> There's no way that criminals with even lower oversight behave better. There are no bigger criminals with lower oversight than anonymous drug sellers on silk

> There's no way that criminals with even lower oversight behave better. There are no bigger criminals with lower oversight than anonymous drug sellers on silk road, and yet most people did get their orders. That was my point. > The idea that you could have an environment where you lack the fraud protections you have in other environments leads to lower fraud rates is absurd It's not absurd at all. For example, if you are a legitimate gold seller and you accept credit cards orders with shipping addresses in Romania you will get destroyed by fraud from buyers. An alternate system where payments are made in Bitcoin results in zero buyer fraud and a reputation system a la Silk Road (plus the ability to sue the non-anonymous seller in court) can reduce the potential for seller fraud to a point where it's worth taking the risk to save X% on the price of your gold.