Latest / Monero Talk / Incognito Darknet Drugmarket Exit Scamming Developments with Sam Bent aka DoingFedTime / EPI 303

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Incognito Darknet Drugmarket Exit Scamming Developments with Sam Bent aka DoingFedTime / EPI 303 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, Sam, how's it going, man? I'm highly entertained with everything that's going on in crypto, as always. It's like I haven't really reached that point of, you know, I'm getting bored of this because it's just the roller coaster keeps gaining momentum, right? Doug I feel like things are really picking up. Most recent entertaining things are Monero's increase in transaction count. I don't know if you've seen that. Yeah, I heard a little bit about it, yep. Yeah, so that's quite interesting. Doug We normally have 20 ,000 transactions a day, and then it's been bumped up to 130, 140 transactions a day for the last week too. It didn't just go up and come down. It went up and stayed up. It's just every day, it's one. Doug So we went from like 20 to 30K per day to 130K per day. So everybody's got their eye on that. Obviously there's a lot of theories, right, of what it can be and what it means, but that's been highly entertaining. Doug And then I think another thing is the, this what we're seeing with the incognito market going down, I think that's a big story. And anybody interested in Monero, I think should have their eye on that as well. Doug That's why I reached out to you. That was my thinking there. And just remembering we have great conversations, so I just wanted to get in touch with you anyway, because when was the last time you came on? Doug A while ago, I think it was about a year now. Okay. I'll just go out and ask you now, any chance we get you down to Buenos Aires, man? We would love to have you down there for Monero. Sam I don't know. I'd have to see what the laws are like regarding, you know, people with felonies, because I know there's some countries I can't go to. Doug I feel like Argentina is one of those ones you can go to, right? It's like infamous for that. Like everybody left, left Europe and headed over to Argentina. It's so that might work out. Sam it would be interesting, yeah. I had one of the heads, this guy, Thomas of Europol, hit me up and asked me if I would do a talk in the Netherlands. I said the same thing, you know, but I'm not really a fan of those, like the closed talks, you know, especially when it's like a talk with law enforcement, man. Sam There's kind of a sour taste in my mouth right off the bat. Sam No. Doug Well, we'd love to have you as a speaker. We could continue to talk about that off -air. But let me back up, Matt. Do you want to do a quick little intro of yourself for those of watching who don't yet know you? Sam Yeah, for sure. Um, so, uh, my name's Sam Ben. Um, I was a dark net vendor. Um, I ended up getting busted. I was also an admin for a period of time. I ended up getting busted, went to federal prison, um, and studied law while I was there and, um, acted as my own lawyer and got myself out. Sam And when I got myself out, the thing that really kind of drove me nuts about a lot of the things that are out there regarding the, especially around the centered around the dark net is the misconceptions and the misunderstandings and just the, the fear mongering that exists, you know, surrounding it. Sam And, and, you know, I guess you, you kind of see that in your scene too, as far as crypto goes, you know, go, what do you need privacy for? It's money laundering. It's drug dealers. You're, you're sponsoring terrorism. Sam It's like, no, I just want to be left alone, man. That's all we hear. It's not, it's not any of those things, but, um, but in my case, it was, it was definitely narcotics trafficking. So, so, um, but there's no, Doug There was no sugarcoating that one. Sam Oh, yeah, no, you know, you get to own it, you know, if you if you do something as I'm a firm believer in that, you know, if you do something, you definitely have to own it. And when you own it, I think you get empowered by it, you know, instead of hiding from it and and trying not to mention it on applications, I try to spotlight it, you know, and say, hey, look, I ran an international business, you know, like in a hostile network. Sam So I think it's a I think it's a it's a selling point, some degree, Doug but I'd hire you, man, with a resume like that? Actually, to that point, I don't know if we're working on a marketplace, XMR Bazaar. Obviously, this isn't going to be the next silk road. This isn't a dark market. Doug I'm clearly the owner of it. It is centralized to some degree, but it's going to be a way for people to buy and sell goods and services directly with Monero, maybe like Goldback, things like that. Obviously, trying to reduce the rules as much as possible in terms of what people want to do with the market, but in a way where we're not held liable for anything. Doug And then it's going to have Monero Multisig built into it. So there'll be trustless escrow. But yeah, I was thinking of you. Maybe you'd be interested in working on it with us, helping out. Maybe we could talk about that, because I was listening to your get into this. Doug I was listening to your episode where you're reviewing one of the dark marketplaces. Obviously, you do an amazing job describing everything, but then your ideas on what can make for a more ideal marketplace, I thought were fantastic. Doug Getting ahead of myself, we'll get to those topics. Let's start talking about the big news, which is incognito market that went down. I know you're kind of intimately familiar with these things for research purposes. Doug You're constantly keeping an eye on everything. Give us the rundown of what happened there. Sam Yeah, so basically incognito was a dark net market that specialized in in drugs. And like, they had a dead, probably one of my favorite features about incognito was the fact that you could hop on and you could look if you wanted a feature, you could hop on and you could put that out there as a vote and people would vote it up or voted down and then the market admin would you know, decide if they were actually going to implement it. Sam But I thought it was a, it's probably one of the most democratic things I've seen, because a lot of dark net markets tend to be tyrannies. So that was that was pretty cool. It was, it was, it was very, yeah, it was very democratic of them. Sam But, but he ended up, you know, not being that definitely not being the greatest person in the world. First off, you know, when you have exit scams, which, for those of you that don't know, it's like when a market has this system of taking in money, and they're the arbiters or they're the escrow between the vendors and between the buyers, they control these wallets, and they could just take the money or they can make it so that nobody can take money out or nobody can send money or like they have complete control over it. Sam When they do these exit scams, a lot of times what happens is they just lock all the wallets, they let people still deposit, but they don't say anything, they go dark. And that's kind of one of the preliminary ways that you can tell a market might exit scam is if you have staff that aren't were, you know, they were very, they were very talkative, and now they're not very talkative. Sam So like when I see a market where the admins don't talk a lot, or, I mean, you know, don't even have a PR guy on the forums, because a lot of them will hire PR guys, go out there and talk to them on the forums. Sam When they don't even have that it gets, it gets, it tends to send out some red flags. So when you see a market that stops talking, and all of a sudden you have technical issues, or they have to do an update, it starts to raise a lot of flags. Sam You got a lot of people in the darknet subculture who've been through this a lot of times for many, many years. So a lot of people have PTSD with this, where you'll see a market might do like a legitimate update, and might have like a little bit of downtime. Sam And they have this downtime, people are like, Oh, it's an exit scam and they Sam It's just it's like, you know, I won't take it. It's like a bad Doug bank run. It's like a bank run, right? That's amazing. I mean, well, since the two things that come to, it's like, so how has nobody implemented trustless multisig yet in these dark markets? They have, right? Doug Somebody's doing that. No. Sam I think there's one that I had heard of that was, because I have a whole list of markets that I'm going through. But when I go through and I check out these markets, I do a pretty deep analysis, so I take them one at a time. Sam But as far as I know, there is one that does use multisig as XMR. So with this guy, he did an exit scan, that's a kind of typical thing that happens. You don't see much communication. But he ended up buying a site called Darknet Live, and he did that to try to corral the news, like to make it so it was one less news source that was going to be shouting from the rooftops that this market's exit scamming, which is an interesting move. Sam And Hubbunter, who's the