Why Do Darknet Markets Suck?

Basically all the Darknet Markets we have seen come and go suck because of two reasons:

  1. They have a single point of failure, which is whoever operates the market and derives profit from it. This centralization ensures that at some point, LE will catch up with them and shut them down, taking all the funds in escrow and the freedom of many people involved in the process.

  2. This fact creates a prisoner's dilemma for all actors on the market: The owner has every incentive to wait for the 'right' moment (not too long though!) and pull an exit scam. The vendors, knowing that their reputation and escrow funds will also disappear at that point are incentivized to pull their own exit scams. To a lesser degree this might also hold true for buyers.

While I was asking myself why noone yet created a new CryptoCurrency that encodes market capabilities in the blockchain - thus disabling the single point of failure - I found that OpenBazaar basically does all of this on top of Bitcoin. They even found very clever solutions to the problem of enabling decentralized escrow systems.

But reading this forum, it seems all the transaction volume still goes to centrlized markets, with all of their downsides. Can Someone tell me why that is? Does OpenBazaar have some features I overlooked that makes it impractical for the kind of illicit transactions discussed on this forum?


Comments


[7 Points] None:

[deleted]


[4 Points] kx_001:

Basically, anyone who could run something well without making stupid mistakes can probably make a reasonable living doing it legally. So their life-time earning potential is greater by not risking life in jail.


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[1 Points] None:

Because smart people work legal jobs. Easy money at the risk of life in prison is not the draw you think it is.


[1 Points] bebopx2:

U SUK!!!!!!!!!!!!!