AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down (opens in new tab)

That first link paints a very unflattering image of Mr. Caze, and in his own words. I couldn't dream up a more perfect depiction of the despicable personalities at the core of cryptocurrency counter-culture.

It's interesting that people on that forum are calling him a liar for claiming to drive a Porsche etc. Reading it myself I was like "wow this guy is a liar, what a tall tale."

But then in the indictment (or whatever the correct term is for the legal document linked in the parent comment) they seize a Lamborghini and a Porsche and various villas and several big piles of money etc.

Color me surprised.

Not sure why you use the word "claiming" - he has passed away.

The WIRED story about the fall of DPR, although I don't have it currently, spins the story as a two part epic- really good read.

Hansa has already taken AB's place.

Tor hidden servers with large traffic aren't too hard to find when you can see the entire internet and can shape traffic.

I think the future is a reputation network/market built on top of something like ethereum.

And that's why nobody makes fakes or knock-offs, right? Because they'd lose their customer base once their customers purchase the product and find out it is not genuine.

They're are large profit margins to be made off of either cutting drugs (if you're nice, with something inert, if you're not, just with something cheap) or for things like LSD, selling research chemicals that are similar yet different and massively cheaper to manufacture/buy than the real thing.

>Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

Not really, no.

For example: spike heroin with fentanyl, user dies, other users flock to that dealer who supposedly has extremely high quality heroin.

This tactic doesn't work as much now that the fentanyl epidemic is widespread and known but it certainly happened in the past.

Also, many dealers are addicts themselves. If they run out of money and need more drugs, what's the chances they will sell some bullshit and claim it's something else? What if they get into some other kind of trouble and need fast cash?

> Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

Most illegal drugs are potentially deadly, and some share of users are going to die from them. Even rationally, cutting with cheaper but more toxic material can be justified if the increase in profit per transaction is sufficient to outweigh the reduction in the expected number of transactions per customer.

Of course, also, drug dealers may not always act rationally, and may not even understand the hazards (either in isolation or due to combination with the drug in question) posed by ingredients used to cut drugs.

It's not a logical tactic, just, without professional equipment (whose sale is restricted!) working with drugs whose doses are measured in micrograms is a hard task and likely to result in failure.

Why are the drugs in the illicit marketplace the ones with such small active doses? Prohibition strongly incentivises the manufacture/transport/sale of drugs with higher potency (per unit volume) -- as the odds of detection go up with bulkiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition

I think it's less poison, and more just ensuring a quality product. Dealers can cut drugs with other cheaper ingredients to increase their profits. Having a reputable seller avoids these sorts of shenanigans.

There is currently an epidemic in Vancouver (among other cities) of overdose deaths from a drug called Fentanyl that is several orders of magnitude more potent than morphine. People want it because it is so potent, but the problem with extreme potency is that the difference between an imperceptible difference and a lethal dose is orders of magnitude smaller in terms of weight.

My guess is 'poison' was a slight hyperbole.

Rat poison is a bit extreme but I've seen one dealer crush up anti-histamines to cut with cocaine. He was making a fair bit of money.

Dealers sell whatever they get. Users will generally buy whatever the dealers have. Most people don't test their drugs so they don't have any idea or just don't care what they're actually using. For example, some estimates are that >60% of "molly" in the U.S. is really bathsalts or meth.

Because 'dealers' that aren't interested in maintaining a 'going concern' could possibly make a quick buck – a 'killing' – in a market without strong info about seller's reputations.

That's one strategy, if said shady dealer was planning on being around. Cutting the drugs with a cheaper material, even if it's slightly poisonous, helps margins.

I think "poison" here means things more like Fentanyl, which has been recently cut into a lot of different opiates.

See the recent news about fentanyl.

If you never plan on selling to him again, and because you don't actually have anything.

The single most highly traded item in terms of volume on most of these markets is pot, then non-addictive (but still potentially dangerous) drugs like MDMA.

The number of hardcore opioid addicts that have a laptop, internet connection, knowledge of bitcoin, someone to convert cash into a bitcoin balance, a tor installation, a good address to pick up from and a willingness to wait a week to get their fix delivered is likely fairly small.

What are your thoughts on alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies that make money from addicted users?

Poor poor vendors who provide safety and reputation protection to addicts who would otherwise be in alleys.

The ability to stream nearly any music you want for $10/month through multiple services has probably done more for decreasing audio piracy than shutting down torrent sites.

So yeah, giving people what they want actually stops illegal activity, who would have thought.

If they want to stop people doing illegal drugs the answer is quite simple, make them legal. Then we can't do illegal drugs, since they are legal.

Sure if I can nip to Tesco and pick up some k I'd absolutely stop using illegal dealers.

I've given up on pirating music but that is because I no longer need to. I can finally consume music in an easy way for a nominal fee.

You can freely play most songs you want now (through youtube, bandcamp, soundcloud, spotify). I don't think there needs to be a 2017 version of Napster, because music isn't locked in physical albums anymore.

Soulseek

11,993 Monero were part of the seized assets.

Take-away: if you're doing something illicit you'd better reconsider being dumb about passwords. Or would just user names / IPs have done them in?

Yeah, there might already be one or two of those in existence already. :\

At the end of the day, the "outlaw" nation states are the ones that are going to be operating these things and then use the money to fund their black budgets.

It doesn't matter if they can be identified as long as they can change the bitcoin to cash in an allied country.

I have a suspicion that good opsec is super hard. It only takes accidentally using an outdated tor client just once to reveal your location...

Typing the wrong password, public key, or even favorite bash prompt anywhere breaks opsec. Even a common typo would probably identify you pretty quickly.

AB didn't send emails. At least not in the last 12 months.

I don't see how this is not unsubstantive. The story is about someone arrested for running an illegal drug market. My suggestion was to just not do that.

I am actually sympathetic to your position, though I don't do illicit drugs (or any drugs). But, you would need to up your game if you really want to argue your case on HN. I can think of several good arguments, better than "Why do you care if I get high when I get home?", but this is probably the absolute worst place to have that discussion. You would also need to do a better job of picking your battles. I think neither of us did a good job with that in this case.

Best.

"sure, but what is actually wrong with drug use?"

I don't care; that's not what's being debated here. The fact of the matter is, it's illegal, and anyone who sets up a drug marketplace today knows that. They set it up with full knowledge that they are breaking the law. If they wish to campaign to have drug laws reworked, I'm all for that and wish them the best of luck. But they're not doing that; they're setting up a marketplace with the intentions of making lots of money. They're not fighting for freedom or anything like that; they're just trying to make a quick buck.

And please don't respond with any kind of false equivalence bs. Getting high is not any kind of civil rights struggle. It's nice, but that's it. It is absolutely nothing like civil rights struggles of the past, and comparing it to such events is an extreme disrespect to those struggles and those who went through them.