10 ms·

The Silk Road's Dark-Web Dream Is Dead

41 points by r721 11y ago

bobby_9x 11y ago
If Bitcoin is ever going to get used by the masses, it needs to be easier to secure your coins. My dad can barely check his email without clicking on an obvious phishing scam. I can't imagine him with a Bitcoin wallet..
- tdkl 11y ago
  Or the masses need to take a step forward and educate themselves. Financial education is already as poor as it gets and managing money should be learned in school instead of memorising useless data.
  - msh 11y ago
    they dont stand a chance, read this: http://jessysaurusrex.com/2015/11/18/security-for-everyone-apple-store-edition/ http://jessysaurusrex.com/2015/11/18/security-for-everyone-a...
    - tdkl 11y ago
      > Where would someone who had never before been exposed to an App Store ever learn about how any of those things work? Well sure, but we could say this about anyone for every topic there is in this wonderful crazy thing called life. The only difference is between those who had interest to learn and those who find 1001 excuses why he didn't. The easiest thing in the world is to give up.
- aianus 11y ago
  Most people will just use Bitcoin-enabled (and probably dollar-denominated) bank accounts with limits on daily withdrawals, same way they use bank accounts and debit cards instead of stuffing $40,000 in bills in their mattress. Fraud and theft will happen but I don't see why it would be much more of an issue than it is in the current system of debit cards and cash.
  - repomies691 11y ago
    I guess it is up to if the customer wants the dollar-denomination. I wouldn't want that, I would rather keep my cash tied to btc. If the customer doesn't want to tie his wealth to btc, why would he/she want to use bitcoin at all? The only reason I can think about is remittance, and there the benefit is cost-saving.
    - aianus 11y ago
      > why would he/she want to use bitcoin at all Remittances, discounts from merchants who pass on the savings vs. processing credit cards, transactions which are considered too risky for current payment methods (ie. buying a MacBook online with your US credit card and having it shipped to your cousin in Romania), buying things online anonymously (porn, VPNs, sex toys), internet gambling (which is legal in most places outside the USA), etc.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    Because unlike debit cards a bank can't reverse a Bitcoin theft and would be on the hook for the losses or would pass them to the customer at which point they're back to square one.
    - herbst 11y ago
      Banks also pass the costs for all the credit card frauds to customers. Where is the difference?
      - sanswork 11y ago
        No they pass it to the merchants not the end users by reversing the transactions. With Bitcoin they can't do that so they either hold the risk themselves or they offload it to the end users and that's not going to float with end users.
        herbst 11y ago
        What? So when i am a merchant and someone frauds me it is my problem? Even thought the fraud was only possible because their system is shit? Thats exactly why i would use Bitcoin over all as merchant, like more and more do already.
- herbst 11y ago
  The masses can use third parties to watch over their coins. Just like they do now as well.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    The history of letting others look after your coins is full of a lot of people without coins anymore.
    - herbst 11y ago
      Same is valid for banks. Still people use it.
codeshaman 11y ago
Yeah, I guess, like all "countercultural" revolutions, the dark markets ran out of steam a bit. So did Bitcoin. But the paradigm has shifted. Dark markets are possible. We now know a lot about the risks/benefits of such marketplaces. What's missing is a solid technological implementation of a distributed, peer-to-peer, trust-less marketplace. It's possible to do it, it's just not that easy. An even better alternative would be total drug legalization. Personally, I think that drugs are good for society more than they are bad and most of the "negative" effects of drugs comes from the prohibition itself. Full legalization would create a true marketplace and the "bad" drugs would be slowly rejected by the market. It would also allow us to openly and professionally deal with the consequences of drug abuse, addiction, etc.. Countries like Portugal have done that (to a more or less acceptable extent) and the results are remarkable. Combine legal drugs with modern e-commerce technologies + reputation systems and we've practically "solved" the drug problem. Welcome to the Brave New world ;).
- chill1 11y ago
  > "What's missing is a solid technological implementation of a distributed, peer-to-peer, trust-less marketplace. It's possible to do it, it's just not that easy." Have you taken a look at OpenBazaar[1][2]? [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/ [2] https://github.com/openbazaar https://github.com/openbazaar
  - codeshaman 11y ago
    I know about it, but I've also seen somewhere that they kind of distanced themselves from the "dark market" idea when they got funded by Union Square Ventures and Andreesseen Horowitz among others. It might be the solution, I haven't checked it out yet.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    It doesn't work on Tor and the developers have no interest in making it work.
    - Cyph0n 11y ago
INTPenis 11y ago
I don't understand the reasoning of wire. They claim the darkweb black markets are dead because apparently in their opinion the silk road was some sort of honorable black market where buyers could trust sellers. This is ludicrous. An anonymous market will only ever be as good as sellers and moderators make it. It has the obvious disadvantage of being anonymous but that's a systematic problem when dealing with this type of darkweb. The silk road was shutdown amidst murder conspiracy and using a brute force method of simply swiping the laptop from under the nose of the mediocre administrator operating it. If anything this episode has opened the door for more disciplined and experienced people to operate their own darkweb markets and actually get away with doing so without having to lower themselves to the deeds of their predecessor. From what I can gather the root problem is not attacks against the anonymity but rather human problems. Human admins, making human mistakes or succumbing to human temptation. So with that in mind, it's only a matter of time before we see proper darkweb marketplaces come into their own. Parallels can be drawn to the world of software and media piracy, everyone should be familiar with the rate of which piracy sites have been coming and going the last 15 years.
ryanlol 11y ago
Yet, the markets are bigger than ever. Volumes are skyrocketing and prices for various substances are lower than in years (see acid). .onion markets are far from dead.
rawTruthHurts 11y ago
Well, it was also Wired who said "browsers were about to croak"... in the late 90's

