Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: poopiepants on April 11, 2012, 05:36 am
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Seems like sending cash would be as clandestine without the hassle.
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1) I love the word clandestine. It is so Bourne Identity!
2) Sending cash through the mail is a hassle. It requires going to the postoffice or buying stamps and then going by a bluebox/redbox (US/UK respectively. Why not send "cash" [read: BTC] in the security of your own living room?
Zeus.
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Sending cash in the mail is about as easy as it gets to send large amounts of money. Perfect for those LB Bud Deals. Plus exchanging BTC to USD and Back is a BITCH. IMO the only thing BTC has over cold hard cash in the mail is the escrow system! think about it you can send 3000 dollars cash to a dealer IRL without Meeting ever. that and im pretty sure waiting for 6 confirmations is better than waiting for the damn mailman!
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Put things this way: In order to receive cash the sender needs to know to your address.
So if you were a seller, within a couple of transactions you would find your mailman or the dead drop you might be using, with a couple of uniforms and a nice pair of handcuffs waiting for you.
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Cash wouldn't work for a site like this. Where would you send cash to? Sending it straight to the vendor would deny SR their cut, so the site would have no method of making income. Plus, I can't imagine many vendors would be willing to just give out their address to strangers online, considering the nature of their business.
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Seems like sending cash would be as clandestine without the hassle.
One reason BitCoins are more stealthy than cash is because cash is physical and bitcoins exist in the digital world. So cash must be handled physically, that means you either go to the cash or the cash comes to you either way at the very least an address is needed or a location. BitCoins on the other hand can be sent to anyone regardless of their location as long as you have access to a computer.
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Seems like sending cash would be as clandestine without the hassle.
This is a question which is covered in a good level of detail on the Bitcoin Wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity
I don't have anything to add to this, anyone?
V.
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CIM = Address. Address = Physical collection. Physical collection = traceable. Traceable = Arrest.
I'll take BTC any day of the week....
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*/facepalm
i'm sorry but FFS! as has been stated already, and just about anyone with an ounce of common sense already knows - if you sell drugs anywhere, online or IRL, why would you want to give out an address that can be traced back to you to accept payment?? because a buyer says 'i promise i'm not old bill'??
every now and then i hit a post/thread that renders me almost speechless. i would be completely speechless if i didn't have a little monster in me that demanded i take the piss out of stupidity
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*/facepalm
i'm sorry but FFS! as has been stated already, and just about anyone with an ounce of common sense already knows - if you sell drugs anywhere, online or IRL, why would you want to give out an address that can be traced back to you to accept payment?? because a buyer says 'i promise i'm not old bill'??
every now and then i hit a post/thread that renders me almost speechless. i would be completely speechless if i didn't have a little monster in me that demanded i take the piss out of stupidity
Yeahhhhhh + 5000
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I swear to god i'm not old bill and neither is my wife.
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for customers cash in mail is more anonymous than bitcoin in most cases (unless you get your bitcoins with cash in mail) but for vendors its pretty much a guaranteed trip to prison.
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Did not think of the transaction from the sellers point of view, thanks for all the replies!
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I know its the best we have! But i fucking hate BTC I'm more stressed out buying BTC than receiving! soooo traceable using Dwolla>MT.Gox...fuck that noise
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I know its the best we have! But i fucking hate BTC I'm more stressed out buying BTC than receiving! soooo traceable using Dwolla>MT.Gox...fuck that noise
I've been using Intersango but I've heard they ain't too secure. Does anyone know if this is true?
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sorry not to sound like a noob cuz ive been here for a few months now but how is Dwolla->MtGox traceable? i buy bitcoins from my bank to bitcoin exchange but then i toss em up by sending thru another ewallet service before sending to SR. how is this so traceable? i thought bitcoins were supposed to be anonymous?
one other question for lilith...why does buying bitcoins stress u out more then receiving? is selling bitcoins bad too? im a bit confused on why all this is bad after we were told bitcoins are anonymous, great, etc etc?
thanks in advance for clarification.
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sorry not to sound like a noob cuz ive been here for a few months now but how is Dwolla->MtGox traceable? i buy bitcoins from my bank to bitcoin exchange but then i toss em up by sending thru another ewallet service before sending to SR. how is this so traceable? i thought bitcoins were supposed to be anonymous?
one other question for lilith...why does buying bitcoins stress u out more then receiving? is selling bitcoins bad too? im a bit confused on why all this is bad after we were told bitcoins are anonymous, great, etc etc?
thanks in advance for clarification.
Please see the link above to the Bitcoin wiki for an explanation viz the Anonymity of Bitcoin (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity).
Personally I think the method you use is safe enough, particularly as SR uses its own built in method for laundering Bitcoins when making purchases. In theory if it is possible to identify someone at the stage of buying BTC, then their transactions can be traced throughout the network as all transactions are public.
This is best illustrated by an example.
In theory if say a dealer were under investigation for selling drugs and :
1. Law Enforcement officials (hereafter abbreviated to LE) were aware they were using Bitcoin to vend their shady wares.
2. The dealer makes their Bitcoin address publicly available or LE had managed to subponea a BTC provider to provide one or more of their Bitcoin addresses.
3. You use a traceable method of buying Bitcoins such as transferring money to a provider's bank account from your own and this information is made available to LE.
...then in theory it would be possible to prove that you had sent Bitcoins to this person.
The fact that this has never happened is down to a number of reasons. The first hurdle for LE would be to obtain the Bitcoin addresses used for a particular transaction (although admittedly they would only need one in order to trace the passage of coins through the system). You can minimise the risk of a transaction being traceable to you in this way by spreading any Bitcoins you buy across several wallets.
If you need a guarantee of anonymity, you can run your Bitcoins through a mixing service which will swap your coins for someone else's. My personal favourite BitcoinFog does this a number of times to be on the safe side and only charges a commission of 1-3% (even the commission is randomised for your own safety) - of course the coins you're getting may also have originally been obtained through traceable methods but a mixing service breaks the chain of causation between you and them. As I mentioned before, SR has its own mixing service built in to make sure that when vendors withdraw your fees.
Naturally you also need to take sensible precautions by encrypting your computer and using PGP to protect your communications but that's been covered at lengths in other posts.
Please bear in mind when I say anonymity I am talking about ways to prevent specific Bitcoin transactions being traced to you personally - it would be very easy for someone with access to your telephone company's records to see that you have been using Tor or been visiting the MtGox website but that in itself isn't illegal.
V.