Evolution Market's Admins Are Gone, Along With $12M In Bitcoin 254
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.
Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the invisible hand will soon make an invisible punishment for those responsible.
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I saw a news blurb about the site just last night on (if I remember right) RT News (http://rt.com/ [rt.com] ), with one of the reporters showing how easy it was to buy stolen web banking login credentials... Could it be that the media exposure spooked the site owners?
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is correct to an extent. There has always been organized crime. But during times of prohibition their ability to make money has drastically increased because the law has created a situation ripe for their exploitation with a huge market. Drugs is the current profit center for most of the worlds organized criminal organizations. Yes, if we legalized drugs they would continue to exist, but they would lose their primary funding stream. With less funding comes less influence and we'd see a reduction in the
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
According to my late father, miners in the small town where he was born would steal a little dynamite for the 4th. This was in the 1920s. I'm sure the occasional limb was lost; but then mining was not particularly safe either. Of course those were "simpler times".
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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But the point stands: the criminals are not going to say, "Aw, shucks, we're out of business now that drugs are legal! Looks like we have to go work at Walmart now!"
Actually, the thing is that for a majority of criminals, crime is just another job choice. They weigh (often very badly) what they perceive as the benefits and the costs, just as you do when you are choosing which field to go into. If they perceive that crime has become less lucrative or that the costs have risen, then most criminals will look
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But during times of prohibition their ability to make money has drastically increased because the law has created a situation ripe for their exploitation with a huge market. Drugs is the current profit center for most of the worlds organized criminal organizations. Yes, if we legalized drugs they would continue to exist, but they would lose their primary funding stream. With less funding comes less influence and we'd see a reduction in their ability to continue operations.
That's only one side of the equation. Law enforcement and the legal system also benefit during prohibition (on average), due to the higher number of cases, asset forfeiture, police budgets, the prison "industry", etc.
So both sides like prohibition. It makes them lots of money. The damage to society, on the other hand, is palpable, on both "sides". Criminals shooting each other in the streets, overzealous police departments, etc.
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In order for a black market to exist you have to have prohibition. If all prohibition is removed, then no black market exists.
Of course, that cannot happen. Some things need to be prohibited.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
I'm pretty sure meth and heroin are still going to pose serious risks to their users whether they're legal or not. Legalizing alcohol certainly didn't remove *its* risk.
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To be honest, drugs aren't the only items they sold... a segment on one of the sat news stations last night showed the site selling pilfered bank logins, credit card details, and in essence, selling stuff that no government would condone, no matter how hands-off that government would be.
Sibling is right - if drugs were legal, the site would simply sell other illegal stuff.
That said, your point still stands... it's not exactly a free and open market in there.
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Also, prohibition laws and similar idiocy/corruption breed contempt for legitimate law.
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True, but drugs are often the cash-cow that motivates the creation of the infrastructure. What percentage of profits are drug-related? Eliminate those, and what percentage of markets would simply close down as the profits were insufficient to justify the risk?
Much like the physical transportation angle: human and weapon trafficking largely make use of the transportation networks created for the much more profitable drug trade - eliminate the black-market drug trade, and the illegal transportation infras
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So you're suggesting the government should legalize identity theft and the selling of other people's bank login information?
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Ok, so what percentage of the population really wants to employ a hitman? What percentage wants to run a credit card scam?
How does that compare to the percentage that want to use an illegal drug?
There is a huge market for people using illicit drugs while the marketplace for hitmen is nearly nil.
It is completely appropriate to blame prohibition for the value of illicit drugs and popularity of markets which offer them because prohibition itself is a blatant hypocrisy in a nation where more than half of the po
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Do what you can get away with
That's not a feature of a market. Because that implies deception or the use of force. Fraud is by definition a departure from the market (where the participants can evaluate each other's offers and choose whether to strike a deal) and a move into a mode where one party is making things happen and the other is being tricked or forced into participating or giving something up under duress or through deceit.
In other words, you're yet another person who doesn't like to compete for business, and will gladly
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Nonsense! Fraud and force are part and parcel to the process. To be against them, you would have to be an anarchist and give the land back to the natives.
