Talk:Assassination market

Melodramatic opinion
The final sentence of the article, "If the concept is taken up as civil disobedience as suggested by Jim Bell then this could easily lead to the end of all open and above ground government anywhere on earth," seems a bit too apocalyptic for a serious encyclopedia.

this is kind of intense, but given the sophistication of Al Qaeda etc., I am quite sure we are not telling them anything here they don't already know...

Missing sources?
Interestingly, much of the material describing this stuff is no longer on the open web...
 * This isn't true really. Large proportions of the very early cypherpunks archives are on the web. This topic was discussed there heavily 1993 onwards. The ideas are all covered at a broad level in Cyphernomicon and Bell's Assassination politics articles.
 * Among other archive sites of CP materials, and of course archive.org. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 08:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Issues
The "Jim Bell" link to zolatimes redirects to another location which yields 404 "File not found".

The final sentence of the third paragrpah is incomplete. It ends "it is substantially more difficult to assign criminal liability for the action(s)." Substantially more difficult than what?

Dominus 14:50 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

The discussion is not quite historically correct
Tim May had already discussed the idea of cryptographic protocols enabling the existence of abhorrent markets (such as assassination markets) before Jim Bell's "Assassination Politics" post (which was intially to the cypherpunks mailing list, iirc.

I personally recall seeing such discussion in the extropians mailing list ~1993-1994 and on cypherpunks in 1994.

Tim May is easily discovered on Usenet, so finding his email address is simple. I recommend contacting him for his version of events.

This discussion is peurile imo because Jim Bell is misrepresented and unable to defend himself.Jim was the first to bring out the great libertory and freeing effects that assassination politics would bring to the world. Quite the opposite tack to the neo-nazi Tim Mays ' abhorrent' markets. Jims conception was less of a market and more of a mass movement of civil disobedience and he is quite explicit about that toward the end of his ten page essay. Jim was investigated, charged and is serving hard time today whereas no one knows where the neo-nazi Tim May is and no one cares. Jim Bell was arrested and charged while at the same time the pentagon was stealing the concept and renaming it ' Policy analysis markets.' Shades of the infamous theft of PROMIS software from the INSLAW company.From my reading of the cypherpunks list it peaked with the genius, Jim Bells contributions circa 1996-7 and then declined rapidly under the flaming racist meglomania of the neo-nazi Tim May. Stuff about Jim is stored at Cryptome inc trial testimony and he should be released in 2010, a prophet without honor in his own land and in his own time, Jim Bell is a latter day Martin Luther King and assassination politics is the death warrant for all governments.


 * Last time I checked, Martin Luther King didn't tell people to kill people.

Jim Bell did not write his Assassination Politics essay in 1997. It was begun in early 1995, and various chapters were written over the next year+. (One chapter was not written by Jim Bell: It was written by a journalist, writing for Asahi Evening News, in reaction to Bell's essay:  Bell chose to include it in the AP essay because it was well-written and entertaining.) Finally, Jim Bell is no longer in prison, having been released March 12, 2012. If he hadn't been released, this paragraph would not have appeared. Jamesdbell8 (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Needs Revision
The article says:


 * the assassination of major figures such as Saddam Hussein would have an immediate impact--very profitable for anyone anticipating it.

With the capture and imprisonment of Saddam Hussein, this remark appears to be obsolete.

-- Dominus 16:19, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I changed Hussein to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia - that seems to solve the problem raised above, and also probably constitutes a better example than Hussein, because even before his capture Iraq's participation in world oil markets was highly restricted, whereas Saudi Arabia is a massive force in oil, and so the assassination of King Fahd would likely have even greater effect.

Sloppy thinking
There are two concepts of assassination markets that are used in this entry, and they are quite different. They are horribly mixed up in this article.

The first is that of a futures exchange where you can (anonymously or not) speculate on the assassination of a certain individual on a certain date. This is similar to the Policy Analysis Market that were suggested and that are highly discredited by now.