administrator on one of the biggest Darknet forums, Dread, had made this whole post about this specific issue with the Darknet market administrator. His name's Pharaoh, by the way. Sam So he had made this whole post about the sky Pharaoh and how Pharaoh went to go buy basically this news outlet to try to keep the news close to the chest and put out counter intelligence at the same time, propaganda. Sam So that was really interesting, because I've never seen a market exit scam and try to acquire clearnet sites for disinformation campaigns. So that was a first that I'd ever seen that too. It might have happened in the background. Sam I'm not good with the politics of the Darknet, like this one talking to this one. I kind of just stay in my lane and just observe as I explore. But it was really interesting seeing all this kind of crazy stuff happen. Sam And what ended up happening was as time went on, I guess him stealing millions or tens of millions or hundreds of... I don't think anyone actually knows besides him. Besides him stealing all this money, he came back. Sam And one point I'd like to really make is you have Darknet vendors who are members of cartels, violent gangs. You have organized crime, syndications that are Darknet vendors on the Darknet that peddle narcotics on an international level. Sam So you have a lot of serious criminals that are out there that are Darknet vendors. Now, what's funny is that some of the people get the most time and you have Darknet vendors to get life sentences, but are the Darknet administrators. Sam They tend to get smoked with time. Oh, really? Yeah. Because it's a massive conspiracy and they're the head of it. And when you get charged federally, if you're the head of a conspiracy, you have upward departures and downward departures. Sam So if I was selling drugs, but I was selling it online, it's a three point upward departure, which could mean an extra year or an extra four years. And they have all these little things that you take one charge and build it up so that you get a momentum, like a crazy amount of time for a single charge because they have all these things that increase the severity of it incrementally. Sam Like mass marketing is one of them if you sell it online, all that kind of stuff. So like with this guy, he ended up going and doing this exit scam and he came back. And my point with the whole, you know, a lot of Darknet vendors can be psychopaths or members of dangerous cartels. Sam A lot of Darknet administrators are just like web developer dudes that are like, you know, these dudes aren't like, they're not cutting anyone's throat or sticking tires over people and lighting them on fire. Sam You know, killing families and shit like they're, you know, they're learning how to manage back ends and, you know, middle tier stuff and, you know, do development, you know. But this guy, like, you know, the woodwork like, you know, hey, I'm as bad as they are. Sam And like, you know, went and did his exit scam and then kept the site up and came back and said, hey, listen, I, you know, I know I said this whole time that everyone's been communicating that all your communications were secret, that I had, you know, purged all the data, but the actual truth is that I've kept everything. Sam I have like, you know, home addresses. I have communications between vendors and buyers. I have all this stuff and what I'm going to do is if you're a vendor and you're level one, like you're a small time vendor, I'm going to charge you $100 and you're going to pay and then you can get your conversations and the information your customers gave you and you talked about back. Sam And if you're a large vendor, then you're going to pay me your level five gear. You're going to pay me $20 ,000 for that and get it back. And one thing that really surprised me, man, was like right off the bat. Sam You saw a good portion of the vendors that were listed immediately give it up and be like, OK, you know, and like here's 20 grand and it just to hand over money to somebody who just robbed you and is in the process of robbing you. Sam And I mean, to trust that person to me is absolute insanity. But on the flip side of that, it tells me a lot about at the end of the day, when you look at like OPSEC, right, you look at like what information am I putting out there that my adversary can capitalize on and use advantageously against me and controlling that information that goes out there is the whole point of it. Sam So if you're not if this isn't a situation you've thought of and like, you know, some of these some of these dark net vendors are making a crazy amount of money. So if this is something you haven't even thought of and it's a business, you're running a business, that's absolutely insane to me to make a to make a decision like that with, you know, it's obviously an emotional decision because if you understood the fact that if I get one argument all the time and it's like, well, if a dark net vendor saves addresses and like like like, let's say Doug orders two ounces of Coke for me, right. Sam And I write, oh, Doug, this one, two, three main street in Indiana, you know, ordered this on this day at this time. And I have all your info. How that actually works is if I get rated and I'm like, oh, I have this customer list and and I have this huge list of all the people who have ever ordered from me and the Fed's going to be like, OK, cool. Sam Yeah, like we'll check it out. And, you know, we'll talk about consideration and then you show it to him. And now maybe they call you with four ounce. So maybe when they read the dark net vendor, they caught him, say, with, I don't know, two hundred grams of Coke. Sam Right. And so his charge is going to be probably like a five to 10 year thing, depending on his priors and a bunch of other stuff. But when he says, oh, here I saw, you know, and there's this thing that says, oh, Doug bought every week. Sam Doug bought an ounce like they're not just going to charge him for that transaction that you did. They're going to say, well, how long was he selling? How long was he a vendor for? And they'd be like, oh, he was a vendor for a year. Sam OK, well, then, you know, he didn't hit this sale to Doug. If it was a weekly thing, then we're not going to charge him with those two ounces that he sold him. We're going to charge him with over 100 ounces because there's 52 weeks in a year. Sam And if he bought two ounces a week, we're going to charge him with this. And it's like what blows people's mind is like, yeah, but they don't have those drugs. How can they charge someone with possession of narcotics that they don't have? Sam That's called ghost weight. And they'll just assign this deal to be like, you know, so now it goes from because you decided to keep information. For blackmail purposes, which we'll get into the buyer side of that, but now it goes from you having a charge of maybe five to 10 years to having a charge that's 10 years to life. Sam Because you have all this weight that in all these different times, and even if you don't have what was actually sold by you keeping those records, you have a record of who bought what, when they can go in and they can say, well, typically you sold an ounce of Coke. Sam So even though Mike's not listed here, we're going to assume that he bought an ounce and we see that Mike's name is here 50 times. So you screw yourself so bad with that as a dark net vendor on a federal U .S. Sam Be clear about that. That's U .S. law. So on a U .S. level now, moving over to the buyers. Doug Oh before you did they did they show some proof that they actually have this information or they just said hey guys We have this information Sam No, no, not that I heard over that I saw. Okay. Yeah, which is a great point, too. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, the blinds absolutely right. They may not even have. Doug this information that they're threatening people that they have to answer. Sam But super indicative of of an emotionally charged decision, right? Why wouldn't you ask that before you hand over 20K? Doug Yeah. I mean, I guess from their perspective is like cost of doing business, right? They're like, you know, like you said, a lot of these guys are making a ton of money. So to them, it's almost why chance not paying, right? Doug We'll be right back. Sam Yeah, I mean, I see I see it completely different. I see it as a as a sign of weakness that, you know, you are willing to break that quick over that small of a threat. I mean, like, you know, if there was if like, if I'm your codefendant and I see you like me and you are in on a criminal conspiracy and maybe we just shot someone and, you know, I see someone come over and threaten to beat you up unless you give them your sneakers and you're like, OK, please don't hurt me. Sam You hear my sneakers? I'm going to be like, man, this dude is never like as soon as as soon as like the FBI interviews us, this dude is going to sell me down the road. Like you're petrified of these these small things. Sam So for me, seeing these vendors get scared and pay this money this quick. I didn't see it as like, oh, we're going to do this just in case. For me, I saw