This is the story about trust, and about the wrong concept of 'honor amongst thieves. Somehow it is funny enough and yet it makes me wonder about the human psychology. It is also ringing some bells to the current DEFI situation, where, it is true, you can get rich over night, but you can also lose a good portion of your income. The trick with DEFI product is to be there for their first 48 hours of shelf life, maybe for the first week. After that time interval, the major part of the tokens go inevitably down the rabit whole. I am not talking about the good, inovating ones, but sometimes even these go down down down, having a correction after the initial hype. But i digress. Back to my story.
Long long time ago, we used to have Silk Road, the TOR boogieman website where everything was for sale. Apparently everything. Drugs, tigers, tanks, small armies of mercenaries, ninja for hire, anything you can think about, it was there. The Feds found the founder, and it was closed. After this were few others continuing the freedom movement, some for profit, some to preserve the memory of one of the Alpha Bay admin who comitted suicide. Or at least this is what they said. I am talking about Empire, one of the most reputable and bigger Darknet Market, until one week ago.
''Empire Market has been down since it went offline on August 22, 2020, which is a total of four consecutive days. Reports say that even though the DNM operators have stolen around 2,638 BTC, onchain funds stemming from the DNM have not moved yet.''
As the story goes, one banned user was using DDOS attacks to take the market down. This happen when most of your clients are amazing russian hackers sometimes, right? Now, nobody knows for sure if the hacker succeded in taking dowm the market continuosly for one week, or they just used this as a motive to do a classic exit scam. You would not believe it, just check the reddit r/darknet to see how many people complain about losing all the crypto hold on the Empire wallets or in escrow. So, the main news sounds like this:
''A dodgy, compltely private, illegal market on Darknet run away with all the clients money. Where we can complain to get our money back?''
Would you believe this, if you were to read it? Probably not. Althought, these being said, they can easily track the bitcoins, to see what happen next. As, you may already know, BTC is pseudo-private, and everyone can track your expenses if they know your address.
Officially, COVID and next financial crisis spectre managed to do what authorities were trying without success for the last 30 years, to disband the darknet flourishing market. Just a side note, if you are thinking how much 2638 BTC means today, this is your answer:
I hope you can see the irony of this event. Take care and eat peanuts!
G.
My crypto-related links (check ratings - 1 to 5 stars based on my personal experience)
Games to gain crypto
***** League of Kingdoms - link here: similar with Heroes of Might and Magic or RoK (worldwide - paying in DAI)
***** DogeWars - link here (paying in Doge, 10-100 Doge initial investment, fight bosses and 1vs1 arena)
Exchanges
***** Binance( good for staking/savings ) - link here
***** Kucoin( good for staking/savings ) - link here
***** Coinbase( ideal for beginners )- link here
****ChangeNOW (make your own exchange widget) - link here
Investments
**** BlockFi (decent interest rates, but less choices than Celsius) - link here
***** Celsius.network (good rates of interests and monthly codes for free crypto, 1235256530 => my referral for $10 bonus ) - link here
**** Coinbundle (investing in crypto bundles) - link here
**** Stakecube (staking, masternodes and very easy to claim faucets for 28 coins/tokens) - link here
Wallets for multiple cryptocurrencies
***** Coinpot - link here (microwallet for all Moon faucets, Bitfun and Bonusbitcoin)
***** Atomic wallet - link here (microwallet for Publish0x DAI, BAT and Loopring)
***** Sphere wallet (for Horizen, combined with the faucet for extra bonus) - link here
**** Crypto.com wallet (good interest staking and 50$ bonus in MCO) - link here
Free crypto (faucets and more)
***** Pipeflare faucet (ZEC & PIVX) - link here
****Lbry.tv (free crypto for watching or making videos) - link here
****Bitfun( 3 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
****Bonusbitcoin( 15 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
****Moon Bitcoin ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
***Moon Bitcoin Cash ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
****Moon Litecoin ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
****Moon Dogecoin ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
***Moon Dash ( 5 min countdown - automatically deposit to Coinpot wallet ) - link here
***** Horizen faucet ( 20 hours countdown - automatically deposit to Sphere wallet - bonus ) - link here
***** Zcash daily faucet (20 hours cooldown - automatically deposit to Binance- bonus) - link here
*** Tezos faucet ( 7 days countdown - automatically deposit to Coinbase or Binance wallet ) - link here
** Tron,LTC, XVG and other crypto faucet (24 hours countdown) - link here
Others
***** Publish0x blog (Free BAT, DAI and Loopring for reading/writing - can combine with Atomic wallet) - link here
***** Brave browser (Free BAT for using it, based on paid ads, very good AdBlocker and high speed) - link here
***** Presearch search engine (Free PRE for using it, works well in combination with Brave browser) - link here
***** Dot.Crypto domains for life (ERC721 with UnstoppableDomains - $10 discount of first purchase) - link here
Disclaimer: This text also can be re-published on my personal blogs, such as this one.
