Topic: How big were DRUGS in the rise of Bitcoin? (Read 351 times)

I completely agree. Before, the abuse of drugs were very rampant at that time and users are looking for ways in order to purchase drugs without being caught by the officials. Due to bitcoins decentralized nature, it served as the medium of exchange under the dark web and this gave rise to a new set of knowledge being spread around the web. Because of this event, this affected bitcoin in its reputation as a currency that cannot be tracked, thus, attracting investors and users throughout the globe.

Well Bitcoin before was generally associated as the "Dark Web Currency" because of how it became the number one mode of payment for the buying and selling of drugs. Generally the website Silk Road and similar sites to it made Bitcoin's value double up in value not once but three times when Silk Road was shutdown several times. The U.S.A made several attempts of shutting down the trades but what they can only do is shut down the website and not the currency which didn't stop anything. Now the Dark web have contributed to its rise the good thing is it is now separating itself as only a money for transacting with drugs.

Drugs were the first unique use case for Bitcoin and the driver for adoption. Bitcoin was a vital factor in creating a unique market that couldn't have existed before.

Fairly rapidly the next major use case emerged which maintains to this day which is sitting around waiting for it to be priced higher. Drugs helped that happen and then it took over. The SR demise showed how rapid that transition was.

I'd love to know what the current levels of demand are for drug sales. They must still be a factor but a fairly piddly one.

Drugs were HUGE in the rise of Bitcoin. The Silk Road is where BTC started to take off and become popular. It was used to buy guns, drugs, child pornography and many other various illegal services. Funny how it has become so popular, with such a shady history. 

Why would your sister, grandmother, use bitcoin?
Learn about it?
Find out how it works?
They wont because they have 0 motivation.

Unless they they just got burnt by street dealers and are SICK AND TIRED OF IT.... and now want to buy drugs online BADLY, then they will have a lot of motivation and buy some bitcoin ASAP.

And once they do, they are familiar with it, know how it works, and would use it also for other, legit things, or even invest in it.

The way Bitcoin is set up, being anonymous and decentralized, this would be impossible to precisely quantify. I think there is little doubt that shady internet deals pretty much started the propagation of Bitcoins though. I mean, it's a currency which real criminals use that can be near impossible to track. Surely there would be better, non-criminal real life applications right? More and more people adopted that line of thinking until its value just exploded.

As for additional uses for mainstream adoption, I don't think that's the issue. Bitcoin still has its reputation from its criminal roots, and far too many people are still too wary to trust a technology they don't fully understand. Vendors will not bother with it if the mainstream does not demand it. The situation is steadily getting better, but we have a long way to go.

If you look at the history of bitcoin,the people who started using bitcoin in the beginning were people who understood technology and it is true that it is really difficult for the average joe even now to understand bitcoin fully ,all they know is that it could help in double your profit in a short time but do not have any idea on where to begin,these are the problems i encountered when i started taking classes regarding bitcoin in a meet up.

Bitcoin is not the safest way to purchase goods in the darknet, there are other coins for that use,so bitcoin wont be used because of its lack of anonymity.

man, are you serious about saying that. I do not think everyone is drugs in the rise of bitcoin , even the opposite is actually the benefit that I get.

Are you kidding? If some drug dealers used bitcoin as a payment method in the past, does this mean bitcoin rised due to this activity? Their illegal activity is like a dot when we think the whole trading volume per day.

Drugs played a huge part but so did gambling as a lot of gambling sites got clamped down on for Americans around the rise of bitcoin.
So I think they are side by side for some aspects in the the rise of bitcoin.

The second part I do not see and think if there was a drug that helped cure cancer, it would have the lobbyists of the drug company hopping around mad that they are not able to profit and exploit the public as has been the process in the past. Pharma is real a mean gangster and they would never allow such a thing to set root. If its addicting people to oxypills, they are all for it because they like return customers that they could pretend not to be making money off.

You got some good observation right here, anyway to answer your question i think market will still be the same, if not then it will probably double or triple but that will still depend on the region you are from, like for example if your government is being run by the corrupt ones then expect the market to be slow reason for that is because they will try and get their hands on bitcoin, they will try to control it in any means they can and since bitcoin is decentralized they will just ban it or something. Like in some countries, say for the example you made about the cancer drug, these business people will surely do something just to leverage on that, they will be using the media and the government to make profit, lets say the drug does not cost much in terms of production but the retail price is different  it is because they pay a lot of people including the officials and media. This can also be applicable to bitcoin, they will manipulate it. Release negative statement against bitcoin but then they are the ones who bought most bitcoins when the price dipped.