Nice tap-dancing, there. "The process" is what, exactly? The process of walking up to a market and deciding when to sell or buy or trade things? How exactly is that related to one group moving into the territory previously occupied by another group (most of whom themselves displaced somebody else)? Who are "natives" - those who wandered in and started occupying the land first? Or those who happened to be occupying it when they first encountered Europeans? Should what's left of one tribe of so-called aborig
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How is a black market a "free market"? How can you have any more government "regulation" beyond completely forbidden?
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How is a black market a "free market"? How can you have any more government "regulation" beyond completely forbidden?
I don't know, but once they figure it out it will be first applied to sending a song to a friend. Which, unlike sending crack cocaine to any buyer, is a serious crime.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:5, Insightful)
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See also "the tragedy of the commons". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
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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.
Re:Free market will sort it out (Score:4, Insightful)
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often considered
By who? This is exactly the mentality expressed by the top level poster, and exactly what I was disputing in the first place. How anyone could argue that a black market represents a free market is beyond me. The primary constraint of being undetectable just blows away many tenets of an ideal free market right off the bat.
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Ahhh (Score:3, Funny)
I do enjoy the feeling of schadenfreude sometimes.
Another Bitcoin Scam? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I'm going to have a heart attack and DIE from that surprise.
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I had to watch it after reading :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Patience Iago.....
A black market was shady? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm shocked!
Re:A black market was shady? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Once again proving... (Score:5, Insightful)
... there is no honor among thieves.
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... there is no honor among thieves.
When oh when are we going to have an ETHICAL and MORAL bitcoin black market service?
Come on! It's like it's just a bunch of criminals doing this stuff.
Wait...
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I wonder how many millions in cash is stolen every day in similar schemes.
Well, watching drugs inc episodes apparently ripping people off is a viable business model in the drug industry.
You got the distributors and dealers of good dope, dealers of crappy dope, then the dealers that sell fake dope, the dealers who steal dope from other dealers to sell, and the gangs who just rob dealer stash houses for the cash and whatever dope is on hand.
So, an online 'marketplace' specializing in illegal black market goods is no different than maneuvering in the real world black market, it isn'
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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.
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On the internet, thieves honor YOU.
Amount (Score:2)
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reckon is worth more than USD $12 million.
That doesn't sound like them claiming they know exactly how many bitcoins were lost to me.
Round up the usual suspects (Score:5, Funny)
The people who run a black market are dishonest? I'm shocked, shocked!
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How would aiding in money laundering in any way allow an entity to build trust?
When you lie down with dogs (Score:5, Insightful)
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They're talking about Bitcoins, not Dogecoins!
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I would comment on this but... (Score:5, Funny)
... I'm off to set up a new marketplace on Tor. Apparently, criminals are really gullible AND use untraceable money! What a great combination :)
Re:I would comment on this but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Make sure you are really untraceable though. Making enemies with a bunch of criminals may not be the smartest move.
Pretty much what you should expect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It could well have been the FBI or NSA running the black market. Nice little money maker and fines handed out to criminals as a salutory lesson.
re: black market (Score:4, Insightful)
"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?
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And people are actually surprised that they poofed with 12 million in bitcoins? Seriously?
Actually, I'm not sensing much surprise at all around this story. I suppose the only thing that might be surprising is that they actually had that many BTC collected at once to take. I guess they could silently disable transferring BTC out of the service for a few days until they decided to pull the plug, I guess that would help build up the coffers for the big jump (if people assume the site is still working fine and keep transferring to it). I can't imagine that anyone who knows what they're doing woul
Acceptable risk (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Fools and their money soon parted (Score:2)
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.
You're claiming that people who use black market's are not gullible on a thread about the news that people who use black market's just got ripped off to the tune of an (alleged) $12 million US? Curious logic you have there...
Re:Fools and their money soon parted (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Smart crooks ripping off dumb crooks (Score:2)
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.
