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Comment by datasink | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that the real risk is taken by the buyer. The seller can anonymously receive payment, then drop the drug envelope into a random postbox. On the buying end, regardless of Tor and Bitcoin, they still need to have it shipped to a real physical location.

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The seller still has to trade the bitcoins for something (either buy something with them, or trade them for $).

Unless they only buy virtual goods, there's a trail to follow.

The seller can easily buy virtual goods, like other e-currencies, and hide his trail that way.

Yes, that's what I said. But on the other hand, the BTC market is still very poor. Besides domains and hosting, what other virtual goods are there to buy?

Real money. Sell bitcoins to people who are buying them in order to purchase drugs.

There's nothing inherently linking the two transactions of "X bitcoins transferred from wallet #1 to wallet #2" and "Y USD transferred from Bob to Joe" - with sufficient care and redirection, you can make it very difficult to track down exactly where the bitcoins are being traded for real money.

Well yes but you are assuming you can find a buyer who is willing to do a straight bank transfer rather than using an exchange. And most people much prefer to use the exchanges. Especially if they are buying drugs with the bitcoins; if they did a bank transfer to a person selling drugs, they could have just used that payment method in the first place.

But now you have to trust "Joe" to make sure his real identity can't be easily linked from his bitcoin addresses, or else they'll find out about the USD transfer.

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