Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Perhaps they should crowd-fund it to get higher bounties.
Ya, I saw something on Slashdot about that.
I am not a crackpot.
As well he should. That website's layout is downright criminal.
... 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.