it as just a sign of weakness. Yeah. Now, is that is that what it is? Sam No, that's just my interpretation of it. Yeah, you could be absolutely right. Now, transitioning to the buyers, like what's the danger for them? Well, if me, if like I'm a Darknet vendor, if giving feds names and addresses gets me a reduced sentence, first off, the first thing that anyone's going to do when they start becoming a Darknet vendor is going to go into the Yellow Pages and they're going to get massive lists of people's names, addresses and phone numbers. Sam And they're going to be like, oh, these are all my buyers. If if if actually giving feds names and addresses of people on the Darknet that you've done business with got you time reductions, every Darknet vendor would be getting massive time reductions by just grabbing random people's info, right? Sam So there's no corroboration with that. Now, if I'm if I'm selling drugs like in person and I sell you drugs, there is corroboration because I can wear a wire, they can do surveillance. I can come talk to you about that time. Sam I sold you two ounces. Like there's a whole bunch of things they can do to prove that. But like, you know, if if you bought off the Darknet, I can't as a Darknet vendor be like, oh, that's that's Doug right there. Sam It's the guy without the glasses and the white shirt. I have no idea what you look like. You know, it's going to corroborate it. You know, and if I if I hop into an I .M. and I write you, I'd be like, hey, Doug, remember that time three months ago when Sam You bought two ounces of Coke for me? Dude, I don't know who the fuck you are! And you can go create another, you know, another username. You can't even burn that idea. Sam And so there's no there's no cooperation with the closest thing they can have is like controlled deliveries We're like the feds will intercept the package and try to deliver it to you as a dark now fire But again, if you understand basic ops that you know about controlled deliveries You know how to spot them and it's not like a hard thing. Sam There's not a lot of like science that goes into it so dark net buyers then Like statistically and based off the wall like they are way safer than dark net vendors So for a dark net vendor to pay money For something because this dark net administrator is saying here Well, I'm gonna release all the conversations and the addresses the addresses are useless The names are useless if the buyers can't be indicted with that information alone, then it doesn't matter So again, it goes back to my point of like so why as a vendor, why would you pay this? Sam Because you don't know right? I mean, yeah Yeah, yeah thing and the only other argument that I've heard that does kind of make sense is like, okay Well, what if you're in, you know, what if you're in a country that has very severe drug laws, you know Like you know, there's a ton of countries where it's a very serious offense. Sam I say okay Yeah, like that makes sense. But I Mean the US is like that too. We give people life sentences for drugs So, I mean if I go if I go if you like, well, what about China? Like, you know, what if like, you're like thieves get their hand cut off and and I'm like, listen, man Like you go you asked the woman who got a life sentence for stealing chocolate chip cookies because it was her third offense Right three strikes you're out. Sam She had a life sentence for it. Go ask her Hey, if we cut your hand off, but you don't have to be in prison for 30 years Would you want to do it guarantee you she's gonna be like, yeah, go ahead. Put my hand off, you know Sam think it's the first time in history that I know of that we've seen a dark net vendor. I'm sorry, a dark net administrator come back and try to extort people, which I think the good thing about this is that it's it being the first time there's going to be a ton of learning and reflection that happens after this. Sam But you know, we saw with HANSA, HANSA, you know, basically the feds in the Netherlands, it was a dark net market that got taken over by feds. They took it over because basically a third party business contacted them and they're like, hey, this dark net market is being hosted on this server. Sam Like it wasn't from incredible investigation work, you know, it was like they were they were handed the answer to where the server was and they went and they took over the server. Like it's not it's not like some, you know, like a lot of times when I hear press conferences about dark net markets, like we took them down. Sam They can't hide behind anonymity anymore. And I'm like, yeah, but like if if if I'm like the alpha Bay administrator and I put my Gmail in the header of the welcome page of alpha Bay for the first three months, like that's not some amazing hack that you carried out to take me down. Sam You know, it's it's a it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty easy one. It's just paying attention. So fall. Yeah. Yeah. So and a lot of the times that's what it is. So I think we see far more, you know, complicated, you know, attacks when we talk about breaches on private companies or, you know, ransomware, any of those things. Sam So do you definitely take a take a page out of some of the criminality that that's going on in some of the breaches that happen. But anyways, going back to the going back to the admin, this being the first time this kind of thing has happened where an admin exit scams and then comes back to extort. Sam It's super interesting watching people's reactions, you know, because people get pissed off when markets exit scam, but like they're so used to it. It's kind of like second nature. They're just like, oh, yeah, that market, you know, this scumbags, you know, and they just move on. Sam But now like with this guy extorting, they're like, oh, someone's going to find him. And it's just it's it's I can't imagine how to be infuriated, too. But especially if at the end of the day, you know, it's it's all because of your own lax obstacles. Sam So my point I was talking about with Hansa is the police took it over and they had a auto encrypt feature that existed on that site. And what happened is people get complacent in security. On this end with security, you have security. Sam On this end, you have ease. And what happens over time, people start going more towards this side because they don't you know, no one wants to have to unlock 20 deadbolts on their door when they come home with a bag full of versions. Sam So, you know, they start not locking them all and they get to a point where they don't maybe lock any of them or they just lock one. And it it invites the ability to be able to get in easier. Good security isn't necessarily to keep bad guys out. Sam It's especially with physical security. It's there to make it so that to break in, it takes longer, which increases the chances of you getting caught. Like, you know, if I put up a door that's a hollow door, you can kick it in and walk in and you're in and out in two seconds. Sam It's a steel core door reinforced. It's going to take you a lot longer. You have a much higher chance of getting caught. So it's worth that investment because it might stop a robbery. But people got complacent. Sam They stopped, you know, encrypting their own messages on HANSA and they started trusting in the market's auto encryption feature. And when when the feds and the Netherlands took it over, they disabled that ability. Sam They disabled that that feature and they made it so they could collect data for, you know, months. And there were definitely people that got arrested because of that later on. But again, we didn't see hardly any fallout in terms of United States darknet buyers. Sam So that's why again, why reiterate why, you know, addresses and names and conversations are relevant. I can go right now on the darknet and and order drugs to your house. Right. Like with OSINT, it might take a while, but like you can find out where anyone lives and you can you can hop on the darknet. Sam Anyone, you know, especially using privacy coin in order drugs to anyone's house. So. There's no guarantee that when drugs are actually ordered, it's an automatic indictment. So now we've went from law enforcement taking over our market and capitalizing on that trust of the auto encrypt feature to a dark net market administrator doing the exact same thing, using people's own complacency and trust to be able to extort them for information that is basically not worth anything anyways. Sam And you know, it totally works. Doug It's crazy, I mean, my take was that it was kind of irrational for this market to do this. They're running away with a lot of money, but crypto prices are up. Why then take this added risk of extorting people and, like you said, pitting some of the perhaps most dangerous people in the world against you that want to come and find you? Doug They took a ton of risk in doing this. It doesn't seem like something that any rational admin would do, right? Like you said, these guys. Sam go, I think it shows, you know, a lot of like, it's kind of like, you could say the same thing about like, when, like, when you see law enforcement, that's brave, right? You