4 ms·

I want to believe this, but I don' think there is a congruent market for legal goods that are willing to take BitCoins online. If buy an eighth from my dealer,

I want to believe this, but I don' think there is a congruent market for legal goods that are willing to take BitCoins online. If buy an eighth from my dealer, he can go buy milk and bread. If I buy an eighth from someone on SilkRoad, they can... buy electronics on NewEgg (which would stop if USD exchange stopped)... and that's about it.

malandrew 15y ago
You are assuming that your dealer will always be in the US and local. AFAIK small amounts of many drugs for personal use are not hard to send through the postal service. From what I read on the Gawker article, Silk Road permits Americans to buy from a dealer they've never met before from anywhere in the world based solely on reputation. No one in their right mind would pay a dealer via a bank transfer because of the paper trail it leaves, but they probably wouldn't be too concerned with transferring bitcoins. For many, you may have a greater risk of being defrauded, but you've eliminated risk associated with dealing with drug dealers in person. For some people this is an acceptable tradeoff in risk, especially since people have been robbed at gun-point by dealers. Interestingly, services like Silk road have the potential to eliminate much of the violence associated with the drug trade because physical proximity of the counter-parties is eliminated. You can't get beat up and shot by someone you never have to meet. In my opinion the number one threat to the mainstream adoption of bitcoin in the US would be the legalization of Marijuana. Marijuana is so widely used that it is the one commodity that prevents the social graph of potential bitcoin users in the US from being full of wholes.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  The only part of that sentence that I found terribly relevant was the first. I'm just not sure that there will be enough dealers that are not just located outside of the United States, but located outside of ANY foreign country that would likely hop on an anti-BTC bandwagon. Additionally you have to worry about customs, etc. Honestly, I'm just not sure that many users are using SilkRoad for ganja. Like you said, it's so widely used. Granted, I'll eat my words in a few months, but it's easy enough to get your hands on that I certainly would have to be in a very uncomfortable spot to risk having weed mailed to me. I'm not really into anything else, though HN keeps me intrigued about LSD, and even then I'm sure I could ask 2-3 people and get that, so I'm not really sure.
  - malandrew 15y ago
    I think people greatly overestimate the capabilities of any government, US or otherwise, to police parcels coming in and out of the country. The overwhelming majority of drug war dollars are spent on going after big busts. There practically is no budget for postal packages unless there is something suspicious about them. This policy of course would change if the drug market experiences a shift from locally sourced to postal sourced. The only drugs that make sense to source locally are those that can be grown locally, namely marijuana and mushrooms. Almost all others are fair game for postal sourcing.

malandrew 15y ago

You are assuming that your dealer will always be in the US and local. AFAIK small amounts of many drugs for personal use are not hard to send through the postal service. From what I read on the Gawker article, Silk Road permits Americans to buy from a dealer they've never met before from anywhere in the world based solely on reputation. No one in their right mind would pay a dealer via a bank transfer because of the paper trail it leaves, but they probably wouldn't be too concerned with transferring bitcoins. For many, you may have a greater risk of being defrauded, but you've eliminated risk associated with dealing with drug dealers in person. For some people this is an acceptable tradeoff in risk, especially since people have been robbed at gun-point by dealers. Interestingly, services like Silk road have the potential to eliminate much of the violence associated with the drug trade because physical proximity of the counter-parties is eliminated. You can't get beat up and shot by someone you never have to meet. In my opinion the number one threat to the mainstream adoption of bitcoin in the US would be the legalization of Marijuana. Marijuana is so widely used that it is the one commodity that prevents the social graph of potential bitcoin users in the US from being full of wholes.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
The only part of that sentence that I found terribly relevant was the first. I'm just not sure that there will be enough dealers that are not just located outside of the United States, but located outside of ANY foreign country that would likely hop on an anti-BTC bandwagon. Additionally you have to worry about customs, etc. Honestly, I'm just not sure that many users are using SilkRoad for ganja. Like you said, it's so widely used. Granted, I'll eat my words in a few months, but it's easy enough to get your hands on that I certainly would have to be in a very uncomfortable spot to risk having weed mailed to me. I'm not really into anything else, though HN keeps me intrigued about LSD, and even then I'm sure I could ask 2-3 people and get that, so I'm not really sure.
- malandrew 15y ago
  I think people greatly overestimate the capabilities of any government, US or otherwise, to police parcels coming in and out of the country. The overwhelming majority of drug war dollars are spent on going after big busts. There practically is no budget for postal packages unless there is something suspicious about them. This policy of course would change if the drug market experiences a shift from locally sourced to postal sourced. The only drugs that make sense to source locally are those that can be grown locally, namely marijuana and mushrooms. Almost all others are fair game for postal sourcing.