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Analyzing Silk Road 2.0

An anonymous reader writes: After a recent article about breaking the CAPTCHA on the latest incarnation of Silk Road (the darknet-enabled drug market place), Darryl Lau decided to investigate exactly what narcotics people were buying and selling online. He found roughly 13,000 separate listings. Some sellers identify the country they're in, and the top six are the U.S., Australia, England, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Canada. The site also has a bunch of product reviews. If you assume that each review comes from a sale, and multiply that by the listed prices, reviewed items alone represent $20 million worth of business. Lau also has some interesting charts, graphs, and assorted stats. MDMA is the most listed and reviewed drug, and sellers are offering it in quantities of up to a kilogram at a time. The average price for the top 1000 items is $236. Prescription drugs represent a huge portion of the total listings, though no individual prescription drugs have high volume on their own.

68 comments

  1. mmmm drugs by Nyder · · Score: 3, Funny

    nm, i'm stoo stoned to remember what I was going to post.

    --
    Be seeing you...
    1. Re:mmmm drugs by flyneye · · Score: 2

      They say my chocolate chip cookies are addictive.
      Who will bit $10 a dozen?
      Come on man, you know you want them.
      I can hook you up.

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
  2. Average price? by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 0

    236 dollars buys you what? A boatload of cocain? One MDMA pill? That's no way to get any relevant information out of research.

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
    1. Re:Average price? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go and check it yourself, here is an instruction silkroaddrugs.org

    2. Re:Average price? by Thanshin · · Score: 1

      There's is a bit on information to extract from that:
      "The system isn't being used to only do major, hundreds of dollars, deals."

      And also:
      "On average, buyers are way past the free shipping minimum amount".

    3. Re:Average price? by dowsell · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd suggest that the order size is determined by to competing factors:

            a) Reduce the risk of being caught by making fewer large orders
            b) Reduce the loss when a delivery goes astray by making smaller orders

      Which leads to the unexpected conclusion that when the police get better at intercepting orders and the drug dealers become more reliable the size of the orders increases.

    4. Re:Average price? by flyneye · · Score: 1

      Well, one visit there should have my Chrome browser sending me "High Times" and bong ads for the foreseeable future.....

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
    5. Re:Average price? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      236 dollars buys you what?

      Around 3 to 3.5 grams of MDMA crystals/powder. The therapeutic dosage of MDMA is 125mg.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  3. Let's talk methodology by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 0


    In order for this research to be of any use we need peer reviews as well.

    Can they please go into some detail as to the methodology used to connect to Silk Road 2.0, how they purchased things anonymously and how to tell teh real thing from fakes?

    Also, if they have any idea of how to hide a kilo of say uhm, feathers from the authorities in terms of shipment, delivery and pickup that would be great for uhm, scientific purposes.

    --
    A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
    1. Re:Let's talk methodology by hodet · · Score: 2

      All he did was use a web scraper with some code to handle captchas and to create a new user account when he was logged out by the site. Yes, a complete methodology would be better but it still is interesting to read what he did. I wouldn't quote his research in anything serious, but it is still interesting. Looks like he will be posting the code for is scraper to github, without the SilkRoad parts which I don't really understand why. Take it for what it is I guess, a good collection of observations for watercooler chat.

    2. Re:Let's talk methodology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya, it's an interesting article but hardly qualifies as research. For example: "The site also has a bunch of product reviews. If you assume that each review comes from a sale..."
      That's a terrible assumption to make.

    3. Re: Let's talk methodology by loufoque · · Score: 1

      No it isn't. It's a perfectly fine assumption.
      Maybe you're the only ass that reviews products he didn't buy?

    4. Re:Let's talk methodology by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      You're the reason we can't have nice articles.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    5. Re: Let's talk methodology by St.Creed · · Score: 1

      Given the nature of the site, it's a bit risky to assume the sellers are fine, upstanding businessmen who would never ever dream of helping their reviews a bit...

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  4. Re:Serious question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Errr, go look for yourself. Are you a FBI agent trying to encourage someone to break the law?

  5. And... and... and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some sellers identify the country they're in, and the top six are the U.S., Australia, England, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Canada.