I dont really know how to answer your question, on the one hand Bitcoin got lots of headlines because of the Silkroad and the implied connection of Bitcoin to drugs - which may have propelled it forward. On the other hand, I think the perceived connection is an ongoing impediment for crypto to get over. Its very easy for somebody to try throwing the whole crypto world into disrepute by bringing up the drugs connection.

In the long run I think that regardless - Bitcoin was going to rise, its a pity that it is at least perceived to be on the back of illicit drugs.

Maybe that's because there's no voting system on this forum.

I don't claim to know the answers to the questions posed here, whether bitcoin would rise or fall
if there was a cancer curing drug and bitcoin was the only way to pay for it.  Who knows.  All I
know is that bitcoin was super important to places like Silk Road, and the stain of that still is stuck
to crypto and likely will never wash off.  But I do think bitcoin will survive regardless; even if all the
dark markets disappeared today, bitcoin would be just as popular amongst speculators.  I don't
think most of the people who try to pump it up here use dark markets necessarily.

Drugs suck, by the way.

I am surprised this post has not gotten more upvotes.

Drugs were HUGE in the rise of Bitcoin. The Silk Road is where BTC started to take off and become popular. It was used to buy guns, drugs, child pornography and many other various illegal services. Funny how it has become so popular, with such a shady history.

This can be said about any of the 100s of payment processors too yet none got as big as paypal, not even close.

If people dont see the value for themselves, why sign up for it and use it?

So thats why I say bitcoin needs to be more simple, and offer more motivation and real life products for people. The drug that cures cancer and is only available thru bitcoin was just an example. Venezuela is another example, where people now use it a lot because their local currency loses value constantly in the hyper-inflation.

So sure if the USD or the EURO would get a hyper inflation too, everyone would probably run into gold and the smarter ones in bitcoin, but despite that what real life use do you see for bitcoin? I mean bitcoin IS already better than credit cards. Not just for consumers but also for shops as with bitcoin they have 0 refunds/fraud. Yet that obviously doesnt seem to be enough for every merchant to accept bitcoin. So what more is needed?

First of all Bitcoin is a real commodity with real usage. There is no need to think about fantasy situation to understand how utility derive the price. When there is utility, there will be demand and hence, there will be a hike in price. Whether that utility is created by your fantasy drug or by merchants all over the world who start accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment, that won't matter.

Coming to your first question. Yes, Darkweb played a giant role in making cryptocurrencies popular. Bitcoin actual usage started from silkroad for trading illegal goods or services. With time when demand increased and  people understood that there is limited cap and hence price will increase. Bitcoin was start being preferred as investment asset and it came out of darkweb and went mainstream. Now usage of bitcoin in darkweb has sharply dropped and people there start preferring other cryptocurrencies whereas Bitcoin has largely became an investment asset today.

yeah maybe drug involve in it since the silkroad use it as acceptable payment few years ago. who know what will happend in journal to rise and rise of bitcoin

So this is a two-part question. My observation is a lot of people had a HUGE motivation to learn about, and buy some bitcoins since they wanted clean/non-street dealer drugs. So thats why they got into bitcoin. Any idea how huge the impact is/was of this in percent?

Another huge group I see btw is peope who see bitcoin constantly rising, see the investment opportunity, and thats why they get into bitcoin.To profit from the constant rise.

Because I think Bitcoin is still way too complicated for average joe and thats why 99% (or a bit less)of the world still dont have a fucking clue about Bitcoin. You could see when the scammer Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wallstreet) just said "I would never buy bitcoin because it would be so easy to just steal them from my phone" ..... Obviously he didnt get it, and doesnt know nobody can get his bitcoin if its sent to an address that only he got the key of, stored away safely. So even this huge finance guru hasnt got a clue how bitcoin works. Now for the most part of the population its even worse. So I am thinking it needs some huge new products/killer-uses for bitcoin to explode faster.

So the 2nd part of the question, lets say there was a new drug that helped everyone live cancer free, disease free, add 20 more years to their lives on average. But the governments would ban this drug for some reason. So it would only be available on the darknet... for Bitcoin... And governments would kind of tolerate this... and the media would be all over it.... Explaining how to buy it....... How much do you think would this mean for bitcoin? Could the market cap double, triple, 50x?