“DEA” Tipping Bot Expands Tipping Culture To Drugs & DNM’s

Posted by: Greg Miller

November 15, 2014

Crypto-currency tipping has been a big use case. The Dogecoin community is built around the practice and it is impossible to not to get some Shibe love whenever visiting /r/Dogecoin. Reddcoin, another tipping crypto-currency, started out with the goal of being the leading tipping crypto-currency and focusing solely on the niche market. Changetip, a bitcoin tipping bot and company, has even gotten $750,000 in venture capital.

Now the same light hearted community culture of crypto-currency tipping is coming to the darker side of the web. DEAlol announced it is beta testing a crypto-currency tipping bot that is specially designed for requirements of the Drugs / Dark Net Markets scene  and promoting the growing subculture.

“…summon DEAlol in order to help you gift your friends any substances (backed by bits). It is meant to be a twisted game, as well as lazy activism.” – /u/DEAlol

While the actual item being tipped or gifted will be bits (a denomination of bitcoin), DEAlol hopes to express the drug culture of the web by representing the gifts as various drugs, including LSD, weed, meth and mushrooms. In the post announcing the tipping bot the developer behind DEAlol tipped user /u/greengiantxo, “a Whole Marijuana!!(Careful now…) – worth 240.834 bits.”

To gift a user all you have to do is type +, their name and the type of “drug” you are wishing to gift them. For example, +Decon doobie. The tipping bot will then gift the amount of bits you wish to give to the person. You can even gift people who aren’t signed up for the service. If they don’t have an account and wish to redeem the tip, they can sign up and type +accept.

DEAlol is only available for use on /r/darknetmarkets and /r/DEAlol but after beta testing the developer’s goal is for it to be used reddit wide. Other than the social sharing aspect of tipping, he hopes the gifting being described as drugs will be a form of “lazy activism.” Going on to say, “Too often are we encouraged to hide our true intentions with regards to money and communication. This allows us to put some bits where our mouth is and blast it across the internet.”

This tipping bot also comes with special features just for deep web users. Unlike regular crypto-currency tipping bot this one runs over Tor, allowing them to hide their IP and keep their location hidden. The developer is also reaching out to deep web bitcoin laundering service, Grams Helix, to offer mixing of the coins sent by the tipping bot to prevent bitcoin address linkage.

While members have been reporting the “DEA” tipping bot to be working great, the developer behind the project stressed the bot is in early beta and you use the service at your own risk. He (or she) also mentioned not to hold large amounts in the service and that your coins in the service are only as safe as how long the password to your reddit account is.

Crypto-currency tipping has played a great role in strengthening many communities and it is seems it is no different for the DNM’s. Already many users have been taking to the idea and enjoy the process of receiving and sending coins, but the service could play an even bigger role.

Information is valued commodity on the deep web / DNM’s. Many community members have shared the details of venders or brought law enforcements operations to the communities’ attention, such as infamous ITOM. This could be a way a easy and social way to reimburse them and in turn, incentivize such posts. It could do the same for product and vendor reviews.

Allowing people to make money off things they are already doing for free. And whenever there is money involved, that extra incentive tends to make people to take more time and effort in what they are doing. Resulting in more quality postings.

To learn more about DEAlol or register, visit their subreddit here.

Updated: 2014-11-15