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There's so much scamming around cryptocurrencies. I personally lost several thousand dollars from the Nano/BitGrail scam. A dear friend of mine delved into cry

There's so much scamming around cryptocurrencies. I personally lost several thousand dollars from the Nano/BitGrail scam. A dear friend of mine delved into cryptocurrencies specifically to buy drugs, and he gets them shipped through the US postal service all the time. He regularly abuses ketamine and LSD in large doses and has done serious harm to his health with them. It's deeply depressing to me what has happened to this dream of internet currencies, and I hope that the US justice department can clean this garbage up.

seibelj 5y ago
In Boston, there is an area called Mass and Cass which is full of drugs users. Crime is endemic as well as rape and overdoses. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/06/opinion/everyone-wants-problem-mass-cass-go-away-no-one-wants-people/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/06/opinion/everyone-want... This exists without anyone ordering their drugs in the darknet. Not sure why crypto is called out for drug problems.
- warkdarrior 5y ago
  Since that area already exists in Boston, I guess we should do not anything about illegal drugs sold over the Internet.
  - smabie 5y ago
    We should: just make them all legal
  - ianhawes 5y ago
    Something tells me the amount of drugs purchased with fiat currency is exponentially more than the amount purchased with cryptocurrency. Are we suggesting removing cash because it’s used to buy drugs? No.
    - socrates1024 5y ago
      exponential in what?
    - midev 5y ago
      > Something tells me the amount of drugs purchased with fiat currency is exponentially more than the amount purchased with cryptocurrency. In raw numbers? Sure. Everyone uses fiat and nobody uses cryptocurrenices. If you compare percentage of transactions, though, cryptocurrencies are almost all illegal transactions. Rookie mistake comparing raw numbers and not percentages.
      - henriquez 5y ago
        > cryptocurrencies are almost all illegal transactions. Citation needed.
      - ianhawes 5y ago
        This argument was potentially accurate as late as 2015, but given the fact that Bitcoin is so much easier to purchase and is considered an investment, I think you’re seeing the lawful and legitimate use of Bitcoin much more than for illegal purposes. If your next argument is, “Not every Bitcoin transaction is for illegal purposes but every illegal transaction uses Bitcoin”, the same could be said of cash.
      - smabie 5y ago
        How could you possibly have enough information to claim that "almost all" crypto transactions are illegal? As someone who works in crypto, I find this claim highly dubious.
  - stooliepidgin 5y ago
    Nope. Prohibition "War on Drugs" is stupid and wasteful of human lives. It was ordered by Nixon to attack minorities and hippies. Portland and Portugal prove decriminalizing all drugs works. All drugs should be legalized immediately.
photochemsyn 5y ago
Just for the record I've been utilizing LSD and other psychedelics with no ill effects and many positive effects for the past 30 years with no involvement of cryptocurrencies whatsoever. As far as the rest of it, obviously the blockchain fails quickly for day-to-day currency uses, and that's blatantly obvious. So it's a store of wealth, maybe a tax dodge, but hardly all that 'revolutionary'.
aaomidi 5y ago
So what's the solution? Throw users into prison? We tried that. It doesn't work.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Ah, but it did work. It decimated communities of color and set them back economically and socially, increasing the competitive advantage of "the right kind of people".
  - Beaver117 5y ago
    Only black people do drugs? Let me guess, black people will also be disproportionately arrested for crypto crimes?
    - NotChina 5y ago
      The laws were disproportionately applied to people of color. More laws just exacerbate that problem. Remove their rights to vote, own guns, and prevent them from competing on any playing field, level or not. Listen to the Mark Fuhrman tapes, get past your unease with his words, and listen to what he says. His job was to do exactly this, as directed by the powers that be. Adult conversations on these things are so fleeting out here, that everyone triggered on the word he repeated, and not on the fact he was being told what to do. So how about we stop projecting?
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      Supposedly studies show black people using drugs at lower rates though more likely to be arrested for doing so. I think the point is our system tends to target the disadvantaged.
    - DoktorDelta 5y ago
      They're already disproportionately arrested for all the other crimes, so...
      - deleted 5y ago
norswap 5y ago
Another solution would to outlaw or super-regulate the US postal service... Blaming infrastructure only gets you so far.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
porknubbins 5y ago
I realize this is a website primarily about startups rather than literal hackers, but the sentiment in your post that the government should protect us from risky investments and putting things in our bodies has to be about as far from the hacker ethos as I think I’ve seen. Getting scammed is infuriating and its sad to see drug addiction affect friends but as someone who has worked closely with some of these agencies giving them control over more of American life is not the answer to anything.
agumonkey 5y ago
any dream involving humans, large bunch of them, will never be a dream
emptysongglass 5y ago
You getting scammed is on you. I'm sorry it happened to you and it's happened to me too but you knew the risks when you entered and if you didn't you ought to have informed yourself. Looking up with your arms open crying, "Save us!" From who? Yourself and your mistakes? I don't need the SEC shutting Telegram's decentralized initiative down because they're "worried about the investor". That's an excuse for strong-arming and it's deplorable. Most of the SEC's actions around cryptocurrency have been in this fashion not in protecting the investors from real scam projects. Coinbase, Telegram, Ripple: none of these companies fits the definition of a scam yet the SEC had a field day going after them in public, at least in two of these three cases after these companies had been privately assured by the SEC they were good to launch.

