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Comment by awt | Hacker News Reader

The illegal drug market in BTC wasn't actually a thing. It never mattered to anyone but journos.

This is the opposite of a factual claim. In 2014, darknets were bigger than legal purchases. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical...

Do you think it's possible anonymous markets themselves may not be the best sources of information about actual volume of transactions occurring on them? Certainly they have some incentive to fake volume, and no real accountability since .. they're anonymous.

1. You made a claim.

2. I provided a citation against your claim.

3. You assert there's evidence ... somewhere.

Do you have anything to back your claim?

my claim that not much was happening? No. I also don't have proof there's no god, or that unicorns don't exist, and so on.

> "The illegal drug market in BTC wasn't actually a thing."

Back up this claim, because it sure looks like it was.

So we have at least 144k BTC seized by the US government to silk road only (http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-to-sell-44000-btc-in-f...) and yet you still claim that all this could be fake? BTC market its still alive thanks to darknets, nobody is going to purchase legal goods in BTC (except maybe ppl from countries banned in the USA) just by the fact they are usually more expensive than purchasing it directly (at least 1.5x).

Is it possible that some not so wise folks left large amounts of btc on excahanges that had risen in value 100x from when they'ed been transferred to the silk road wallet?

Also, what do you know of the offline blackmarket volume of cocaine, heroine, meth? How does it compare to the (self reported) volume on darknet markets? Is it even notable in comparison? Why do you think cartels don't run their own dark markets? Because they're idiots?

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