this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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I have to say… even with the Elon influence, I didn’t see that one coming. Ulbricht stole capital from the rich and enabled stuff including human trafficking considered evil by the religious right. But I guess he also stuck it to The Man, for which he is being rewarded.
Human trafficking was not allowed. Not even CCs were allowed. Silk road didn't let you sell anything that harmed others.
Also, how did Ulbricht steal from the rich?!?
If anything he made it easier for the rich to wash their money and buy ketamine
The site operated on bitcoin. How did it help people wash money?!? Bitcoin is more easily traced than cash. Its a public ledger
And it was still quite literally used by 10,000's of vendors to sell illegal drugs?
I dont think it would have even been a thing if it was as easy as you suggest to catch people selling drugs on it. Sure, with enough resources, a dedicated law enforcement team can likely bust a drug dealer using BTC; but like with most things involving drugs and Neo-liberalism, the prisons are all full, the police are underfunded and can only occasionally make token arrests and the people who arent low hanging fruit get in and out without any interaction with the police.
No way you actually think this is reality. No way enforcement could just be a deeply inefficient way of dealing with crime and the low hanging fruit along with making a show of token arrests is really all they care about.
No lol the country with the largest prison population, that generates private profit by holding its people captive and hands out billions of dollars to police, the DEA and the FBI to capture them, well it just needs to hand out even more billions of dollars of "resources" to these agencies so they can lock up the real criminals and then crime will be properly dealt with!
The people in prison for dealing drugs arent the same people dealing drugs with bitcoin, you conflate gang members, prescription drug resellers and corner standers with the profile of a typical darknet drug dealer, which arent the same demographics for the most part.
Its the reality in the UK at least, only drug dealers who get caught here are the ones trying to ship in millions of worth of cocaine, the prisons are actually all full here and most drug crimes dont even get charged because the time limit they have to charge people expires by the time the courts become available.
As for the US, it remains a convient excuse for the police to suppress votes from demographics the upper class needs supressed; you wont be finding the people who supply elon musk with ketamine going to prison anytime soon, they will be smart enough to use monero!