say like, like, for example, if you see like a guy is, you know, he's shooting a bunch of people or whatever, he's victimizing someone, and you have a bunch of people that are running away from that situation. Sam Like, law enforcement are supposed to be the people running towards the bullets to stop them from, you know, hurting this was to be peace officers. And like, you know, with with firefighters, it's the same thing. Sam Like, imagine if like, you know, but like, a lot of times we'll hear about cops who killed someone, and they'll be like, well, I was in fear for my life. I always tell people I'm like, let's let's take that same context and put it into put it into firefighters. Sam Like, you know, take a firefighter, when my house on fire, they show up. And and like, they get out and they're like, Oh, the house is really on fire. Sam I'm like, yeah, man, you know, I think someone's in there. And they're like, oh, well, I don't, you know, I might get hurt if I go in. I mean, you know, I don't really want to do it. I'm like, dude, why do you have this job? Sam Like, you're supposed to be brave. You're supposed to do dangerous things. This is why, you know, society. Sam that Doug Yeah, yeah Sam You know, and it's like, you know, and then people and people be like, you know, the same that kind of the same comparison It's like, you know, law enforcement is supposed to be reactive. Like I go to your house. Sam I punch you in the mouth. That's assault I can be arrested fair enough. Right? I violated your person. I absolutely deserve to be arrested but like Imagine if like I went to your house and they just arrested me cuz they're like well You might you know, you might punch him in the mouth and like we have like these these preemptive arrests where it's like, you know, just kind of like the the fire department scenario where You like cops go out and look for crime happening Like imagine if firefighters went out and looked for fires happening. Sam It sounds idiotic and crazy, but it's kind of the same Philosophy, you know, and it's just it's really it's it's a total side issue I dig us but um, but it's it's um, my mind is an absolute maze and we can get lost in it Doug I'm loving it too, I'm taking it all in. I mean, yeah, that's a whole nother thread to go down, and I do think that it's a fair way of looking at it. But how does that relate? Because I was saying with these guys, right, it seemed irrational that they did this. Doug So you're saying, like, what? Sam I mean, I mean, you know, like it's it's a great comparison, I think, for the dark net is like you have, you know, you have like a sheep, right? You take a sheep and, you know, you put a sheep inside a fence to keep it safe from the wolves and that sheep knows it's safe, but like it's very limited in what it can do, right? Sam It can't. It's very limited in what it gets to eat because you're the one who feeds it. It's very limited on like, will it go outside? Will you open the door and let it out of the barn? Like all of those things are dictated by the farmer. Sam Whereas like with the deer, the deer is out roaming. It's completely free. It can go wherever it wants, can eat wherever, wherever it wants and go under a tree or out from it whenever it wants. But it lives in a much more dangerous environment like freedom. Sam When they say freedom isn't free, I don't look at it as freedom is the cost of a yellow ribbon or some nonsense like that. I look at it as, you know, freedom is the cost of, you know, going out and potentially, you know, running into a situation kind of like these people who are like, hey, I want to buy drugs or I want to sell drugs. Sam That's what I'm going to do. They've elected to do this. So now they're in this situation where they're in a dangerous environment where things like this can happen because, you know, you don't have regulations in place to be able to stop. Sam You know, this is not Amazon where, you know, you're going to get refunded your money if you get ripped off. But again, like you have total freedom there. So it's it's a very liberating thing, but it's also a very nerve wracking thing. Sam But it creates an environment where you're obviously. Doug You know an adrenaline element to this thing, right? I mean you're doing these you know, you're you're somebody you're not doing this Just for the money, right? You're running one of these marketplaces It's a lifestyle. Doug This is your your way of sticking it to the man Perhaps maybe you know free market right and you're doing it in the most extreme form I'm not saying you know the all these guys that run this are are You know, maybe have their heart, you know, or maybe if any of them have their heart in the right place But I think certainly some of them do right like Ross, right? Doug Ross Albright You know, he he just wanted to create a free market, right? He wanted to experiment with with how how we could just have a marketplace where Individuals can come and decide what they want to buy and sell right? Doug Yes As long as they're not hurting anybody else in the in the process, but Sam It's crazy. Let me let me ask you this because so many people get this wrong. It was it was like do you think that like like was was silk market the like the the first dark net market to exist and if it wasn't like what when was there another one Doug I mean, it was the first Bitcoin market to exist, right? It was basically the first app for Bitcoin, right? It was the first use case for Bitcoin. It was the first successful company that was using Bitcoin or whatever application. Sam Yeah, that's a great distinction right there. There was a market before called the farmer's market. And whenever I hear people talk about this, it's even by companies who do investigations into the darkness specifically, they'll have these conferences, they'll talk about it. Sam They'll be like, the first dark net market was the Silk Road. I'm like, no, it wasn't. You're supposed to be an expert. I consider myself a novice in all things, because I know enough to know that I don't know anything. Sam And that's just the position I take. I'm never going to be like, this is 100% certain, because I've been wrong so many times in my life. I've just lost faith. Doug Take everything with a grain of salt. This is, you know, yeah, for sure. For sure. Oh, but yes. Sam the real beauty of freedom is like, even in systems where things are constructed with so many restrictions and control grids that exist, that you feel like you'll never get out of that kind of control grid, you still have people who can think their way out of it. Sam And I think that's the real beauty of crypto in general, not like this one coin or that one coin, but it's like, in general, was this whole thought process of we're going to think our way out of this economic enslavement, you know, we're going to create whole other system that we can use to have economic freedom, which, you know, in a in a debt slave society is real freedom. Doug Yeah, it was engineers that engineered their way out right like cypherpunks for getting cypherpunks. They're just crypto engineers that We're trying to promote Liberty It's working man. It's definitely it's definitely working. Doug It's very exciting and we're like at the we're along for the ride I mean, obviously I'm trying to do my part You're trying to do your part and I do I do feel like we're making a ton of progress Towards getting to the point where people are gonna be able to transact more freely than ever using marketplaces like this and using Monero, right And just allowing people to freely to freely use their money as they wish peer -to -peer without The state or any corporations being part of those transactions and deciding whether they can or can't do it, right? Doug Obviously within the within the realm of of morals and just you know The the simple code of as long as you're not harming anyone else. It's it's it's okay But my I wanted to hear your thought though back to the point These guys obviously. Doug All right, so maybe maybe there it could just be some You know somebody who's out there who's just taking it to the next levels on a power trip seeing what they they feel like You know, they're playing chess well and they can get away with it. Doug So why not extract more money? But could it be something else? Could it be could it be the feds or something? Could it be? Sam one thing that I can tell you for certain is I don't know for certain right right cuz obviously you don't know Doug But I'm just like I'm just wanting to get your insight on because it seems very much out of the ordinary and the effect It's gonna have is it's going to push people away from using these marketplaces I mean more so than a normal more so than a normal rug pull, right? Doug So there's like you said, there's normally everybody's already ready for the rug pulls But now it's like a whole plus you get put in this situation where you get extorted. It's like oh shit Sam So going from 2022 to 2023, there's an estimated like 1 .7 billion additional amount of money that went through the dark net markets. So I don't like this idea of things slowing down because things get bad, I don't think is a