Long before there were sea routes and ships, caravans of camels and horses hiked across Europe, trudged through the deserts of Persia, trekked over the mountains of Afghanistan and crept through the narrow passes of the Himalayas on the historical Silk Road to trade spices, metals, cloth and of course, silk. Along the way, traders had to ward off hunger, thirst, robbers and inclement weather to deliver their goods.
On this Silk Road, however, traders brave prison sentences to deliver goods of an entirely different kind.
(Before we proceed any further, you’ll need an anonymous TOR client if you want to check out the site. Why? You’ll soon find out.)
There is no other way to put it: Silk Road is an anonymous marketplace where you can buy and sell drugs online of the recreational kind. Marijuana, LSD, E – whatever be your fuel of choice, you can find someone selling it here. To be sure though, you can also buy books, apparel, music, furniture, etc. as well, but the amount and variety of drugs on sale far dwarfs everything else.
A Veritable Supermarket for Drugs
Stumbling across the site will leave you mouth agape for a couple of seconds. That virtually every banned and illegal drug is on sale online, out in the open, can take a few seconds to grasp. No wonder the site insists that you use an anonymous TOR client to access it.
Cannabis is the most popular drug of choice, followed by a variety of psychedelics. A seller ‘Holland’, advertises ‘1g of Powerplant, direct from grower’ for 5 bitcoins (we’ll get to that) and ships straight from Netherlands, while another sells 3.5g of ‘Atom Bomb Sour Diesel Kush’ for 20.02 bitcoins, this time from the US itself.
Virtually every drug, from Ketamine and Viagra to 99.98% GHB (Gamma-Butyrolactone) and LSD stamps is up for sale, usually at a steep marked up price. It’s like walking through a drug supermarket.
Safety First
No actual currency changes hands. Instead, payments are made through bitcoins, the P2P currency. One bitcoin currently equates to $2.96. So ‘Holland’s 1g of Powerplant would cost you $14.8. Expensive? I wouldn’t know.
You DO require a physical address to accept the delivery, though Silk Road never stores your address permanently. Once the seller confirms package delivery, the address is deleted from the database.
You’d imagine a site like this would have Pentagon-grade security measures in place and you’d be mostly right. An escrow service protects the buyer and the seller from financial loss. Another security measure called ‘Tumbler’ (hopefully after the Batvehicle) channels your payments through a series of complex, random transactions, each with its own address to ensure anonymity. And since bitcoin exchange rate can vary greatly by the hour, an ‘Escrow Hedge’ feature is in place to ensure that you don’t lose money while it sits in escrow. The site also lists a number of precautions you should take to ensure your safety on its ‘Buyer’s Guide’ page.
Additionally, buyers can leave feedback on the seller’s page – just like eBay. Sellers also typically have their own preconditions before delivering an order, including rules for escrow transactions, shipping, and of course, an advertisement of their wares.
Whatever your opinions on drug use, this is a fascinating site to browse through, especially seeing how it is able to incorporate TOR and bitcoins into a secure, anonymous marketplace. It certainly gave me my “oh wow oh wow” moment of the day. Besides, buying it online at least ensures you won’t get shot by some crazy addict peddler.
(Once again, the site will NOT work without a TOR client, so please download it before you hit the link in your browser).
Update: It appears that the US Senate is seeking a crackdown on BitCoins after “reports that they are used to buy illegal drugs anonymously” online, the Reuters reports (link). I didn’t think it would invite that much scrutiny unless and until it became a mainstream phenomenon, but US lawmakers seem to be not as far behind the curve as I though.
This is very interesting approach. I don’t think I personally would ever purchase things off a site like this, as it’s already sketchy enough, but I’m curious to see how it actually develops and pushes the world of illegal substances.
I’m curious more from a sociological perspective. How does a drug dealer who sells his wares on the internet see himself compared to someone who pushes it on the streets?
The people selling it on the site aren’t the “drug dealers” they’re the manufacturers. Usually the dealer you see on the streets has about 4-5 middlemen that it goes through from the manufacturer to him with each person marking it up slightly to make a profit. By buying it straight from the manufacturer you’re getting a much better price, and the manufacturer can now profit by scaling up his production of the drug due to a much bigger customer-base.
If anything the biggest issue with the site right now is packages being intercepted by US Customs.
That’s what I figured too. Customs would probably intercept the packages, though the site doesn’t talk anything about it.
Within the country though it shouldn’t be an issue. Hence the crackdown.
Take this article down, it’s basically snitching.
Nah its not. This information is freely available everywhere. How else do you think users will find the site?