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

Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by alphydan

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:43:35 GMT

> 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 Bitcoin transactions. Hardly what I would call "The lion's share".

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by nullc

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 00:09:15 GMT

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 "anyone could do this, so there are no ethical considerations". E.g. for an example in print from CMU, see section 6.2 of http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139 I don't consider the argument persuasive: First, if we look to physical law there is no experiment that couldn't just be conducted by 'anyone'-- That nothing prevents…

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by synctext

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:43:46 GMT

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

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by alphydan

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:03:39 GMT

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 twice the size of the Bitcoin Economy, helping criminals, drug lords, etc), and only got a slap on the hand (a $1.8bn fine). The powerful can launder their money, do tax evasion, use tax havens ... now it's available to all technicaly skilled ones (good or bad?). Drugs sold on silk road were evaluated…

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by jerguismi

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:07:23 GMT

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.

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by teebs

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 20:40:08 GMT

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 still isn't on the Silk Road. Also, buyers on the Silk Road have to be careful about which services they use to buy Bitcoin. If CoinBase isn't anonymous (and I'd guess it's not, since it uses bank transfers), Silk Road transactions could be tracked back to the purchaser's bank account.

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Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace — mentioned by wmf

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 20:49:33 GMT

"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..." http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139

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

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:19:12 GMT

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

9 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

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

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 18:25:57 GMT

A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

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

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:14:39 GMT

Paper on the Economic Activities of the Silk Road

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.