    Hey, you need a few more ands in there...

    1. Re:And... and... and... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      And then?

    2. Re:And... and... and... by iserlohn · · Score: 1

      It's the United Kingdom, or Great Britain if that pleases you. But it's not England. It's like calling all Americans Texans.

    3. Re:And... and... and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... it's not England. It's like calling all Americans Texans.

      Is that like calling US-Americans, Americans?

  6. Dollars mean nothing by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

    The price is only so high because these drugs are illegal. I can't see the page (slashdotted?), but chances are that these drugs would not even be worthwhile to sell if the price was not driven up by making them illegal.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:Dollars mean nothing by Thanshin · · Score: 2

      "No legal supply raises price of goods."

      I don't think that gonna make the news at 11.

    2. Re:Dollars mean nothing by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Aspirin still costs money, even in generic store brands.

      My understanding is that total synthesis of opiates is possible but remains complicated and low yield, so you still need to obtain raw opium for it to be cost effective to produce opiate derivitives like morphine. Factor in a global supply chain, FDA-certified production and the price you pay at the pharmacy for generic oxycodone is probably priced accurately.

      If it was available retail I would probably expect raw material excise taxes and consumption taxes to double the current pharmacy pricing.

      In theory pot should be cheap like most agricultural commodities if produced at industrial scale but AFAIK in Colorado it remains curiously expensive. Not sure if this is due to taxes, the legal-but-not-federally legal status that results in all kinds of extra transaction costs for businesses involved in its production and sale or due to the demand and associated costs with producing many varities of a premium product through "artisinal" production methods.

    3. Re:Dollars mean nothing by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

      No, but dollars don't say anything. Weight or volume or things like "enough to ensure world peace by getting each soldier world-wide high for 20 years" are more descriptive.

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    4. Re:Dollars mean nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *Or because the for-profit companies in Colorado want to make as much money as possible and will work together to keep prices as high as they can...

    5. Re:Dollars mean nothing by misexistentialist · · Score: 1

      Colorado can't be allowed to be a supplier to other states' black markets so the price is controlled. The pharmacy system also has artificially high prices (see licensed pill counters paid over $100,000 and pricing that can vary by a 1000%)

    6. Re:Dollars mean nothing by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 2

      I think it's the latter. While marijuana production and even growing your own is legal under state law, it's still heavily regulated -- but much less so than it was before legalization.

    7. Re:Dollars mean nothing by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      work together to keep prices as high as they can...

      I see what you did there.

    8. Re:Dollars mean nothing by swb · · Score: 1

      I had orthopedic surgery last winter and I was paying like $13 for forty 5 mg oxycodone pills. It's hard to see that price getting too much lower regardless of who counts them.

      Think about it -- generic oxycodone is made where? India? There's probably zero intellectual property licensing involved, labor costs are low and regulation probably at the minimum required to import it. It's geographically close to the raw materials. High health care costs in the US mean that marketing for a generic, common medicine are also near zero as pharmacy wholesalers and insurance companies probably are always scouring the market for ever-cheaper suppliers. And you're not imposing punitive taxation on it like cigarettes or liquor, either.

      My guess is that the opioid supply chain (farm-to-table, if you will) probably has a bunch of places where it's just not elastic enough to meet the economies of scale required to push the price lower than that, especially if you factor in some kind of increase in demand in some kind of hypothetical retail sales environment. And once you assume some kind of looser retail sales environment you have to factor in costs for marketing, etc, which will contribute to the price, too.

      And that kind of a retail environment seems pretty unlikely, probably the closest you would come is some kind of highly regulated environment where the overhead costs of regulation plus punitive taxation would keep the costs higher even if greater production was brought online.

    9. Re:Dollars mean nothing by swb · · Score: 1

      It wouldn't surprise me if the regulations were somehow structured to hinder the introduction of a marijuana equivalent of Budweiser, some kind of acceptable but middling quality product that could be sold cheaply in mass quantities.

      I'd guess that there's probably not any active collusion on prices, but some kind of pricing structure that more or less represents production costs and producers and consumers accept as a price floor.

