Sales

2012-08-07

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/07/1910238/bitcoin-based-drug-market-silk-road-thriving-with-2-million-in-monthly-sales


"Every day or so of the last six months, Carnegie Mellon computer security professor Nicolas Christin has crawled and scraped Silk Road, the Tor- and Bitcoin-based underground online market for illegal drug sales. Now Christin has released a paper (PDF) on his findings, which show that the site's business is booming: its number of sellers, who offer everything from cocaine to ecstasy, has jumped from around 300 in February to more than 550. Its total sales now add up to around $1.9 million a month. And its operators generate more than $6,000 a day in commissions for themselves, compared with around $2,500 in February. Most surprising, perhaps, is that buyers rate the sellers on the site as relatively trustworthy, despite the fact that no real identities are used. Close to 98% of ratings on the site are positive."

[fm1234]

Most surprising, perhaps, is that buyers rate the sellers on the site as relatively trustworthy, despite the fact that no real identities are used.

Most suprising, perhaps, is that the MSM still can't get their tiny brains wrapped around the notions that pseudonymity ≠ fraud, and that reputation>documentation.   


Frank

[bb113]

Holy crap. I just searched that entire slashdot thread for the word "ponzi" and got zero hits. This is very good.

[justusranvier]

Holy crap. I just searched that entire slashdot thread for the word "ponzi" and got zero hits. This is very good.

Most of the comments were mud slinging vis a vis the drug war and very few were actually about Bitcoin.

[TraderTimm]

Slashdot gets major advances wrong with amazing frequency. The day they 'buy-in' is when your grandma is using bitcoin.