8 ms·

It's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the Silk Road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is MDMA. MDMA is difficul

by tedks 12y ago

It's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the Silk Road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is MDMA. MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product (comparable to old pressed pills you can hear aging ravers wax nostalgic about) at a fair price. I expect marijuana legalization will eat away at darknet marketplace weed sales, leaving MDMA and LSD as the top two. Which is exactly how it should be. They can be made in large quantities by moderately-skilled chemists to a high degree of purity and safety, and the Silk Road allows them to be distributed without any violence. It'd be impossible to bulk-search the mail for them. MDMA could be packaged as any white powder and LSD is literally paper. I hope that this safe availability of MDMA and LSD quenches the misinformation campaigns that have so horribly marred their reputation for the public. Both of them have incredible potential for therapeutic and recreational use.

jimktrains2 12y ago
> MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating Could this be selection bias? If you're dead you can't give a bad rating?
- aganders3 12y ago
  Potentially, but death is still pretty rare with impure MDMA and the effects can be felt. It's also a social drug, so I would imagine most buyers purchasing ~tens of pills and sharing them with friends. One would probably leave a bad review if a friend died. Testing kits and services are also available so you could review the quality without even taking the drug.
  - Evolved 12y ago
    Be forewarned: A lot of these kits only test for the presence of, not quality/purity of, MDMA and other forms of E. That being said, someone would definitely pipe up and say "this killed my friend" if something were to go wrong.
    - dobbsbob 12y ago
      A test I learned in jail from petty computer trespassing charges when I was a kid is to light a small amount of powder on fire sitting on foil, if the residue is cherry red it's mainly mdma and not piperazines. Once again prison is criminal university. If regeant testing a pill break it in half and test the inside too since often the outside is coated in mdma and the inside is shitty pipes
- trose 12y ago
  You can test it without ingesting it. With hundreds of reviews I'd hope a few people were smart enough to sacrifice some of their MDMA to test it.
  - xamolxix 12y ago
    > With hundreds of reviews I'd hope a few people were smart enough to sacrifice some of their MDMA to test it. I guess that it depends on how easy it is to test it. If it requires a chemistry degree and a lab I am guessing they won't test even if they are otherwise smart.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - spudlyo 12y ago
      Testing is actually pretty easy, you can get a fairly comprehensive test kit from dancesafe.org[0] for $65.00. [0]: http://www.dancesafe.org/product/coomplete-adulterant-screening-kit/ http://www.dancesafe.org/product/coomplete-adulterant-screen...
      - refurb 12y ago
        Holy flippin' mark-up! $65 for four bottles that contains maybe $1-2 worth of chemicals? Anyways, as someone stated above, these kits test for the presence of MDMA, not necessarily all adulterants. There is the issue of cross-reactivity as well. It's better than nothing, but I'm not sure I would trust a drug that hadn't been run through an HPLC.
    - rich90usa 12y ago
      There are simple reagent test kits that are reasonably accurate and affordable.
    - Nyr 12y ago
      There are professional labs offering free testing in The Netherlands, Spain and other European countries.
- tedks 12y ago
  Test kits are cheap, ~$25 on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/NIK-Drug-Test-Kit-Methamphetamine/dp/B001R1U4XE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412025602&sr=8-1&keywords=NIK+amphetamine+kit http://www.amazon.com/NIK-Drug-Test-Kit-Methamphetamine/dp/B... The Silk Road (and presumably the darknet markets that followed it) let any user contest the charge and get their money automatically, which they almost certainly would do if they got MDMA that tested badly. Further, if this happens too many times, the marketplace will just seize the account. Vendor accounts are expensive, so it doesn't make economic sense to sell bad shit.
