What has become known as the Dark Web has gained a lot of
attention over the last year. While you
may not be familiar with the term, you may be familiar with the Silk Road, Ross
Ulbricht, Dread Pirate Roberts or Bitcoin.
In case you are not familiar, let me explain. The “dark web”
is an immensely larger side of the Internet that can only be accessed using a
particular browser. Essentially what this means is that the dark web is a
section of the Internet that is hidden from normal browsers such as Internet Explorer,
Chrome and Safari.
The most popular of these browsers goes by, Tor, that stands
for “The Onion Router”. By masking your IP address, Tor allows users to browse
the dark web anonymously as well as untraced.
One of the most popular websites accessed via the dark web was,
and still may be, the Silk Road. The Silk Road is an online marketplace similar
to ebay or craigslist. Sellers will post to the website items that they want to
sell and then interested buyers will purchase the items. The main difference
between the Silk Road and Ebay is that the items for sale on the Silk Road are
all illegal.
That’s right, you can purchase anything ranging from
marijuana to heroin on the Silk Road. It is, in a nutshell, an online pharmacy
for illegal drugs. While the concept is outrageous, it exists because users can
not only buy and sell these items totally anonymous, but the currency that is
used to make these deals is also almost totally untraceable. This currency is
Bitcoin.
According to Bitcoin.org Bitcoin is the first decentralized
digital currency. What this means is that there is no bank or 3rd
party to go through when making transactions. It is a purely peer-to-peer
currency. This allows for low or no fees, allows for easy and fast
international transactions as well as no sign up requirements, meaning that
anyone and everyone can use Bitcoin.
The most unique Bitcoin feature that makes it totally
different than most other currencies is that the value of Bitcoin’s are always
changing since it is like a traded commodity and is only worth what people are
willing to pay for it.
While the Dark Web runs on Bitcoin, the currency is used for
normal every day transactions as well. Some have even gone as far as saying
that the “crypto-currency” is the next big thing money wise.
If Bitcoin will be the next world currency has yet to be
proven, however it has proven that it is not going anywhere anytime soon. It
will be interesting to see how far this new-age “crypto-currency” can go.
-James G Mendez
Mayborn School of Journalism
University of North Texas
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