Quote from: ravgni on April 15, 2013, 12:57 amDoes SR block entry to your account for a period after a certain number of failed attempts? I know the forum does but I've been trying to gain access to my old account and am a little disheartened by not knowing this since the main site doesn't give any hints to why a failure occurs (thats probably a good thing in general though.) ThanksI don't believe so. Things that may help you login include:I've noticed that the capcha on SR expires quickly, typing it accurately and quickly is important, paying attention to capitalization. If you're spending longer than four or five seconds logging in, it can become frustrating.To aid your login speed, type your username/password down and copy paste them when you login. A password storage software system like KeePass is a good idea for this. In addition to secure storage, this means you'll be 100% sure you inputted the information correctly too.If you still can't login after repeated attempts, then I suggest you contact the SR staff in the correct subforum. It might take a while to sort it out due to high volume of help requests so you'll need to be patient. If you don't have any bitcoin in the account, then it might be worth your while just starting out all over again with a fresh account.Quote from: Atr3yu on April 15, 2013, 01:04 amWould you advise sending bitcoins to an interim wallet (e.g., blockchain.info) before sending to SR or is that unnecessary?It depends on how you obtained the bitcoins. If you obtain them with cash using OTC bitcoin services (search forums for info) to some 3rd party bitcoin wallet on the internet, you can just send them straight to SR. If you acquired them on an exchange with your credit card or bank account transfer, then sending them directly to SR would mean (in the situation of the exchange and SR being compromised) you've just told LE agents that you're buying drugs on SR. Although I always recommend using OTC services to make LEO's life hell, if you do use a conventional method of obtaining bitcoin I suggest you use a bitcoin laundry to be receiving other random people's bitcoins. Search the forum for information on bitcoin laundry procedures. If this is too expensive for you (these sorts of procedures cost ~5% - 10% for OTC and 2% - 3% for laundry) then you can obfuscate the origin of the bitcoins by splitting them up into different 3rd party wallets and sending them to different SR addresses. I have a forum post which describes how this is done.Here are instructions I wrote a while back if you have acquired bitcoin with a credit card or bank account transfer.http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=29038.msg344009#msg344009Read through it carefully!Since the default assumption among ourselves ought to be that SR is, and always has been hacked (although we'd prefer if this was not the case obviously!), one has to use Bitcoin and PGP in a certain way to avoid any hypothetical possibility of interception.As you are probably gathering, it's easier to do it right from the outset, than to unlink identity connections later.Quote from: cocktree on April 15, 2013, 01:13 amHow long do you think this place can exist as a place to sell drugs on the internet? Is that really what SR is, or is there some loftier perception as a beacon of freedom?There are two Silk Roads. On one level it is a website that brings vendors and consumers of illegal/difficult to obtain drugs together. This is the practical 'bare metal' Silk Road. On another level it is the very beginning of an entirely new economic paradigm. One must appreciate that there has never existed a completely free market in history. Now there is! That is really something special. One must not mistaken its current simplicity for a lack of sophistication.In the long term (decades!), Darknet Markets will, within our lifetimes, change the world. They will make it impossible to tax online services and products in the way the taxman is used to doing. Not just illegal kinds, but any kind. Probably small, transportable kinds mostly unless the availability of drone transports becomes ubiquitous. Right now that the IRS can't tax SR is not exactly the most important feature of the network. The primary feature today is access to some types of illegal goods and services. But SR and other Darknet Markets are growing extremely quickly. Any bank manger looking at this business plan would be singing its praises. Darknet Markets are here to stay and they are going to have a profound effect, especially in poorer countries with (even more) rent seeking government structures.Any way you look at it, this is a true revolution. Not a violent revolution, yet, that depends on the reaction of the State, but a genuine revolution nonetheless. It is my belief that this is a unique period in history that we are privileged to witness. DPR is currently serving the same function as a 21st century John Cowperthwaite. http://gwulo.com/node/6190Ensure some basic institutional safeguards, such as anonymity, and then step right the fuck back, interfering only to prevent interference with the market. Right now SR is a tiny shanty town, like the way Hong Kong used to be. High levels of illiteracy, poverty and basic problems everywhere. But one day we shall grow to lead the vanguard of the black market economy into the heart of the West. Our intention is to destroy the State, not by violence, hopefully, but by enabling the voluntary actions of millions of people. We believe the alternative is that the West shall stagnate and destroy itself by turning inward like the Chinese mandarins when their empire reached its zenith. I believe that we are the only true economic alternative to stagnation. In short, this is about money yes, but we have dreams of even more wealth than that and not merely for ourselves. There is also a big picture that even many of our detractors would understand to be noble. Just as with Hong Kong, the smuggler is the vanguard of Free Market Capitalism. Later on, Silk Road and other illegal drug markets are expected to be a tiny part of the overall Darknet Market system, it will have achieved its goal of bootstrapping the Darknet at that point.This is what the concept of CryptoAnarchy is about. Yes, it is just ones and zeros in exotic patterns in an attempt to appear random. But it is also a new system of political economy the world has never seen before. Military stategists have understood this for a long time and have focused on what the shape of violence shall be in such a world, the so called Network War or Netwar, and Fourth Generation Warfare. But there is also the potential for peace and propensity such that the world has never seen before.There are millions of prisoners in jails in the West serving no productive purpose, stagnating. There are at least a billion people under the thumb of corrupt and ineffective States whose only real raison d'etre is to be rent seekers. So when we talk of Freedom on the Silk Road we are not discussing metaphysical aspirations.People with low aspirations and low intellect shall denigrate the Silk Road as the the destruction of civilized society. It is nothing close to the truth. The truth is that we are the foot soldiers of capitalism and free markets. Democracy has proved itself simultaneously too weak and too blunt an instrument to discern the will of the people, the growth of the State has finally become cancerous. There is really no other option than to join the ranks of the cryptoanarchic.  = Anarchy is the mother of Order.