Acknowledgements 5
1: Overview of the book 6
2: Crime is as smart and as dumb as the internet 11
Digital crime is global and local 13
The limits of digital crime 14
After Cybercrime 15
New configurations of digital crime 17
Do not fear the darknet 19
Myths of the internet make digital crime look strange when it is normal 24
Conclusion 27
3: How cryptomarkets work 27
Cryptomarkets mimic the form but not the content of clearnet shopping sites 27
New contexts for crime and semi-crime 34
Technology shouldn’t lead and criminals should avoid bitcoin 37
Cultures of digital crime 40
Implications of cryptomarkets 42
Conclusion 43
4: Fracturing research in splintering digital environments 43
The internet is more mobile, more ingrained and also more fractured 43
Reshaping expertise in social research 45
Questioning scientific hierarchies 47
New data types and combinations 49
Ethics and politics in the data infrastructure 51
End of the online 53
The Network and the Limits of Metaphor 54
How this changes what we study 56
Research for this book 58
Conclusion 58
5: Illicit trades are political economies 59
Security and insecurity are distributed by the nation state and global economy 59
Social trauma and harm geography 60
Extent and growth of the illicit economy 62
Legitimate illicit business 66
Legitimate violence 71
Markets regulate crime 72
Conclusion 74
6: The cultural drug-crime confection 74
Illicit intoxication and normal addiction in the ‘machine zone’ 75
The work of culture in the context of the illicit 76
Symbolic order and power 80
Looking for culture 83
Looking into the surface 85
Drug markets in institutions 86
Conclusion 88
7: Cybercrime is not always rational, but it is reasonable 89
Digital crime is structured more than organised 89
Organised crime is a useful performance for cops and criminals 91
Trade associations exist alongside cartels 93
Illegal markets come in different types 94
From Kingpinning to routine crime 95
Normal scammers and legit vendors 96
Business strategy and trajectory 96
Building a hybrid infrastructure to cope with uncertainty 100
Markets regulate crime work 101
Coordination and cooperation 103
Structuring Opportunity 105
8: Managing relationships in digital crime 108
Seeing like a blockchain: the problem of trust 109
Smart contracts, and machine laws 110
Trust in cryptomarkets 111
Coordination and cooperation 113
Conclusion 115
9: How knowledge about drugs is produced in cryptomarkets 116
Quality is an unstable quality 118
Paraphernalia and preparation 119
How users share knowledge and assess quality 124
Adulteration, contamination 127
Conclusion 129
10: Risk structuring 130
Cryptomarkets are one place where drug risk is dissected and reworked 130
Structuring of risk 132
Peer support 135
Risk signalling and responsible harm 137
Dosing and the user’s body 141
Drug Altruism 142
Cryptomarkets are meeting points 143
Conclusion 146
11: Technology does not confer security and transparency does not confer safety 147
Anonymity is desired but not achieved in the cryptomarkets 147
Secrecy is needed 150
Anonymity’s techno-politics 150
The pleasures of the hidden 152
Attesting persona 155
Multiple identities are a challenge for users and vendors: 155
Maintaining opsec through defeat and deniability 156
The inadequate shield of technology 158
Conclusion 161
12: Why digital crime works 162
Cybercriminals and law enforcement imagine crime and so shape what crime is 163
Crime has logics, not only rationality 164
What is happening to the cryptomarkets 166
This all matters because as a society we are far more constrained than at any time in the past 167
Conclusion 168
References 169