The second is that of assassins, who themselves (or their peers) profit financially from the assassinations they carry out through bets in financial markets. This is not an 'assassination market'. It is just insider trading in well-established markets.

My suggestion is to just merge this into Prediction market - and keep it there as a footnote - DocendoDiscimus 18:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Vote

 * Against! I dont agree with you. This article should be kept as a separate part. It concerns the theory about assasination markets as proposed by Jim Bell (or whatever his name is) both as a conspiracy theory and as he (Tim) thought about it. Also, and this is equally important as the first argument, it considers what impact cryptography mixed with capitalism/crypto-anarchism (onion routing esp.) has on society. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.11.232.248 (talk • contribs).


 * Oppose You seem to misunderstand the concept; the prediction market is what provides the incentive for the assassins to operate, thereby instead of being a mere futures exchange, the prediction market in effect becomes somewhere to commission assassinations on a given date. Skomorokh  incite 11:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Against! Historically it has been called assassination markets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.254.32.81 (talk) 18:10, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Trillion dollar hit
The article seems to imply that Al Qaeda traders made a trillion dollars on shorting airline stocks after the 11 September attacks. As the NYSE total market cap is about $19.7 trillion I find it very hard to believe that any group could make 5% of this on one series of trades. I'm going to tone down this claim unless someone can come up with a reputable cite. Lisiate 01:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I read at the time that there was Al Qaeda was suspected of manking about $200 million ”going a bear” on airline stocks; this money was probably more about raising fianances than an alternative justification for the act. Scott197827 22:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't see how it could be read to even remotely imply that al-Qaeda made a trillion-dollar profit on 9/11...rather, it's simply referring to the severe decline that occurred on the stock markets that day (which may indeed have decreased the NYSE's total market cap by a trillion dollars) Kurt Weber 15:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Unclear Writing
"Certainly the expensive investigations, arrests and prosecutions of Jim Bell, Carl Johnson and Matt Taylor were not theoretical. Were enough activists to join them then the entire process of repression would have to be seriously compromised. And this 'denial of service' attack from the net would work with even more synergy if following on from any external and directly physical attack. This threat to the state is verifiable. The threat is real - albeit virtual - because first responders would be distracted."


 * What's going on in this paragraph here? It sounds like it was written by Charlie Brown's teacher. 154.20.115.35 (talk) 06:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Al Qaeda
If somebody wants a ref to the Al Qaeda debate, here it is, - dont know why it has been deleted from the original version of the article. Power.corrupts (talk) 17:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Er, no. That is a computer-generated book taking its information from... Wikipedia. Bit circular. Fences  &amp;  Windows  21:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Jim Bell mention missing?
I don't have time to look for it right now, but it seems as if this article is missing something. I came here after seeing the discussion on Jim Bell's page, but Bell isn't even mentioned on this page. The only mention is in the final paragraph...

"'He began an initiative called Operation Soft Drill — a term which reporter Declan McCullagh wrote was created by Bell — with the stated intention of intimidating police and corporate polluters into respecting human rights.'"

It looks like an earlier reference to Bell was removed, leaving only this passing mention. I'm not familiar with the article myself, and I'm heading out for a while, but I thought I'd mention it for some of the editors who are more familiar with the article. Thanks in advance. Dayewalker (talk) 23:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I put Bell back in, though he did not originate any of the terms in question. The text before my re-adding edits was senseless, since it referred to both "Bell" and "assassination politics" in totally non-sequiturial ways. I just added some Bell stuff from scratch, without reference to earlier versions of the article. Someone or other is POV-warring on this article to remove any mention of Bell, and that cannot stand. But maybe earlier versions were objectionable in some way(s). I'm not friend or fan of Bell (nor his enemy), but he unquestionably played a very major role in this issue. Frankly, he scared the hell out of a lot of people, more so than May (Denning notwithstanding), since May wasn't too detailed, while Bell really wanted to implement this.  NB: The fact that assassination futures (another term that should probably be added) are among the most scary-for-lotsa-people aspects of crypto-anarchism isn't really covered, and people like Dorothy Denning are not mentioend at all.  Some stuff can probably be reworked from the main Crypto-anarchism article. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 08:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I want to know about assassination-futures!!! Please add whatever you know about it! If you dont have sources, please just dump some hints here, and maybe I can dig it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.254.32.81 (talk) 18:08, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

"Wikipedia does not allow the URL of this source"
I've just replaced a reference that simply said the above (see this version of the article) with a 'citation needed' tag.

