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Bitcoin Won't Be the Dark Web's Top Cryptocurrency For Long (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the other-side-of-the-coin dept.

Bitcoin has essentially become the poster child for cryptocurrencies, and that's a problem for cybercriminals dealing on the dark web. From a report: Researchers from Recorded Future, a threat intelligence company, looked through 150 of the dark web's top marketplaces and forums and found that bitcoin's boom is driving shady characters away from the cryptocurrency. The rise of bitcoin has brought cryptocurrency -- digital alternatives to government-issued money -- to the mainstream, enticing people who are looking to get rich quick. Last December, bitcoin hit its all-time high at nearly $20,000, but it has since slumped and as of Thursday is trading at a little over the $8,000 mark. But before it was a massive investment that millionaires bought, it was the dark web's currency of choice, thanks to its decentralized and anonymous structure.

42 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by ZiakII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure it has nothing to do with transaction fee costing anywhere from $5 to $50 in the past 3 months.

    1. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by higuita · · Score: 2

      THIS!!

      also, with the value always climbing, everyone wanted to keep the bitcoins for a few more weeks, so they value would increase... now they do not want to sell because they are probably losing money and spend it is still to expensive

      --
      Higuita
    2. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by turbotalon · · Score: 1

      Sorry, transaction fees are currently in the $1 range.

      --

      I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

    3. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Exactly. When you're doing Dark Web stuff $50 non negligible amount of money. You could pay a crackhead to bumrape someone for that, or buy some heroin or get a Saturday night special. Or half to two thirds of a pony.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    4. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by mukinrestak · · Score: 1

      My last one just yesterday was closer to $2.50, so no, they aren't.

    5. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Which is more than any other crypto-currency, and it fluctuates pretty wildly.

    6. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by Artemis3 · · Score: 1

      Funny you made that comment just when the fees went back down, and soon Lighning.Network will put a definitive end to the problem.

      Unlike other coins (and fiat), Bitcoin actually leaves more traces for authorities to track. Darkcoin (renamed Dash) and a few others are trying to address that.

      These could be important if a government, such as China, becomes hostile to cryptocurrencies.

      --
      Artix
      Your Linux, your init.
    7. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by guyniraxn · · Score: 1

      As mentioned in the FA.

    8. Re:Nothing to do with transaction fee.. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      XPP - Partial Pony has been volatile recently.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Not Anonymous by XXongo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "...the dark web's currency of choice, thanks to its decentralized and anonymous structure."

    Decentralized, yes, anonymous... not quite so much.

    Every single transaction of bitcoin is recorded, and the record stored in the blockchain. It's "anonymous" nature relies on you keeping your bitcoin wallet isolated from your identity. Which may be possible. Or, with enough sorting through transactions and linking transactions to actual individuals, may not be.

    1. Re:Not Anonymous by MikeDataLink · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or, with enough sorting through transactions and linking transactions to actual individuals, may not be.

      THIS! People think cryptocurrency is a way to trade money secretly and anonymously. And it can be, but the fact remains that if you use the same wallet over and over and don't take precautions to remain secret you will be found.

      This is no different that the drug dealer who gets caught by the IRS for owning 20 Ferrari's and only reporting 10K of income. It takes work to remain anonymous and launder your money.

      --
      Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
    2. Re:Not Anonymous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      With all the money government intel and law-enforcement agencies are putting into connecting the dots, Bitcoin is a big honking trap. It not just help finds scofflaws, but proving that someone did a transaction by showing how secure the blockchain is, makes convictions inevitable.

      This makes me wonder who Satoshi was. The fact that early adopters received a lot of perks (cash for transactions, ease of mining without specialized hardware), while the people coming in have a substational equipment and energy investment to show any return. This, plus that all transactions are forever there and public for anyone to peruse.

      It makes Bitcoin look like both a Ponzi scheme, as well as a nice trap for some LEO to step in and do a lot of mass arrests when the time is right.

    3. Re:Not Anonymous by mysidia · · Score: 2

      And it can be, but the fact remains that if you use the same wallet over and over and don't take precautions to remain secret you will be found.

      Yeah.... that's what I expect will eventually drive certain groups to coins such as AEON and MONERO; which conceals what the address is that receives coins; You need a wallet's View-Key to even see what the balance of a particular wallet is..... whereas with Bitcoin; you can see all the transactions related to any wallet, and you can see the balance of any wallet -- It's also become so popular that some Web-based services have emerged where you can simply search a specified Wallet ID and see its balance PLUS all the transactions that sent coin value to that wallet ID.

    4. Re:Not Anonymous by sdinfoserv · · Score: 1

      I was going to make this same point, but you beat me to it... It does however beg the question, if every single illegal transaction is track able (which it is via blockchain) , and authorities know exactly where illicit proceeds are sitting, ie, which wallet, why are cyber criminals still not in jail?

