Hacker News Reader

Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

Is this actually newsworthy?

If you’re going to buy drugs the darkweb is almost surely safer (as in more likely to be getting what you ask for) than buying it from some random person in your neighborhood.

View on HN

Theoretically, sure, but in practice it's not safer:

- Law Enforcement has been getting better at tracing and taking down markets, meaning the reputation systems keep getting reset and the authentic dealers are being arrested. Markets will get taken over by law enforcement and honeypotted, with BTC transactions being traced.

- Dealers and scammers have multiple aliases, sometimes even in the same market. One common strategy is to sell high quality product until a modest reputation is built on one alias, and then to 'cash out' by switching to cut junk or getting people to finalize escrow early and just not deliver. Wash, rinse, repeat with multiple aliases in parallel. It's so common it's called the exit scam.

- I've also seen firsthand some people get threats from dealers on tor forums, because they left negative reviews. Keep in mind the dealer has an idea where you live, but you have no idea who they are. You also don't know if the dealer has another alias that is going to cut your product with fentanyl, RCs, or rat poison next time because they recognize your delivery address.

They're just some risks, we could also say: - Local drug dealer knows where you live and cut /threaten you - Local drug dealer can find out a lot about you, and mess with your job or family etc - Local drug dealers often always have cut or non pure 'product' - Local drug dealers from what I've read and seen, are much more likely to fuck you over than drug dealers on DNMs

The point here is that in Local vs. Darkweb, you still have means of having a way to identify the dealer when you buy face to face, or know them through a friend of a friend. Darkweb you have no idea.

Why would a drug dealer want to inflict violence on you????

Killing your cash flow is usually not a good practice. People are more likely to take your money and fuck off.

Best practices:

-Use VPN -Use a PO Box and not your home address -Use Monero and not BTC -Buy from sellers that ship quickly and check recent reviews in the last week or so -On the point about reputation gaming, you could use to you advantage by buying from a newer seller with a few good reviews knowing they are highly incentivized to ship quickly high quality product to get your review.

I agree 110%, but there are still issues:

- VPNs are not perfect. IIRC Wall Street Market was busted in part using an exploit on the admin's VPN.

- You need to use your real name and ID when renting a PO Box, and most dealers require you to share the full name for delivery to a PO Box, since that increases the odds of a successful delivery. The only workaround here is to register an LLC and use that company name for the PO box.

- Last I checked, most markets still do not allow Monero. Empire market had a "bug" but that caused everyone to lose their monero, and they haven't re-enabled Monero last time I checked, effectively forcing everyone to use BTC.

- Fake reviews are easy. If you buy from a newer seller you run the increased risk of a being scammed or getting harmful product. Luckily dealers are lazy though and will make all their fake reviews at once.

> Last I checked, most markets still do not allow Monero. You can use services like XMR.to to convert Monero to BTC and use that. Buying Monero initially to preserve anonymity, then converting smaller amounts to BTC to use for the markets.

The vast majority of trusted exchanges won't even let you get an account without multiple forms of identification, meaning you're still traceable if you don't use some shady unknown exchange/tumbler (which could also be a honeypot).

Reread the comment again, do you know much about Monero?

Otherwise I buy BTC on Bisq without asking anyones permission nor handing over license + passport details.

If the exchange has your information, that means you're identified when you convert monero to BTC and vice versa. You're traceable from the market regardless because the BTC leads back to the exchange wallet that required multiple forms of your identification to use.

Sigh,the bullshit asymmetry principle at work.

Can you please read the original comment and understand that Monero is claiming to be not traceable. Make no claims for them but some well regarded mathematicians do.

Can you read about xmr.to the site that uses a very large prominent Bitcoin exchange as a backend yet still has an onion frontend to exchange XMR to BTC.

Can you also read my comment about buying Bitcoin from Bisq without providing any centralized source with passports/licenses/dna.

What exactly is your point here, incredibly interested in some elucidation?

I'll pay you $10,000 (held in escrow) if you can show me how to prove ownership of coins going from Bitcoin to Monero to Bitcoin via xmr.to

Any day, any time. Offer is open to anyone in Earth.

Reply here for interested parties.

Nobody here is claiming that Monero alone is traceable. No one.

The proposed solution was to convert/tumble Monero with BTC. My reply is that the majority of the trusted exchanges where you do said conversions require multiple forms of identification from you to even have an account. Even the more popular ones like shapeshift.io have switched to verified accounts as law enforcement has cracked down on above-the-table exchanges. XMR.to is not a trusted exchange.

So when you use BTC on the honeypot market, the law enforcement can trace the BTC back to your exchange and make a request there for your information. It doesn't matter if Monero is involved because the BTC exit point from the exchange to the market is still traceable to you.

How exactly? This makes no sense to me.

Having a package arrive discretely is arguably safer than the in person interaction with a dealer. Also, you don't get repeat customers if you kill them, so online procured products are usually of a quality high enough you will be a repeat customer (and not die).

