On Thursday, October 11, 2018, 12:58:30 PM PDT, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
Famous quote: The best defense is a good offense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_best_defense_is_a_good_offense About the time Silk Road 1 was taken down, October 2013, I suggested on the Cypherpunks list that a 'dark market' ought to be protected by an AP (Assassination-Politics; Assassination Market) type system: My example numbers were something like: If a given dark-market did $1 billion in gross every year, and 1% of this was retained as a defense fund, that would be $10 million per year. But unlike my original AP proposal, https://cryptome.org/ap.htm (Thanks very much to John Young of Cryptome.org for keeping the AP essay available to the public), the award will be paid for the "prediction" of the death of people involved in the prosecution of anyone whose case was related to any dark market. A cynic might claim that this retained 1% would simply increase the price of the marketed items by 1%. But I believe the opposite would occur: 'Dark markets' exist, mostly, because items sold on them are illegal to possess or sell, most obviously what governments call "controlled substances". Those drugs, when illegally sold, are sold at a very high price with essentially no reference to a (very low) cost of production. The price is mainly due to the risk of buying and selling. 'Dark markets' function is to dramatically reduce the risk of discovery, enabling a seller to sell the substance with far less risk than had been traditionally existed. Even so, there is still currently a risk to (mostly) sellers and potentially buyers. Dark markets have shown very good security, at least on a per-transaction basis, but they can eventually fail: Even if the crypto involved is perfect, some people occasionally screw up, and officials eventually can become able to trace some participants. Typically they can prosecute the operator(s), and some of the larger sellers: The don't have the resources to prosecute low-level customers. If there could be a change to virtually eliminate the possibility of prosecution, the risk would go nearly to zero, and so sellers would be able to sell based on a pseudo-legal price. For example, I see no reason that cocaine could not be sold for less than $1 per gram, if sold entirely legally. If the award was sufficiently large, nobody would dare prosecute somebody based on any relation to a 'Dark Market'. For that reason, I suspect that the prices for substances found on an AP-protected-'Dark market' will fall far lower than current prices. Thus, the typical buyer and typical seller would be far better off than they are today. Prices would drop on a 'per-gram' basis, which would be good for buyers, but total volume of transactions would greatly increase and risk would drop, which is good for the sellers. Instead of naming specific people (who you don't know the identity, yet, since no prosecution has yet occurred), the award could be assigned to the person who "predicted" the death of anyone involved in the prosecution of a case related to activity on a dark market. A judge, example reward $250K, prosecutor(s), $250K, possibly including every prosecutor working in the office doing the prosecution (even the ones not directly involved in the case; this would prevent the situation where a single prosecutor in an office is willing to accept all the risk), and also any investigators, and any willing witnesses for the prosecution. There could also be an award to be distributed to any jurors who vote to acquit on all charges, say $250K: That would amount to an enormous award for 'the last juror' holdout who is willing to hang the jury. And once that last juror decides to hold out, more jurors would be motivated to join him to share in the award, by also voting to acquit. The bonus for jurors won't be directly "offered" to them: The government would call that 'jury tampering'. Rather, it will simply become known that his proportion of the award would eventually be paid to any juror who voted to acquit on all charges. No offer would need to be made, or actively accepted. The jurors, knowing that, would make their decisions accordingly. Obtaining a conviction would become nearly impossible. These example award values are based on the idea that they will typically cost $1-2 million per case; A reward fund of $10 million per year will, therefore, support 5-10 cases. Naturally, this is just an estimate. We don't typically see many prosecutions for involvement with a 'Dark market', even today. If such awards become credible, it is possible that there will never be another prosecution of anyone involved in a 'Dark market'. The resulting economics could be called a "virtuous circle", the desireable counterpart to the "vicious circle". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_circle If few or zero prosecutions occur, the rewards offered (per case) could be raised to huge values, making such a prosecution impossible. Fortunately, the advent of the Ethereum/Augur prediction system would likely allow this kind of protection system to be implemented in the relatively near future. They need to change their policies a bit, allowing the rewarding of very specific 'predictors', and also implement guaranteed crypto-secured anonymity for awards, as I forecast in my AP essay in 1995-96.. Jim Bell
Thanks very much to John Young of Cryptome.org for keeping the AP essay available to the public
If a concern, you might want to look into submitting text / multimedia to archive.org and or one of the wikimedia foundation projects, or even gutenberg, for whatever their curated collections series is called. The automated web archive of archive.org probably has scraped a lot already.
