If the numbers are true, they tell us that in recent months the number of people who used bitcoin to purchase drugs at SR2 was in the tens of thousands.  I don't know how SR2 compared to other drug sites in popularity, but if they were typical then there may have been a hundred thousand people using bitcoin for that purpose.

However, I would give 90% probability at least that the guy is a scammer or a prankster (trying to scare the SR2 customers for laughs).

Well, how many advertisements are unanswered questions?

Yeah, this forum has been rather slow lately.  We are still in school vacations down here, and, as you know, I only sleep during my own lectures.

Wait, is this thread about to become an advertisement space?

You had to register in order to browse, I suppose?

It has some political and economic autonomy, but I believe it is now fully part of China, right?

A guy claiming to be the Silk Road 2.0 programmer is offering their database for sale:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=952177

The guy may well be a scammer, of course.  One interesting detail is that he claims to have "usernames and
hashed passwords of 476,122 users, 51,490 deposit addresses, 7,756 plaintext passwords, 13,280 product listings, 52,481 private messages, 145,493 transaction records".  If true, those numbers may help estimate the number of bitcoin users.

How would he have more than 3 times as many users as transactions?  Is it plausible that 2 out of every 3 people who registered at the site did not order anything from it?

Why would anyone mind an act of service for the public good?

Did you know that, since I started browsing bitcoin sites (after having grokked Fukushima for a year or so), Google Ads has offered me, successively, apart from various bitcoin exchanges and funds, (a) an escort girl service, (b) a bitcoin tumbling service, (c) investment in thorium reactors (since, obviously, bitcoin + Fukushima = nuclear energy fraud), (d) FOREX trading software, (e) an auction of heavy construction machinery (since, what else could I have been browsing the USMS auction site for), and now (f) LED-lighted, RFID-equipped, impact-resistant mining helmets?

If someone can wear a suit, would he be suitable?

And yet this still seems to be the best thread in this whole forum.

Recall that, many months ago, about half of the postings on bitcointalk.org were about altcoins.  I am too lazy now to redo that statistic, but, by eyeball, the altcoins still seem to take a large fraction.

Why do you think that I would be a suitable person to ask that to?

I though of placing on my webpage, below my email, a note "Unsolicited advertisement emails to the above address are welcome, and will be charged 10 dollars apiece".  And then billing any spammers that I could identify, suing those who refuse.

But that looks too much work, nah...

It may come as a shock to you, but the things that you buy are still made on real farms and factories, just as they were before the internet; and they are carried by old-fashioned trucks and other physical vehicles for hundreds or thousands of miles, all the way from the source to your home.  It is true that far more people buy through the internet, rather than by phone from a printed catalog or from the store; but that only affected the last mile of the delivery network, shifting some of the volume from the customer's car to the UPS or merchant's delievery van.


Oh, the internet is definitely much more efficient in many ways than telephones, books, and newspapers at carrying information.  I read a lot of books and used to enjoy browsing the Britannica, but now I use Google all the time and I love Wikipedia (and have contributed several hundred articles to it).  For certain professions and business, doing without the internet would indeed be a severe handicap.

But the question is, how much did its increased information transmission efficiency change the world?

Wikipedia put a huge store of real knowledge to the reach of everyone.  Has the world become wiser, better educated, or more competent since it came up?  I really wonder...

I thought of adding a 3rd list for "car" or "telephone" or "refrigerator" or "electricity" but that would make the exercise much harder.  For example, because of the car you don't see people walking on the street, but only on sidewalks; inner city streets are much wider; homes have garages and garage lanes, and buildings have underground garages, and sidewalks have lowered curbs for car entrances, and there are parking lots, and gas stations look and work very differently from horse stables, and people go to a supermarket miles away once a week, instead of to the corner grocery store every day, and ...


That counts, but only because, without the internet, you would be sitting on a couch in front of a big screen TV, instead of on an uncomfortable chair in front of a tiny computer screen.  But you would be watching Homer Simpson or some stupid guy being interviewed on a talk show, instead of arguing with a stupid poster; so that difference does not count.

The reports I have read say 30 people went to talk to a local councillor (politician); not the police or the courts, because, according to the paper, they thought that the police would not take up their case given that they had no proof of their investment.  If that is correct, there are quite likely more than 30 victims.  3000 victims is not at all unlikely for a ponzi scheme in a fairly wealthy city of 7 million.  (Here we recently had an MLM scheme which scammed tens of millions of victims.)

The estimated average amount per victim is 1 milllion Hong Kong dollars (HKD, HK$) which is about 128'000 US dollars.  Since each cloud mining contract was 52'000 USD, and the newspaper names a couple of victims who bought multiple (up to eight) contracts, that amount does not seem excessive at all. 

Since I haven't been called a retard enough recently, let me suggest this experiment:   

Get your tablet or smartphone, or some old-fashioned pencil and paper

Take a 1 hour walk around your neighborhood

Make two lists, with everything material that you see that is there, is not there, or is different than would have been otherwise, because of (a) the internet, (b) the fax machine.

(By "material" I mean objects -- not merely the text or pictures on store signs, windows, billlboards, computer screens, etc..  For example, you may notice that, because of the internet, the newspaper kiosk or vending machines at the street corner have disappeared: that counts.  You will see URLs or QR codes on signs, instead of telephone numbers: that does not count.  You may see the building of some internet venture that employs dozens of people and is making piles of money: that does not count, because, without the internet, there would probably have been a building of some other company there, employing dozens of people and making piles of money with some other business, computer-related or not.)

If you are too lazy to take the walk, do the same inside your home or place of work. (But actually get up and walk, do not just sit there and make a mental walk, you bum!)

If you are too lazy even for that, think of all the people you know, and note which ones have had their lives substantially changed because of the internet. (If the guy would be sitting on a desk 9 to 5 anyway, pushing numbers and writing reports,it does not matter whether he uses the internet or not.)

If you are too lazy even for that, at least note the following: what you see on your computer screen, on TV, on newspapers and magazines, is not the world, it is just images of the world.  Just because the images have changed, it does not mean that the world has.


After you have done your homework above, there will be a quiz on this subject too.   

Don't you get annoyed when someone breaks the pyramid?

But maybe we can be entered in the blockchain somehow? That should beat being frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Damn! I thought that I had removed all the double spaces after periods from all my posts...