41 points by r721 11y ago

If Bitcoin is ever going to get used by the masses, it needs to be easier to secure your coins. My dad can barely check his email without clicking on an obvious phishing scam. I can't imagine him with a Bitcoin wallet..

tdkl 11y ago
Or the masses need to take a step forward and educate themselves. Financial education is already as poor as it gets and managing money should be learned in school instead of memorising useless data.
- msh 11y ago
  they dont stand a chance, read this: http://jessysaurusrex.com/2015/11/18/security-for-everyone-apple-store-edition/ http://jessysaurusrex.com/2015/11/18/security-for-everyone-a...
  - tdkl 11y ago
    > Where would someone who had never before been exposed to an App Store ever learn about how any of those things work? Well sure, but we could say this about anyone for every topic there is in this wonderful crazy thing called life. The only difference is between those who had interest to learn and those who find 1001 excuses why he didn't. The easiest thing in the world is to give up.
aianus 11y ago
Most people will just use Bitcoin-enabled (and probably dollar-denominated) bank accounts with limits on daily withdrawals, same way they use bank accounts and debit cards instead of stuffing $40,000 in bills in their mattress. Fraud and theft will happen but I don't see why it would be much more of an issue than it is in the current system of debit cards and cash.
- repomies691 11y ago
  I guess it is up to if the customer wants the dollar-denomination. I wouldn't want that, I would rather keep my cash tied to btc. If the customer doesn't want to tie his wealth to btc, why would he/she want to use bitcoin at all? The only reason I can think about is remittance, and there the benefit is cost-saving.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > why would he/she want to use bitcoin at all Remittances, discounts from merchants who pass on the savings vs. processing credit cards, transactions which are considered too risky for current payment methods (ie. buying a MacBook online with your US credit card and having it shipped to your cousin in Romania), buying things online anonymously (porn, VPNs, sex toys), internet gambling (which is legal in most places outside the USA), etc.
- sanswork 11y ago
  Because unlike debit cards a bank can't reverse a Bitcoin theft and would be on the hook for the losses or would pass them to the customer at which point they're back to square one.
  - herbst 11y ago
    Banks also pass the costs for all the credit card frauds to customers. Where is the difference?
    - sanswork 11y ago
      No they pass it to the merchants not the end users by reversing the transactions. With Bitcoin they can't do that so they either hold the risk themselves or they offload it to the end users and that's not going to float with end users.
      - herbst 11y ago
        What? So when i am a merchant and someone frauds me it is my problem? Even thought the fraud was only possible because their system is shit? Thats exactly why i would use Bitcoin over all as merchant, like more and more do already.
herbst 11y ago
The masses can use third parties to watch over their coins. Just like they do now as well.
- sanswork 11y ago
  The history of letting others look after your coins is full of a lot of people without coins anymore.
  - herbst 11y ago
    Same is valid for banks. Still people use it.

codeshaman 11y ago

Yeah, I guess, like all "countercultural" revolutions, the dark markets ran out of steam a bit. So did Bitcoin. But the paradigm has shifted. Dark markets are possible. We now know a lot about the risks/benefits of such marketplaces. What's missing is a solid technological implementation of a distributed, peer-to-peer, trust-less marketplace. It's possible to do it, it's just not that easy. An even better alternative would be total drug legalization. Personally, I think that drugs are good for society more than they are bad and most of the "negative" effects of drugs comes from the prohibition itself. Full legalization would create a true marketplace and the "bad" drugs would be slowly rejected by the market. It would also allow us to openly and professionally deal with the consequences of drug abuse, addiction, etc.. Countries like Portugal have done that (to a more or less acceptable extent) and the results are remarkable. Combine legal drugs with modern e-commerce technologies + reputation systems and we've practically "solved" the drug problem. Welcome to the Brave New world ;).

chill1 11y ago
> "What's missing is a solid technological implementation of a distributed, peer-to-peer, trust-less marketplace. It's possible to do it, it's just not that easy." Have you taken a look at OpenBazaar[1][2]? [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/ [2] https://github.com/openbazaar https://github.com/openbazaar
- codeshaman 11y ago
  I know about it, but I've also seen somewhere that they kind of distanced themselves from the "dark market" idea when they got funded by Union Square Ventures and Andreesseen Horowitz among others. It might be the solution, I haven't checked it out yet.
- sanswork 11y ago
  It doesn't work on Tor and the developers have no interest in making it work.
  - Cyph0n 11y ago

INTPenis 11y ago

I don't understand the reasoning of wire. They claim the darkweb black markets are dead because apparently in their opinion the silk road was some sort of honorable black market where buyers could trust sellers. This is ludicrous. An anonymous market will only ever be as good as sellers and moderators make it. It has the obvious disadvantage of being anonymous but that's a systematic problem when dealing with this type of darkweb. The silk road was shutdown amidst murder conspiracy and using a brute force method of simply swiping the laptop from under the nose of the mediocre administrator operating it. If anything this episode has opened the door for more disciplined and experienced people to operate their own darkweb markets and actually get away with doing so without having to lower themselves to the deeds of their predecessor. From what I can gather the root problem is not attacks against the anonymity but rather human problems. Human admins, making human mistakes or succumbing to human temptation. So with that in mind, it's only a matter of time before we see proper darkweb marketplaces come into their own. Parallels can be drawn to the world of software and media piracy, everyone should be familiar with the rate of which piracy sites have been coming and going the last 15 years.

ryanlol 11y ago

Yet, the markets are bigger than ever. Volumes are skyrocketing and prices for various substances are lower than in years (see acid). .onion markets are far from dead.

rawTruthHurts 11y ago

Well, it was also Wired who said "browsers were about to croak"... in the late 90's