      Black market prices also play a role -- you can charge a legal retail price that's probably even some marginal value above black market prices because you're adding the value of freedom from criminal liability and predictable quality, so in some ways the black market price helps set the legal market price even if the legal market price could be lower.

      I would kind of expect more like cultural collusion, though, where producers see themselves establishing a "connoisseur" market like wine and focus more on varieties and quality than pushing prices lower, much like the craft brewing phenomenon.

    10. Re:Dollars mean nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Opium poppies grow well in a lot of places. I know they grow in California quite easily. Unlike pot, nobody is doing massive surveillance to find them AFAIK. I think if you wanted to grow a small batch and get real pain relief once in a while, you'd get away with it. OTOH, a garden big enough to supply a real hardcore habit might attract too much attention. I'm not sure how much land that would take. My neighbors grew about half a dozen of them, and saved the seeds for making their own poppy-seed baked goods. I've been told that they're only really illegal if you nick them and process the fluid that comes out of the seed pods. That's how the opiates are produced. I seem to recall that some nice OPs were growing in local botanical gardens, totally legal. Funny, it just goes to show how nuts the government is when it comes to pot. It's their obsession, although recently they're trying to recover from it. They're addicts though. I don't trust them. They're totally addicted to the "pot is the devil" industry, and how much do you want to bet they'll be hitting it hard again in a few years?

    11. Re:Dollars mean nothing by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      I had orthopedic surgery last winter and I was paying like $13 for forty 5 mg oxycodone pills.

      That's not the same as saying that 40 5mg pills cost $13 though, that's just the cost to you. The manufacturer's price is higher, and they're getting paid by your insurance company. Sadly, I haven't found any insurance company that will go in with me on Silk Road purchases.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    12. Re:Dollars mean nothing by swb · · Score: 1

      No, that was not the insurance co-pay, that was the cash price. Most pharmacies I've ever used charge the cash price if it is lower than the co-pay.

    13. Re:Dollars mean nothing by swb · · Score: 1

      I think the usable yield is too low for individuals to get much out of it. The numbers vary, but on the low end it's something like 2.4 kg prepared opium per acre of poppies.

      It seems like a lot until you do the math and realize its nearly 20 sq ft. per mg. of prepared opium. My average-sized yard is about 4000 square feet and filling it completely with poppies might yield a quarter kilo of prepared opium. I'm sure someone in a rural area might get away with an acre of it, but even then the labor involved would be huge and it still might seem weird to someone if you were growing an acre of poppies.

  7. What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by advid.net · · Score: 1

    Are the captcha so ineffective?

    He uses OpenCV for pre-process and Tesseract for OCR, and has >90% success for captchas...
    That's great but how do sites counter bots nowdays?

    1. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The captcha generator they used is really old and has been solved for ages. It's not called simple_captcha for nothing. Here's another solution explained in detail: mieko/sr-captcha It's really trivial, you don't need any math or AI to figure it out.

      The short answer is: SR and SR2 captchas aren't alike, but SR2 is just as trivial. SR2 is also probably fully solvable (99%+) without machine learning, as all of its operations are reversible.

      (my emphasis) WTF

    2. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by plover · · Score: 1

      That's great but how do sites counter bots nowdays?

      Bots are like any other parasite. If you have something they need, they arrive, and you have to figure out how to control them. And like controlling parasites, the most effective means is to take away their food source. So sites reduce the value of their site to spammers, black-hat SEOs, etc., by measures such as adding nofollow tags, preventing CSRF, restricting and filtering user uploaded content, and vigilant policing. And CAPTCHAs still help a lot, but as the sophistication of the bot tools is expanded, it's just another measure - not a perfect one.

      There are millions of sites on the web. The idea is that if you make yourself harder to abuse than the next site, the bots might leave you alone in search of easier pickings.

      --
      John
    3. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if you use the best captcha ever, you can still have a script that sends the image to some kid in a 3rd world country to solve for one penny per correct answer. He will be getting maybe $10 a day and will be well off, and you will have 10000 new accounts for 10 bucks.