real thing. Sam I think the opposite is true. I think if anything, it draws attention. Like when you start talking about it in like mainstream media, that person who never really heard about it, starts to hear about it. Sam It's kind of like how you saw crypto spill into mainstream media. You know, people try to effect like you're talking to your neighbor or something about Bitcoin or XMR and like, like, oh, yeah, that's a fad. Sam It's like this is the same dude. You know, back in the early 90s, I was telling you the Internet is a fad. Doug Right. So it's no better than the facts. Sam But I don't think it discourages anything. I think what happens is it's a Hydra and when you cut one head off like the all the other ones get fed more and they just grow back more so. Doug Right, and they come back and new and improved, right? And with that, yeah, they come back with features. They come back with features and more decentralized, right? We're also working on, you know, those things are happening as well, right? Doug We're, I mean, we've seen decentralized marketplaces already, none really took off, open bizarre was an attempt. I love it. Sam dope and bizarre, man. I thought the idea of like, you know, a third party, third party moderators for disputes, third party, I thought that was so cool. I was like, that was one thing. I was like, if this gets big, like I will quit vending and I will just do just, I will do adjudication all day. Sam I would love to do that, you know? And like, yeah, I just totally tanked, you know, it sucked too. Doug Yeah, it just never took hold. I mean, there were issues there, right? Because there were also just Bitcoin based. That was before Bitcoin Cash, right? And then I think they tried doing it as Bitcoin Cash. Doug But I think part of the problem was, yeah, the Bitcoin transaction fees were getting too high. I could be wrong. I think that was kind of one of the things that slowed them down. Just wasn't right place, right time. Doug So people are still trying to solve that. I know Zano's working on a marketplace, which seems interesting. And it would be like a decentralized marketplace built using the Zano coin and the ability to build essentially kind of like apps on Zano. Doug So that's pretty interesting. And obviously, there's a ton of other things that people are working on. But as things stand now, for those who are interested in doing research and whatever engaging with these markets, what kind of advice can you give people out there, like best places to go and learn about these things other than following your channel, like best resources, how to identify marketplaces that are reliable versus ones not to trust, and then basically. Doug Like anything else? Sam else experience time, you know, you have to, you have to, you know, to be able to do anything effectively, you have to learn about the basics of it, you know, so, like, if I'm going to, for example, if I'm going to be an OSEN practitioner, I'm going to go out and find information, I need to first know about OPSEC, and how to keep my information secret. Sam Because if I go out and I start doing OSEN with my Facebook account, and I'm like law enforcement, trying to get, you know, information on a drug dealer, law, like, like Facebook's and be like, Oh, you guys profile, so they're going to show me to him as a friend suggestion. Sam And when like that drug dealer sees this cop being suggested as a friend, it's going to be a flag. So right off the rip, I would I would say, you know, concentrate on on defensive, like security and OPSEC right off the rip. Sam And then, you know, just just don't don't take, you know, one sources word for anything, even like my channel, you know, I have people who disagree with me all the time. They'd be like, No, that's not right. Sam This is how it is. And that's those are some of my favorite things in the world, because then you're teaching me, like, if I'm wrong, I want to be corrected. It makes me a better person. It makes me a more intelligent person, right? Sam We all adapt and move forward together. And that's I think that's what makes as a community, that's what makes us incredibly dangerous is because that that adaptation is something that's key to survival inherently. Doug How about just like, like, what are some good resources, though? Like, um, dread, right? Like, what are good? Sam Probably one of my favorite resources for like, maybe darknet news specifically is like tour times. I think that's a great resource that's really underrated. And you know, Hacker News for like cybersecurity stuff, this is a crazy amount, man. Sam I mean, you just hop on YouTube all day and just watch, literally watch stuff all day or podcast. That's the thing nowadays, there's such a proliferation of content that it's not even really like where to find it because there's so much high quality stuff out there. Sam It's just actually going out and doing it, you know, it's kind of like, like back in the day when we had manuals for things and someone be like, I don't get it. And you know, they tell them like, RTFM, like read the fucking manual. Sam And we have we have so many resources out there that just, I mean, plugging that question into Google or or going to chat GPT and asking that question would probably get you much better sources than I could ever quote anyone. Sam You know, I know for me personally, it's more about like optimization of the information. So like one of the things I've been doing is I've been grabbing like some of my some of the different sources that I use, whether it's like tour times or dark owl or a lot of those different RSS feeds that are news feeds that are like CTI or dark net related or cybersecurity related news feeds. Sam And I just I hop on like Alexa blueprints, I put in that that RSS feed and I put it in as a a brief, a news brief. So now like when I wake up in the morning, I can ask Alexa and I'll tell me all all of the RSS feeds that I put in, it will spit back a summarization of all the news that's going on that's been published on those feeds. Sam So I think it's like moving on, I think it's like a question of how do you digest this information in a productive way that's the most efficient. And like, as far as like, like that goes, man, like I got a ton of RSS feeds. Sam So it's a big question, but it's kind of like asking someone nowadays, what's Mike's phone number, because it's like saved, you know, and you don't even you don't know, you know, I don't know my wife's phone number. Sam So so I could I couldn't I could tell you know, like one of my favorites that I frequent is definitely Hacker News. I would say like, if you want to learn about stuff like cybersecurity, hack the box is awesome. Sam Awesome, awesome hands on stuff there. Oh, yeah. Sam But just to like Doug simplify things. If I'm a noob, I guess your advice would be, well, don't be a noob, you got to go learn stuff. But if I'm a noob, and I just want to go explore the dark markets, what are some resources I could rely on so I could do it in the right way from step one, right? Doug Yeah. Thank you. Sam But even that's kind of a risky proposition because like link directories are subject to become phishing directories at any point. So like right now, I would say the only one that I personally trust would be daunt .link. Sam And that's when it's available in the clear net, but it has tons of markets and forums and all stuff related to that. But again, I really hate to endorse anything because everything is subject to switch up. Sam Like my archetype video where I dissect that market and I do market analysis on it, tomorrow they could exit scan. And that's why at the end of the day, trust is really something that you can't trust anything, especially in that context. Sam But you can verify things, like you can verify vendor sales and stuff like that. But that's about as far as that goes. Yeah, so you see, you got like the forums, the markets, the shops. That's probably, you know, that would be the one that I like the most. Sam And you'll find a bunch of ones on there for I think they list times on there, too. Doug So that's kind of my next question. So this is good, right? I mean, this is good information you're putting out there. I'm sorry to try to pinpoint it, but I just know if I was listening and I'm a noob, I would love to hear, like, this is get in for your dropper right here. Doug Obviously, guys, like you said, rule number one is take everything with a grain of salt. Trust nobody, including samurai, right? We're just putting it out there. So don't trust verify, but everybody knows that. Doug So I guess my second question, then, is marketplaces themselves, right? We saw what happened with Incognito. What are some of the top marketplaces out there that have earned trust and that perhaps are least likely to scam people? Doug Obviously, it's a hard question to answer, but I imagine there's some pretty rare marketplaces. Sam I think it's almost kind of like it's an impossible question to answer because the only person that knows, like there are definitely telltale signs of a market that's going to exit scam. We kind of covered those earlier, but the only person that knows