[BashiBazouk]

Did Silk Road even put a slight dent in street drug sellers in the first place? I would be surprised if street level sellers and buyers are internet savvy enough to use a service like this. SR looks more like the ideal system for savvy college students and young techs to specifically avoid the street level market.

[Touche]

Street sellers get their supply from people up the food chain who are savvy enough to use SR. I've not sure who you think the sellers on SR are, but they weren't mom and pops. As for the buyers, yes most likely white collar addicts.

[3pt14159]

I've never done drugs in my life, but most drug users using SR were not addicts. They were just drug users.

[BashiBazouk]

I would think up the food chain deals would not have taken place on the street in the first place. More replacing the house level deal with SR.

[jtbigwoo]

Right. Just requiring the use of tor prevented 95% of the population from using SR.

[carlob]

Make that 99.5%.

[fragsworth]

I doubt that. If you don't care (or know) about anonymity or security, it was extremely easy to access the Silk Road through a web proxy with a simple Google search.

[epi8]

I'm not doubting, but why?

[princess3000]

There were several obstacles to using SR, each of which would have been difficult or frightening to overcome when the alternative is doing transactions in person with cash. You needed to understand TOR (which, while not especially difficult to use in general, is harder than opening Chrome and going to Amazon), you needed to understand and obtain BTC (either mining them or purchasing them, which was generally somewhat difficult given that you couldn't use credit cards or paypal or other simple payment methods), and then you had to figure out PGP for sending your information to the vendor.

It's all definitely doable and none of it really requires much technical knowledge but there's definitely some friction that I assume would intimidate a fair amount of people.

[tymski]

Do you really think that a seller would pass up the opportunity to use a service like this that would net them far more than they probably make as well as it being much safer for all parties? Of course not, it only requires some googling to figure out how to use it.

[BashiBazouk]

And a computer. And an internet connection. And enough computer experience to get tor running. And enough savvy to find SR's address in the first place. And a customer base with all of the above. I think my point stands...

[pavel_lishin]

I imagine that today, in 2013, an enterprising 20-something year old who's dealing drugs for a living is more than competent enough to do all of the above; and my understanding was that SR was more like eBay than BestBuy - your customer base will find you.

[lmm]

I suspect at least some of those savvy college students and young techs would be buying in the street market if SR didn't exist.