On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:02:50 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Fortunately, the advent of the Ethereum/Augur prediction system would likely allow this kind of protection system to be implemented in the relatively near future.
They need to change their policies a bit, allowing the rewarding of very specific 'predictors', and also implement guaranteed crypto-secured anonymity for awards,
It seems to me that anonymous communications is a building block that is still missing. Now, Chaum has a new cryptocoin : https://elixxir.io/ I don't know how good it is, or if it's even working (seems not), but if you take a look at their 'technical brief' you'll see they use a mixnet. My half educated guess is that only high latency mixnets may provide good enough anonimity. So, I was wondering, maybe it would make sense to get some bitcoin millonaire to fund some sort of mixnet? Such a project seems like a good fit for somebody like Roger Ver? What do you think Jim? Maybe you could sell the idea to him?
as I forecast in my AP essay in 1995-96.. Jim Bell
On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 05:07:11PM -0300, Juan wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:02:50 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Fortunately, the advent of the Ethereum/Augur prediction system would likely allow this kind of protection system to be implemented in the relatively near future.
They need to change their policies a bit, allowing the rewarding of very specific 'predictors', and also implement guaranteed crypto-secured anonymity for awards,
It seems to me that anonymous communications is a building block that is still missing.
Now, Chaum has a new cryptocoin :
I don't know how good it is, or if it's even working (seems not), but if you take a look at their 'technical brief' you'll see they use a mixnet. My half educated guess is that only high latency mixnets may provide good enough anonimity.
So, I was wondering, maybe it would make sense to get some bitcoin millonaire to fund some sort of mixnet? Such a project seems like a good fit for somebody like Roger Ver? What do you think Jim? Maybe you could sell the idea to him?
And, the idea don't need millions of dollars: 1) - a chaff fill plugin for I2P - initially a simple fixed bw link - then add dials for base chaff bw (e.g. if bandwidth drops below say 10kbps, chaff fill, but allow link bw to rise above) - then time period "chunked" - e.g. if link pressure is steadily being throttled, provide for stepping up/down, e.g. from 10kbps to 50kbps etc) - then add a per-connection latency dial (implies RAM cache of packet flow(s) that require latency - the latency dial should provide for randomness (a window of latency perhaps) That's the low hanging cherry. 2) Next should also be reasonably straightforward network layer isht` - network reconfig for roaming mobile devices - ad hoc/ mesh net of some sort. 3) The next one is perhaps a little more complex, and could benefit from some priviledged-class acedemia study, but the technical implementation ought be straightforward enough - network layer "non public links", that is e.g. an ethernet cable strung between two neighbours, or a street-level "wireless pod". "Street Net" then becomes an advocacy and grass roots activism project - build out the people's network: If you don't own it, you don't control it. If you don't control it, it shall be used against you. You are not the customer, you are not even the product any more as, according to Mark Zuckerberg, you are the "dumb fucks" trusting him.
On Sunday, October 14, 2018, 1:08:24 PM PDT, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote: On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:02:50 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Fortunately, the advent of the Ethereum/Augur prediction system would likely allow this kind of protection system to be implemented in the relatively near future.
They need to change their policies a bit, allowing the rewarding of very specific 'predictors', and also implement guaranteed crypto-secured anonymity for awards,
>It seems to me that anonymous communications is a building block that is still missing. Yes, that's right, a very important factor. There are (at least) two vital issues: 1. People who run Dark markets will want to donate to what I'd call a "Dark Market Insurance Fund" (DMIF) in an anonymous way, but moreover including the ability to prove to the public that they are paying the "insurance rate" based on their gross transactions. In my example, say 1%. People who are considering using a specific Dark market will want to know that it is making such a donation, and its size in comparison with the gross volume of business done. They will want to be assured that should they, or any of their customers, be prosecuted for crimes related to such use, the DMIF will offer money (AP-style). With any luck, the deterrent value of this offer will make impossible such prosecutions. 2. The DMIF will itself want to guarantee anonymity of payment to anyone "predicting" the death of anyone associated with some future prosecution of a Dark-market related case. And, it will want to be able to show to everyone, including predictors, that payments for correct predictions does occur. As I see it, the DMIF should be independent of most (or any?) Dark markets. It should persist even if a Dark Market is brought down.
