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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 think I'm going to have a heart attack and DIE from that surprise.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
... there is no honor among thieves.
People dealing in illegal goods on a site that specialized in black market goods were trusting a 3rd party to hang on to all of their money?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You get up with fleas
It's no longer funny, it's hilarious. It's hilarious that people still trust an untraceable, pseudoanonymous bit of data that's worth real money to organizations that have no bigger entity breathing down their necks.
I have no love for big banks, but at least in the United States, the FDIC and NCUA do a good job of regulating the banks and credit unions such that the bank cannot simply steal your money wholesale and get away with it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Look at it from the point of view of the people running these markets. They have a finite amount of time before the FBI or the NSA crack them like pistachios. The longer they operate the more people will learn who they are. So unless the illegal market is so insanely profitable for them that they can buy sanctuary someplace where the long arm of the law wont reach, betraying the people using the market is just optimal strategy.
The solution to an escrow company absconding with the money in escrow is a tertiary risk market of insured backers.
I support appropriate regulation as much as you do, but I have to point out that if the government wasn't fighting the drug trade they would be free to openly sell the risk. In this case blaming the free market is inappropriate.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
How is a black market a "free market"? How can you have any more government "regulation" beyond completely forbidden?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"an online black market that sells everything contraband — from marijuana, heroin and ecstasy to stolen identities and malicious hacking services"
And people are actually surprised that they poofed with 12 million in bitcoins? Seriously?
I think a lot of these problems are that it was an illegal market with people probably using a properly secured TOR connection so that they couldn't be traced. They got bored of what they were doing and said "HOLY SHIT, there's 12 million here, untraceable" so instead of the normal walk away, they took the money and walked away. You are going to run into this in any illegal venture, with untraceable currency, where the operator is unknown. Anyone shocked by this needs to give their head a shake. Don't drop a crap ton of money, to someone you don't know, who has no real incentive to help you out. You don't even need a regulatory body, just someone you can hold accountable. You are never going to get someone to hold accountable in a market like that because, well they will be held legally accountable as well.
Hilarious indeed.
... so far, and there's not one Bitcoin defender.
When Mt. Gox went down, the worshipers were everywhere. I know, because I tangled with them then.
Where did those loopies go?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If the government was not fighting drugs, sites like this would probably just change which black market commodities they were involved with. That is not to say I agree with prohibition, but I think in this case it would not matter one way or the other since it was the profit motive of illegal trades that drew people in.
That tends to be the problem with pure free market corrections. What is good for the market and what is good for individuals in advantageous positions often to not align, with aggregate self interest often running contrary to what is good for almost everyone.
Unfortunately, escrow sites like this are one of the proposed solutions to other issues involved with anonymous trades. So there is a bit of a rock and hard place here.
Black markets are often considered models of completely free markets because the government regulation is so uniform. "Completely forbidden" means that, so long as you can manage to actually exist, the market mechanics are completely free. No external barriers to competition and whatever tactics work: theft, intimidation, violence, offering a better product.
Users are not gullible if they realize there is a risk of losing their money, and assess that their profit is worth this risk, as AC explained above.
Trade illegal black market items with cash transactions out of a trunk is also risky, and doing it with paypal or credit card can be traced by the authorities. Using bitcoin may still be the most prudent choice, even if it means that there's a chance you'll lose some of your money.
The bitcoins are secure in the accounts they were transmitted to.
Make sure you are really untraceable though. Making enemies with a bunch of criminals may not be the smartest move.
Fortunately, bitcoin allows multi-signature escrow. That permits the escrow service to decide who gets the bitcoins (buyer or seller), but doesn't let them run off with them. It's not perfect, as it can't prevent collusion between escrow agent and either party against the other party, but it does prevent the simpler forms of "just run off with the money". Why it isn't in more widespread use yet, I have no idea.
You missed his point. His point was that something will always be prohibited and they'll just move into selling that instead. It doesn't have to be drugs. Explosives and other forms of weaponry come to mind as items that are either outright banned or at least highly regulated in most of the World. Are you going to legalize and deregulate them too? Laissez faire for C-4? It would make the Fourth of July a lot more enjoyable but other than that I'm not certain it's a good idea.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Having no rules is not a free market. A free market consists of the following:
1. Freedom to try. (bring a new or competing product to the market)
2. Freedom to buy.
3. The Freedom to sell.
4. The Freedom to fail (no member of the market is too big to fail.)
Of course there must also be a morality that exists in the market that at the bare minimum includes honesty. You aren't free to buy and sell if you don't trust who you are buying and selling from.
There must also be a lack of force on both the sellers and buyers. You do not have the freedom to sell if you are forced to sell at a certain price, nor do you have the freedom to buy if you are forced to buy.
In absence of this morality of some individuals a government of some sort must regulate to protect the market from those that would perpetuate fraud. That regulation must be in ensuring that force, fraud, and monopoly doesn't exist in the market all of which destroy a free market.
For more information see: The Making of America by W. Cleon Skousen p. 203-210
Why the hell are you using an exchange at all? Worried someone will mug you and steal your cryptographic key? News flash - they can steal your exchange credentials just as easily.
One of the wonderful things about Bitcoin is it completely eliminates the need for any trusted third parties to facilitate completely secure remote money transfers, even internationally. About the only "legitimate" purpose for involving a third party are situations where the block-chain confirmation delay is unacceptably long (in-person purchases), where you're trying to ensure true anonymity of transfers rather than only pseudonymity (aka money laundering), and escrow services. And in all three cases it really behooves you to ensure that the third party isn't grossly over-leveraging their trustworthiness, and/or minimize the time that they're holding your wealth - regardless of whether you're dealing in bitcoins or dollars.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
NOBODY that's a proponent of free markets considers Black Markets to be models. Find where Menger or von Mises, or Hayek or Rothbard or Rand considered the black market to be something to emulate - a model, so to speak, of Free Markets.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You missed his point. His point was that something will always be prohibited and they'll just move into selling that instead. It doesn't have to be drugs.
For this high of a profit potential, yes, it pretty much does have to be drugs.
There just isn't that much domestic demand for online sale of things like explosives and firearms. Dealers of any quantity would likely sell them overseas. Hell, as far as I know the biggest illegal domestic gun dealer in the U.S in recent decades was the Federal government itself in that outrageous Fast and Furious screwup. For which nobody has gone to jail, as I recall. Why is Eric Holder still walking around outside of jail?
Likewise for other products. What else are you going to sell? Poison? Brass knuckles? Those are already available (in most states, AFAIK) in legitimate retail outlets.
Lots of illegal things can be sold. But high demand + high prices? Drugs are pretty much it domestically.
Because enough people haven't been bitten by this exact scenario yet for people to realize it's a basic requirement of any mediated market. Black and grey markets will likely be the last place such protections will pop up because the people populating the market are not bitcoin sophisticates, but rather fall largely into the criminals and drug aficionados categories.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
It may be that they determined that they were too high profile now and they dropped everything and ran.
It's about the smartest thing they could do under the circumstances, given that at a certain point, enough heat would be on them that they'd get caught. If I were them, as soon as Silk Road went tits up, I'd have started planning my departure from the market. Becoming the heir apparent to Silk Road also means they become the next target too.
It is quite likely their hope now is that it all cools off and they get away with what they've taken in. As soon as someone bigger appears, the law is going to start looking for today's bigger name.
Of course... the "vendors" on Evolution are not exactly nice people. They're hackers and drug and arms dealers. The late proprietors of this service had better hope that the vendors aren't aware of who they are, or they're going to end up with a pair of cement shoes.