Of Course Shutting Down Silk Road Will Not Deter the Black Market in the Slightest
The infamous online black market Silk Road was shut down by authorities at the beginning of the month and its alleged mastermind, Ross William Ulbricht, arrested.
While the feds actions have disrupted trade momentarily, the black market is already rebounding. Mashable tracked down one of their major vendors and found they've already figured out new ways to sell their THC lollipops:
Angelina was a vendor on Silk Road, which the FBI described as the Internet's largest "sprawling black market bazaar" after the agency seized the website and arrested its alleged owner earlier this month. Though we refer to Angelina as a female, in reality she's a highly secretive team of people who use sophisticated anonymizing technology to maintain a booming online drug business.
We communicated with Angelina through a series of encrypted messages before the fall of Silk Road, and she said her business runs "like a small Internet retailer/packing and shipping company." A couple weeks after the site closed, we reconnected with Angelina on Silk Road's forums, which are still up and running.
"The shutdown of Silk Road and the instantaneous rise of several new sites has taught us that the market is an idea, not a particular web address," Angelina wrote. "It doesn't matter who, or where or how exactly — as long as there are buyers there will be sellers."
"Angelina" has moved on to two other sites to sell her THC-infused suckers. Mashable notes the volume of customers is much lower than Silk Road, but no doubt they will certainly grow now.
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