Wouldn't it have been much, much more destabilizing for the community if they had staggered the seizures?
Or do you think they just wanted as much bitcoin as possible?
Or the publicity would appear better for their organization?
Do you think the way it was done hit the vendors harder?
I'm curious what other's thoughts on this are. Because I, if it was my job to eliminate/discourage the DNMs, would have staggered the attack. I cannot imagine anyone buying online for a while if C9 had closed, then three days later Hydra, then 4 days later SR2.
It gives people less time to see it coming and take steps to mitigate their damages.
Right now, there are more markets down than there are markets reported to be seized. It's a safe assumption that people started unplugging cords the second they realized they might be next.
If they had only gotten enough on one market and moved from there, they would almost assuredly have not gotten to the others. Concentrated efforts like this allow them to get the most down at one time. It also serves to be more "shocking" -- it gives off the impression that no matter how big the markets are and how widespread their use is, it leaves people with the notion that LE is bigger and more widespread. It truly does serve to frighten people overall and acts as a deterrent for others to pick up and try.
Think about it-- when SR1 was busted, it was fairly huge. But it didn't take very much time for the system to rebuild and expand. It's many times larger now than it was a year ago. Now, this time they've taken down multiple markets and a lot more people with them, and there are more to come. The more widespread these takedowns are, the more it fractures the other side and makes it more difficult to regroup.
Most people on this forum aren't naive enough to believe that these markets really were operating underground and not really registering on LE radar, but sadly, plenty of people do. Once a week someone will comment about being upset by any publicity and state something like "LE will catch on," which is just preposterous. Large sweeps like this are really shocking to people who didn't have a better understanding on how absurd that notion is, and they get horribly upset and frightened by events like this.
Those people are generally customers of markets, and it absolutely will scare plenty of people into washing their hands of it and going back to finding drugs on the street. So there's another victory for LE -- taking out customers via scare tactics instead of force is still taking more players out of the game.