  - _pmf_ 12y ago
    These test the presence of substances; they don't test the absence of toxins.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 12y ago
  The Marquis reagent is commonly used to test MDMA. It will readily distinguish MDMA from cathinones (aka 'bath salts') which is a common adulterant or substitute. Operations like Dance Safe have popularized this, and the demographic using the deep web seems to be particularly aware of this test and its value.
  - Evolved 12y ago
    Marquis, Mandolin, Mecke and Simon are all sold on DanceSafe and are used to determine only whether a substance contains MDMA (or other similarly desired chemicals) and whether or not it contains PMA and PMMA (undesirable and toxic chemicals). It does not ascertain the quality of such substances nor does it establish concentrations beyond trace amounts. Thank you for your input.
- hammock 12y ago
  There exist readily available test kits to check the purity. No consumption necessary. And of course it's just as important to look at the number of ratings. But you're probably being tongue in cheek.
- SnotJockey 12y ago
  Drugs are social, most people who buy from SR will have at least one friend who know where they got them and would go out of their way to warn others. MDMA almost never kills people, it's far safer than alcohol or most other drugs. The chance of serious selection bias is unlikely. More likely there is bias because sellers can edit listings without losing the existing rating.
- gwern 12y ago
  Think about it quantitatively. MDMA has always been tops in the rankings (not just this one, but DARCs and others), implying it's been sold to at least tens of thousands of customers. If the worst MDMA would rank 1 and normal MDMA 5 and half the MDMA sold is bad (to maximize the possible impact on the rating), then you'd have to have thousands of people croaking after taking the bad MDMA in order to produce an average of 4.9 (to pull down the average by .1 using ratings of 1). In contrast, I've seen media reports of maybe 2 deaths clearly linked to drugs bought off the black-markets (psychedelics which were RCs and led to fatal accidents).
virmundi 12y ago
Legalized weed might eat away, but if the market is anything like Colorado, it's too expensive vs dark weed. It's so bad in fact that there are projected budget shortfalls because there are few consumers in the space. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/high-times/marijuana-prices-colorado_b_4550666.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/high-times/marijuana-prices-co... http://khon2.com/2014/04/09/colorado-tax-revenue-on-recreational-marijuana-down/ http://khon2.com/2014/04/09/colorado-tax-revenue-on-recreati...
- Hytosys 12y ago
  Just speculation, but won't the legalized price drop as other states become legal as well?
  - pokpokpok 12y ago
    depends on how regulated and taxed it is
  - neurobro 12y ago
    I think it depends more on the federal government officially deferring to state drug laws (unlikely) or taking action to de-schedule marijuana specifically (slightly less unlikely). Right now the only people who can grow cannabis openly and "legally" with any degree of safety are the states themselves, which kind of puts a damper on market competition.
- aganders3 12y ago
  I would guess the market pricing for personal quantities of Silk Road weed (including shipping) is more in line with legal/medical prices rather than local black market prices.
- meritt 12y ago
  It's worse in Washington. Legal weed is 3x the cost of medical and 6x the cost of street. It still brings in a vast amount of new consumers who won't pursue other methods, but the other methods will not die off until the price is more competitive.
xorcist 12y ago
> Silk Road allows them to be distributed without any violence. Yeah, what's a few contract killings among friends...
- Energy1 12y ago
  Any examples?
  - vidarh 12y ago
    He's presumably referring to the contract killings Ross Ulbricht is alleged to have tried to arrange.
    - programmarchy 12y ago
      This charge was dropped. In my opinion, it was a baseless charge in the first place, meant to poison the well against Ross.
      - mikeyouse 12y ago
