“Cryptomarket Forums: Self-Advertisement and Rumors on Silk Road”, 2021 (; similar):
The research question that will be studied in this bachelor thesis is as follows: To what extent does interaction on cryptomarket forums affect the reputation of the seller, the prices they charge and the speed at which they sell their products?
This thesis will gain insight into the influence of forums on trust and cooperation between users of cryptomarkets, which is a subject less researched than the effect of reputation and reputation systems. Additionally, the results of this study could be useful to achieve more knowledge of the online illegal drug market, by researching the influence of forums on Silk Road.
…For this thesis datasets are used that contain data on item listings that dealers sold on Silk Road 1 and forum conversations that were posted on the cryptomarket. The data on item listings was retrieved by 2013 between 3 February 2012 and 24 July 2012. Data on forums was compiled by 2015, derived from the data collected by 2013. This thesis takes the research on reputation scores on item price and item sales of et al 2017 as a starting point, which is why the data from that study will be used. The relevant data for this thesis will be summarized in the section below. For more details on the data, the study of et al 2017 can be consulted. It will be mentioned when additional changes are made to the data.
…find that in the case a seller has been mentioned on the self-advertisement forum, the product price per gram and the number of item sales per day increase. By contrast, if a vendor is mentioned by others on the scammer forum the item price per gram and the amount of daily item sold decline. Evidence is found to conclude that the mentioning of a seller on a self-advertisement forum raises the price of products and the amount of products that are sold per day. If a seller is mentioned on a scammer forum, I find that this only has an increasing effect on the number of sales and not on the product price. The mentioning of sellers by members of the cryptomarket on the self-advertisement and the scammer forums does not seem to have an influence on the effect of reputation scores on prices and sales when to results are considered.