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Meet the 'Assassination Market' Creator Who's Crowdfunding Murder With Bitcoins
schwit1 writes "As Silk Road emerged from the 'dark-web', other sites have appeared offering services that are frowned upon by most. As Forbes reports, perhaps the most-disturbing is 'The Assassination Market' run by a pseudonymous Kuwabatake Sanjuro. The site, remarkably, is a crowdfunding service that lets anyone anonymously contribute bitcoins towards a bounty on the head of any government official–a kind of Kickstarter for political assassinations. As Forbes reports, NSA Director Alexander and President Obama have a BTC40 bounty (~$24,000) but the highest bounty — perhaps not entirely surprising — is BTC 124.14 (~$75,000) for none other than Ben Bernanke."
Assassination Politics I think he went to jail for it.
Odds are you're going to be dead immediately after, so what good does the money do you?
guaranteed to get the whole government in on breaking the Bitcoin chain, as well as getting your ass parked in a Federal prison for a whole lot of years. it's so idiotic that it has to be a government operation to suck in idiots who are looking for jail time.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
What, no direct link to the site?
It is pretty straight forward how it will work.
1) People send in money.
2) After a while the site closes down.
3) Person that put up the site earns a nice profit.
The only disturbing part is the guy did it so early, someone with real planning would of waited for the US Presidential election and then really brought in the money.
How exactly do you prove your the one who shot or poisoned the target? Seems difficult to collect not to mention the legalities and morals of the act. Sounds more like an FBI honeypot.
I feel like I have been put on the list just for reading this. But then I realize I'm already on the list for everything else I read on the internet.
I would be expecting the NSA to be cracking Bitcoin / TOR as we speak to prosecute people for material support of terrorism.
I bet that the owner of the site could be charged with "conspiracy to commit murder".
...someone starts a bounty on the site for "Kuwabatake Sanjuro"?
Yaz
Political violence doesn't work to actually implement social change. It only plays into the hands of authoritarians who rule by fear, in this case fear of you. Kill Bernanke, and they have a great propaganda tool against your cause. And they can replace Bernanke with no trouble. And you haven't actually done anything to harm the people whose interests Bernanke is protecting.
There is an excellent essay on the topic, dating from the 1970s, titled You Can't Blow up a Social Relationship. From the preamble:
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Searching for Ben Bernanke brings up as first news "BERNANKE: Bitcoin 'May Hold Long-Term Promise'
Business Insider - 4 hours ago
Ben Bernanke sort of endorses Bitcoin."
Do you think he knew of the bounty?
Perhaps they should crowd-fund it to get higher bounties.
Ya, I saw something on Slashdot about that.
I am not a crackpot.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072985/
~Sticky
... only the guy who near single-handedly saved the world economy from total and utter destruction.
(YES, he did have a bit to do with the bubble in the first place... but that was mostly the previous free-market, deregulationist Fed chairman's fault.)
Of course, this assassination nonsense is a scam and a horrific idea. But sweet jesus, these anti-Fed demogogues are such self-denialist losers. Sure, let's go back to the gold standard so we can have a Panic every 15 years. Let's relinquish total control over our money supply and our economy for absolutely no reason. Let's just hand over our nation's economic advantage as the world's go-to currency... great idea... ...say the same idiots who insisted QE would lead to global hyperinflation (wrong), that the biggest problem our government has is the national debt (wrong), that nations need to tighten their belts during a recession (wrong), that there was no gold bubble (wrong), and that nothing bad would ever happen if we default... How many times do these people have to be proven wrong, over and over?
But I guess it makes sense that the ultra-paranoid sorts of people who would be attracted to the idea of bitcoin are the same ones who would hold some kind of insane vendetta against the Fed, totally missing the mark on who REALLY to blame for the near collapse and meltdown of western civilization.
For people who don't get the joke, "kuwabatake" means "mulberry farm" in Japanese (where you would raise silk worms).
