The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable. It’s called Silk Road. The URL is incredibly obscure, you can only access the site through Tor, and Bitcoins (explanation) are the defacto currency. Shipments go through the U.S. Postal Service. It was destined to happen.
2 Comments
1) My initial “so what?” response to BitCoin is fading fast.
2) No way this can scale; its a sting waiting to happen.
3) This might be the beginning of the end for Bitcoin if (a) the association with drugs sticks and in everyone’s minds BitCoins = “drug money” and/or (b) police now become interested.
What’s genuinely most interesting to me about this particular experiment is the Bitcoin aspect. Black marketplaces aren’t anything new; the Internet makes those transactions easier, but it’s just increased the diversity and breadth of what was already happening.
Bitcoin is something new. I’ve read arguments both pro (Jason Calacanis) and against (random Joe Shmo on Quora), and I simply don’t know enough about its foundational principles to assess whether it contradicts economic laws or follows them. If it’s bunk, then maybe it’s a creative manifestation of the bubble frenzy we’re in. If it’s solid though, then it’s truly the most disruptive idea in the last 100 years.
Or so they say.