Crowdfunding Site Promotes Assassination of Political Figures

Officials are going to love that

As Bitcoin becomes an increasingly popular form of digital cash, the cryptocurrency is being accepted in exchange for everything from socks to sushi to heroin. If one anarchist has his way, it'll soon be used to buy murder, too.

Last month I received an encrypted email from someone calling himself by the pseudonym Kuwabatake Sanjuro, who pointed me towards his recent creation: The website Assassination Market, a crowdfunding service that lets anyone anonymously contribute bitcoins towards a bounty on the head of any government official–a kind of Kickstarter for political assassinations. According to Assassination Market's rules, if someone on its hit list is killed–and yes, Sanjuro hopes that many targets will be–any hitman who can prove he or she was responsible receives the collected funds.

Comments

[Gorilla tactics]

Jim Bell "Assassination Politics"-I wonder if this will work.

[VinnyG]

Is it a legit refresh of AP, or some misbegotten FBI sting op? What better way to permanently defang both those who believe that their Liberty is currently in dire rextremities and requires physical defense to survive, and those who are willing and able to act as their agents? According to the Forbes article, "Sanjuro" claims to have taken "additional security measures" to prevent a Silk Road type scenario involving tracked Bitcoins, but refuses to divulge what those measures might be. So, potential participants are expected to trust "security by obscurity" for risks of this magnitude? Seriously? If this is not a gooobermint attempt to massively vacuum up effective Enemies of the State, it is utterly incompentent. Either possibility is a good reason to distance oneself from this proposal.

[Scarecrow Repair]

This reminds me very much of an interesting assassination funding scheme which made me laugh. I don't think it was ever real. Maybe it was just a science fiction story.

Anyway, it was disguised as a betting site. People post bets such as "I bet Obama is not killed by a pink dildo fired from a bazooka on the 17th of May", and other people back it up. If the pot gets big enough, someone would see an easy way to win the bet, bet $1 against everybody, and carry out the kill himself. But it was just a bet, not a contract.