"Sanjuro" is a standard alias for a 30 year old guy (it literally means "30 year old guy", more or less).
I wonder if this isn't an operation to sour the public on Bitcoin? I mean, not that it needs much to sour the folks here on Slashdot, but the common Joe/Jane on the street might need some Emmanuel Goldsteins to scream at for two minutes.
And with all the revelations of Snowden and Wikileaks, calling someone a "tinfoil hatter" has lost most of it's sting.
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it seems wrong that such a site with a list of people to execute could exist. it brings the good old lynch mob in to the digital era. fun times. gov officials should not have to operate in fear of assassination.
yet. it is interesting that this is exactly what the us gov is doing with its enemies, building hit lists, ranking them, and executing.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'll laugh if the entire site is a honeypot designed to identify people willing to crowdfund the assassination of world leaders.
We found the missing part of the '???' belonging to this meme.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Summary appears to be ripped verbatim from zerohedge. Or did it originate somewhere else? It'd be nice if people would cite their sources.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-18/dark-web-exposes-75000-bitcoin-based-bounty-bernankes-assassination
Why do I think the home server for this assassination market is located at the CIA headquarters?
But compared to these people, the worst in American government are like boy scouts
Not really. One example you gave was "anyone from a Mexican drug cartel". But mexican drug cartels are only dangerous because drugs are illegal. Those who vote to keep drugs illegal are just as responsible for those deaths as the cartels are. Further, they're responsible for every death caused by impure drugs, or drugs of unknown concentration.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Or it's simply a honeypot.
Or some bizarre ultra-libertarian performance art.
Still wouldn't be as bizarre or outlandish as the time in 2006 that Loyalist Michael Stone attempted to enter the Stormont Assembly in Northern Ireland and assassinate the leaders of Sinn Fein, then claimed that it was "performance art".
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This whole Bitcoin thing and everything associated with it is an ongoing circus made up of different kinds of idiots. Idiots who don't understand that Bitcoin is the most non-anonymous "currency" in existence. Idiots who don't understand that Bitcoin is completely unusable as any kind of legitimate business transaction because the value fluctuates wildly. Idiots who don't understand that the Internet is completely non-anonymous. Idiots who don't understand economics 101.
Bitcoin, to me at least, is a lot like Sarah Palin: Unbelievably stupid and something nobody should waste time with, but like a car wreck, something we can't stop watching in utter disbelief.
I don't respond to AC's.
The problem with your list, is that without exception, every one of them has a well-established and documented reputation for hunting down and killing those who target them for assassination.
So please! By all means, go for it. I'd ask you to tell us how it went, but somehow, I don't think we'll need you to tell us?
We'll find what's left of you on the 6-o-clock news.
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For every assassination bounty hosted they should also host a corresponding anti-assassination bounty. The assassin would be paid the net pro-assassination value, that is, the difference between the two bounties, and the bounty hosting site would keep the remainder. For opposing interests of equal magnitude in a bidding war this would be hugely profitable for the bounty hosting site and also result in nobody actually getting assassinated. It would also be more equitable because it represents the opinions of both pro-assassination and anti-assassination sides, not just the pro-assassination side.
Though seriously, the entire subject is revolting. Almost every American, love Obama or hate Obama, love Bush or hate Bush, agrees that they do not want their President to be assassinated. Despite disagreements in American politics, there are essential fundamental core values which unite us all, and that we do not assassinate our leaders is one of them.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
1) Create anonymous crowd funding website for dodgy activity people won't want to own up to (out of fear, like drug or murder prosecution). ...
2) Have people give you money.
3) Shut down site and pocket money.
Profit!
where you can find people willing to do mercenary work
I suspect that up to half of them are bogus, and the other half are likely scams. What's left is probably well out of Interpol jurisdiction, let alone that of the FBI (or RCMP, or {insert European national police force here} ), since you're probably going to do it in the borders of some craphole nation already torn asunder by civil war or rebellion.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yes, it fact cash can.