that a market's going to exit scam is the admin, right? Sam That's the only person. So again, like you say, like a false sense of security is one of the most dangerous things that anyone can have. So it would be, it would be like, I would consider it like a horrible misstep to say any one thing is trustworthy because that's the last thing I would want anyone to do. Sam I wouldn't want anyone to trust any market or any forum or any source of information. And that is probably the quintessential skill is like, you know, that's where we come back to that verify stage. Like I can't say this is trustworthy or that's good because at the end of the day, it can go bad tomorrow. Sam So it would, it would be a horrible misstep for me to label something like that. Like the old, the old dawn thing, I put that out there because you're like, well, what do you use? And that's, that is what I use right now for links because any, anywhere else I've seen issues with aside from maybe tour taxi, tour taxi, I think they've, they have a solid reputation from what I've seen, from what I know. Sam I haven't heard anyone complain about them. So yeah, that's that. Doug Very cool, very cool. Yeah, because I saw you, I think, in one of your videos you were talking about, which forum was it? It was, I don't know, Market. It was Archetype. You did a thing, I thought that was really cool. Doug So you think they're one of the perhaps better markets in terms of usability and the features and the things that they're doing on there as a marketplace. Sam right now. Yeah. And I think that, you know, that could be completely different tomorrow. So, you know, that's really the key to take away is that nothing is like, we don't have a dark net market that's been around, you know, in existence this whole time. Sam So, so they all, you know, they all leave a lot of most, a lot of them exit scam. Some of them get busted. And, you know, very few exit gracefully, which I think, honestly, I think if you had a bunch of markets that exited, exited gracefully, I think they would, they would get to a point where like, the trust would build up in the community to, to a point where like, it would, it would make the community much better. Sam Like one thing that I will tell you that I dislike, that turns me off automatically is when I see a version two come out. If I see a market come out and it's a version two of an original market, I won't even go to. Doug Mm -hmm incognito to incognito to we're back. I dare you to trust us again Something about these guys, I don't know Sam I mean, like exit scams are definitely they're an acceptable they're an acceptable form of cost like I said Doug I don't understand why they're not using multisig. I know it was a little difficult to create Monero, but it is possible. We're doing it with hours. There's ways to do it. And then certainly with Bitcoin, multisig is possible. Doug Why is that not the default? How did that not take hold yet? You think the market demand would be so strong for something like that? That would be the main marketplace. I think you have a. Sam a big pull for that control, you know, like I said, a good portion of the Megxit scam, right? And if that's your goal at the end of the day, that wouldn't be a switch you want to give up. Doug Right. So just nobody's taking the, so anybody who's doing these dark markets are like, they're all, it's always going to, they have the personality probably of, you know, this is going to be a thing I'm going to come in and come out, right? Sam I don't know. I know that I had a message. I had a message the other day on Dred and a DM where I had a market administrator who wrote me and told me that they had multi -sig Braxamar. I forget the name. Doug It just seems like that would naturally grab hold and if you wanted to compete as a marketplace that you would be like, we have Monero multiseg, all right, why wouldn't I go with that one? It seems like the least risky, right? Sam So you see you see multisig two with with Bitcoin earlier earlier and like to you know, oh, seven, seven, two thousand seventeen. And like you, I would see a lot of people complaining like, oh, it's complicated. Sam I had to do all these extras. Sam Okay, it goes back to you know that Sam I was talking about convenience and security. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Slide, you know. Doug Yeah, so somebody's got to step up and build a good user interface for it, right? Sam Yeah, it won't be me, man. Doug Well, we're doing it for XMR Bazaar, so I wouldn't be surprised if you find some version of that. Oh, yeah. Of course, yeah. That'll get adopted. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Should probably get a hero. Sam about that. But that's awesome. It's a revolutionary act, you know. Doug Mm -hmm. Yeah, I'm excited that we're launching with it. I have no idea where it's going to go. Like, my goal is to, you know, personally use it and use it to live off Monero by putting posts up there, being like, you know, I'm looking to hire somebody from Monero for this or buy this with Monero. Doug So I'm excited in that regard. Sam Probably one of my favorite tips that I ever got from you was, and this is not a plug, but like is cake wallet. I love it, man. I've used it. I still have it. Like I still have it on my phone. And I love how flexible it is. Sam I love that I can switch between currencies. I can pull it out at any point. I can go get a gift card like that. And like when I first did, I was like, oh, what do they want? What's the percentage I got to pay to get a gift card? Sam It's like nothing. I was like, what? Doug It makes a lot of sense. It makes Monero very usable, right? Dick has done a tremendous job. That's always been his mission, right? And that's the thing. Sam right, it goes back to that ease, that convenience factor, you know? Doug Yeah. With regards to Monero, can you give us any insight there? I mean, I brought up that other marketplace, which we know is Monero -based archetype. But are most of them now Monero -based these days? Doug Like, what's kind of the current scene? Sam like dual currencies. You definitely see like Monero only markets, but a lot of them also have those dual currencies. And like I said, you also have that drive for market admins who know what the end result is going to be in three years. Sam I'm going to exit scam and make 50 mil. So you're always going to yours going to have that. And then the buyers and if there's a market and on that market, they don't have any multisig and it's like the admin controls everything. Sam If there's a ton of buyers on there, no matter what, you're going to have vendors. Like they're going to they're going to follow the buyers. It's like when dream market existed. I hated dream market, but there was a ton of buyers, you know, and it's just, you know, like you just that's what you do. Sam You go with a, where the businesses. Doug And they just, because they just did a better job at marketing or something. Well, I mean, I think I, I mean. Sam dream dream was horrible man like i remember i would have if i had an issue you'd write support and you just they would never write you back like never like just ignore you it was like um but it's just it's crazy to see that you know you you also you have markets now with really good support um but you always have the question you're like you know do they have good support because they're gonna pull that rug out from under you but it also it makes it dangerous but it also keeps you on your toes and it keeps you sharp and like if you're really free that's you need to be on point you know because it's a dangerous world you know you don't unless you're a sheep in a cage then it's not you know but in that case you know it's like Doug you're nice and safe in your little cage. Sam You know, I mean, I mean, I like, you know, we are our our system of of money. You know, we have the government takes three months worth of your salary and taxes, you know, and like, if I come over to you and I take your if I take your work, I take your labor from you under, you know, force or threat of duress. Sam It's extortion and it's slavery because I've taken your work and giving you nothing for it. You know, I I hate taxes. I can't I can't stand it. I pay all my taxes, though. Sam Yeah, cuz you don't want it Doug want to get thrown in the cage. You don't want to come take more, right? It is extortion. And so that's why it was my thought was with Incognito. This kind of sounds like what they already do to us, right? Doug They extorted all the users, and then they assessed their tax based on the level of people's income, which is a great thing. Sam incognito. It's it's still a choice though, right? Like, like, you know, if it's, it's never a choice for, you know, not to pay your income tax, like you're going to get 20 years. Doug They got that monopoly on violence man the biggest gang in town. That's all that's all Sam out yeah yeah it's like it's like you know you can you can you can Sam sell drugs for decades if you're dealing with the DEA and you know you do all these crazy ass things but like you know don't pay your taxes. I don't care where you move because