this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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You know the story about the Somali pirate stock market?
Think that, but times 1000.
Bitcoin is mostly used for illegal shit. Mostly drug trades, but anything else criminal as well. Want to buy guns, removed, even a hitman? Bitcoin.
The drug trade basically created the value for Bitcoin. And then the traders who already had lots of it when people began hyping Bitcoin became richer and richer.
Which annoys me a whole fucking ton, because at one point I had over 120 Bitcoin in my possession. Should've saved at least one and I wouldn't be in this problem. Well, honestly, I would, because I'd have probably sold it at 500 or something.
Back when I had then they were worth 1e a piece. Ordered me some drugs, so I never bought them as an investment, just as currency.
Tldr Anyway yeah investing in Bitcoin is essentially funding drug cartels.
Source?
Source for what? For my personal experiences? For me having purchased drugs?
Or the amount of marketplaces, interactions in the marketplaces, and their values?
We can't quantify the size of the illegal drug trade, but it's in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions.
Hell, if only any of those marketplaces were open anymore, I'd have had probably now worth thousands in Bitcoin because a portion of them remained after my shopping. I didn't have a local Bitcoin wallet, the stores had wallets you'd transfer into.
But yeah they switch so often, after either cutting and running or being caught.
But yeah, that's what made Bitcoin a bit more mainstream, but the value radically shot up once people began seeing it as something worth investing in, since the value was growing relatively fast even without there being investors.
I don't know what you're asking a source for, exactly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade
And those are honestly very conservative (and bad) guesses. Of course it's much larger. You can see if you google it, none of the guesses are even similar to each other, lol.
Also, remember there's a hugely popular show called "how to sell drugs online - fast" or smth. It's just everywhere. But people pretend it isn't. It's fascinating to me, the willfull ignorance.
We have to legalise all drugs to actually get them under regulation.
Your thesis:
I've bought a ton of drugs with cash. Is cash mostly used for illegal shit?
What a shit strawman. The illegal drug trade figuring out it could use tor and bitcoin is what made cryptos popular.
No-one knew shit about them before that. The blockchain was invented in the 90's.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
While nowadays places do accept bitcoin and it could also be used as a every niche currency, in practice, there is no use for it, except purchasing illegal goods and services.
Because if you actually need something that isn't illegal, why the fuck would you use bitcoin? Because first off, you'd have to find someone who agrees to accept it. Are there any supermarkets where you live which accept bitcoin? Any stores which accept it, period? Perhaps the local headshop/vapestore/other such place run by some weed-worshipping 20-year old might, but seeing how slow it is, that's doubtful either. People take donations on sites in Bitcoin.
What use does Bitcoin actually have, except for illegal shit?
It's downright obtuse pretending otherwise. When Bitcoin came out in 2009, it had no users or use cases. Then 2011 Silk Road opens and less than three years later there are official inquiries from states like UK into cryptos, because it started the crypto boom and made Bitcoin actually valuable, because it's used to facilitate drug deals, which are worth actual money.
So because it has a base value of the trading going on in the marketplaces, investors started just buying it because it was a very good investment. But people don't buy it to use as currency — unless they plan on buying something illegal.
As a decentralized store of value.
But it's not.
It's an actively used currency. Very actively. There's probably been thousands of transactions in the time we've had this chat.
It's just that pretty much every single one of those is for drugs or other illegal services, mostly drugs. (I say "pretty much everyone" because there's the offchance that someone has actually used one of those niche stores which accept bitcoin).
So I've given you plenty of proof.
Based on your best guess.
Its also not relevant. Bitcoins key utility is as a store of value, and that's what its being used for most.
No, based on actual data available.
We only have data for busted markets, which is only a miniscule proportion of the trade being done, yet it still far outweighs any transactions used for legal purposes. Even when stores like growstores accept bitcoin and growers sometimes use their profits (made illegally, from several illegal transactions) to do one transaction which is for legal grow shit. The amount they'll make off that gear will be far greater than the it's cost.
This isn't a debate. This is you just refusing to accept reality.
https://syntheticdrugs.unodc.org/syntheticdrugs/en/cybercrime/onlinetrafficking/payment/index.html
https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Europol%20Spotlight%20-%20Cryptocurrencies%20-%20Tracing%20the%20evolution%20of%20criminal%20finances.pdf
It's impossible to have specific numbers of a black market, in case you want something even more specific, but despite not being able to pin down specific numbers, it's obvious.
First of all, we aren't talking about cryptocurrency, we're talking about Bitcoin.
Secondly, like I already said, it's irrelevant. Bitcoin is for storing value.