Children as Young as 12 Using Bitcoin to Buy Cocaine on Dark Web
One boy told how he made over £7,000 in less than 18 months dealing cocaine to friends.
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Before the anonymous digital currency began being embraced by legitimate businesses such as online gambling firms, Bitcoin had a special place in the dark web with drug dealers and users.
It still does apparently and young children are being caught up in that web.
The Mirror reports that web savvy generation of schoolkids are paying for cocaine, MDMA and ketamine with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin on encrypted websites.
From the Mirror:
One boy told how he made over £7,000 in less than 18 months dealing to friends.
But he ended up addicted to drugs himself and his horrified parents found out when he collapsed from a ketamine overdose outside a nightclub.
His dad warned tonight: “We had no idea this was going on right under our noses and I would urge other parents to educate themselves about the dark web because it can ruin lives.”
The boy invested £100 in Bitcoin when he was 13 and used it to deal after getting the idea from friends at school who were involved in the illegal trade.
On his laptop, he downloaded a web browser that lets users access areas of the internet invisible to other software.
He then subscribed to a “virtual private network” to hide his location and internet use from parents and the authorities.
He found a drug dealer in minutes using a dark web search engine.
The lad, now aged 15, told the Sunday People: “It was like TripAdvisor with loads of buyer ratings on quality and reliability.
“Knowing my mum and dad would become really suspicious if random packages started arriving for me at home, I spoke to a mate at school whose mum wasn’t very clued-up, who said I could get it sent to him for £20.
“So I ordered three grams of ketamine at £10 a gram, and three grams of coke at £20 a gram and waited.”
The Bitcoin drug trade is seen as highly decentralized.
The illicit bitcoin ecosystem is centered around a small number of services that could be subject to scrutiny, regulation and co-option by law enforcement. A recent report found that just three mixers and gambling sites account for 97 per cent of the volume in their categories and 50 per cent of the volume overall.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