they'll find you. Doug 100% pay taxes. Sam Well, we can. Sam anything about the drugs, we can't do anything about any of this stuff. We do a ton about a ton of different stuff. There are things that are concentrated on and things that are not concentrated on, and both of those things are given the amounts of attention they're given for very specific reasons, I feel anyways. Sam But it is great, man, to see just crypto in general be accepted as something that's not, you know, like, you know, I remember for at least half a decade, people would tell me that it was all, you know, it's all a scam. Sam It's not real. And I'm like, dude, more real Sam than that green shit you're holding, you know what I mean? Sam holding is an instrument of debt. You know, this instrument of wealth is actually, you know, accumulates and builds value. And if we look at, you know, the inception of even just like Bitcoin or XMR, but if we look at a hundred year history, which we don't have yet, but if we look at a hundred year history, the price of the dollar steadily goes down. Sam It's like the price of gold steadily goes up. And like you could, you know, you have that argument that people make and they're like, Oh, well, you know, gold's worth more. And I'm like, no, it's not. Sam Your money is worth less because of inflation. Like if I, if I had a, if I had a gold coin, um, back in Rome, I could take that gold coin and I could cash it in. I get like a custom made toga and some nice custom made sandals and, you know, get a whole really nice outfit. Sam Um, and today five, that same gold coin, I can go get a nice suit, a nice hat, nice, like it's worth the same amount of money. It's just the measurement that we have, our measurement of that resource, you know, which is our currency changes. Sam Um, and Doug that's real value. Yeah, absolutely. Sam Yeah. And if something that is of real value increases in value over time, not decreases, and that should be like basic common sense. But you have all this nonsense where you'll have economists talk about horseshoe recessions and also the just total BS. Sam And so if you understand that every dollar that's put out there is loaned at interest, if I control the ability for money to exist. And I say, here's a dollar, you owe me $1 .25. That $0 .25 doesn't exist. Sam It was never created. So how do you pay back that $0 .25? You borrow more. And now you borrow another $2. And now I say, OK, now you owe me $3. But there's only, say, $2 that exists. You're never going to pay it back. Sam And that's what makes it a scam. And that's why I think it's a beautiful thing that we've literally invented our way out of economic slavery. But it's also a very dangerous thing. Again, it goes back to our whole point with freedom. Sam Freedom is extremely dangerous. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. See if there's some point where Doug gets arrested. Sam We're talking about XMR. Do not. Doug Don't even put that thought out there in the universe. Sam talking about the site rolling out the propaganda machine saying like terrorists Doug That's when Doug runs for Congress again I'll be I'll be like Trump will be as they're trying to fucking convict me I'll be out there running for office or something. I live in Vermont. I would certainly go down swinging. Doug That's for sure. Oh My god. God forbid. I mean Did I mean if we if we get to that point then you know, we're all fucked anyways the way I look at it Right. So like I think you're right Sam a massive system of control that's looking at a serious threat. I mean, that's exactly what it is. So I think that's a realistic conversation to have as far as threat intelligence goes. You have people who like, what was it, like two days before the planes went into the towers? Sam It was, who was it? It wasn't Cheney. There's another one, I was talking about how there was trillions of dollars missing. Doug Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was, uh, it was the head of the, uh, the CIA, the Pentagon, I forget who it was. Yeah, whatever. But yeah, right. Yeah. Like that, that clip where he's like, we misplaced, right? Doug Like $3 trillion. That was insane. Sam So I mean, I think I think you have this this traditionally has been. Controlling a monetary system is incredibly powerful, right? Like, was it like Nathan Rockchild that said, I, you know, give me control of a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws. Sam And it's very, very telling about the power that that's inherent with, you know, the ability to regulate a monetary system. I was Donald. Doug It was Donald Rumsfield. Rumsfield, remember that, that too was. Sam Yeah, so I think I think it's I think it's dangerous and I think I think the creation of crypto offers a lot of freedom and I think there's a lot of people that have a vested interest in not Seeing people be free, you know Doug What do you think of the attack that we're seeing on Monero, right? It was delisted from Binance. Obviously people are, you know, you got people like Senator Warren that would ban it if she could. Things seem to be ramping up against it like you're talking about. Doug That starts. What's that? Sam Is how it starts Doug All right, so where do you see things go? What's your current take on Monero? Sam Uh, like, like, it's just, it's a threat, man. It's a threat to people who, who have systems of control that have had these systems of control, you know, in place for, you know, a hundred years. Um, how do you see things playing out though in the, in the U S. Doug Huh, how do you see things playing out though in the US particularly with regards to like how they end up treating Monero? How it Sam I could see a big push, like, I mean, we already saw, I mean, I remember when you could do your taxes and they didn't even mention crypto. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Now it's the first question. Doug It's like Sam So, you know, like any form of registration is a form of control and I think that that'll ramp up. I think you'll have more laws put in place that are nonsensical that don't even need to be there, you know. Sam All honesty, I think Congress should meet twice a year, you know. I really don't see, you know, how you have this much to talk about, you know. We have, so if you just put it in this perspective, at the end of the day, you have a lawyer. Sam This person spends seven years learning about law, right, and, you know, going to college and paying a lot of money to do it. When they leave and they go off to practice law, they specialize in one form of law. Sam I've never met a lawyer who does tax law, criminal law, personal injury, divorce, divorce law, international law. I've never met one that is like, oh, my specialty is everything. Like even people who study it for seven years can only study one type of it. Sam So my point with that is when you have that many laws, it makes it so that at any point in time anyone can be a criminal because even people who study it for seven years don't know all of the laws and they definitely don't know the ones that are constantly passed after they leave law school. Sam And like I think to back that up, there's a great study by a guy, I want to say his name is Silverman or Silverstein or something like that, who is a Harvard professor and he wrote a book called Three Felonies a Day that basically talks about how like your law abiding, your average law abiding citizen on an average day commits three felonies. Sam And like that's like, oh, well, that's you know, that's really that's horrible. Like it's like, yeah, it is. But like if you if you create a system where I don't like what Doug's saying. So let's just watch him for 24 hours. Sam Oh, look, he just committed a felony. We could put him in jail for seven years. You know, when you tend to go to prison, you know, people tend to forget about you. And it's a great way to get rid of dissidents or people who are dangerous in a society. Sam And I think I think that's a really easy way to go about it. And then like you read like the 13th Amendment, where it basically says that once you are incarcerated, once you are a felon, you're you're an indentured servitude, you're you're a slave and they can force you to work. Sam And like this is this is that's that's I think that would be the future. It's a legalized version of slavery for all the people who disagree or oppose what's said. And and that's again, that's how it starts. Sam And the people that don't say anything back are encouraging that system to move forward. And we see that with any dictator that traditionally comes along is if no one says anything, no one does anything to stop it. Sam It just gets worse and worse. And the tyranny gets worse and worse and worse. And then the single people that are willing to stand out and talk about it, they get persecuted. They get made example of and it kind of sets that precedent for everyone else to fall back and just accept whatever is being handed out. Sam So if I mean, I would say the best way to tell what the future is going to be is to look at the past. Doug It's government just doing what they've always done is what you're saying. Sam Like, dude, I'll totally send you commissary money, man. You just got to write. Sam I'll send you a couple books, you know? Sam what you're doing. It's wicked dangerous. You know, that's, that's exactly what we're talking about. Yo, we can laugh about it right now. We'll see where we're at in 20 years. Doug Shit. Nah, man. No, we're on the right side. They're the bad. I agree with that, you know, but and I do. I do. I do think ultimately, no, I think ultimately the the political will is still there in this country to be supportive of liberty and free speech when it's really up against the wall. Doug I mean, we saw with PGP, right, that I don't know. I'd be I'd be shot. I'd be. