I would like to hear what YOU think the future of tor, dark markets and the online drug trade is going to be. You being the end user only could have the true answer. I'm hoping its now the proverbial VHS tape compared to the future version Of darknets which would be bluray. Just an analogy. Let the absurdity begin :
I think that the credibility gap between established vendors and scammers will become unspannable. a 3 months-old vendor can't compete with a 3 YEAR old vendor, so the fake prices will be lowered and lowered in desparation.
Already, the profiles and listings of scammers are more likely to copy those of successful scammers than vendors - its really easy to tell the difference nowadays. I think so, anyhow. They hardly mention the drugs.
I think DNMs are the future, the money now is insignificant to what it will be. yet most vendors trade in their share of the future for dishonest money now. When the future is here, they will be bellyaching because they cashed-in their share of it.
In countries like the UK, the online drug economy will significant, and mainly retail. Why? Because you receive your drugs in the post tomorrow morning.
In the US, the vendors will be wholesalers, and the customers will be local retailers, "flipping" acid, weed and MDMA. You want drugs THIS week.
I invisage owner-less "robot" marketplaces with a fixed expiry date, automatically rebooting once a week, in which consortiums of users can buy like software and govern using any model - a bit like countries. escrow disputes will be decided by 3 users selected from a pool of volunteers, in return for the 5% commission on that trade.
decentralized, with no owner to bust, and not carrying on and on until failure. Competing like countries or italian city states with survival of the fittest.
no other cryptocurrency will grow in bitcoin's shade, but now that satoshi has been dead for a year and people are starting to cotton-on, we will see that decebtralized = arguements about direction.
bitcoin used to be centralized around what "satoshi" (Hal Finney) thought.
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/hal-finney/
Bitcoin's price was being artificially suppressed by MTGOX's owner laundering 1.2 million btc. He was re-arrested a week ago, and bitcoin is floating to its natural level.