If one thing is for sure, Tor and the Silk Road has changed the international drug market forever.
When Silk Road was shut down last fall, the FBI estimated that over $1.2 billion in profit was generated over roughly two and a half years and $23 billion worth of bitcoins have been traded over the market.
That means that in that time, a quarter of all purchases made with bitcoins were made on the Silk Road.
Since the federal government shut down the Silk Road, the Silk Road 2.0 has opened up for business and this website promises that it won’t make the same mistakes that led to destruction of the first one. Now, most users agree the illegal activity is back and better than ever but not because of Silk road 2.0 but instead because of the competition that has been given a chance to step onto the newly opened market.
The Silk road 2.0 was produced fast to replace the original as quickly as possible and this has lead to some flaws. Some of the major ones include, a hack that stole all users Bitcoin’s stored on the site and in incomplete escrow transactions. This problem resulted in them removing there escrow service which in turn, lead to many scammers flocking to the site. Since this, they have repaid 85 percent of users lost funds however, These mistakes have led users and sellers to look elsewhere.
Mainly, the Agora Marketplace, They have been stably running on the Deepweb for substantial period of time and have lots of work in the production and security of the site and learning from all the problems of previous black markets.
To become a seller you must provide accurate history of your selling records on previous black markets or put down a deposit to be used to pay back buyers in case of a attempt to rip them off, they offer full escrow, there funds have never been hacked, and they give a percent of all there profits to the users for all the buyer/sellers they bring to the site.This stable system has since led to most major black market sellers to look past the revolutionary trial era of The Silk Road and unto easier more advanced options.
With all the new option available today, The FBI shutting down the Silk Road has had a reverse effect of what they intended. The online drug market stronger than ever, there are now more people than ever before buying illicit goods from a whole range of different sites on the Deep Web and with the increased competition, at cheaper prices.
The FBI will have their hands full trying to take down dozens of new marketplaces just like the Silk Road and if they do, will it even make a difference? I think not.
Just another perfect example of the joke the government calls, the war on drugs.
