Do you think this could ever end, and how do you see the future of darknet markets?
[GeneralQuestions]Can the genie ever be put back in the bottle? How do you see the online drug trade evolving?
Do you think this could ever end, and how do you see the future of darknet markets?
[13 Points] MLP_is_my_OPSEC:
[10 Points] RoyalOilSR:
DNM's will only get better with time.
Silk Road was like the Napster of drugs. Now we are currently in the Limewire/Kazaa stages of online drug dealing. Give it a few years and somebody should have built the "Spotify" of drugs.
~RO
[5 Points] None:
Kind of like a reverse Pokemon.
[3 Points] None:
www.aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-the-hidden-internet
There is no solution to the trust problem. Either you are not anonymous (and therefore busted by LEOs) or you are going to get an unacceptably high level of scamming in the markets, leading to their inevitable collapse and that of the industry itself.
[2 Points] Toolander:
"You gotta tame the beast before you let it out of it's cage."
[2 Points] Kazaa99:
I don't think it will change that much.. There is no real safe way that is easy. Only timeconsuming solutions that would make a days work for those vendors way to long. (try imagening setting up 40 multisig transfers in a day for small purchases and a few large)
As I see it, people will talk about this a little longer, then after a while they will forget about it (except those who lost tons of money) and we will see regular escrow but with more strict policy in buying selling instead. Vendors will all go FE when possible, and buyers will only buy from those vendors they have bought from in the past and trusts.
[1 Points] Oldwisewoman:
What DNM's need to get back 'on track' is actually a simple, more human solution then all the tech jargon and hard to implement features: An idealist like Ross (without the opsec failures and lapses of judgement). Ross Ulbricht was not the perfect DNM operator, but he was an idealist and most probably would never, ever have thought of pulling an exit scam. He believed in what he was doing. He had multiple opportunities to run off with what at any point in time certainly would have been a fortune to a middle class white kid who was having hard luck finding his career/way in life and living on Ramen and pot, renting rooms off craigslist with 4 or 5 earthly possessions. He could have ripped and ran so many times, and for those who really knew him (there are a few out there that did who have not emerged from the shadows), knew he was an idealist through and through. Even his failed attempts to have people executed were never out of personal needs, it was what he thought was the best decision in a sticky situation that might cause irreparable damage to his site and community.
He fucked up many times in the beginning because he had no handbook to go on, and he fucked up later because he had no handbook to go on, and the isolation and new waters he was treading was surely confusing. + Bad advice from a group of groupies and sycophants who were either manipulating him, scamming him, actively working against him, or providing unqualified advice.
All of this aside, had Ross not made the fatal errors he did, he would have been the perfect hero DNM operator.
He believed in what he was doing. He would have kept it going had he not been caught. Unlike the other exit scammers, he was never a criminal, and that is what did him in.
We need a DPR/Ross 2.0 (not to be confused with the phony "DPR 2's" that were slithering about).
God, those were the days.
[1 Points] SpaceCaseBassFace:
DNM's will always be a reflection of the street drug trade. People are gonna get ripped off, locked up, or killed, no matter how safe it seems. There are plenty of trustworthy vendors out there that deserve your money, just as there are in the street. And yet bad things still happen to them in both worlds, even if they don't deserve it.
But with that in mind, the genie will never go back in the bottle. Every marketplace that falls will have three more pop up in its place. Every bust will be seen as a major achievement by the public while the people in charge chalk it up as overhead. The noble libertarian ideals that inspired SR and other DNM's simply can't co-exist with the shady nature of the drug game. You just can't give a person that much power and money without them having to compromise their morals at one point or another.
[-1 Points] lnsaf:
You must be new here
DNMs will never go away, not any time soon. IMO if a new market had these features I think it could easily become the most popular marketplace