Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade
An anonymous reader writes "A story on Aljazeera tells how bitcoin is being used to pay for cocaine, marijuana and other drugs at various eBay style drug websites. From the article: 'Two US senators are asking federal authorities to crack down on an online narcotics market that accepts "virtual" currency. The "Dark Web," an anonymous and secretive online community that trades in heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines among other drugs, has been operating unhindered for months.' Who said bitcoin is not used in the real world?"
Most of these alternative-currencies (Bitcoin, e-gold, etc) find themselves on the shady side of things pretty quickly - especially money-laundering and the like. This is not at all surprising, really.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Your government is responsible for aiding this trade!
I think we are going to see a lot of anti bitcoin smokescreen stories pushed down the pipe line at us. Until they tax bitcoin. Then you'll see "Baby heart transplant paid for with bitcoin" stories in the news.
I, for one, do not want to have to explain to some thugtastic DEA jackboots that "hash-based currency" can be acquired by legitimately doing a bunch of math, as well as by other means...
And here I thought it'd be porn, not drugs that would get bitcoin going.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Also, at what point did it become a good idea to buy illegal drugs over the Internet? What exactly do you plan on doing when your 10k in Cocaine doesn't show up at your doorstep?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Nothing like using a hash to score some hash.
Hire me...
Are these web sites and deals happening inside the US? If not what are US Senators going to do about it?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Welcome to the first sign that the Wunch of Bankers that lord it over us have spotted a threat..
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
in related news, ATF and FBI raids have also found cartel trafficking drugs and using antique bottle caps as currency. Numerous antique shops around the country are being investigated for money laundering cases.
Bitcoin has the feature, that it can't be inflated (claimed by their proponents). However, that's very good reason, why government might want to outlaw it: you're avoiding a tax, the "inflation tax".
They just need some stories about some drug dealers, pedophiles, terrorists who use Bitcoin, and it will be pretty easy to crack it down.
The $US dollar is by far the most popular currency used in narcotics trade.
Hope is the currency of fools
Dealers sell drugs to users using local currency, Senators pass a law to outlaw the $100 bill.
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Yet another bitcoin story posted by samzenpus. I smell a rat.
Again.
Remember when we had the "mistaken pot busts" Bitcoin story where the first five paragraphs were just about Bitcoin, and the pot bust was not only buried in the article but attributed to an IRC chat?
This one is slightly better in that it's not mainly about Bitcoin, but it's obvious that Slashdot is being pumped full of Bitcoin articles by Bitcoin promoters.
Last week it was about an imaginary bust of a Bitcoiner "miner" who may be using too much electricity, making law enforcement potentially believe that it was a grow-op.
Today is a story about virtual currency that is barely used anywhere to be used on online drug trading. Not Bitcoin specifically. Paypal most likely ...
Honestly. Having a video "story" is bad enough. Having the story linked to Bitcoin on a vague premise is pretty bad.
Let's create a Bitcoin /. filter, so I can exlude these stories from my profile. Not sure how this relates to "Privacy". I'm thinking that there is a group of Bitcoin proponents working hard to get any publicity.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
https://mtgox.com/trade/history (click "all time")
In two months, the value per Bitcoin has increased from .5 USD to 20 USD, a 40 fold increase. Slashdot is being flooded by bitcoin speculators to increase prices. People are paying $20 for something worth 50 cents for no good reason. The price will collapse to less than $1 in the near future. People are throwing money away.
Probably don't know what deepnet is.
The only drug dealers accepting bit-coin for their drugs are the ones using their own product. I'm sorry to say, but bit-coin has ZERO value in what 99.99% of people refer to as the real world. It might make you a rich man in Second Life, but you aren't going to be buying a joint of Mexican schwag weed with this stuff outside of the internet.
Bitcoin has no viable value. I dont understand why anyone, esecially drug dealers, would take bitcoin. Why not just draw on some paper with crayons and say it's money?
Bitcoin is not backed by any government, nor is it backed by anything of value. CPU cycles are not valuable after they are expended, and the work involved is not useful for anything else. So I really can't understand why anyone would give goods that ARE worth something in exchange for them.
Just because it takes a lot of effort to make them doesn't mean they're worth anything. Has anyone here *REALLY*, and I mean *REALLY* used bitcoin to trade anything valuable? Ever?
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Surprise! People are using money for something illegal, that's never been done with any other form of currency before. The only thing even remotely notable about using bitcoin instead of say a prepaid visa card, is it's a harder to trace down the source/destination of the funds.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
What would be interesting is if you can find an actual example of someone willing to sell drugs for bit-coin. This story offers no examples at all.
if you really want a harder drug, there is very little keeping you from getting it, and it's been that way for thousands of years. forget drugs, look what happens when you give millions of people unrestricted access to slashdot. basically if your group has more than 5 people your fate is to enjoy watching at least one of them misbehave, no matter what the circumstance.