    5. Re:Not Anonymous by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      They can trace the money, but may not be able to tie it to a specific person. All they know is that this address (who we think is bob) paid this address (that is associated with EliteHackor) on this date.

    6. Re:Not Anonymous by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      Re 'why are cyber criminals still not in jail?"
      None of the really smart law enforcement want to tell the other side or their own corrupt staff the "how" of collect it all.
      Law enforcement like to tell the media that they gave a bad person a million US$ and watched the money move around the bad banking world.
      Not that collect it all had the crypto to all their banks in real time for the past decades.
      Governments like to map out all the bad people, see who has skills, who is evil, who is political, who is greedy, sloppy.
      The clandestine services might like to turn some into support for their new "freedom fighters" i.e. another Iran Contra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–Contra_affair.
      Once a group has the support of the US clandestine services, no "cyber criminals" in that group get investigated, none go to jail while the US mission to support some "freedom fighters" is productive.

      The other aspect is that US and UK law enforcement cannot trust their own investigators not to talk/sell information to lawyers, human rights groups, politicians, the media, criminals, their cult, their faith, as a dual citizen be totally loyal to another nation.
      Too many bad people have been given security clearances in the police, gov, mil, security services to allow for "illicit proceeds" to be tracked without such efforts been discovered and methods sold/goven away to the very people been investigated. The police and mil in many once secure nations are now full of staff with political consideration and staff that have advanced under "political correctness". They are not loyal, criminal or will always support another faith, a criminal group, another nation.
      Such staff with clearances cant be trusted not to report back to their cult, faith. another government, criminals.
      So few in the police, mil, clandestine services really what to show what ability they have, even to law enforcement as generations of security cleared staff cant be trusted. The politics of an agency head has reduced the security clearance level to some political reward that is handed out to political party members.
      Bad political people have had total US law enforcement oversight in the USA for decades only due to politcal party considerations.
      Is the US gov doing what it did to the phone system to blockchain? Yes but they don't want the world to know what the police can do and stop interesting people trusting traceable blockchains.
      "U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades" (April 7, 2015)
      https://www.usatoday.com/story...
      Some effort was put into voice prints, phone collect it all. The same went into blockchain.
      The NSA and GCHQ are watching. If for example some Irish groups spin up US funding for Irish politics the SAS will be ready to for such transactions.
      Until then its just all about collect it all, the over time, the new upgrades to the security services, lots of US/UK contractors who see money on the table.
      Nobody wants to tell the bad people they are all been watched 24/7 and that their banking crypto to and from the blockchain is junk.blockchain Let the bad people keep on trusting their banks and making crypto mistakes, their criminal networks just become more visible to investigations.
      Why did so many IMSI-catcher like systems get used? Police cant trust telco workers, the legal system not to give away their work to the bad people.
      Its the same with banking crypto, blockchain tracking. Its been used to track people, but nobody has to know about it.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    7. Re:Not Anonymous by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Probably for the same reason why my friend in LE ends up grabbing some porn addict who has 30 year old CP on his hard drive instead of going after the guys actually making money off it, because they are in dontgiveafuckistan where its easy to bribe the local cops?

      You have to remember there is still a LOT of places in this world where things we would find the most vile and repulsive is totally acceptable if you have money and/or the right connections. Hell look up "child porn confession" on wikileaks some time and you'll find an article written by an actual CP producer where he brags about just how easy it is when you are making millions in a country where the average yearly income is less than 10k, he can just buy anybody he wants, cops, judges, and I bet its even easier than it is for the drug lords as they aren't having gang wars and shooting the place up every other week.

      So it doesn't really do them any good if the one at the top of the ladder is in some place its gonna take an international incident to get their hands on to know who it is, easier to grab the small fish living in countries that play ball.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  3. Clearly a shill for Dogecoin by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Funny

    >> Bitcoin Won't Be the Dark Web's Top Cryptocurrency For Long

    Clearly, the author is a shill for Dogecoin.

    1. Re:Clearly a shill for Dogecoin by Smidge204 · · Score: 1

      Laugh all you want, but Dogecoin has been a consistent performer for years now.

      =Smidge=

  4. bitcoin always sucked by NynexNinja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time looking into crypto-currencies would know that Bitcoin is the most traceable, least anonymous, highest priced, transaction fees are super high, half the time it takes multiple hours for the transaction to go through, if at all. Anyone who wants real anonymous transactions would think about using Monero, or something like it.

    1. Re:bitcoin always sucked by mentil · · Score: 1

      Monero may have an encrypted blockchain, but its transaction fees are nearly as ridiculous as Bitcoin's.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  5. Markets are crashing, tulip farms burning by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Look, you're going to be regulated.