        It wasn't dropped, I wish people would stop parroting that line. He was indicted in two separate jurisdictions, NY and Maryland. Maryland indicted him for 'Planned Violence' which includes one count of murder for hire. The NY charges are the ones that he's currently facing, the Maryland charges are still in the wings. http://freeross.org/correction-of-our-report-on-the-indictment/ http://freeross.org/correction-of-our-report-on-the-indictme...
        dmix 12y ago
        And he is innocent until proven guilty. So people should stick to that angle.
  - s0uthPaw88 12y ago
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/21/alleged-silk-road-ross-ulbricht-creator-now-accused-of-six-murder-for-hires-denied-bail/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/21/alleged...
marincounty 12y ago
Ketamine will be popular. Right now they have ongoing medical studies trying to determine it's efficacy. You need to infuse the drug, so it's a hard core drug, but in terms of preventing someone from committing suicide the drug shows promise. (I'm not condoning it, just passing along what Psychaiary is talking about amount themselfs--other than stock picks.)
- lumpypua 12y ago
  You don't need to inject it. I use ketamine for management of depression, though I've thankfully been doing well and haven't needed it for the past 6-8 months. The fast relief getting you back to being able to function and care for yourself day to day is soooo helpful. From a prior post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170989 pstuart 47 days ago Did you need to go into the k-hole to achieve results? --- lumpypua 41 days ago Definitely not, but you are going to get weird for 45 minutes. The study in that forbes article used 50mg intranasally (basically snorted). The earlier study backing ketamine's efficacy[1] used "0.5 mg/kg diluted in saline, administered over 40 minutes by IV pump". Works out to 35mg for a 70kg guy with a drug delivery rate in the ballpark of snorting it. Redosing protocol is up to you, I'd read both papers, track your mood, and decide something reasonable. [1] dumps a fair amount of K into their volunteers in one part. Basically the 35mg every two to three days. When depression hits hard I do 35mg every one or two weeks, and go up to 3 weeks as I'm feeling better. I like dissociatives but maaan 35-50mg is pretty much the least pleasant dose. You're not near k-holing but reality is still pretty bent for about 45 minutes. Normal social interaction is totally out of the question for me and my thinking is warped. What works best for me to handle it is putting on an album I can play all the way through, lying down and meditating on the music until I sober up. Cheers! [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935847/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935847/
tomphoolery 12y ago
Even with safe MDMA, the risk of possession carries a far greater weight in a lot of the country than something like weed. So people tend to take more risks, and thus the price is higher. If you could somehow subvert this cost by buying in bulk through a trusted vendor on the Internet, you stand to make some money for your troubles. This is, in my opinion, the most likely reason why SR has large quantities of MDMA and LSD.
ma2rten 12y ago
Precisely for this reason there are actually places in Holland where people can have their ecstasy pills tested, so that they know exactly how much MDMA and what other stuff is inside.
icpmacdo 12y ago
I would hazard a guess and say that DMT is probably pretty high on the best seller list. The common theme is that there is a huge market for things that fall under the catch all of the label drugs that are being used for very different reasons than what a stereotypical addict is chasing.
fubu 12y ago
I'm not that aware of how Silk Road 2.0 works, but with all the anonymity involved, would it be very difficult for a seller to complete transactions to herself with dummy accounts to pump up their ratings? This was very common in the Amazon and Ebay world when I was around those several years ago.
- Semaphor 12y ago
  I don't know first hand, but several articles about SR (2.0? 1.5? no clue) said that the admins are very good at weeding out fake reviews. Though it wasn't mentioned how they do it.
- gwern 12y ago
  It would not. Of course, they still have to pay the SR2 commission on all the turnover. There have been a lot of complaints on the SR2 forums over the past year that a lot of feedback is untrustworthy compared to SR1, among many other complaints about the poor operator performance.

