Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: PrincessHIGH on September 19, 2012, 11:00 pm

Title: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: PrincessHIGH on September 19, 2012, 11:00 pm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-market-drug-site-silk-road-booming-22-million-in-annual-mostly-illegal-sales/

$22 Million? Nice to hear business is booming! Yup, 'The War On Drugs' has been a raving success, LOL! We're free to do whatever we want to with our bodies, and long may it continue! Of course, with much better feedback than any government agency, this speaks volumes within itself! :D

Good read, it's a very interesting article, thought I'd share it with everyone! :)
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: spacecase #2 on September 19, 2012, 11:03 pm
What they don't say is how that number they came up with does not include bitcoin fluctuation, therefore making the whole study inaccurate.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: johnmtl on September 19, 2012, 11:06 pm
Thank god its only 22 mill!!!!

that's peanuts in the big picture... The annual black market for illicit drugs is in the trillions...

that means less LE eyes watching over it.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: smokeweed420 on September 20, 2012, 11:31 pm
So is it saying that the owner/administrators make this much a year or is this split between all vendors/administrators/owners? yeah 22 million sounds about right for what DPR himself would make in a year. he deserves every penny. the great thing is that if they were to find a way to shut us down than a new website doing the exact same thing would pop right up
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: catfishinmysocks on September 20, 2012, 11:45 pm
So is it saying that the owner/administrators make this much a year or is this split between all vendors/administrators/owners? yeah 22 million sounds about right for what DPR himself would make in a year. he deserves every penny. the great thing is that if they were to find a way to shut us down than a new website doing the exact same thing would pop right up

Read the article, that's their estimate of sales. They estimate $6000 a day in commission.
It's big money for operating a very simple service, this site isn't run out of kindness.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: mito on September 21, 2012, 12:19 pm
Quote
To dig up Silk Road’s sales numbers, Christin ran a program that crawled the site and scraped its content, including sales and pricing information, about once a day for a six month period

I wonder how he accomplished the above.

How does he get sales number?
Is he a vendor?
An admin?

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor?         ??? ???

Discuss.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: gestaltassault on September 21, 2012, 12:32 pm
i don't like the attention that SR is getting...it brings the wrong people around....irresponsible people...
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: mito on September 21, 2012, 01:53 pm
i don't like the attention that SR is getting...it brings the wrong people around....irresponsible people...

FE will weed them out.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: painbow on September 21, 2012, 03:32 pm
Seriously, where did he even pull out the number 22 million?  Is he DPR's accountant or something?!
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: PrincessHIGH on September 21, 2012, 03:33 pm
I wonder how he accomplished the above.

How does he get sales number?
Is he a vendor?
An admin?

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor?         ??? ???

Discuss.

Very valid points raised here mito, I hope someone will be able to shed some light. That's what I initially thought when I read the article, how the hell did the reporter come up with the figure $22 million, it's not just picked out of the air, is it? Is he a vendor, or is he admin? This would be near impossible to prove, I believe, how would you even start to prove that statement? I don't think we'll ever know the answer to this question.

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor? Now, that's the scary one! I'm computer literate, so haven't got a clue. Can one of the more experienced computer programers amongst please let us know? And if that's possible, what other personal information could be leaked? Sinister stuff! Praise be we have PGP to protect ourselves!  :)
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: johnmtl on September 21, 2012, 06:49 pm
I wonder how he accomplished the above.

How does he get sales number?
Is he a vendor?
An admin?

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor?         ??? ???

Discuss.

Very valid points raised here mito, I hope someone will be able to shed some light. That's what I initially thought when I read the article, how the hell did the reporter come up with the figure $22 million, it's not just picked out of the air, is it? Is he a vendor, or is he admin? This would be near impossible to prove, I believe, how would you even start to prove that statement? I don't think we'll ever know the answer to this question.

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor? Now, that's the scary one! I'm computer literate, so haven't got a clue. Can one of the more experienced computer programers amongst please let us know? And if that's possible, what other personal information could be leaked? Sinister stuff! Praise be we have PGP to protect ourselves!  :)

He had a scrubber go through all the feedback left over the period of his test and based his numbers on the feedback.. you can tell what item was bought but not how many of said item... none the less I think his numbers make sense and are on par with the truth..




Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: pureforsure on September 22, 2012, 02:04 am
Wow! That's amazing!
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: mito on September 22, 2012, 06:03 pm
I wonder how he accomplished the above.

How does he get sales number?
Is he a vendor?
An admin?

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor?         ??? ???

Discuss.

Very valid points raised here mito, I hope someone will be able to shed some light. That's what I initially thought when I read the article, how the hell did the reporter come up with the figure $22 million, it's not just picked out of the air, is it? Is he a vendor, or is he admin? This would be near impossible to prove, I believe, how would you even start to prove that statement? I don't think we'll ever know the answer to this question.

Did he use a script polling encrypted data over Tor? Now, that's the scary one! I'm computer literate, so haven't got a clue. Can one of the more experienced computer programers amongst please let us know? And if that's possible, what other personal information could be leaked? Sinister stuff! Praise be we have PGP to protect ourselves!  :)

He had a scrubber go through all the feedback left over the period of his test and based his numbers on the feedback.. you can tell what item was bought but not how many of said item... none the less I think his numbers make sense and are on par with the truth..

bingo.

just multiply the number of feedback entries by the item price....

repeat for all vendors and products.

Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: blowdrobro on September 22, 2012, 08:10 pm
SR ADMINS BE BALLIN'
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: peels4u on September 23, 2012, 01:28 am
I think the actual amount is much higher than 22 million.  There is no way for analysis of total qty of units bought and many people buy lots not just one qty each order.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: johnmtl on September 23, 2012, 01:41 am
I think the actual amount is much higher than 22 million.  There is no way for analysis of total qty of units bought and many people buy lots not just one qty each order.

yes this is very true, I can only assume that the test had to take into account that some people order more then one unit.. How they would come up with that number is beyond me but I'm sure it was there and calculated.

 
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: Moldybread on September 23, 2012, 01:59 am
I think the actual amount is much higher than 22 million.  There is no way for analysis of total qty of units bought and many people buy lots not just one qty each order.

yes this is very true, I can only assume that the test had to take into account that some people order more then one unit.. How they would come up with that number is beyond me but I'm sure it was there and calculated.

On the site where you select how many units you buy, you can see the maximum number of units available. If i am correct this number decreases with every unit bought, so you can find out how much is sold of every item. You don't even have to check every listing of every Vendor, just some random sample of the listings of the biggest vendors, and you get a correction factor.
Title: Re: SR Has Made It *$22 MILLION*! It's In Forbes Magazine! :)
Post by: johnmtl on September 23, 2012, 02:05 am
I think the actual amount is much higher than 22 million.  There is no way for analysis of total qty of units bought and many people buy lots not just one qty each order.

yes this is very true, I can only assume that the test had to take into account that some people order more then one unit.. How they would come up with that number is beyond me but I'm sure it was there and calculated.

On the site where you select how many units you buy, you can see the maximum number of units available. If i am correct this number decreases with every unit bought, so you can find out how much is sold of every item. You don't even have to check every listing of every Vendor, just some random sample of the listings of the biggest vendors, and you get a correction factor.

Like I said before, They had to figure out some way to count quantity but I'm sure they were not keeping track of each seller and alll items, Like you said just run a random test to get a rough average..

However they did it I can see 2ish million a month on here..