Now, Chaum has a new cryptocoin :
Looks quite promising. Given that it is occurring after nearly 10 years of the experience of Bitcoin and, subsequently, hundreds of other crypto coins, it would have to be much advanced. No doubt David Chaum wishes he'd managed to bring DigiCash to a world-wide fruition, but he had the big disadvantage that the Internet didn't really exist, to the average person. Somebody (probably not myself) should talk to Chaum about the use of Elixxir in Dark-market applications.
I don't know how good it is, or if it's even working (seems not), but if you take a look at their 'technical brief' you'll see they use a mixnet. My half educated guess is that only high latency mixnets may provide good enough anonimity. So, I was wondering, maybe it would make sense to get some bitcoin millonaire to fund some sort of mixnet? Such a project seems like a good fit for somebody like Roger Ver? What do you think Jim? Maybe you could sell the idea to him?
Like Zenaan, I don't think this will be very expensive. It will be intricate, but there will be plenty of money in Dark market insurance payments. Everybody (except those trying to enforce drug laws, for example) would want to see this occur. The operators of the Dark markets, as well as the sellers, would love to see some guarantee of non-prosecution, And, I hesitate to approach anyone on this, 1-to-1. Can I sell the idea directly to the operators of a Dark market? Not likely, in large part because nobody knows who they are, and they like it that way. B^) Usually, we hear about them only when they get prosecuted. By that point, it has been thought to be too late. That's why I think they should be able to "buy in" to this, after it is running, by the simple expedient of receiving publishable "certificates" from the DMIF, attesting to their continuing payments. Those Dark markets could publish those certificates on their sites, proving that they (and their customers) will be 'covered' against all prosecutions, and the size of that coverage becomes well-known. I think there needs to be further discussion, for example on CP, as to this idea. What additional features? Would it work? But we should be cautious, as usual: Maybe the people doing the discussion should state that we have no intention of actually, personally, implementing this idea. (The Feds are notorious for wanting to go after people with "bad" ideas, as they did to me.) What I'm trying to do is to flesh out an idea, a concept: Somebody else, later, may actually implement it. I hope I've already convinced people that something like this would be a good solution to a genuine problem. Even so, there should be further discussion and debate. I should mention that such a fund should probably cover, with the permission and funding of the new funders, all prior people prosecuted for Dark-market related violations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace) Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Onymous They didn't pay into the system, of course, but nevertheless they should be rescued. One big reason is that the supporters of the DMIF system won't want to wait to see the enforcement aspect of that system until the next Dark market is taken down. Future prosecutions of people involved in Dark markets will be deterred just as much by punishing past incidents, as future incidents. I think people will need to be convinced that DMIF actually works, and that if prosecutions occur, those responsible will pay a lethal price for doing that. Going after the authors of all prior Dark market prosecutions would demonstrate support for this idea. But there needs to be more research and discussion. How many Dark markets have existed? How many went down, and why? How many are currently operating? What are their approximate gross sales? Would operators and sellers generally like the kind of system that DMIF could provide? What do they think the cost/coverage should be? And, while I don't know how to arrange a survey, how about a 'test-market' for potential predictors, at least the subset that don't expect to survive: Poll a random selection of people have have been given "medical death sentences", a/k/a victims of terminal illness diagnoses. Somebody could ask them, purely as a hypothetical question, "What amount of money should be offered to people like you, those with terminal illnesses, to be paid to you or your relatives, if you manage to kill a person who has participated in the prosecution of a Dark market case". I think we'd all be curious as to what their answers would be. Jim Bell
On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:42:38 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Now, Chaum has a new cryptocoin :
Looks quite promising. Given that it is occurring after nearly 10 years of the experience of Bitcoin and, subsequently, hundreds of other crypto coins, it would have to be much advanced.
For what it's worth, a couple of bitcoin people I talked to were not impressed. Apparently Chaum's coin is "proof of stake" and PoS isn't robust enough. But I'm just repeating what they said. But what caught my attention like I said is the use of a mixnet.
No doubt David Chaum wishes he'd managed to bring DigiCash to a world-wide fruition, but he had the big disadvantage that the Internet didn't really exist, to the average person.
Well digicash had good anonimity properties, so that probably was an incentive for banks to *not* use it. And it was based on government pseudo 'money' so that was an incentive for users to avoid it. I think it was also patented?