by tedks 12y ago

jimktrains2 12y ago

> MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating Could this be selection bias? If you're dead you can't give a bad rating?

aganders3 12y ago
Potentially, but death is still pretty rare with impure MDMA and the effects can be felt. It's also a social drug, so I would imagine most buyers purchasing ~tens of pills and sharing them with friends. One would probably leave a bad review if a friend died. Testing kits and services are also available so you could review the quality without even taking the drug.
- Evolved 12y ago
  Be forewarned: A lot of these kits only test for the presence of, not quality/purity of, MDMA and other forms of E. That being said, someone would definitely pipe up and say "this killed my friend" if something were to go wrong.
  - dobbsbob 12y ago
    A test I learned in jail from petty computer trespassing charges when I was a kid is to light a small amount of powder on fire sitting on foil, if the residue is cherry red it's mainly mdma and not piperazines. Once again prison is criminal university. If regeant testing a pill break it in half and test the inside too since often the outside is coated in mdma and the inside is shitty pipes
trose 12y ago
You can test it without ingesting it. With hundreds of reviews I'd hope a few people were smart enough to sacrifice some of their MDMA to test it.
- xamolxix 12y ago
  > With hundreds of reviews I'd hope a few people were smart enough to sacrifice some of their MDMA to test it. I guess that it depends on how easy it is to test it. If it requires a chemistry degree and a lab I am guessing they won't test even if they are otherwise smart.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - spudlyo 12y ago
    Testing is actually pretty easy, you can get a fairly comprehensive test kit from dancesafe.org[0] for $65.00. [0]: http://www.dancesafe.org/product/coomplete-adulterant-screening-kit/ http://www.dancesafe.org/product/coomplete-adulterant-screen...
    - refurb 12y ago
      Holy flippin' mark-up! $65 for four bottles that contains maybe $1-2 worth of chemicals? Anyways, as someone stated above, these kits test for the presence of MDMA, not necessarily all adulterants. There is the issue of cross-reactivity as well. It's better than nothing, but I'm not sure I would trust a drug that hadn't been run through an HPLC.
  - rich90usa 12y ago
    There are simple reagent test kits that are reasonably accurate and affordable.
  - Nyr 12y ago
    There are professional labs offering free testing in The Netherlands, Spain and other European countries.
tedks 12y ago
Test kits are cheap, ~$25 on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/NIK-Drug-Test-Kit-Methamphetamine/dp/B001R1U4XE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412025602&sr=8-1&keywords=NIK+amphetamine+kit http://www.amazon.com/NIK-Drug-Test-Kit-Methamphetamine/dp/B... The Silk Road (and presumably the darknet markets that followed it) let any user contest the charge and get their money automatically, which they almost certainly would do if they got MDMA that tested badly. Further, if this happens too many times, the marketplace will just seize the account. Vendor accounts are expensive, so it doesn't make economic sense to sell bad shit.
- _pmf_ 12y ago
  These test the presence of substances; they don't test the absence of toxins.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 12y ago
The Marquis reagent is commonly used to test MDMA. It will readily distinguish MDMA from cathinones (aka 'bath salts') which is a common adulterant or substitute. Operations like Dance Safe have popularized this, and the demographic using the deep web seems to be particularly aware of this test and its value.
- Evolved 12y ago
  Marquis, Mandolin, Mecke and Simon are all sold on DanceSafe and are used to determine only whether a substance contains MDMA (or other similarly desired chemicals) and whether or not it contains PMA and PMMA (undesirable and toxic chemicals). It does not ascertain the quality of such substances nor does it establish concentrations beyond trace amounts. Thank you for your input.
hammock 12y ago
There exist readily available test kits to check the purity. No consumption necessary. And of course it's just as important to look at the number of ratings. But you're probably being tongue in cheek.
SnotJockey 12y ago
Drugs are social, most people who buy from SR will have at least one friend who know where they got them and would go out of their way to warn others. MDMA almost never kills people, it's far safer than alcohol or most other drugs. The chance of serious selection bias is unlikely. More likely there is bias because sellers can edit listings without losing the existing rating.
gwern 12y ago
Think about it quantitatively. MDMA has always been tops in the rankings (not just this one, but DARCs and others), implying it's been sold to at least tens of thousands of customers. If the worst MDMA would rank 1 and normal MDMA 5 and half the MDMA sold is bad (to maximize the possible impact on the rating), then you'd have to have thousands of people croaking after taking the bad MDMA in order to produce an average of 4.9 (to pull down the average by .1 using ratings of 1). In contrast, I've seen media reports of maybe 2 deaths clearly linked to drugs bought off the black-markets (psychedelics which were RCs and led to fatal accidents).

virmundi 12y ago

Legalized weed might eat away, but if the market is anything like Colorado, it's too expensive vs dark weed. It's so bad in fact that there are projected budget shortfalls because there are few consumers in the space. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/high-times/marijuana-prices-colorado_b_4550666.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/high-times/marijuana-prices-co... http://khon2.com/2014/04/09/colorado-tax-revenue-on-recreational-marijuana-down/ http://khon2.com/2014/04/09/colorado-tax-revenue-on-recreati...

Hytosys 12y ago
Just speculation, but won't the legalized price drop as other states become legal as well?
- pokpokpok 12y ago
  depends on how regulated and taxed it is
- neurobro 12y ago
  I think it depends more on the federal government officially deferring to state drug laws (unlikely) or taking action to de-schedule marijuana specifically (slightly less unlikely). Right now the only people who can grow cannabis openly and "legally" with any degree of safety are the states themselves, which kind of puts a damper on market competition.
aganders3 12y ago
I would guess the market pricing for personal quantities of Silk Road weed (including shipping) is more in line with legal/medical prices rather than local black market prices.
meritt 12y ago
It's worse in Washington. Legal weed is 3x the cost of medical and 6x the cost of street. It still brings in a vast amount of new consumers who won't pursue other methods, but the other methods will not die off until the price is more competitive.

xorcist 12y ago

> Silk Road allows them to be distributed without any violence. Yeah, what's a few contract killings among friends...

