Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Burning Babylon on May 28, 2013, 01:39 pm
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This thread consists of two parts, first the question itself and then how the concept would work.
The question: I'm wondering if it's allowed to sell pre-registered and preloaded Silk Road Accounts outside of Silk Road? If not, are there any specific guidelines which dictates this specifically (ie. not allowed to load to many random accounts etc. ) ? For the concept if it were to be allowed:
The basic idea would be to register an account, preload it with a fixed amount of bitcoin (from our vendor account to a third party account, then to the user in question) and then sell it to potential customers outside Silk Road for cash. There would be a complete guide along with all the tools necessary to access Silk Road on an USB memory stick which we would then sell through a third party which has no clear affiliation to us (meaning no possible drug connection whatsoever). I'm thinking we would give each account an internal identification which we could then use to send additional funds at a later date if they pay our intermediary (so they don't have to buy new USB memory sticks all the time). The intermediary would get a fixed cut of each transaction for him to have any motivation to be selling to begin with.
Now someone might be wondering why would we do something like this to begin with? Simple, laziness. Most people won't have the will or time to learn how to use bitcoin no matter how simplified it gets, even having a guide for how to use Silk Road is most likely stretching the attention spans of a vast majority of users but could at least get a few more into it.
Now to address some points that could possibly come up:
* Won't you have access to their usernames/passwords?
Yes, but the guide would include clear guidelines on how to change them as quickly as possible. If I know people right by now I would guess 90% would ignore this advice and let the password sit right on the usb memory stick - unfortunate but it's probably the reality.
* Won't the intermediary be in significant risk from Law Enforcement?
This is an interesting thing to ponder. Now Silk Road itself is obviously not illegal and bitcoins are not illegal either, but having a combination in the sense of a preloaded account on a site where 90%+ of the products are illegal does create a potential problem. I don't see any possible way of Law Enforcement pinning any case on the intermediary except possibly tax evasion which would pretty much be impossible to prove as there's no written record of anything. The best possible solution for this I can think of is to have all USB memory sticks encrypted and decrypt them right before a customer gets access to one (a customer will not have the will/attention span to learn to decrypting anything).
* Won't the end user be in significant risk from Law Enforcement?
The plan is for the end user to be identifiable by an internal identification which in itself makes no sense to our intermediary. The username and password will be in plain text on the USB memory stick and if the police get access to it without the user having switched password they could potentially get access to the account and have a full history of everything ordered. Now this alone would in most countries not count as everything, but Sweden which has some of the most restrictive drug laws in Europe could potentially be a bit different in this regard. I would not be surprised if the prosecutor would argue that if a person has ordered 20 grams per week for four weeks that the person had the intent of ordering over a kilogram per year with the intent to distribute. No simple solution to this problem except for the customer to switch password (which he/she most likely won't) or for Silk Road to implement some kind of function which makes a person login fine but requires them to instantly switch password the second they've logged in for the first time.
The USB memory stick would include the following:
* Tor Client.
* Gpg4win. v2.1.0
* Username and password to a Silk Road Account along with internal identification number for easy reloading of account later with bitcoin through intermediary.
* Guide how to access Silk Road through the Tor Client.
* Guide how to (optionally) encrypt a message when sending the address.
* Possibly lot's of other random (legal) stuff as to not make it to obvious what's on the memory.
I'm sure there are some other things that could be improved with this concept, if anyone has any ideas/suggestions feel free to post them here. :)
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Sounds like an interesting concept, but how are you going to tackle the zero/little feedback issue?
Having my old account been made inaccessible (though my own fault really) I know the pain of starting from scratch as a "new buyer" which most established vendors asked to FE or outright refused to sell to me at all
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Sounds like an interesting concept, but how are you going to tackle the zero/little feedback issue?
Having my old account been made inaccessible (though my own fault really) I know the pain of starting from scratch as a "new buyer" which most established vendors asked to FE or outright refused to sell to me at all
Ah but this would be entirely outside of Silk Road though, didn't even consider it might be interesting for use through others buying them on Silk Road itself. The purpose in the end is to get people familiar with drugs in general to go to the "next step" and upgrade to Silk Road, something they might not have done on their own. For personal use it would be quite simple for someone to just create an account for a friend and send some bitcoin his way if they pay him in cash, I don't see how someone could do this process more effectively and make a profit on it through Silk Road itself. Anyway the only question is if they are allowed to do this or not, regardless if it's for personal use or a bit larger scale as I'm thinking about it. :)
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YOU answered the second part yourself..I will answer the first part....Of course someone could sell you a buyer account with say 100 btc in it. It would be the EXACT same thing as selling you btc. But the vendor would have the information such as the password and the pin. You could always change both right away and bam..it is your account.
