Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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