Anonymous marketplace Silk Road is an underground online community where drug dealers can sell their goods for quite a profit. Currently, there are 1200+ offerings for a variety of drugs ranging from cannabis to ecstasy.

While drugs are not the only type of goods sold on the Silk Road, it is the one with the most offers. Other products sold on the site include Viagra, syringes and porn. LAUNCH wonders how long it will take for a dealer or others selling illegal goods to get caught selling on Silk Road.

Silk Road is only accessible through a Tor client, an open-source software that lets you browse the web anonymously, and only accepts peer-to-peer currency bitcoins as payment.

Bitcoins, which are unaffiliated with any government-regulated form of currency, are trading on Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange at $3.15 for one bitcoin. Right now, users can buy 3.5 grams of marijuana for ฿17.08, or roughly $51.

Cannabis accounts for the most listings with 504, but the current bestselling drug on Silk Road is one gram of "very pure fishscale cocaine" for roughly $108. The second best ranked seller, tetravort, has sold more than 250 grams of cocaine on Silk Road and made at least $27K+.

"This stuff is flakey fish-scale and as pure as I've come across: no jittery speediness as you might find with stomped on product, just smooth, accelerated euphoria and the characteristic warm flush," tetravort, writes in the product description. "You will probably find that you use less and desire a line less frequently than the stuff most people are doing. Also, the comedown is quite smooth. After about an hour of winding down, I can usually fall asleep and sleep normally. The product makes me warm, but it does not affect my heart or breathing at all."

While both the marketplace and payment process is anonymous, shipping can present other security issues.

As Silk Road user tetravot writes on his product page, "I now strongly believe that Priority Shipping and Express Shipping are bad ideas as they both require regular trips to post office and post offices have lots of cameras and friendly clerks that tend to remember me. Unless you have a dire party emergency, I will only be shipping First Class."

LAUNCH contacted Silk Road, but the administrator declined to comment. "Sorry, we aren't talking to the media at this time," administrator "Silk Road" tells LAUNCH.

In June, that same administrator told Wired, “Our community is amazing. They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other.”

In the Silk Road forums, users can reminisce about the first time they smoked weed, share favorite songs to listen to while tripping on a hallucinogenic, debate over whether raw amphetamine is better than Adderall, and more.

Do LAUNCH readers know anyone who has experienced legal troubles because of their involvement with Silk Road? Please send us an anonymous tip at tips at launch dot is.

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