Somebody (probably not myself) should talk to Chaum about the use of Elixxir in Dark-market applications.
heh =)
I don't know how good it is, or if it's even working (seems not), but if you take a look at their 'technical brief' you'll see they use a mixnet. My half educated guess is that only high latency mixnets may provide good enough anonimity. So, I was wondering, maybe it would make sense to get some bitcoin millonaire to fund some sort of mixnet? Such a project seems like a good fit for somebody like Roger Ver? What do you think Jim? Maybe you could sell the idea to him?
Like Zenaan, I don't think this will be very expensive. It will be intricate, but there will be plenty of money in Dark market insurance payments. Everybody (except those trying to enforce drug laws, for example) would want to see this occur. The operators of the Dark markets, as well as the sellers, would love to see some guarantee of non-prosecution, And, I hesitate to approach anyone on this, 1-to-1.
Oh sorry, my bad. I didn't mean to suggest that you talk to Ver about the whole idea. My line of thinking was : Your insurance system requires good anonimity. Mixnets apparently can provide it. So the first step would be to set up a mixnet. And *that* first step is something that Ver might like to fund.
Can I sell the idea directly to the operators of a Dark market? Not likely, in large part because nobody knows who they are, and they like it that way. B^)
Well I haven't checked lately but dark markets usually have forums and the operators pay attention to them, to varying degrees.
I think there needs to be further discussion, for example on CP, as to this idea. What additional features? Would it work? But we should be cautious, as usual: Maybe the people doing the discussion should state that we have no intention of actually, personally, implementing this idea.
Oh of course. We would never do anything 'illegal' ^-^
I should mention that such a fund should probably cover, with the permission and funding of the new funders, all prior people prosecuted for Dark-market related violations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace) Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Onymous They didn't pay into the system, of course, but nevertheless they should be rescued. One big reason is that the supporters of the DMIF system won't want to wait to see the enforcement aspect of that system until the next Dark market is taken down.
Yeah that's a good point.
But there needs to be more research and discussion. How many Dark markets have existed? How many went down, and why?
I think all the big ones were either succesfully attacked by govt criminals, or the operators quit while they were ahead. Agora being the best example I know. As to how they went down, my first guess is network surveillance. Here's a gem from the Tor-US-navy 'project' "The longer an onion service is online, the higher the risk that its location is discovered. " https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-onion-service.html.en
How many are currently operating? What are their approximate gross sales? Would operators and sellers generally like the kind of system that DMIF could provide? What do they think the cost/coverage should be?
And, while I don't know how to arrange a survey, how about a 'test-market' for potential predictors, at least the subset that don't expect to survive: Poll a random selection of people have have been given "medical death sentences", a/k/a victims of terminal illness diagnoses. Somebody could ask them, purely as a hypothetical question, "What amount of money should be offered to people like you, those with terminal illnesses, to be paid to you or your relatives, if you manage to kill a person who has participated in the prosecution of a Dark market case". I think we'd all be curious as to what their answers would be.
Yeah that would be interesting.
Jim Bell
On Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 2:46:48 PM PDT, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote: On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:42:38 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Like Zenaan, I don't think this will be very expensive. It will be intricate, but there will be plenty of money in Dark market insurance payments. Everybody (except those trying to enforce drug laws, for example) would want to see this occur. The operators of the Dark markets, as well as the sellers, would love to see some guarantee of non-prosecution, And, I hesitate to approach anyone on this, 1-to-1.
Can I sell the idea directly to the operators of a Dark market? Not likely, in large part because nobody knows who they are, and they like it that way. B^)
> Well I haven't checked lately but dark markets usually have forums and the operators pay attention to them, to varying degrees. I've never looked into those forums. But if anybody reading this is motivated to do so, I request that he copy the essential elements of my idea to such nets to motivate further discussion. Nothing wrong with that person doing that posting anonymously as to himself, if he wants, but I think my name (and perhaps a link to my AP essay, as well as the fact that the source was the CP list) be included. I'd say I give "permission" for this, but I don't want to imply that I think some sort of "permission" was necessary: CP is a public list, of course, and I don't want anybody to think that if this kind of cross-posting was done, somehow I might be upset if that occurs. Quite the opposite!
I think there needs to be further discussion, for example on CP, as to this idea. What additional features? Would it work? But we should be cautious, as usual: Maybe the people doing the discussion should state that we have no intention of actually, personally, implementing this idea.