The reason this is not done..is because it makes no sense. Buyer accounts are free and take 1 min to open. So there is no need to sell them as a package...as everyone would want there own name and information. I understand everything you said...and again I think you offered the answers to all your questions...except for is it allowed...and I answered that for you.
I think your LE is a lot off and comes from a paranoid sense.
And bottom line is though people are lazy...there still is no need for this. And there really is not need for the USB memory stick. I get what you are saying buy it...and I agree that someone would be willing to pay for this information to all be there...just the convenience of it....but as a vendor...this would all take way too much time and so not be worth it..Though I am sure some vendor that really doesn't sell that much could put these together...the problem is he would have no btc as the vendors never have any money. Also that would be the problem...as soon as you had an account...and say you loaded it with any amount the customer wanted....after that what are you really offering them? An account that takes 1 min to open and some btc in it? Newbies are cheap as fuck as it is...most want like 1 btc...so again... I think some would buy.....but nothing that would be worth any real vendors time.
Also this has been brought up many time and in fact was actually done when there was a time no more buyer accounts would be given at that time. So there were people selling buyer accounts...but no one offered the USB stick..
Do buyers even use a stick?
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For those reading this not wanting to read all of this post, atleast consider reading my last part which begins with "This got me thinking of different ways of delivering a functional tutorial of some sort to a potential user beyond an USB memory stick." :)
I came back to this thread with some comments and additional thoughts as I was surprised with how many buyers didn't bother with encrypting their addresses. First the comments:
YOU answered the second part yourself..I will answer the first part....Of course someone could sell you a buyer account with say 100 btc in it. It would be the EXACT same thing as selling you btc. But the vendor would have the information such as the password and the pin. You could always change both right away and bam..it is your account.
This is technically correct for any active user here, but for an end user with no experience with neither Silk Road or Bitcoin it's not.
I think your LE is a lot off and comes from a paranoid sense.
Better safe than sorry. :D
And bottom line is though people are lazy...there still is no need for this. And there really is not need for the USB memory stick. I get what you are saying buy it...and I agree that someone would be willing to pay for this information to all be there...just the convenience of it....but as a vendor...this would all take way too much time and so not be worth it..
I would agree entirely if the purpose would be to sell on Silk Road only, no profit margins and no point really as if anyone can actually watch the listing they've already done 80% of the work. If the buyer has any friends they would tell them in person or just keep it secret, although there might be a small market for a complete video tutorial for registering, concepts etc. on Silk Road itself, Bitcoin and so on.
Also that would be the problem...as soon as you had an account...and say you loaded it with any amount the customer wanted....after that what are you really offering them? An account that takes 1 min to open and some btc in it? Newbies are cheap as fuck as it is...most want like 1 btc...so again... I think some would buy.....but nothing that would be worth any real vendors time.
With an intermediary this would be a fairly stable and secure way of money laundering into cash, in my opinion there's a very large section of people who would be willing to pay for having 70-80% of the work completed for them in advance without them having to learn any new concepts they aren't familiar with. The amount of people not bothering to encrypt their addresses when ordering act as circumstancial evidence in this case. :P
Do buyers even use a stick?
This got me thinking of different ways of delivering a functional tutorial of some sort to a potential user beyond an USB memory stick. I came up with the following (all these examples assume an intermediary if nothing else specified) :
* Normal mail, with for example a pamphlet with all the information/images required.
* E-mail - simply send all the details directly to an e-mail (although obviously extremely unsafe unless a password of some kind is used).
* Website which has all the information on it, including possibly an interactive tutorial/guide on how it would look like.
* SMS including all information needed (would assume a preloaded account).
* DVD, a short movie which details how Silk Road and Bitcoin works, or alternatively perhaps in addition how to exactly deal with the intermediary in question in regards to loading the account further and so on.
* Podcasts/MP3/Audio, something which guides the user through all steps through sound only - not everyone can be bothered to watch a movie or might for example have visual problems.
* Computer/Mobile, a fully functional computer or mobile which is ready to be used on Silk Road instantly (a good choice for this would be for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi). This option would allow additional security measures ( plausible deniability ) along with functions like for example automatic login into Silk Road. This option will get more and more viable as computers/mobiles get smaller and cheaper.
A small note about the last alternative of a computer/mobile which many might not know that the microchip on any credit card is technically a computer in itself, it's not a very fast one but it has the capacity to encrypt/decrypt information with the intention of giving proof to the bank that the account is in fact the correct one as the credit card holds the right key to decrypt the data sent by the bank about that specific bank account. There is nothing technically stopping a solution of buying a prepaid Silk Road card which could just be swiped at a terminal and then instantly get an order processed with address and everything after picking a product (this is obviously not going to happen any time soon due to legal/security reasons, but still there's nothing stopping the concept itself in a perfect world 8)).