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I'm pretty sure Marijuana isn't a narcotic. And I don't think cocaine is either.
A narcotic would be like morphine or heroin.
Narcotics are specific, not a generalization for all drugs.
If you're going to post Slashvertisements, at least get some of your facts straight.
If the US Dollar is getting stronger against the Euro and the BitCoin and the BitCoin is getting stronger against the Euro, then for people who live their lives on the Dollar, the BitCoin appears to be subject to inflation but not as much as the Euro. For those who live their lives on the Euro, BitCoin appears to be subject to deflation but not as much as the US Dollar.
To those who live their lives on the BitCoin, the US Dollar appears to be deflating and the Euro inflating.
Substitute one set of commodities whose prices are rising for "Euro" and another set of commodities whose prices are falling for "American Dollars" and you can see inflation and deflation at work at the same time in the same currency. We see this all the time with the Dollar, where consumer inflation and producer inflation are rarely exactly the same. If both are close to zero in a given month, one may show inflation and one may show deflation.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
alternative currencies find themselves doing illegal stuff?
what do you suppose real currencies do? the exact same thing.
This just in: it's actually harder to track with USD than it is via bitcoins.
Here you go, granted it's a Tor hidden service, so you'll either have to use TOR or a tor2web proxy like this to read it, but you wanted an example.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Mike Bergman, credited with coining the phrase,[1] has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the Web's information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot "see" or retrieve content in the deep Web – those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search.
When the US senators talk about the "Dark Web", it either reflects their prowess for all things technical or their desire to get rid of the anonymous internet.
BTW, here's a better article on bitcoins being used in the "Dark Web".
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Is this really a surprise? Everything with some intrinsic value is used for the drug trade. Dollars, Euro, Yen, Gold, Weapons, iPods, Other drugs, etc. People even barter services for drugs (i.e. I'll fix your car if you give me pot).
Since drugs are a physical product that has to change hands eventually, the drug trade would continue to thrive even without some virtual electronic currency.
Says the Senator for Paypal.
Oh boy, here it comes. Next it will be traced to child porn offenders and to terrorism. Finally they ban it - it must be important then...
...is between Charles Schumer and a television camera.
This just in!!! American US Dollars are being used to pay for drugs! Dollars are dangerous and must be outlawed.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Since cash is (relatively) anonymous, and bitcoins are anonymous, I don't see the difference.
At the end of the day, DEA and other agencies can and will infiltrate this new marketplace, so when you place an order for 1lb of pot, you're gonna get busted.
This concept of anonymity can work for digital information and media, but anything that shows up in a parcel is a huge risk.
These shady sites are nothing new. I may or may not have used them myself, and they may or may not have had ways to obfuscate your purchase. I get confused a lot, so it probably never happened.
why is this shocking? bitcoin is currency. You can buy stuff with currency.
Like there was noone buying dope on the internet with creditcards
OMG!!11 credit cards are being used to buy drugs online!!!11 let's burn them!!!1
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/01/buy-illegal-drugs-anonymously note the update at the end from bitcoin
So you traded a specific arrangement of bits for a different arrangement of bits? Did you at least make sure you didn't get cheated and got the same number of bits?
sounds like pobble beads and Ningis to me...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A survey found that almost 90% of US currency had cocaine residue on it. So not only is it being used to buy drugs, it's being used to use drugs.
i guess when your local drug dealer accept bitcoin it makes it just as valid as usd.
Why is this a surprise? Just reading about aspects of bitcoin make it obvious to anyone with a brain what illicit uses it has.
Ideally, it's a good idea but seriously... Who didn't see this coming?
Ironically, by hard to trace Anonymous Readers.
They have, however, changed to an invite only system. Apparently, DEA and nosy news reporters aren't invited.
This is sort of "old news"; Wired ran the story last week in Threat Level, about bitcoin and the "silk road" drug marketplace:
Underground Website Lets You Buy Any Drug Imaginable
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/
I think we've all seen this before.... ... regulate the webs -- protect the children! ... don't buy this -- it helps terrorist (as he drives off in SUV from GE). ... but it will be used for the drug trade!
You know what ELSE is used for the drug trade? US Banks. http://prairiepundit.blogspot.com/2011/04/wachovia-accused-of-laundering-drug.html
No one actually got sent to prison with $450 Billion in transactions "unaccounted for." So, I'm guessing that something this large is part of the infrastructure. There wasn't some "dip" in drug laundering after Wachovia was caught was there? So maybe some hands got slapped, a corporate merger was made, and the next, better "connected" banker fills in the gap, making sure that the right politicians get donations next time.
