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Here's an academic analysis of Silk Road. After crawling the site for a few months they came up with this: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publication

by cnp 14y ago

Here's an academic analysis of Silk Road. After crawling the site for a few months they came up with this: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR-CMU-CyLab-12-018.pdf http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR-CMU-... "Abstract We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road, an anonymous, international online marketplace that operates as a Tor hidden service and uses Bitcoin as its exchange currency. We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012, including daily crawls of the marketplace for nearly six months in 2012. We obtain a detailed picture of the type of goods being sold on Silk Road, and of the revenues made both by sellers and Silk Road operators. Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics, and that most items sold are available for less than three weeks. The majority of sellers disappears within roughly three months of their arrival, but a core of 112 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers, from public listings, to slightly over USD 1.2 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 92,000 per month in commissions for the Silk Road operators. We further show that the marketplace has been operating steadily, with daily sales and number of sellers overall increasing over our measurement interval. We discuss economic and policy implications of our analysis and results, including ethical considerations for future research in this area."

waterlesscloud 14y ago
$1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic. Still, it seems like the risk far outweighs the gain here.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  $1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic. apples and oranges. This is illegal and their take is maybe enough to pay one criminal lawyer for a month.
  - cageface 14y ago
    Criminal lawyers make 1.2 million in a month?
    - pjscott 14y ago
      Silk Road's cut of the transactions is a lot less than $1.2 million.
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        $92,000 per month per the study. Not to be sneezed at, but not a gigantic sum.
    - OGinparadise 14y ago
      as other said, their cut is under $100K. A decent criminal lawyer will take that in a month and tell you that he needs $2-$3++ million for a drug case. (From Aaron S case we learned that a simple fed case is $1.5 million, on average)
      - roel_v 14y ago
        "A decent criminal lawyer will take that in a month and tell you that he needs $2-$3++ million for a drug case." [citation needed], which is really a passive-aggressive way of saying "bollocks". Well I'm not saying that Pablo Escobar's lawyers didn't bank that much, but really - there are thousands of drug dealers tried every single day, a sizable percentage of that with turnovers way over 100k / month - you're not seriously suggesting their defenses all cost millions? 500 hours (= almost 3 full-time man months!) at 150 USD / hour = 'only' 75k.
        celticninja 14y ago
        whilst i agree with your overall assessment I do think that if the Silk Road admin(s) was/were identified and arrested it would be far from your usual drug trial and may involve a lot of expert witnesses dealing with Tor, .onion sites, bitcoin and importantly how they could link the defendant with SilkRoad given the anonymity provided by Tor. This would all add to the costs of defnding a client way more than your usual drug bust.
- rorrr 14y ago
  It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything clothing-related.
  - clicks 14y ago
    > Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. And that is precisely when Bitcoins will receive renewed focus from officials all over and g-men will step forth to somehow try to make operations involving Bitcoins illegal.
    - codesuela 14y ago
      Books I could see, but only expensive academic material. I'd guess the market for those is fairly small. You don't need to get behind TOR to buy fake clothing (ioffer.com comes to mind, pretty sure there are tons of other sites around who would love to sell you fake clothing straight from a Chinese factory) And why would you buy physical copies of pirated movies if you can get them for free?
      - rorrr 14y ago
        > And why would you buy physical copies of pirated movies if you can get them for free? BluRay market is 5-6 billion dollars. People buy them.
  - olefoo 14y ago
    There is a certain point where their bandwidth will exceed the noise threshold and it will be trivial to trace the location of their servers and of their offices, tor or no tor. And if they are simultaneously the subject of renewed enforcement interest... """ Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks. """ - Neuromancer: William Gibson
- dobbsbob 14y ago
  That study didnt cover all the hidden transactions, also DPR sells on his own site too when it started his g/f was the first vendor selling shrooms. So theres one person in this world who knows who DPR is, which is exactly enough for her to rat him out should anything go south in their relationship. Im sure she's told all her friends too like Max Visions' gf did. Another problem is all the writing hes done on the site about agorism. Surprised feds havnt broken out the writing analyst software and then trolled agorist forums and the bitcoin forum to match it up, unless hes been extremely careful with his Opsec

by cnp 14y ago

waterlesscloud 14y ago

$1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic. Still, it seems like the risk far outweighs the gain here.

OGinparadise 14y ago
$1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic. apples and oranges. This is illegal and their take is maybe enough to pay one criminal lawyer for a month.
- cageface 14y ago
  Criminal lawyers make 1.2 million in a month?
  - pjscott 14y ago
    Silk Road's cut of the transactions is a lot less than $1.2 million.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      $92,000 per month per the study. Not to be sneezed at, but not a gigantic sum.
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    as other said, their cut is under $100K. A decent criminal lawyer will take that in a month and tell you that he needs $2-$3++ million for a drug case. (From Aaron S case we learned that a simple fed case is $1.5 million, on average)
    - roel_v 14y ago
      "A decent criminal lawyer will take that in a month and tell you that he needs $2-$3++ million for a drug case." [citation needed], which is really a passive-aggressive way of saying "bollocks". Well I'm not saying that Pablo Escobar's lawyers didn't bank that much, but really - there are thousands of drug dealers tried every single day, a sizable percentage of that with turnovers way over 100k / month - you're not seriously suggesting their defenses all cost millions? 500 hours (= almost 3 full-time man months!) at 150 USD / hour = 'only' 75k.
      - celticninja 14y ago
        whilst i agree with your overall assessment I do think that if the Silk Road admin(s) was/were identified and arrested it would be far from your usual drug trial and may involve a lot of expert witnesses dealing with Tor, .onion sites, bitcoin and importantly how they could link the defendant with SilkRoad given the anonymity provided by Tor. This would all add to the costs of defnding a client way more than your usual drug bust.
rorrr 14y ago
It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything clothing-related.
- clicks 14y ago
  > Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon. And that is precisely when Bitcoins will receive renewed focus from officials all over and g-men will step forth to somehow try to make operations involving Bitcoins illegal.
  - codesuela 14y ago
    Books I could see, but only expensive academic material. I'd guess the market for those is fairly small. You don't need to get behind TOR to buy fake clothing (ioffer.com comes to mind, pretty sure there are tons of other sites around who would love to sell you fake clothing straight from a Chinese factory) And why would you buy physical copies of pirated movies if you can get them for free?
    - rorrr 14y ago
      > And why would you buy physical copies of pirated movies if you can get them for free? BluRay market is 5-6 billion dollars. People buy them.
- olefoo 14y ago
  There is a certain point where their bandwidth will exceed the noise threshold and it will be trivial to trace the location of their servers and of their offices, tor or no tor. And if they are simultaneously the subject of renewed enforcement interest... """ Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks. """ - Neuromancer: William Gibson
dobbsbob 14y ago
That study didnt cover all the hidden transactions, also DPR sells on his own site too when it started his g/f was the first vendor selling shrooms. So theres one person in this world who knows who DPR is, which is exactly enough for her to rat him out should anything go south in their relationship. Im sure she's told all her friends too like Max Visions' gf did. Another problem is all the writing hes done on the site about agorism. Surprised feds havnt broken out the writing analyst software and then trolled agorist forums and the bitcoin forum to match it up, unless hes been extremely careful with his Opsec