I still hold the ultimately electronic cash will fail do to the ease and power of attacks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suspect that many governments really want to get rid of cash but know they can't get away with it just yet.
So they tighten the screws on large scale cash users by doing things like requiring the banks to report large cash transactions and limiting the size of the largest banknotes printed. Oh and they don't link this to inflation so the "real value" of the largest transaction you can easilly make with cash gradually declines.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yeah cool story bro... I'll side with OP. Last time I checked, European banking interests weren't all that solvent thanks to the dithering of the EU. Plus, an economy based on debt has done far more for the general good of humanity than an economy based on produced net assets ever has. There's a very good reason that the Dutch and the English eventually bested the French in the 1700's.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
You take your last 10 years of your pitiful understanding of the history and shove it up your butthole, while the rest of us recognize hundreds of years of European banking interests subverting the liberty of every nation on earth.
Translation: it's the Jews!!!
Reminds me of the movie "Shooter"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822854/quotes
First quote...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Not only that, but even if we take the deaths and horrors the US government is directly responsible for, by actions which are violent in nature (so I'm excluding both inaction and disastrous economic measures, for the purposes of this comparion). they beat the mexican cartels pretty easily. Look at the number of dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at the US prision system: almost 1% of its population is behind bars - that's more than 2 million people. Working people, producing armaments and other cheap goods. It's institutionalized captivity and slavery. The mexican cartels are showy, yes, and maybe inspire more horror, but that's only if you don't take scale into consideration.
Well, with 12 bullets in his body, it's no surprise they found him dead.
Now if you had said they found him practicing shots on goal with 12 bullets in his body, now that would be surprising.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
hunting down and killing those who target them for assassination.
So don't miss. Put enough money on the table and some real pros might be attracted to the contract.
As far as those funding the operation: That's what BitCoin/Crowdfunding is for. Good luck finding the responsible parties.
Have gnu, will travel.
Money doesn't go "into" the stock market. It goes through the stock market and ends up in the hands of whomever you bought the shares from. That's a critical distinction that causes serious trouble for your theory.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Woohoo! Where do I donate? Hey NSA, mark my file as "promotes assassination, subversive, needs to be watched closely."
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
How about this one-word refutation-by-example: Prohibition.
You aren't right, and you're an asshole, too.
I thought of it as soon as I saw the headline. Thanks for posting a link!
You mean like cash? Cash needs to be regulated so people can't buy illegal drugs or guns or child soldiers or slaves with it.
Jeez people.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'd be interested in seeing the internal list of assassinations ordered by each Putin and Obama and see who wins that one.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Straw man*. Just because I said the US goverment is arguably worse does not mean I'm saying other criminals are innocent or any less bad. This isn't a sports match, one "side" doesn't have to "win". And we'll have to agree to disagree on the whole "Afghanistan was necessary" thing and on the classification of what the American military did. Their actions weren't only "criminal negligence", they were straight up war crimes by definition.
*That would be misrepresenting some else's argument, like you did to mine. I did not even allude to any given argument, just made a subjective analytical comparison.
At this time, it's a cute idea, but not newsworthy unless you want to advertise the service.
Post an article when they have paid out the first bounty.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cash is regulated too - try to deposit $1000.00 or more in one shot at your local bank, you'll see what I mean.
WTF do Anarchists have to do with this?
OK, it's Forbes and they belong to the kind of idiots who call "liberal" to anything that doesn't carry a huge cross on his neck and owns a Tea Party affiliation card... but mates, moderate yourself.
Anarchists just don't give a shit
-- 29A the number of the Beast
You are trying to say the U.S. government did something bad when the U.S. government has nothing to do with what the cartels do. I'd say that was deflecting the argument.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Who said we need banks to use cash? Why do you think criminals keep it in cash form? Come on.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)