> Oh of course. We would never do anything 'illegal' ^-^ Hardy-har-har!!! But we must remember that their are ideas, and there are people with enough time and persistence to accomplish them. One of the big reasons for discussion areas such as CP is to cross-pollenate ideas...
But there needs to be more research and discussion. How many Dark markets have existed? How many went down, and why?
I think all the big ones were either succesfully attacked by govt criminals, or the operators quit while they were ahead. Agora being the best example I know.
We cannot object if Dark market operators merely go out of business, as long as they don't rip people off. One function of the Digital Market Insurance Fund (DMIF) might be as a reward fund to find operators who have ripped people off. But I hope that if DMIF does what I predict, there will be little or no motivation to get out of managing a Dark market. At least, there should be no danger of prosecution, I hope. >As to how they went down, my first guess is network surveillance. Here's a gem from the Tor-US-navy 'project' > "The longer an onion service is online, the higher the risk that its location is discovered. "
One great feature of the Ethereum system is the fact that it has no "location": It's everywhere that a computer running it is. Nobody can stop it by stopping 1, 10, or 100 computers. When I wrote my AP essay, I thought of a system with a single, secret location. The addition of the Ethereum feature is a major breakthough. Jim Bell
Jim, A much better solution to the problem of secure sales of controlled substances is to eliminate conventional distribution. (I think we may have discussed this more than two decades ago): use genomics. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05659-z No reason such yeasts couldn't be informally transferred between people any different than sourdough starter nor express other psychotropics. Without the money incentives and common illicit channels it could end the war on illicit drugs. On Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 10:04 PM jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Thursday, October 11, 2018, 12:58:30 PM PDT, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
Famous quote: The best defense is a good offense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_best_defense_is_a_good_offense
About the time Silk Road 1 was taken down, October 2013, I suggested on the Cypherpunks list that a 'dark market' ought to be protected by an AP (Assassination-Politics; Assassination Market) type system: My example numbers were something like: If a given dark-market did $1 billion in gross every year, and 1% of this was retained as a defense fund, that would be $10 million per year. But unlike my original AP proposal, https://cryptome.org/ap.htm (Thanks very much to John Young of Cryptome.org for keeping the AP essay available to the public), the award will be paid for the "prediction" of the death of people involved in the prosecution of anyone whose case was related to any dark market.
A cynic might claim that this retained 1% would simply increase the price of the marketed items by 1%. But I believe the opposite would occur: 'Dark markets' exist, mostly, because items sold on them are illegal to possess or sell, most obviously what governments call "controlled substances". Those drugs, when illegally sold, are sold at a very high price with essentially no reference to a (very low) cost of production. The price is mainly due to the risk of buying and selling. 'Dark markets' function is to dramatically reduce the risk of discovery, enabling a seller to sell the substance with far less risk than had been traditionally existed. Even so, there is still currently a risk to (mostly) sellers and potentially buyers. Dark markets have shown very good security, at least on a per-transaction basis, but they can eventually fail: Even if the crypto involved is perfect, some people occasionally screw up, and officials eventually can become able to trace some participants. Typically they can prosecute the operator(s), and some of the larger sellers: The don't have the resources to prosecute low-level customers.
If there could be a change to virtually eliminate the possibility of prosecution, the risk would go nearly to zero, and so sellers would be able to sell based on a pseudo-legal price. For example, I see no reason that cocaine could not be sold for less than $1 per gram, if sold entirely legally. If the award was sufficiently large, nobody would dare prosecute somebody based on any relation to a 'Dark Market'. For that reason, I suspect that the prices for substances found on an AP-protected-'Dark market' will fall far lower than current prices. Thus, the typical buyer and typical seller would be far better off than they are today. Prices would drop on a 'per-gram' basis, which would be good for buyers, but total volume of transactions would greatly increase and risk would drop, which is good for the sellers.
Instead of naming specific people (who you don't know the identity, yet, since no prosecution has yet occurred), the award could be assigned to the person who "predicted" the death of anyone involved in the prosecution of a case related to activity on a dark market. A judge, example reward $250K, prosecutor(s), $250K, possibly including every prosecutor working in the office doing the prosecution (even the ones not directly involved in the case; this would prevent the situation where a single prosecutor in an office is willing to accept all the risk), and also any investigators, and any willing witnesses for the prosecution.