You are seriously going to claim that these guys basically handed an unknown third party what amounted to a pile of untraceable cash trusting that they wouldn't run off with it and that they knew the risk they were taking? They would have to be the dumbest crooks on the planet to do that and you're claiming that they understood what they were doing? Yeah, not buying that argument. This was smart crooks ripping off dumb crooks.
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.
Oh I don't doubt that bitcoin could have some protective value but I very muc
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You are seriously going to claim that these guys basically handed an unknown third party what amounted to a pile of untraceable cash trusting that they wouldn't run off with it and that they knew the risk they were taking?
Most people would understand there would be a risk that they would be ripped off during such a transaction. Yes. But there's a big market for illegal goods, and other ways of trading have risks too. Some of them a bit more up close and personal than losing a handful of money.
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From Paper Street Banking, Incorporated (Score:2)
This is your currency on artificial scarcity. (Score:2)
The incentive to steal increases.
Why are you storing your coins with them? (Score:3)
I seriously don't grasp why anyone would store coins with anyone. I can personally hold billions of dollars worth of coins a cheap flash drive. So... why?
The whole point of bitcoins was that you don't need a trusted third party.
So why are you trusting a third party?
Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's true, but a currency that can't be held onto safely is not a useful currency, and people figured out a long time ago that they cannot be trusted to hold onto their own money. That's why the rise of banking during the Renaissance was such a big deal and why banks are so heavily regulated today. Bitcoin has banks, but they haven't yet proven that they can be trusted, and with people losing their bitcoins when their hard drives fail or a thief takes their drive, bitcoin needs the stability that regulate
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It's hard to pay for something while keeping bitcoin in your own wallet, though.
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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.
Just like it is a very bad idea to hand cash over to an untraceable investment scheme.
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Seems to me that we just have to give up the entire concept of money, since it is a thing that can be stolen from idiots!
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How would that be any different from any other escrow service?
Paypal locks people's money up all the time, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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END THE FED! DOWN WITH THE DOLLAR!
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Most of those would be his problem, not the bank's. The bank is not obligated to let the account holder spend more money than they have. I disagree with how the banks will debit against the account largest transaction to smallest so that multiple small transactions each incur their own overdraft fee, but my
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The historical record strongly implies that the very existence of the FDIC has prevented a lot of banks from collapsing. Just look at the rate of bank failures per year pre-FDIC and post. The idea of a "bank run" was a quaint historical thing for decades after the FDIC came into being, and bank failures for any reason declined enormously until the 1980s.
The most recent fa
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I think part of it is a Robin Hood type of mystique. Someone anonymous having something that bypasses the establishment, similar to being able to sneak on the King's grounds and hunt deer without being drawn and quartered as a poacher... but Robin Hood is most often a myth, and most often, it could be someone like O'Brian from "1984" looking to see who dissents... or a mercenary who would then turn right around and hand the people with the deer to the Sheriff for a reward.
BitCoin does have its place. Rig
Re:Why is bitcoin popular again? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:I read the comments ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What would Bitcoin need to be defended against, exactly speaking? Someone looted the coffers and disappeared. Remove the "and disappeared" and you get what happened to dollar and euro economies.
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What does this have to do with Bitcoin? I'll defend it if you want to tell me exactly what you perceive the problem to be (or, at a minimum, I'll tell you why you're mistaken).
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I think that the difference here is that some people (who didn't do their homework) actually thought that Mt. Gox was legitimate organization that could be trusted with their Internet funny money.
Anyone using these black market sites knows what they are doing isn't legal and should accept the risk that their bits are going to go "poof" someday and they have no legal resource when it does.
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The bitcoins are secure in the accounts they were transmitted to.
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Your calculations are way off. Per day, 3600 bitcoins get mined. At current exchange rate, these represent about $1 million. For an average price of $0.12 per kWh, that puts an upper limit of about 350 MW on the total mining electricity use.
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Oh, they are quite spendable. You just can't get any new ones. Also, be prepared to also spend about a half hour of people at the bank examining them with a magnifying glass, and explaining where you got them. Better still, sell them on eBay to a collector, where you will get WAY more than $1000 apiece for them.
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That would be the World's Largest Orchestra of the World's Smallest Violins! :D
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