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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.
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?
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.
The last few chumps who took shots at US Presidents all lived to talk about it. The Secret Service is a law enforcement organization, not an execution squad, they're under the same obligation as any other LEO to apprehend a suspect alive when possible. Of course, Bitcoin probably doesn't go very far at the Terre Haute prison commissary.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm fairly sure they don't charge agents running a honeypot...
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!
Perhaps they should crowd-fund it to get higher bounties.
Ya, I saw something on Slashdot about that.
I am not a crackpot.
... 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).
Seems to me that the creator of that site is shortsighted in how he or she confirms who the assassin is. Namely, that the assassin has to be able to specify the date of death prior to the death. That task if fairly easy for a large number of ways of committing murder. But not always possible. For instance.
1. Poison
2. Opportunity - Assassin may be in a position where he or she has multiple chances of contact with the target, but is unable to predict exactly when the contact would be suitable for the actual assassination.
Frankly, the motive of the site creator is rather foolish and childish. Given this paragraph in the original article:
Sanjuro's grisly ambitions go beyond raising the funds to bankroll a few political killings. He believes that if Assassination Market can persist and gain enough users, it will eventually enable the assassinations of enough politicians that no one would dare to hold office. He says he intends Assassination Market to destroy "all governments, everywhere."
it seems to me that Sanjuro is advocating world wide anarchy.
I personally, don't like most governments, however total anarchy is worse than the government we currently have. Frankly, we need something to hold in check the various sociopathic assholes that from time to time attack other people. We need public services such as fire, police, sanitation, sewers, water, etc. There's a lot of infrastructure that frankly needs a government. And even well balanced, social people from time to time will disagree with each other. And said disagreements will from time to time get quite acrimonious. Hence the courts.
Frankly, Sanjuro is either a nutcase, or a honeypot. In either case, it would be best to avoid him.
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!
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?
The last few chumps who took shots at US Presidents all lived to talk about it.
Every successful US presidential assassination has resulted in the assassin's death:
Lincoln: The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was tracked down by Union soldiers and killed.
Garfield: The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was executed by hanging.
McKinley: The assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was executed by electric chair.
Kennedy: The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald*, was shot in the Dallas Police Headquarters.
*There are plenty of conspiracy theorists that disagree with this. However, if you're in the "he didn't act alone," but that he was the shooter, he was still killed. If you believe he wasn't the shooter, then whoever was remains unknown and wouldn't have the opportunity to collect their bounty.
Of course, if you do it in another country you might have a chance at survival. For example, the dude who threw a grenade at GWB in the country of Georgia received a life sentence because Georgia (the country) has abolished the death penalty, even though he did kill a Georgian high ranking agent when being apprehended. Of course, if he had been successful the US may have intervened and killed the guy. Either way, at best he would have had to enjoy his bitcoins from a Georgian prison.
So how could you get away with surviving it, yet be known to have done it so you can collect your bitcoins?