Silk Road Shutdown Only Temporarily Stifled Online Drug Sales
According to research done by the Digital Citizen’s Alliance, The shutdown of the Silk Road marketplace only temporarily reduced online drug sales. When the Silk Road was shutdown in October of 2013, it looked like a crushing blow against online drug-dealing. At the time, Silk Road accounted for more than 70% of the online drug market, giving users access to basically any illegal items, such ash drugs, weapons, and fake documents. Within months of the Silk Road’s closure, Silk Road 2.0 popped up and was subsequently busted. Two smaller sites — Evolution and Agora — then took up the slack....
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Online drug sales, just like over-the-counter drug sales, have been on the rise for the past several years, worldwide. Law enforcement crackdowns like the closure of the "Silk Road" website found in the "Deep Web" or "Dark Net" in October of 2013 was supposed to curb this phenomenon. The latest information found by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald shows that sales have continued to explode unabated worldwide. Also, there is information showing that many new online drug-selling websites have not only replaced "Silk Road" online, but have grown far larger and more numerous in its place.....
Two years after the FBI shut down Silk Road, online drug markets are alive and growing, thanks to the Tor browser and virtual currency, reports US News & World Report. Darknet markets offer greater product reliability and less risk of violence than physical encounters with drug dealers. Darknets average $300,000 to $500,000 in sales per day according to one study. Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Matthew Green says Silk Road provided a proof of concept for darknet markets. He says it's an idea that someone doesn't think about until it happens. Some Silk Road successors....
Wired reports that the shutdown of Silk Road 2 was shut down by FBI's and Europol's Operation Onymous, earlier this month, scattered the Dark Web's drug dealers. But one new and improved crypto market is welcoming and profiting from those refugees: an appropriately named website called Evolution. Evolution, a Tor hidden service only accessible using Tor (like Silk Road and most online drug marketplaces), has more than tripled its rate of growth in new product listings, according to data collected by the non-profit Digital Citizens Alliance, since the demise of Silk Road 2. That's helped....
The Silk Road revolution will not be centralized. Photo via lakpuratravels. Ars Technica recently published an interview with the Dread Pirate Roberts of "Silk Road 2.0", and one of the main points DPR 2.0 made at the end of the interview was that this underground marketplace is a small part of an overall revolution in decentralization. I recently wrote about the ideas of decentralized marketplaces and how they could affect eBay and Amazon, but these marketplaces also play a role when it comes to advancing the philosophy behind Silk Road. It's just a matter of time before this new version....
A new study argues that online black marketplaces, such as the infamous Silk Road, can actually reduce the number of drug related-violent crimes. The researchers' argument is simple: online drug traffickers act more like wholesalers, and since online markets limit the scope of direct interaction between the traffickers - blurring or removing territorial boundaries, there is less of a chance for violent confrontation. The research was conducted by University of Lausanne criminologist David Décary-Hétu and University of Manchester law professor Judith Aldridge. Entitled "Not an 'Ebay for....