| dc.description.abstract | Over the last few years, Internet has been established as a place for drug markets to expand into a new reality and develop according to new business opportunities. Silk Road is one of many cryptomarkets that have succeeded online, offering a wide selection of drugs on global level. This thesis deals with the structural aspect of Silk Road and how it is organized, with theories of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as a theoretical perspective to catch the complexity. Data has been collected through observations of Silk Road 2.0, the second edition of the Silk Road market concept. More than a thousand screen shots have been captured and hundreds of pages with forum conversations printed to give a complete understanding of the market structure. The online environment has made huge changes in the structure of drug markets, where new opportunities have been offered and restrictions created. As a facilitator of communication without hardly any spatial or timely limits, the Internet has become a place to establish connections around the world. Cryptomarkets are deriving advantages from this new context and have established themselves as a meeting point for entrepreneurs, consumers, and other people wanting drug related information. Markets such as Silk Road are offering an anonymous marketplace and forum where people can stay without being connected to their physical self. This might lead to a more socially equal market, but one cannot ignore existence of online restrictions and risks. The lack of face-to-face contact challenges Silk Road when it comes to trust and security – how can anything be secure when the participants are unidentifiable? Silk Road solves this insecurity by introducing a feedback system and encouraging social interaction to increase the trust level. Leaving feedback has left the consumers with a major power to affect the market; bad comments and rumors are hurtful for the vendors, who in return offer the buyers great customer service to avoid negative feedback. Silk Road s forum is also important because of how the vivid interaction leads to a closer community bond that heightens the level of trust. The closeness among the participants is also increased by similar motivations and goals, which steers the market in a specific direction following the participants lead. But it is still the administrator that enforces rules and delegates roles. Silk Road might seem as a free market, but after a closer look one discovers restrictions and formal boundaries. The restrictions, though, are not involuntarily enforced, but rather desired by the participants in order to keep the market more stable. Morally decisions such as banning the sale of weapons are taken collectively and forum hierarchies are revealing the level of experience – all to induce trust into the market. Additionally, formal rules are an attempt of creating order, which does increase the trust, but it also seems to leave the participants with a false security. Role divisions are not as formal as they might seem, especially since all the participants can interact in multiple activities crisscrossing their appointed tasks. This is where Deleuze and Guattari s rhizome theory becomes particularly useful. According to their theory, social structures are based on a multitude of connecting nodes and other unnatural attempts to create order. Silk Road s rules and role divisions are accepted as organizing elements in the market, but it is also important to look beyond them to see the chaos that really exists. Nothing is as simple as ordering structures such as binary opposites and hierarchical structures; they need to be placed in a larger rhizomatic structure to see the many connections. Also, this opens up for acceptance of elements from the general society as important influences on Silk Road s structure. Cryptomarkets would not exist without the development of networked technologies and constraints set by law enforcement agencies. Media also has an impact on creating the cryptomarket reality adding to the participants experience and influence on the market structure. Silk Road is also tightly connected to the physical world through drug supplies and postal services. The structure of Silk Road is a complex rhizome, where elements of hierarchical settings and role divisions are important for its totality. But so is also the interplay between different connections both inside and outside the online market. Silk Road is a place for entrepreneurs to enter a structured environment and act as a collective group, while still keeping their individuality. Therefore, the complex structure of Silk Road resembles a controlled entrepreneurial market, where chaos and multiplicity lingers under the seemingly formal structure. | eng |