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what they did was with tornado cash. That was that was pretty that was pretty egregious. The steps they took there against tornado cash. Doug That was pretty pretty wild. But yeah, I don't know how how much further they'll go against Monero. And ultimately, I do think it would be, you know, Supreme Court case. And Monero will will will succeed. Doug Otherwise, I'm leaving this country. Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting I'm got like, I'm no longer a part of this. And I think there'd be a lot of obviously not maybe just because of Monero, but people realizing like, wait a minute. Doug That's a real attack on Bitcoin at that point, too. Right. There's really no way to throw throw one out without throwing the other out. Is there technically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, Sam demonization, you know, I'm making examples of you. I think that's traditionally what we see. Am I saying that's what's going to happen? No, I'm not. I have no idea what's going to happen. But that's, that's kind of the good thing about life is it makes it interesting to see what does happen next. Doug I'm already, you know, whatever, I'm going to be 44. Life's short, right? So it's like. Sam I'll do push -ups. Doug some pull ups every day and I'll read philosophy. Sam Thank you. Sam Yeah, you get to just do it on general principle, you're like, this is me. This is who I am. This is what I believe, you know, there are people that are going to, you know, hate you. And there are people that are going to, you know, come at you. Sam But again, like, that's that should just be something that keeps you sharp and on point. Doug driven. I've always been driven by my own principles in a very large way, whether for good or bad. I don't know. Sam I would say from the wire, man's got to have a code, you know, absolutely. Doug 100% I like that that's a good expression back back to marketplaces big kind of big question and you were going over it a little bit in that video but what would you see as being you know I thought that was a great topic what would you see as being kind of an ideal marketplace what what what needs to be done what what is the ideal marketplace look like these days Sam Um, yeah, like, like in, you know, um, imaginary, uh, land, like, um, I would say like a decentralized one where, um, you know, people, people, you know, kind of, kind of like open bizarre, you know, I really, I really liked that model. Sam It's just, um, it's just super difficult to, um, to get the masses to, to take hold of, you know? Um, like, honestly, I wish, I wish, I wish that, that, uh, you know, drug markets didn't exist at all. Sam Um, like, you know, I think putting incarcerating people for decades at a time for non -violent victimless crimes is, is, is fucking stupid, you know, um, so, you know, I, but I also think that there are, there is a time and a place, um, you know, for the justice system. Sam Absolutely. Um, there's definitely, I met a ton of, you know, socio and psychopaths that I would, I would never want to get out, you know, um, and be around my family or, you know, my loved ones or, you know, I know people to this day that if they got out, they would fucking kill four people, you know, first day without even, you know, moments hesitation. Sam So like, there's definitely a place for it, but, um, I think like the perfect market would be a situation where we don't need a market at all where we're actually free. Like we should have the ability to put whatever we want in our bodies. Sam If we own our bodies, we should be able to dictate what we do with them. Um, whether that's drugs or tattoos or I don't know, it's irrelevant. Um, now, if you're talking about like from a technological standpoint, I would say I would go back to the, the whole deep, you know, decentralized, um, decentralized, uh, community -based, you know, a system where things like, you know, exit scams and, um, you know, things like that are, are impossible, or you have ways to reward vendors who maintain a reputation for certain periods of time, like, you know, maybe lower transactional fees or something along those lines, because right now you, you really don't, it's like, you know, for the people who are selling, they, you know, reputation obviously is important, but like they can read, they can, they can selective scam for two years and then just go into full as a vendor, go into full out exit scam mode and then reboot the next day or months before that with a totally new identity and re and rebuild that, like there has to be some kind of incentive to not become a scumbag and really, you know, with that anonymity, there really isn't, you know, um, and, and a lot of times a lot of dark net vendors will reboot identities just, you know, just for the sake of it, you know, new PGP keys. Doug for being around longer, right, essentially. Sam Yeah, I mean, to some degree, because even then, then then, but then you have to question like, okay, well, doesn't that, you know, that affects like their threat model? Because now they're all they're around longer. Sam Like, you know, how does that affect their OPSEC? That's individualistic for each one, depending on the country they're in, and a whole bunch of other factors. But, you know, I, like, what's it look like? Sam I have, I have no idea, you know, I know that I'm not capable of creating it. You know, I think there's a lot, a lot of people who are way more intelligent than me, that like, I get lucky enough to be able to, you know, be on like the, the, what is it, what's that, what's that say on the shoulder of giants, you know, I think that's a great description for what I do, because, because like, you know, I don't invent anything, I just kind of look at all the other cool stuff that everyone else does and kind of pointed out. Sam And that's, that's, that's my thing, man. But I think, I think whatever it is, it'll be interesting, it'll be cool. And I think something horrible will happen, and it'll screw it up. And then what we'll do is there'll be an evolution after that. Sam And they'll adapt and you know, it'll be, and that'll just be, it's like the security battle in general, going back to like the burglar and the locksmith, and how it's evolved, you know, all the way up to the point that, you know, we have it now where people are, you know, stealing, you know, stealing cars with flipper zeros and shit, you know what I mean? Sam So whatever it'll be, it'll be interesting. I can't imagine it though. I think it's like asking someone in the 60s, what would it look like in 2023? And the only thing they could talk about is like flying cars, you know, because they have the concept of cell phones or any of this crazy stuff that's going to be affecting society way more than any flying car possibly would, you know, like a TikTok in the hands of your kid is going to have a lot more influence on a flying car, you know, but there, I think there are insidious threats that like no one could really predict. Sam I think that's true with anything, including dark damn markets. Like this admin exit scamming, no one saw that coming. But if you think about it for a minute, a criminal doing whatever he can to extort or take from people, it does make sense. Sam And I just hope that the community sees it. And from it, they say, okay, well, there's nothing, there's nothing of value here. So when the next one does it, like they get nothing, you know, if you would just laugh at them, that would be the ideal evolutionary step. Doug Good stuff, man, good stuff. Where, you wanna put out resources where people can just find you? I obviously got your YouTube channel. Sam Yeah, for sure. My YouTube channel is Doing Fed Time. I have a website, Doing Fed Time, and the same name on basically every social media outlet. Some of the more toned -down professional posts you'll find on LinkedIn under my actual name, Sam Ben. Doug Awesome, buddy. Thanks for taking the time jumping on. For sure. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, maybe like I said, maybe there's some way we get you down to Buenos Aires. That'd be cool. Have you come down? Doug Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it would be interesting. And I do. I do want to reach out to you about XMR Bazaar. OK, maybe maybe get some maybe you're interested in doing some consulting on XMR Bazaar. All right, buddy, we will we'll be in touch. Doug Thank you so much, man. Sounds good. All right. Cheers, man.