I am starting this off saying this is just a theory. There is no solid facts to say my accusations are true. This is just the thoughts of a trader trying to see potential in the future. I seek no ill reputation on Agora Tokens.
Is it true Agora Tokens are going to be the first illegal drug coins? Are they connected to underground marketplaces? Who really knows but let's just take a little investigation into what has happened over the past 3 years.
DEEP WEB MARKETPLACES
If you do not know by now there are underground marketplaces on the onion network. These are primarily black markets, selling transactions involving drugs, weapons, forgery, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details and even to the point of offering killers and hackers for hire. You may have heard of Silk Road the most widely known Marketplace, which was shut down a few years ago. These sites use crypto currencies, mainly bitcoin, for all transactions to have a level of anonymity that the criminal world has never seen before.
You might be asking yourself "What has this got to do with Agora." Well, I'm getting there.
You see, Silk Road was a booming place that was only active for 2 years. Within that time the site had a net value of 9,519,664 Bitcoins traded. Silk Road earned a small percentage od commission off every deal and the owner amassed 614,305 Bitcoins in just 2 years. At the time of his arrest this was valued at least 100 million USD. Even after his arrest and the shutdown of Silk Road, copy cat sites have arose to try to take it's place as king of this industry.
THE NEXT KING
The next site to take Silk Roads place was Evolution Marketplace. Evolution continued to increase the popularity of Dark Marketplaces until it's exit scam in mid March 2015. As the largest market, by losing credibility and scamming all it's users Evolution caused everyone to flock towards Agora Marketplace to create the largest dark marketplace yet. Agora has been around since 2013 and has always been within the top 5 websites in this industry but never the big dog. Now, after Evolution exit, it's long history of credibility has finally payed off.
AGORA MARKETPLACE
Agora experienced a few months of enjoying the benefits of being the largest dark marketplace until whispers started to get around that these places are not as safe as they say at keeping the users details anonymous. So in August 2015 Agora admins released a PGP signed message announcing a pause of operations to protect the site against potential attacks that they believe might be used to de-anonymize server locations.
Below is the message:
Recently research had come [sic] that shed some light on vulnerabilities in Tor Hidden Services protocol which could help to deanonymize server locations. Most of the new and previously known methods do require substantial resources to be executed, but the new research shows that the amount of resources could be much lower than expected, and in our case we do believe we have interested parties who possess such resources. We have a solution in the works which will require big changes into our software stack which we believe will mitigate such problems, but unfortunately it will take time to implement. Additionally, we have recently been discovering suspicious activity around our servers which led us to believe that some of the attacks described in the research could be going on and we decided to move servers once again, however this is only a temporary solution. At this point, while we don't have a solution ready it would be unsafe to keep our users using the service, since they would be in jeopardy. Thus, and to our great sadness we have to take the market offline for a while, until we can develop a better solution. This is the best course of action for everyone involved.
Everyone was sad to see the shutdown of the largest service, but as there was no exit scam or government shutdown like its predecessors and even at the extent of helping everyone from ever getting caught for their actions, they have gained a level of respect and trust that no marketplace has. But what has this got to do with anything you say?
MY THEORY
Okay, lets take a look at the dates of all these last events.
Agora goes down on about 27th of August 2015.
And lets take a look at the time Agora Tokens became available.
Okay but that may be a coincidence, just like how Agora Token's main objective is for the most anonymous coin available. But if it's not a coincidence, what does that mean exactly? Well let me explain a few things that this might mean.
Firstly, this means this would be the first of these dark markets where the owners have a hand in the whole process and can give a level of anonymity and protection that has never been seen before. But why would they do this? Not only to cement themselves as the best dark marketplace on offer but also for a greater financial gain. If they own these coins they would have a stake in them so when the price of the coins increase from the boom of their return they will make more money then any other website has before. But is this a bad thing?
I personally don't think this is a bad thing necessarily. I know that their services are illegal and frowned upon, but these marketplaces make the criminal world, especially the drug industry, a much safer place for workers and customers for the following reasons:
less intimidation for buyers
sellers not getting robbed or run up on with weapons
the purity of these drugs are the highest of anywhere you can obtain so no dickheads selling mixed garbage killing people or having life long consequences for consumers.
These sites clean up a bit the dirt that comes with crime and makes it more of a business. Honestly, these sites will never go away anytime soon or even at all so with that being said, what does that mean for us?
A POSSIBLE RISE FOR EVERYONE
At the time of writing this article, Agora Tokens are cheap and ranked as the #36 coin with a market cap of $5.2 million. Based from the information provided from the shut down of Silk Road, they were at the very least moving $1.65 million USD daily in transactions. That was 3 years ago. This industry has continued to grow ever since. So on the return of Agora, if they use Agora Tokens as their main or secondary currency for trading, they will have more than $1.65 million of movement everyday. This level of movement would drastically increase the value of the coins in the future. So from me to you, I advise investing anything you can spare into Agora Tokens and leave them in until this marketplace returns. You most likely don't support this type of business but the fact is this is never going away and there is always going to be someone who is going to invest into something like this so you might as well come on the ride instead of watching it climb on without you. But this is all speculation and only accurate if my theory is correct.
Execute in the present. HIVEMIND!
Fascinating. Great post!
I own a few AGRS... I had no idea ;-p
Well, if your theories are correct, Agoras (Agorae?) would at least have a purpose that adds to their utility as a store of value, making them more useful than many cryptocurrencies.
Legality is an amorphous concept in an international market. Where I live some things are legal at one jurisdictional level, and illegal on another, and there are additional jurisdictional levels. Various jurisdictions have different laws.
TBQH, it is an impossible mess, and, for a company, or NGO, or church, with, either no brick and mortar edifice, or one on the high seas, or some other completely unanticipated jurisdictional circumstance, the questions become not only theoretical, but utterly illusory.
I suspect that, in terms of business prospects, it is reputation that will eventually come to matter more than legality.
Ethics know no geopolitical boundaries. The golden rule applies wherever you are, or aren't.
Security, however, is the peg on which any endeavor must depend, as it matters little whether a criminally insane monarch seizes your wares in an operation completely legal per the law of the land, or completely sane, but evil, pirates loot your stores in utter disregard and contempt of any legal rationale whatsoever.
What really matters is if you can safely operate, and that means keeping your customers safe too. If AGRS do enable operational security, then it is difficult to overestimate their potential value.
But, you might be thinking, what about space pirates?
I, for one, hope you enjoy doing so. I do what I can to help you pass the time and enjoy the ride.
Thanks!
Congratulations @hivemind! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Award for the number of posts published
Award for the number of upvotes
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP
Congratulations @hivemind! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!