I think you vastly overestimate the business acumen of drug dealers on the darkweb. You are much more likely to never receive a shipment than to bump into someone worried about repeat customers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11466413/Wha... (What 'dark net' drug buyers say about their dealers, March 2015)

> Third, people who use Silk Road 2.0 are very happy punters. The average score out of 5 left by drug user on the site of was an impressive 4.85.

> This is the most important thing of all. Because it offers competition and choice, the power here is in the hands of the buyer rather than the vendor. Drug dealers on these markets are very polite and attentive – desperate for a positive review because anything else would damage business. I emailed a number of vendors during my research and all were extremely helpful. As you can see from this Wordle, ‘great’ ‘fast’ and ‘good’ are the most common words left on the written feedback section. There are a lot of happy users out there. Markets really do work!

As someone who's tried this, this is just not how it works.

Ratings matter a lot on these sites. It's also very different being able to choose from many vendors and see all the reviews vs. getting the number from one guy and having no reference point at the time of purchase.

You are 100x more likely to get ripped off on the street. Why would a business take took effort to build up a rep and a flow of cash risk it so they could rip off a few get bad reviews and lose it all.

Why would an irl dealer rip of a potential customer? Do you have any idea how profitable selling weed is? Wholesale->retail is 100% or more markup, and you have virtually no overhead (bags, gas, time). Reliable customers means reliable cash flow.

I do. When you buy on the street that person was barely able to come up with 170/220 for an O. They sell for 10 dollars a gram to reach 280. They lose weight in sticks and water. They need to end up selling you a .7 for them to make 80/100. Some add water / some use really cheap weed.

Once you find a dealer who buys 500/1000 dollars worth (to make that 100% markup) they don't stand on a corner because those people get robbed / arrested. But they expect customers to buy larger amounts.

Hmmmm. Street dealers make the most per gram, but do the most hustle and probably make the least overall in terms of profit. The middleman buying and selling between the growers and the dealers makes decent money with little risk, while the growers themselves tend to make the least by weight, but make decent profit. Especially factoring in the expenses of growing and the risks they take. The middlemen, like with most businesses tend to be the biggest winners as far as making money vs getting caught and going to jail goes. They just need to have some starting money and their job ends up being pretty easy as long as they don't get caught. By middlemen I mean the ones buying multiple pounds off growers to sell to street dealers or to have street dealers hustle for them with.

Though here at least, with dispenseries and legalization, that's all changed.

> Also, you don't get repeat customers if you kill them, so online procured products are usually of a quality high enough you will be a repeat customer (and not die).

It seems like that argument would apply to in person deals too.

Yes, but meeting in person introduces unnecessary risk. People have been shot and killed selling their Xbox online when they meet up [1]. Derisk, derisk, derisk.

[1] https://fox6now.com/2019/07/05/police-2-arrested-in-killing-...

Oh of course, I'm just saying that particular argument of quality doesn't seem unique to online sales.

Buying drugs over the internet and having them mailed to your house puts you at risk of federal felony charges. Lower one risk, increase another.

Unlikely. The package will be confiscated if found at a border crossing or in transit, but it doesn't appear charges are brought against the recipient (the sender might be pursued though if within the jurisdiction; this is why I assume many of these types of shipments originate outside of the US). Not that I recommend doing so, especially with anything considered a controlled substance or on a federal schedule.

Most people buy drugs online with delivery in-country, to get around borders and customs.

You're still right though - most often the marshals will just confiscate the box and leave you a note about how you can claim it if you really want it.

There's reviews, seller ratings, and often test results from some EU lab or via store bought tests. It's kinda like amazon and could probably be gamed but it's probably less likely whatever you're buying will be deadly.

The websites are set up so that you would not make a profit if you tried to game the system.

There are reviews, you can see seller history, you don’t have to interact with someone in a dark alley and bring wads of cash with you, the package arrives discreetly, etc.

nobody buys drugs in a dark alley. people buy drugs in parked cars or living rooms.

Ok? Drugs are bought everywhere.

that's true, but the way you paint it sounds like there is no web of trust or reputation IRL and that its all shady ad-hoc meetings. buying smack off of a random stranger is junkie behavior. considering the estimated size of the black drug market, there is no way most drug users fit into this category. most drug users must be functional for the market to be that big. ergo the most likely scenario does not take place in a dark alley among strangers.

At the very least, buying drugs in person comes with the risk of getting punched in the face in exchange for your money.

In all honesty, when I was young buying street drugs was appealing for the hustle, risk, excitement, and mischief. Often I'd simply resell it for double the thrill. Perhaps with that element gone it might actually be less appealing for some.

No drug dealer punches you in the face for money... drug dealers make money by you coming back for more. Only a crackhead would punch you for money

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about drug buying in this thread in general. You're right, and I'll add that they also make money by word of mouth -- not just you coming back, but bringing a friend, extending a network of trust, etc. Punching someone in the face doesn't exactly engender that kind of thing for one's business.

The only people I know who buy drugs from comparative strangers do so almost exclusively in the food courts of shopping malls, for some reason. Presumably it makes it a little harder to get mugged.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com