SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

After the last of the Dirty Harry films [wikipedia.org], The Dead Pool [wikipedia.org], was released in 1988, libertarians began to discuss the potential for crypto-currency prediction markets to become crowdfunded assassination markets [cryptome.org]. Many schemes were proposed and many were unworkable. The main complication is an assassin using zero-knowledge proof [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] of lethal force [theguardian.com]. When a BitCoin [wikipedia.org] dead pool launched in 2013 [forbes.com], Chairman of the [wikipedia.org] United States [wikipedia.org] Federal Reserve [wikipedia.org], Ben Bernanke [wikipedia.org], became subject of the biggest bounty. Perhaps it was obvious with hindsight that libertarian capitalists in possession of digital currency [wikipedia.org] 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 [soylentnews.org] flight to safety [soylentnews.org] encourage libertarianism not previously seen? Or are people wimps?

Original Submission