Read Silk Road for Free Online Page B

service where funds were mixed in order to make it difficult to trace them to their original source) and dynamic pricing to smooth out exchange-rate fluctuations. The owner also promised an improved browsing experience and a more transparent ordering process. With its slick new look and ease of use, Silk Road’s clientele grew steadily.
    Many articulated why they liked the idea of the market. ‘Reputation allows buyers to make informed decisions, escrow gives both buyer and seller added protection against fraud, arbitration gives both parties a non-violent recourse to disputes, and anonymity protects against any violent recourse outside the system,’ posted ‘BitterTea’. ‘Notably, anonymity not only protects from violent recourse from other traders, but also from law enforcement.’
    The website had variously been described as either the Amazon or the eBay of illegal drugs. It was more closely aligned with the latter in that the website itself sold no drugs (putting aside the mushrooms and marijuana listed by the owner during the site’s infancy). Rather, it provided a marketplace where buyers and sellers could meet and do business.
    If the drugs were not received or not what had been promised, the buyer and seller were expected to try to work out the issue between themselves before hitting the ‘Resolve’ button, which would put the transaction into resolution with Silk Road administration. Administration would arbitrate, taking into account the past transactions, reputations and statistics of the parties, to decide whether the funds should be released to the seller or returned to the buyer. The better a seller’s feedback, the more customers they would get and the higher the prices they could charge. Sellers had an incentive to keep customers happy to ensure they would always receive that coveted five-out-of-five rating.
    It wasn’t only vendors who needed feedback and reputation for the ultimate Road experience. Sellers could also see information about buyers and might refuse to do business with those who had less than perfect statistics. Because of this, new sellers and new buyers often had to work together to build up their reputations.
    Although anonymity was the cornerstone of Silk Road, the one point where it had to be given up was when the buyer provided an address for the delivery of goods. Nervous first-timers questioned why law enforcement wouldn’t just open up an account and nab those who gave their address. They were placated by lengthy explanations as to why this would not be a feasible use of law enforcement resources.
    For one thing, Silk Road charged $500 to set up a vendor account, an amount that was returned to the vendor after a certain number of successful transactions. Any efforts by law enforcement to use the system to harvest addresses would soon be spotted by the community and the vendor called out, their account cancelled.
    Further, many buyers, especially those purchasing trafficable amounts, would use a ‘drop’ address rather than their home address. This might be a vacant house or apartment nearby, or a post office box opened under a false name. And even if a buyer did use their home address, there would still be the problem of proving that person had ordered the drugs online. Tor and bitcoin provided enough anonymity that no digital trail was left. Any person could send drugs to any other person, so the receiver had plausible deniability in the case of their parcel being intercepted.
    So, in theory, honeypot (law enforcement sting) vendor accounts were certainly possible. But they would waste so much police time with so little reward that it would not be worth posing as a vendor selling small amounts. Law enforcement is rarely interested in busting small-time end users, so such vendor accounts could only possibly be worthwhile to sell bulk amounts that were of such a quantity that the police could be confident the buyer was buying the drugs in order to on-sell them. But bulk