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posted by n1 on Monday June 19 2017, @09:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the i'd-buy-that-for-a-dollar dept.

After the last of the Dirty Harry films, The Dead Pool, was released in 1988, libertarians began to discuss the potential for crypto-currency prediction markets to become crowdfunded assassination markets. Many schemes were proposed and many were unworkable. The main complication is an assassin using zero-knowledge proof to claim a bounty without implicating any other party. This arrangement ignores betting exchanges where anyone can lay or back bets and no-one on a given exchange may be involved in assassination. Discussion has been sparse regarding secondary markets for fake death followed by new identity.

Whether or not a dead pool is bloodless, ire has been most often directed at government officials and the actual use of lethal force. When a BitCoin dead pool launched in 2013, Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, became subject of the biggest bounty. Perhaps it was obvious with hindsight that libertarian capitalists in possession of digital currency would focus on the person directly responsible for managing the world's largest, centralized, debt-based, nation-state, fiat currency.

Anyhow, given that a real assassination market has supposedly been running for four years, where are the high-profile deaths? Or disappearances? Is digital currency too complicated for soldiers of fortune? Too risky? Too ephemeral? Are the rewards too small? Will digital currency's increased value and flight to safety encourage libertarianism not previously seen? Or are people wimps?


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @11:42PM (#528215)

    Ordinary people volunteer for firing squads.
    I believe that cops/military do the job.

    Neither gets paid for it.

    Context is everything.

    People demolish buildings all the time under contract. I doubt they'd bomb a building without a government approved permit.

    People slaughter animals for meat all the time. I doubt they'd butcher a neighbor's dog.

    A state executioner would (probably) have compunctions of illegally murdering somebody in cold blood.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:32AM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:32AM (#528364)

    I guess you're not cynical enough to acknowledge that quite a few people just need an excuse to do something that itches them, and that they would do without the excuse if they thought they could get away with.