ANTH106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Cryptocurrency, Forum Communications, Operation Onymous
5 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ANTH6
Drugs on a Digital Frontier
What is a cryptomarket?
A cryptomarket is an "online form where goods and services are exchanged between parties
who use digital encryption to conceal their identities" (Martin 2013)
Share the following characteristics:
• Christ party hosting and administration
• postal systems to deliver goods
• decentralised exchange network
• use of aliases to conceal user identity
• reliance on TOR network (a different version of an internet browser you can
download that allows you to access this encrypted part of the internet).
• use of encrypted currency (e.g. Bitcoin)
Silk Road
• A site on the crypto market that sells illicit drugs among other goods
• It was running for 2 years before the state was able to shut it down due to the power
of the encryption
• Tom Vanan started the website. He earned a personal profit of $80 million
• A month after Silk Road was shut down, a second version popped up. There are also
many other sites like this on the crypto market, such as Dream Market.
How illicit drug sites compete without the use of violence
• They have to operate without the control of state - making it dangerous
• Because each company does not know where their competitors are, they cannot use
violence or any other physical means to compete
• They must use gimmicks, reviews, customer benefits, marketing strategies etc, to
compete. They have to maintain good relationships with their customers and offer
them deals and prove their legitimacy
• The sites offer shipping information
• Drugs that come in the mail are very secretive and hidden well.
• Australia is considered a hard country to ship to
• Drug dealers have to keep a sense of gentrification about them to still 'look tough'
Customer feedback
• It is changing the nature of legitimate and illegitimate retail
• A good way of showing which drugs dealers are good
• These reviews also provide research much information about the online drug trade
• There are also discussion forums on many different issues
• There are huge amounts of detailed information about various topics, including how
to get around security, for example. This means that people can learn from successful
people how to commit crimes and get around the law.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
