Drugs on the Silk Road
Scott Adams puts this disclaimer at the top of some of his blogs: “This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another.” Consider the same to be applicable to this blog before you read on… The Internet currency, Bitcoins, that I wrote about a couple of months back, was the currency of choice on The Silk Road : a black market web site for “illegal narcotics, fake documents, hackers-for-hire and other illicit goods”. So how did it work? Like eBay! Users logged in, searched a catalog, checked out the ratings by previous buyers, paid in Bitcoins and the stuff would get mailed to their address while the money was held in an escrow account. The FBI recently shut down the site and arrested its mastermind, Ross William Ulbricht. Which should be a good thing, right? Except you should check out Co...