There could also be an award to be distributed to any jurors who vote to acquit on all charges, say $250K: That would amount to an enormous award for 'the last juror' holdout who is willing to hang the jury. And once that last juror decides to hold out, more jurors would be motivated to join him to share in the award, by also voting to acquit. The bonus for jurors won't be directly "offered" to them: The government would call that 'jury tampering'. Rather, it will simply become known that his proportion of the award would eventually be paid to any juror who voted to acquit on all charges. No offer would need to be made, or actively accepted. The jurors, knowing that, would make their decisions accordingly. Obtaining a conviction would become nearly impossible.
These example award values are based on the idea that they will typically cost $1-2 million per case; A reward fund of $10 million per year will, therefore, support 5-10 cases. Naturally, this is just an estimate. We don't typically see many prosecutions for involvement with a 'Dark market', even today. If such awards become credible, it is possible that there will never be another prosecution of anyone involved in a 'Dark market'. The resulting economics could be called a "virtuous circle", the desireable counterpart to the "vicious circle". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_circle If few or zero prosecutions occur, the rewards offered (per case) could be raised to huge values, making such a prosecution impossible.
Fortunately, the advent of the Ethereum/Augur prediction system would likely allow this kind of protection system to be implemented in the relatively near future. They need to change their policies a bit, allowing the rewarding of very specific 'predictors', and also implement guaranteed crypto-secured anonymity for awards, as I forecast in my AP essay in 1995-96..
Jim Bell
On Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 1:08:02 AM PDT, Steven Schear <schear.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
Jim,>A much better solution to the problem of secure sales of controlled substances is to eliminate conventional distribution. (I think we may have discussed this more than two decades ago): use genomics. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05659-z
No reason such yeasts couldn't be informally transferred between people any different than sourdough starter nor express other psychotropics. Without the money incentives and common illicit channels it could end the war on illicit drugs.
Well, yes, not too long after I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1980, I joked that "somebody" should insert the gene for making THC into the blackberry plant (which grows virtually endemic here!) and spread the seeds by some kind of crop-dusting operation. However, I don't keep up with DNA technology, other than occasionally reading a public-media article. I have recently seen an ad for full-sequence DNA testing for humans, at about $500. I don't know if this would be automatically applicable to plants or other animals, including marijuana plants, but I certainly wouldn't know how to find the "THC gene". But, experts would know that, I think. I suspect both plants have been full-sequenced by now. How to transfer the DNA, I also don't know. Jim Bell
On Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 1:08:02 AM PDT, Steven Schear <schear.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
Jim, A much better solution to the problem of secure sales of controlled substances is to eliminate conventional distribution. (I think we may have discussed this more than two decades ago): use genomics.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05659-z
No reason such yeasts couldn't be informally transferred between people any different than sourdough starter nor express other psychotropics. Without the money incentives and common illicit channels it could end the war on illicit drugs.
I just did a Google search for 'recombinant DNA THC' and found: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/09/15/modified-yeast-marijuan... "Yeast Can Now Produce THC, Marijuana’s Infamous Compound By Carl Engelking | September 15, 2015 2:15 pm Yeast, the sugar-gobbling microorganism that’s filled our bellies with beer and bread for millennia, has a new, increasingly important, role to play in society: serving as a therapeutic drug factory. In August, scientists announced they had genetically engineered yeast to produce the painkiller hydrocodone, and even before that breakthrough, modified yeast churned out the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. Now, scientists have customized yeast to create THC (the marijuana chemical that produces a “high”) and cannabidiol. Drug Factories Biochemists from the Technical University in Dortmund, Germany, created a genetically-engineered yeast strain to produce very small amounts of THC or cannabidiol. Unlike normal yeast, however, these custom yeast have to be fed cannabigerolic acid, which is a precursor molecule to THC and cannabidiol. Using a molecular precursor as a starting point is a bit like reading a book from the middle chapters to its conclusion. Ideally, the entire process would start with simple sugars — or chapter 1 — rather than precursors to complete the entire chemical pathway that the marijuana plant does naturally. However, scientists believe they’ll get to that point and scale up production for industrial use in the near future, the New York Times reports. The team published its work with the yeast strain that produces THC in the journal Biotechnology Letters. They also created a separate strain that produces cannabidiol, but those data are yet to be published." [end of quote] Jim Bell
participants (5)
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grarpamp -
jim bell -
juan -
Steven Schear -
Zenaan Harkness