    In China they're executing bitcoin traders.

    It's a thing.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:Markets are crashing, tulip farms burning by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

      I checked, it's not a thing.

      I could find no mention of any executions.
      http://fortune.com/2018/01/17/...

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    2. Re:Markets are crashing, tulip farms burning by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      The most amazing thing is you don't realize the non-statist people you idolize are the worst statists ever.

      You'll learn.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    3. Re:Markets are crashing, tulip farms burning by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Ah I was waiting for that tulip comment. Please explain how similar tulip bulbs and bitcoins are.

      I hear there's a newsletter you can subscribe to.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  6. The good ole days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When the REAL internet commerce was pr0nz collections!

  7. Don't Worry Dark Webbers! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    The price of Bitcoin is less than 1/2 of what it was at the beginning of the year. And falling. At this rate, it will soon be cheap enough for you to use, once again, to pay for heroin, weapons, human slaves and contract murders. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure you'll be OK using personal checks..

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Don't Worry Dark Webbers! by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Still double what it was six months ago.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    2. Re:Don't Worry Dark Webbers! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Still double what it was six months ago.

      Yeah, but you bought it around Christmas.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Don't Worry Dark Webbers! by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      100% of the time if someone claims they are a hitman it really means they are a cop.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  8. Stop misleading people! by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 2

    thanks to its decentralized and anonymous structure.

    Inaccurate. It's the exact opposite of anonymous. Every transaction is recorded, from the beginning of bitcoin's existence.

  9. Only one answer... by internet-redstar · · Score: 4, Funny

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:Only one answer... by rwyoder · · Score: 1

      That was *great*!!!
      ROTFL!!!

    2. Re:Only one answer... by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Basic to asic, I liked his comp, with "two fans like a Charger game!"

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  10. All cryptocurrency ultimately in same boat... by Junta · · Score: 1

    Sure, people can identify technical flaws/merits of different cryptocurrency, but when all is said and done, the fate of all of them is tied together.

    If Bitcoin ultimately fails, it'll bring the whole decentralized cryptocurrency concept with it. The non-technical aspects are more relevant to a currency and all the cryptocurrencies are approximately the same on that front: not vaguely representative of anything concrete nor backed by any organization. Sadly, the consensus of the people is fickle and lacks the stability to base a currency on.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  11. Monero by ArchieBunker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Maybe you should read up on Monero. It was designed to be anonymous.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  12. Currency by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Currency? I thought it was gamb... I mean, investing?!

  13. Bitcoin isn't the wave of the future. by shellster_dude · · Score: 1

    Bitcoin should be lauded for what it is/was. It was the first crypto-currency. It created a paradigm. It has too many problems to remain the crypto-currency of the future. It is not truly anonymous, something that Monero and to a lesser extent, ZCash have solved. It chokes under large transaction volumes and has high transaction costs. It has no way to easily be converted to proof-of-stake in the future, once enough mining has been completed. For all of these reasons, it is unlikely to remain king. All of these problems have either been solved, or at least significantly improved upon by more recent crypto-currencies. To the extent that I'm betting, I'm betting on Monero. Ethereum also has a lot of positives, but I think the combination of the community not honoring all transactions and the fact that the programming mechanism has proven to be devilishly hard to implement without major mistakes means that it too will be replaced with a better iteration at some point.

    1. Re:Bitcoin isn't the wave of the future. by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      It has no way to easily be converted to proof-of-stake in the future, once enough mining has been completed

      Bitcoin is proof of work, and will remain so. New bitcoin production will end one day, but mining will not - the miners will switch from creating bitcoins to locking the blockchain.

      Where do you think the transaction fees go? They don't disappear - they simply go to the miners who lock the block in, and more is made now on transaction fees than on making new bitcoin. It's how the network is supposed to operate - after all the bitcoin is mined, you get paid in transaction fees. The more you pay, the more likely you're going to be in the current blockchain block.

  14. Pseudonymous NOT Anonymous by turbotalon · · Score: 1

    Please, please stop calling Bitcoin 'anonymous'. It is the exact opposite of anonymous, as every single transaction can be tracked. It is pseudonymous because each transaction can be tracked to infinity, but cannot be linked with a real-life person until one in the chain is known.

    --

    I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

  15. Bitcoin was designed for anonymity not value by maxcelcat · · Score: 1

    As I recall from back when Bitcoin was created, it's point was to allow anonymous transactions. The stupidly large increases in prices and the wild fluctuations are totally counter to it's intended role.

  16. Re:Blockchain tracking by fabriciom · · Score: 1

    There are cases in the USA where the FBI has traced the transactions in the blockchain wallet to the bitcoin exchange. Thus tracing the criminal from say a dark market to his actual data in the exchange account information.