    4. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And if you don't want to pay a kid, then the next best way to solve captchas is to create a site that serves up some shitty porn images you downloaded from a torrent, and you then ask visitors to solve the captchas to see the next batch of free images. You can do this offline, and take hashes of the images to match them up again later, or if you have enough traffic to your porn site you could probably make it happen in close-to-real time, which would actually be pretty cool.

    5. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One penny per captcha is still a hell of a lot higher than what bitcoin faucets give these days. Let's say an average of 100 satoshi per faucet/captcha, at a current price of around USD$380 per BTC, that means USD$0.00038, or 0.038 cent, or roughly 1/26 of a cent per captcha.

    6. Re:What I've learned: 90% captcha solved by ultranova · · Score: 1

      That's great but how do sites counter bots nowdays?

      Why would Silk Road want to censor Viagra offers?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  8. Re:Spawn of Satan! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > They don't pay any taxes - not federal, state, county, or city!

    This is my big problem with drugs. Just think of all the lovely healthcare the country could buy with that drugs tax.

    > Think of the children!

    I don't think Peado bear is allowed on it.

  9. Re:Spawn of Satan! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Drugs are an evil scourge upon humanity!
    Drugs are destroying the moral fiber of our citizens!

    Yeah right.. I've been hooked on opiates for 15 years now. I work 65 hours a week, I pay my taxes, I keep to myself, and my morals are still intact last time I checked. I do it legally by going to my local Methadone clinic. You see, I love pain killers and I don't want or need help and nobody is going to stop me from taking them.

    I don't blame you for your opinion. You just like many others are the result of years of drugs are evil propaganda spread by the cartels. They do this because legal drugs are bad for business.

  10. Re:Serious question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless you are actually buying drugs I don't think you are breaking any laws.

    If I write here: "Order drugs for $5!" You are not breaking any law by reading it.

  11. Re:Spawn of Satan! by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've been hooked on opiates for 15 years now. [...] and my morals are still intact

    These two things don't go together. You may want to re-evaluate. Get real help and free yourself.

    Different person here. This is in line with my own personal morality and absolutely correct. My life is mine to do with as I please. I am free to do whatever I want whenever I want, provided that the consequences are SOLELY confined to consenting adults (generally that would be just me).

    Anything else is an evil desire to control other people, with the approval you get from your own conscience, by convincing yourself it's for their own good, so you can pat yourself on the back and feel like a good person. The typical lack of reasoning ability, wisdom or long-term thinking in most people today and the general shallow thinking of the popular culture sadly promotes and legitimizes this inability to be satisfied with one's own life while respecting that others will live theirs as they please and realizing that telling people how they should live has never worked in the first place (c.f. Prohibition) so there should not even be a debate about this.

    Someone who cannot responsibly use things (usually due to either a lack of personal maturity and self-knowledge, and/or an inability to deal with one's own life that causes them to reach for drugs as a quick-fix "remedy") has a problem. There are many others who use drugs the same way you might come home from work and drink a beer and stay home. Like Bill Hicks pointed out, it sure is strange the way you never hear about responsible drug users on the news or see them portrayed on shows. That would contradict all the fear propaganda and think-of-the-children rhetoric. Pay attention and you'll notice that the major mass media outlets will generally never contradict either: each other, or anything that faciltiates control. Adult people who are expected to make their own decisions about their own lives in a responsible manner, without being told how to live, absolutely does not facilitate control. Qui bono?

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  12. Slashvertisement by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 2

    This is the first slashvertisement I've seen here that hasn't generated a single complaint! Does seem to indicate that the war on drugs is a losing battle.

    1. Re:Slashvertisement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You didn't notice the other signs that the "war on drugs" was a losing battle?

  13. Re:Spawn of Satan! by jythie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As long as someone is fairly affluent this is not unusual. It is when people close to the poverty line get hooked that you run into problems since so much of their resources go into supporting the addiction as opposed to just taking a chunk out of their disposable income.

  14. MDMA Demand by Scottingham · · Score: 2

    It seems that this is pretty good proof that there is a demand for reputable MDMA. Perhaps the club scene would be safer if there were less mystery powders claiming to be "Molly". If the dosage was known steps could be taken to provide the most fun for the least amount of harm (it sure as hell isn't harmless).