seibelj 5y ago

In Boston, there is an area called Mass and Cass which is full of drugs users. Crime is endemic as well as rape and overdoses. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/06/opinion/everyone-wants-problem-mass-cass-go-away-no-one-wants-people/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/06/opinion/everyone-want... This exists without anyone ordering their drugs in the darknet. Not sure why crypto is called out for drug problems.

warkdarrior 5y ago
Since that area already exists in Boston, I guess we should do not anything about illegal drugs sold over the Internet.
- smabie 5y ago
  We should: just make them all legal
- ianhawes 5y ago
  Something tells me the amount of drugs purchased with fiat currency is exponentially more than the amount purchased with cryptocurrency. Are we suggesting removing cash because it’s used to buy drugs? No.
  - socrates1024 5y ago
    exponential in what?
  - midev 5y ago
    > Something tells me the amount of drugs purchased with fiat currency is exponentially more than the amount purchased with cryptocurrency. In raw numbers? Sure. Everyone uses fiat and nobody uses cryptocurrenices. If you compare percentage of transactions, though, cryptocurrencies are almost all illegal transactions. Rookie mistake comparing raw numbers and not percentages.
    - henriquez 5y ago
      > cryptocurrencies are almost all illegal transactions. Citation needed.
    - ianhawes 5y ago
      This argument was potentially accurate as late as 2015, but given the fact that Bitcoin is so much easier to purchase and is considered an investment, I think you’re seeing the lawful and legitimate use of Bitcoin much more than for illegal purposes. If your next argument is, “Not every Bitcoin transaction is for illegal purposes but every illegal transaction uses Bitcoin”, the same could be said of cash.
    - smabie 5y ago
      How could you possibly have enough information to claim that "almost all" crypto transactions are illegal? As someone who works in crypto, I find this claim highly dubious.
- stooliepidgin 5y ago
  Nope. Prohibition "War on Drugs" is stupid and wasteful of human lives. It was ordered by Nixon to attack minorities and hippies. Portland and Portugal prove decriminalizing all drugs works. All drugs should be legalized immediately.

photochemsyn 5y ago

Just for the record I've been utilizing LSD and other psychedelics with no ill effects and many positive effects for the past 30 years with no involvement of cryptocurrencies whatsoever. As far as the rest of it, obviously the blockchain fails quickly for day-to-day currency uses, and that's blatantly obvious. So it's a store of wealth, maybe a tax dodge, but hardly all that 'revolutionary'.

aaomidi 5y ago

So what's the solution? Throw users into prison? We tried that. It doesn't work.

anonporridge 5y ago
Ah, but it did work. It decimated communities of color and set them back economically and socially, increasing the competitive advantage of "the right kind of people".
- Beaver117 5y ago
  Only black people do drugs? Let me guess, black people will also be disproportionately arrested for crypto crimes?
  - NotChina 5y ago
    The laws were disproportionately applied to people of color. More laws just exacerbate that problem. Remove their rights to vote, own guns, and prevent them from competing on any playing field, level or not. Listen to the Mark Fuhrman tapes, get past your unease with his words, and listen to what he says. His job was to do exactly this, as directed by the powers that be. Adult conversations on these things are so fleeting out here, that everyone triggered on the word he repeated, and not on the fact he was being told what to do. So how about we stop projecting?
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    Supposedly studies show black people using drugs at lower rates though more likely to be arrested for doing so. I think the point is our system tends to target the disadvantaged.
  - DoktorDelta 5y ago
    They're already disproportionately arrested for all the other crimes, so...
    - deleted 5y ago

norswap 5y ago

Another solution would to outlaw or super-regulate the US postal service... Blaming infrastructure only gets you so far.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

porknubbins 5y ago

I realize this is a website primarily about startups rather than literal hackers, but the sentiment in your post that the government should protect us from risky investments and putting things in our bodies has to be about as far from the hacker ethos as I think I’ve seen. Getting scammed is infuriating and its sad to see drug addiction affect friends but as someone who has worked closely with some of these agencies giving them control over more of American life is not the answer to anything.

agumonkey 5y ago

any dream involving humans, large bunch of them, will never be a dream

emptysongglass 5y ago

You getting scammed is on you. I'm sorry it happened to you and it's happened to me too but you knew the risks when you entered and if you didn't you ought to have informed yourself. Looking up with your arms open crying, "Save us!" From who? Yourself and your mistakes? I don't need the SEC shutting Telegram's decentralized initiative down because they're "worried about the investor". That's an excuse for strong-arming and it's deplorable. Most of the SEC's actions around cryptocurrency have been in this fashion not in protecting the investors from real scam projects. Coinbase, Telegram, Ripple: none of these companies fits the definition of a scam yet the SEC had a field day going after them in public, at least in two of these three cases after these companies had been privately assured by the SEC they were good to launch.