I'm guessing this was a Tor URL - does anybody know? And does Wikipedia really not allow these?

Let me know and I'll raise it elsewhere on Wikipedia if necessary, as being able to cite Tor sites would certainly be useful for articles like this!

Jonathan Deamer (talk) 17:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I was linking to the URL of the assassination market-implementation itself. Wikipedia stopped me when I submitted, with the error message that the URL was blacklisted. Maybe its because its an assassination market. I do not like this policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.254.32.81 (talk) 18:04, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. This article and this Reddit thread led me to Wikipedia's spam blacklist, which seems to include *all* .onion URLs. Jonathan Deamer (talk) 18:14, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Here's a couple of additional discussions on the inclusion of .onion links. Seems that they're not allowed because of WP:ELNO#EL7, which lists "Sites that are inaccessible to a substantial number of users, such as sites that only work with a specific browser or in a specific country" under "Links normally to be avoided". Jonathan Deamer (talk) 18:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I am assured that official .onion links for pages will be whitelisted. See  and  (both of those links will eventually have to be redone/archiving)  I am told the main concern is that they might be substituted with bogus links by unscrupulous editors.  To be sure, I didn't get this link to work, but on the other hand, it seems impossible to be certain that it is down for good, even if taking the pot and closing shop sure seems like a smart move.  In any case, I think we will eventually need to keep track of which Assassination Market we were talking about, since any idea this spectacularly bad never goes out of style. Wnt (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Online marketplace has closed
Original research from myself has determined the site closed in June 2014 and that the money never moved since. Alas I am not a reliable source, but I am on the only one AFAIK.

http://pirate.london/2015/11/whatever-happened-to-the-crowd-sourced-assassination-marketplace/ Deku-shrub (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)


 * It is relatively easy to verify that the monies has not been moved from the accounts. Wikipedia accepts references to public databases for example when referencing genetic sequences, publicly known mathematical constansts and whatnot, so it should be possible to reference the bitcoin blockchain too, right? Here is the transaction history and balance for the account dedicated to Bernanke assassination: blockchain.info page for the account. 2001:2002:51E3:8007:3AD5:47FF:FEB9:111D (talk) 17:08, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Identical to Agatha Christie Book
The terms of this website appear identical to the plot of an Agatha Christie book, the Pale Horse (1961). I wonder if this is relevant for the main page.

Assassination market cashed out
https://pirate.london/fake-blockchain-assassination-market-remembers-his-wallets-are-now-worth-1-3-773447f94b80 Deku-shrub (talk) 18:11, 31 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I updated it with RS


 * https://harpers.org/archive/2020/01/click-here-to-kill-dark-web-hitman/


 * Zezen (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that partial agreement. See the Pirate London site for more such cases (from the US) or details. Bows. Zezen (talk) 04:34, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

List of murders ordered via markets
This

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47747357

apart from more famous ones. Zezen (talk) 15:58, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * That wasn't via a market Deku-shrub (talk) 19:11, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

BBC says it was: The documents seen by BBC Russian suggest the man who allegedly placed the order for the murder [on Hydra market], who goes by the pseudonym Miguel Morales, was being investigated by Lt Col Shishkina while other sources are much more specific.

The first "Internet hitman requests", market-based or otherwise, date to 2004 and earlier: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/may/29/crime.uknews

Zezen (talk) 14:29, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair, I had not read into that. None the less, that was arranged by a general purpose darknet market, not a murder-specific one Deku-shrub (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2019 (UTC)