Energy1 12y ago
Any examples?
- vidarh 12y ago
  He's presumably referring to the contract killings Ross Ulbricht is alleged to have tried to arrange.
  - programmarchy 12y ago
    This charge was dropped. In my opinion, it was a baseless charge in the first place, meant to poison the well against Ross.
    - mikeyouse 12y ago
      It wasn't dropped, I wish people would stop parroting that line. He was indicted in two separate jurisdictions, NY and Maryland. Maryland indicted him for 'Planned Violence' which includes one count of murder for hire. The NY charges are the ones that he's currently facing, the Maryland charges are still in the wings. http://freeross.org/correction-of-our-report-on-the-indictment/ http://freeross.org/correction-of-our-report-on-the-indictme...
      - dmix 12y ago
        And he is innocent until proven guilty. So people should stick to that angle.
- s0uthPaw88 12y ago
  http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/21/alleged-silk-road-ross-ulbricht-creator-now-accused-of-six-murder-for-hires-denied-bail/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/21/alleged...

marincounty 12y ago

Ketamine will be popular. Right now they have ongoing medical studies trying to determine it's efficacy. You need to infuse the drug, so it's a hard core drug, but in terms of preventing someone from committing suicide the drug shows promise. (I'm not condoning it, just passing along what Psychaiary is talking about amount themselfs--other than stock picks.)

lumpypua 12y ago
You don't need to inject it. I use ketamine for management of depression, though I've thankfully been doing well and haven't needed it for the past 6-8 months. The fast relief getting you back to being able to function and care for yourself day to day is soooo helpful. From a prior post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170989 pstuart 47 days ago Did you need to go into the k-hole to achieve results? --- lumpypua 41 days ago Definitely not, but you are going to get weird for 45 minutes. The study in that forbes article used 50mg intranasally (basically snorted). The earlier study backing ketamine's efficacy[1] used "0.5 mg/kg diluted in saline, administered over 40 minutes by IV pump". Works out to 35mg for a 70kg guy with a drug delivery rate in the ballpark of snorting it. Redosing protocol is up to you, I'd read both papers, track your mood, and decide something reasonable. [1] dumps a fair amount of K into their volunteers in one part. Basically the 35mg every two to three days. When depression hits hard I do 35mg every one or two weeks, and go up to 3 weeks as I'm feeling better. I like dissociatives but maaan 35-50mg is pretty much the least pleasant dose. You're not near k-holing but reality is still pretty bent for about 45 minutes. Normal social interaction is totally out of the question for me and my thinking is warped. What works best for me to handle it is putting on an album I can play all the way through, lying down and meditating on the music until I sober up. Cheers! [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935847/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935847/

tomphoolery 12y ago

Even with safe MDMA, the risk of possession carries a far greater weight in a lot of the country than something like weed. So people tend to take more risks, and thus the price is higher. If you could somehow subvert this cost by buying in bulk through a trusted vendor on the Internet, you stand to make some money for your troubles. This is, in my opinion, the most likely reason why SR has large quantities of MDMA and LSD.

ma2rten 12y ago

Precisely for this reason there are actually places in Holland where people can have their ecstasy pills tested, so that they know exactly how much MDMA and what other stuff is inside.

icpmacdo 12y ago

I would hazard a guess and say that DMT is probably pretty high on the best seller list. The common theme is that there is a huge market for things that fall under the catch all of the label drugs that are being used for very different reasons than what a stereotypical addict is chasing.

fubu 12y ago

I'm not that aware of how Silk Road 2.0 works, but with all the anonymity involved, would it be very difficult for a seller to complete transactions to herself with dummy accounts to pump up their ratings? This was very common in the Amazon and Ebay world when I was around those several years ago.

Semaphor 12y ago
I don't know first hand, but several articles about SR (2.0? 1.5? no clue) said that the admins are very good at weeding out fake reviews. Though it wasn't mentioned how they do it.
gwern 12y ago
It would not. Of course, they still have to pay the SR2 commission on all the turnover. There have been a lot of complaints on the SR2 forums over the past year that a lot of feedback is untrustworthy compared to SR1, among many other complaints about the poor operator performance.