But, BitCoin is EVIL! Because it doesn't use the banks,... because to do otherwise would, I don't know, level trade and keep us from economic imbalances?
To me, most of the Drug Enforcement and Judicial activities more and more look like the "real players" keeping down the "start ups" and we are supposed to usher in new and powerful laws so that THEY can keep down on the Competition. If we actually wanted to STOP drugs, maybe we'd revisit what the BCCI was doing with Dubai Banks, and the CIA -- or maybe we'd pay attention to articles that show that Blackwater Mercenaries were caught red-handed trading drugs with the Taliban by US forces -- you know, same, old, same old.
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He was invited by the "cool kids" to hang out at some kids house whose liberal parents had left for the weekend.
My brother, always a moral and thoughtful individual, wanted to attend because it was one of those massive house parties that he'd never been to.
Well, as was later recalled by some of his friends at the party, he was pressured into smoking marijuana. He ended up smoking the entire pack of marijuana cigarettes.
Not long after he went into convulsions and started foaming at the mouth. The people at the party held back calling 9/11 for almost 10 minutes.
When the paramedics finally arrived they could do nothing to save him.
The autopsy revealed he had 3 times the lethal dosage of THC in his blood.
But I'm sure everyone here will deny my story and the fact that my brother died after smoking that illegal narcotic.
Gawker has an article on one of the underground sites called Silk Road, and includes the domain: The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable - Gawker. The domain is for TOR, but I don't know if the server will respond to HTTP requests from outside TOR.
You can't take heroin during a work break, mainly because you wouldn't be able to return. Smoking relieves stress for various circumstances, while also stimulating you, so it not only provides temporarily relief, it also provides motivation to do a specific task.
From what I've read (and seen) the tor network is a much more valuable resource to these underground trades. There are numerous platforms for pseudo-anonymous online payment other than bitcoin used for these black market trades, many of them used in combination with Tor and '.onion' websites. By itself bitcoin is not much different from paper money, which is also used for anonymous payment in the real-world drug trade. Just like on our physical planet illegal trade is very hard without a safe venue, regardless of trade item or currency.
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Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-air
In west Philadelphia born and raised
On the playground where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school
When a couple of guys, they were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighbourhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
And said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air"
I whistled for a cab and when it came near the
License plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror
If anything I could say that this cab was rare
But I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air!
I pulled up to a house about seven or eight
And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!"
Looked at my kingdom I was finally there
To sit on my throne as
The Prince of Bel-air
What is the optimal arrangement of my sticks that will function as a computer. I realize that 1000 sticks isn't a whole lot, but I really only browse slashdot, google.on.nimp.org, and not4chan, so it doesn't have to be all that fast.
Pic related, it's my sticks.
dogs as far as the eye can see. a delicately intertwined network of dogs stretches out to the horizon, bathed in spring light... sunrise on Infinite Dogworld
the planet's surface is clothed in a flowing sheet of spaniels. dog-shadows blot out the land. maybe the dogs are the land. it's been millenia since any human has set foot on Infinite Dogworld.
it's a calm, clear day. the sun lends a honeyed hue to the coats of golden retrievers. a few clouds drift aimlessly through the sky's blue expanse - but wait! those are no clouds! bubbly puffs of fuzz and fur, canine cumulonimbus; levitating dogs waft through the heavens like hairy helicopters, wagging their tails to propel themselves. anything is possible on Infinite Dogworld.
how many dogs are there? no one knows. the dogs move as a single entity, the world's cutest bacterial colony. at some points they seem to blend into each other and blur together to create a semi-corporeal dogblob with legs and tails jutting out haphazardly. amorphous splotches of fur and dog-flesh, they are almost unidentifiable but still retain some characteristics of doggishness. this furry ameoba trudges doggedly on, tongues whipped by the breeze, across the sweeping plains of Infinite Dogworld.
there are no gaps in the dog chain. what happens when a dog dies? is a puppy born to take its place? perhaps there is no death on Infinite Dogworld. all dogs live forever. all dogs go to heaven.
only drug traffickers use bitcoin.
only criminals care about privacy.
only paedophiles use encryption.
only terrorists use p2p.
Also with the $500 and up denominations (there were also $1000, $5000 and $10000) - a lot of demand for them was for large interbank transactions (sometimes involving Federal Reserve Banks). Technological developments meant you didn't necessarily need physical currency for that anymore.
There were also $100000's that were only for the Fed.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.