The Silk Road Is Back 261
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Silk Road is rising from the dead. After the FBI seized the deep web's favourite illegal drug market and arrested its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht last month (for, among other things, ordering a hit through his own website), the online-marketplace-cum-libertarian-movement has found a new home and opened for business at 16:20 GMT this afternoon. In the wake of the original Silk Road's closure, everything became a little turbulent for its users. First, they had to get used to not getting high-quality, peer-reviewed drugs delivered direct to their sofas. (Though presumably they didn't stop getting high, instead forced back to the 'mystery mix' street dealers and surly ex-Balkan war criminals who have spent years filling cities with drugs at night.) Some users were pissed off that they'd lost all the Bitcoin wealth they'd amassed, or that paid-for orders would go undelivered, while small-time dealers freaked out about how they suddenly lacked the funds to pay off debts owed to drug sellers higher up the food chain."
Yea, Right! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never seen nor participated in Silk Road. But, you'd have to be an utter moron to participate in the Silk Road "Phoenix"! It is sure to be either an FBI honey pot or a scammer looking to steal BitCoin.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Not really news (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of silk roads have opened up since the original one was raided. Some have taken orders, collected the money and done a runner with it. Some presumably are still operating. Some will be fronts and honeytraps set up by various law enforcement bodies around the world. Some will be real genuine marketplaces. Nobody knows for sure which ones are the genuine ones.
Re:YAY !! (Score:3, Insightful)
People have a product to sell.
Other people desire this product.
Person A sells this product to person B.
This is capitalism. it's not evil. Nobody is directly harmed in this transaction, and both parties got what they wanted. This is a good thing!
note, I said "directly harmed." it is possible somebody may have been indirectly harmed by violence perpetrated by deranged criminals who are involved in the supply chain due to the fact that this activity is currently deemed illegal. note, it's not illegal because it is run by criminals, no it is run by criminals because it is illegal. There's a big difference.
Re:Another bitcoin short-sell opportunity coming (Score:5, Insightful)
HOLY LOLI HONEYPOT EXPLOZION, BATAMAN! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The only thing that would make sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'massive security upgrade' could be that this one isn't run by a goddamn moron....
Re:Another bitcoin short-sell opportunity coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin was at $130ish when Silk Road shut down. Then there was hand waiving about a "crash." It "crashed" all the way to $100.
As I write this it looks like Mt. Gox is $265.
You're whole posit is bullshit.
Re:YAY !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like being illegal does not automatically make something unethical, being illegal but in demand does not automatically make something ethical either.
Weighing the possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be a honeypot, but since everything done through a site like Silk Road is anonymous except receipt of delivery of items, the only users of the site the FBI would catch would be the drug buyers. Sellers, provided they're not using an OS or browser with the vulnerabilities that the FBI has used to de-anonymize TOR users in the past, and provided they don't do something dumb when they mail a package like reveal their identity, are safe. And since when is the FBI interested in going after drug buyers? Typically they only bust such small-time participants in the drug trade to get them to rat on their dealers, but that obviously won't work when your dealer is anonymous.
Or am I missing something here? My understanding was that Silk Road did things entirely through TOR and Bitcoin, meaning that those ends of the transactions are (excepting user stupidity) completely anonymous.
Re:The only thing that would make sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
This. The guy was a multi-millionaire but couldn't be assed to make fake ID cards in-house or separate his identity as Silk Road admin from one he used on the web to promote the site, among many other things. Someone smart behind the wheel would have made it unstoppable.
Re:YAY !! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is capitalism. it's not evil. Nobody is directly harmed in this transaction, and both parties got what they wanted. This is a good thing!
This is debatable, at best. Modern capitalism is theoretically founded in modern economics, which, guess what, uses utilitarian ethics for value. The utility A and B derived from the transaction may or may not offset the utility lost to everybody else. If it doesn't, then the transaction is not efficient, and rational actors should not perform it.
Of course, this is where libertarianism falls flat on its face. Your transaction incurs costs on others, and you are irrational if you do not take those costs into account.
Mod parent up for ridicule. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea, Right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the old saying goes: You follow drugs, you get drug dealers and drug users. You start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna go.
Re:YAY !! (Score:5, Insightful)
There already exists recreational drugs without addiction or health issues... they are also all illegal.
Re:Another bitcoin short-sell opportunity coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, exactly like tulip bulbs, gold or US dollars.
Re:Another bitcoin short-sell opportunity coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin value isn't attached to anything.
Actually, if you understand political-economy, neither do the various fiat currencies we have today. All we have is a shared psychological conditioning that attaches a value to something (pieces of artistic paper) that have no inherent value of their own. When a fiat currency goes bad, you don't see people burying it in the backyard hoping it will have value again in the future. OTOH, you do find precious metals, gems, jewelry, sometimes other works of artistic value, and the odd person with some Swiss Francs. Now I'd add a flash drive with a few bitcoins.
Re:Another bitcoin short-sell opportunity coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Collective might of what? There's nothing wrong with creating a new currency, even one that is digital. The fact that gold has real world applications has no relevance to its value as a currency, despite how people keep insisting on finding some 'intrinsic value' in the currencies they use. The intrinsic theory of value was the theory people held before Adam Smith, and the economic equivalent of the Ptolemaic system in astronomy -- the ancients thought so, but they were wrong.
We now believe that objects have subjective value, and that it is determined by the market forces of supply and demand. And we also believe that currencies exist because they facilitate transactions, so that their demand does not depend on any use they have other than as a medium of exchange for other goods (I include here being a store of value). Some important characteristics that make up a good medium of exchange are:
You see that under these conditions, bitcoin is equivalent to gold (except for the size of the market - a lot lot more gold is traded daily). This is because what makes fiat currency fiat is the fact that its scarcity is artificial. The dollar is scarce because the Federal Reserve has promised not to print too many, and we have faith (fiat) in it. Gold is scarce because if we want any more, we have to dig it out of the gound with increased difficulty, and bitcoin are scarce because it takes computing effort to find more. Practical uses for these things do not even come into consideration here.
Finally we come to the size of the market. If a currency is useful only as a medium of exchange, then the more people you can trade with in that currency, the more useful and valuable it is. This is the reason for the dollar's supremacy, as for 50 years it was the currency of the largest market in the world, and so it got established as the basis for international reserves. Because of this, the dollar maintains its primacy even now that it has been demoted to the second largest market. But this does not mean that it has intrinsic value, only that its demand as a medium of transaction is further boosted by transactions at the nation level
My point is that there is nothing wrong with bitcoin as a currency. It is as good as gold, as good as the dollar. But it just has a smaller market for now, which gives it the flaws people point out here. Any new currency would have the problems bitcoin is having. It may fail in the end, but that does not mean it was a bad idea.