    It's also purportedly good for therapy too. I plan to get some for my parents on their 50th anniversary.

    1. Re:MDMA Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also purportedly good for therapy too. I plan to get some for my parents on their 50th anniversary.

      Might want to get their hearts checked by a doctor first.

    2. Re:MDMA Demand by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      How do you powder molly?

    3. Re:MDMA Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://www.amadeal.co.uk/acatalog/AMAG200%20Heavy%20Duty%20Bench%20Grinder.jpg

    4. Re:MDMA Demand by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      It seems that this is pretty good proof that there is a demand for reputable MDMA.

      The SR vendor you're looking for is Geoffrey Giraffe.

      If the dosage was known steps could be taken to provide the most fun for the least amount of harm (it sure as hell isn't harmless).

      The therapeutic dose is 125mg, with an optional 62.5mg an hour or so in. Note that the additional dose doesn't typically cause any increase in intensity, it just makes it last a little longer. The first dose usually determines the intensity.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  15. Honey Pot. by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

    Of course it is a Honey Pot people .

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    1. Re:Honey Pot. by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      It just attracts idiots. Silk Road is, purportedly, viable now because you can buy things anonymously--over Tor, with Bitcoin.

      And have them shipped to a physical address.

    2. Re:Honey Pot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      yea but when it comes to trusting that mr mailman wont come with mr swat team in tow is the real issue. its hard to trust 2.0 when 1.0 was obviously fubar

    3. Re:Honey Pot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It worked well when I bought some weed. I didn't know anybody in the area so I gave it a shot. It came double vacuum sealed in plastic, inside a nondescript box with no odor whatsoever. The box was prepaid and dropped in a dropoff box. The return address was a legitimate business in the same neighborhood as the shipping origin. No shipping company x-rays packages just for the heck of it- there is simply too much volume. The chances of getting caught as a recreational buyer (ie- reasonable amounts, not purchasing kilograms of drugs) are minuscule, and even if your package should be identified, you can just deny you know anything about it. Not having any prior knowledge to how the package will arrive or who it will be from definitely lends authenticity to a claim of ignorance.

      I would never be a seller on the SR, but being a buyer is pretty safe.

  16. Bullshit ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... usually due to either a lack of personal maturity and self-knowledge, and/or an inability to deal with one's own life that causes them to reach for drugs as a quick-fix "remedy"

    Simplistic answers to complex problems set off the trip (love the play) wires.

    You left out a whole set of parameters both known, and suspected, as contributors of drug addiction/use.

    As one obvious example: Some people are wired for addictive/obsessive/compulsive behavior.

    Sadly, that omission trashed out your whole post.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:Bullshit ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... usually due to either a lack of personal maturity and self-knowledge, and/or an inability to deal with one's own life that causes them to reach for drugs as a quick-fix "remedy"

      As one obvious example: Some people are wired for addictive/obsessive/compulsive behavior.

      Sadly, that omission trashed out your whole post.

      Seems like he addressed it.

    2. Re:Bullshit ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people are wired to masterbate a lot. Quick lets imprison all the chronic masterbators!

    3. Re:Bullshit ... by causality · · Score: 1

      Indeed I did, but people who have invested in their worldviews have this nasty habit of only seeing what they want to see.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  17. Re:Serious question... by St.Creed · · Score: 1

    If you come over to The Netherlands you can buy 'em right in the city center - leaves and everything on 'm. You can draw thea from the plant and use that. And due to all that nice agricultural expertise we even managed to increase the THC count to the level of a harddrug, so I'm pretty sure you're not going to have to concentrate it - it's going to be pretty dangerous if you do that to plants with 18 to 20% THC in the tips already.

     

    --
    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  18. Re:Spawn of Satan! by St.Creed · · Score: 1

    It rather depends on what you get hooked on. If you get hooked on heroine or morphine (which is worse, I've understood), you're only going for the fix after a while, so unless you have a trust fund you will run out of cash due to lack of income.

    --
    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  19. soome buublle by ZdzichuFjutek · · Score: 1

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