> And more to the point: who cares -- the real-world market absolutely dwarfs (by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two) the "online drug trade", so his fear-mongering there seems short-sighted to me.
The authors concern is that if Bitcoin were to take off become globally popular, the resulting online market would be much bigger than the existing real-world markets, because of lower barrier to entry and increased globalisation.
Take the current state of online drug/murder/cp trade and mutliply by however many times larger you expect the total bitcoin user population to be in the future than it is now.
Okay, though if that is his point, then he is truly underestimating how large the real drug market is? I don't know I just feel like buying drugs online with cryptocurrency is an inherently limited market. The people involved in the real world drug trade (in large volumes, not your corner dealer here) steer well clear of technology, for good reason.
Source: once upon a time I was a heroin addict involved in some nasty stuff.
The authors concern is that if Bitcoin were to take off become globally popular, the resulting online market would be much bigger than the existing real-world markets, because of lower barrier to entry and increased globalisation.
Take the current state of online drug/murder/cp trade and mutliply by however many times larger you expect the total bitcoin user population to be in the future than it is now.