Slashdot Mirror
Evolution Market's Admins Are Gone, Along With $12M In Bitcoin
tsu doh nimh writes: The Evolution Market, an online black market that sells everything contraband — from marijuana, heroin and ecstasy to stolen identities and malicious hacking services — appears to have vanished in the last 24 hours with little warning. Much to the chagrin of countless merchants hawking their wares in the underground market, the curators of the project have reportedly absconded with the community's bitcoins — a stash that some Evolution merchants reckon is worth more than USD $12 million.
I doubt _all their money_. I think the site collects transactions and holds on to them for escrow until both parties are satisfied. So probably whatever the total current amount in escrow was what was taken.
Well, this is why you should keep your own bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin theft isn't a problem with bitcoin itself. It's a problem with where you're keeping your bitcoins.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Because bitcoins are 100% traceable and everybody can calculate what everybody else has at all times. From there, if you know what account is holding all the coins, you multiply bitcoins times the current price of bitcoins.
it's free as in you have no rules.
it's non-free as in you have no freedom to publish your identity nor does the other party publish his, so no trust relations can be created based on long term reputation.
and well, free market will sort itself out, they figured out that running with the money was better business. maybe it was, maybe not, just another company strategy.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Exactly - it is the worse case of naivety that I think I've ever seen. "Ooh, I'm so hip because I'm anti-establishment! What have they done for me?" followed by "hey, wadda mean I can't trust faceless, anonymous, more-or-less untrackable strangers?". I mean, seriously, how many times are people going to have to get ripped off by these "anonymous, anti-establishment" ploys before people wake up? Apparently, 12,000,000 more times is still not enough.
This is the classic throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, the real, regulated currencies are not perfect, but they are a damn sight better than trying to trust faceless, untrackable strangers. It is the inherent potential for crime from strangers that led to the whole infrastructure around real currencies.
But I'm just spitting into the wind here. People would rather be anti-establishment hipsters than actually pay attention to history and facts. I'd laugh at the people being ripped off except for the fact that it is rewarding the people who make life worse for the rest of us.
None of the people who actually use the black markets are surprised. It's a gamble; 9/10 times I get military grade shit, 1/10 i lose money. To me it's acceptable. Nobody points a gun at my head on the Internets, only a bunch of dickheads at Slashdot that think we are all gullible. Clueless...
If the government wasn't fighting some drugs the users would simply buy them from their local booze store with little if any risk to anyone.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Because bitcoin is secure against government seizure, and it's secure against theft. That is, barring the idiocy of letting someone hold your coins for you. However, I expect these same folks fall prey to wallet inspectors.
Because bitcoin is secure against local fiat hyperinflation. Bitcoin, over the past few months, has actually been more stable than my home currency ($CDN), which has lost 30% of its value in that time.
Because I can bring more than $10,000 of bitcoin into any country I like without needing to fill out forms or risk the government taking a cut of it if I forget.
Because microtransactions are cheap, and big transactions are also cheap.
Because it works just like cash. As a merchant, when you have your bitcoin, Visa won't call you next week and take the money from your account because the payment turned out to be fake. That can never happen with bitcoin.
Because I'm tired of carrying a pocketful of change to put in vending machines, and a walletful of paper bills to pay for things. I'm equally tired of giving the debit company a major cut of every small purchase every time I decide I don't want to do this, or a credit company a major cut of every large purchase.
But yes, one of the big reasons is fuck government, nobody wants to have their money seized because they are rich enough to afford a large cash holiday. But the bigger reason is to have a currency that you can treat like cash, that is secure like cash, but can work on the internet, just like cash.
And, just like cash, when your money is stolen because you left it out in the open, nobody is going to cry for you. Life sucks, move on.
What I don't get is why people blame bitcoin. Did you blame the insecurity of the US dollar when Bernie Madoff conned people out of $65B. Yeah, that's right, $65 BILLION, not $12 million.