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arXiv:1207.7139cs.CY

Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace

Nicolas Christin

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road, an anonymous, international online marketplace that operates as a Tor hidden service and uses Bitcoin as its exchange currency. We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012, including daily crawls of the marketplace for nearly six months in 2012. We obtain a detailed picture of the type of goods being sold on Silk Road, and of the revenues made both by sellers and Silk Road operators. Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics, and that most items sold are available for less than three weeks. The majority of sellers disappears within roughly three months of their arrival, but a core of 112 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers, from public listings, to slightly over USD 1.2 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 92,000 per month in commissions for the Silk Road operators. We further show that the marketplace has been operating steadily, with daily sales and number of sellers overall increasing over our measurement interval. We discuss economic and policy implications of our analysis and results, including ethical considerations for future research in this area.

arXiv comments
26 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables; changes to v1 include revised sales volume and commission estimates (Sec. 5) and slightly expanded discussion
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.CYComputers and Society cs.CRCryptography and Security

On Hacker News

Linked by 6 identifiable commenters in 7 comments across 7 threads, from Feb 2013 to Apr 2018. Found in 3 HN submissions from Aug 2012 to Oct 2012. Open submission discussions.

Comments linking this paper, per year.

Discussed in comments7 threads

  1. YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals 1 comment

    • > what originally drove the lions share I think that is known to be false (although it is repeated ad nauseam on HN). The best estimate around 2011 / 2012, is from this study: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139 which estimated SR transactions to be between 4% - 9% of the total…

      alphydanView on HNParent context

  2. Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users? 1 comment

    • They likely didn't speak to an IRB. I've complained a number of times about sketchy behavior from researchers in the space of "Bitcoin transaction deanonymization" which were likely to cause harm to people and have reliably gotten a response from CS departments that sounds like…

      nullcView on HNParent context

  3. XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' 1 comment

    • Silk Road is a few pennies and few gram transactions. [See the data here http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139] It would be foolish to expose their snooping capabilities for this, right? Wow, Tor is not considered safe... Amazing

      synctextView on HNParent context

  4. The Big Book of Bitcoin - An introduction 1 comment

    • I can't. I think criminals will find their way with Bitcoin or without it. It's easy to fall for the easy argument: "the standard banking/monetary system is even worse, so bitcoin is ok". As a small example HSBC was considered too big to jail (they laundered last year about…

      alphydanView on HNParent context

  5. Bitcoin rises from $14 to $40 in two months 1 comment

    • http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139 Based on this analysis, not much. But then again, the estimation methods in the paper are not very good IMHO.

      jerguismiView on HNParent context

  6. Coinbase Is Now Selling Over $1M USD Of Bitcoin Per Month 1 comment

    • This isn't a complete, up-to-date answer, but Nicolas Christin estimated in August 2012 that 1.2 million USD worth of transactions are made every month. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v2.pdf I imagine that number has grown, but odds are that the vast majority of Bitcoin usage…

      teebsView on HNParent context

  7. Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction 1 comment

    • "We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road... We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012... We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers, from public listings, to slightly over USD 1.2 million per month..."…

      wmfView on HNParent context

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