Its intresting, however I havnt mastered how to even buy and pay with bitcoin without help. Maybe its my age, but I get lost in the explanation because I dont understand the language. I say I need access to the darkweb , and my son says I need Tor to be able to access .onion and I though he was kidding. I thought Tor was like a comicbook villian and what the hell is a.onion. it was explained, which made it worse. I dont even understand how the basic telephone works. You talk into it and how the hell it gets from there to someone else in real time seems..i dont even know. Since Im stuck there I cant understand a single instruction past that.
I remember like 8-9 years ago, when my oldest son was a teenager I would ask him what hes doing on his computer all day and night and he tells me "mining for coin". I thought it was a video game. He still laments something about trading or loosing a coin that was worth so much money later or etc.when he tried to explain what bitcoin was to me back then, I was like "honey, thats great but its not real money" . Then he would always beg me to buy like usenames or accounts whatever on some game called runescape? I thought he kept needing new accounts because he was getting banned. Then I found out he was selling them, because people would want the username or idk and would buy it. I didnt believe him, I was like "why would someone buy it when they can just pick thier own username and start at the begining, play thier own game?" I still dont get it.
My other son plays TF2 and always use to need "funds" to buy "hats". Yeah. Then something about a "mystery box" with a "rare hat" a marketplace "win" and now he dosnt need me to give funds anymore. I dont even ask questions anymore. I was looking through his computer and things like communications with people that look like this : [<™^h][¥«€»®~ krhrbsnT\\{+\\><{} h hdjsm//[<>]»«{}..Im like what is this? And I get a blank stare "Im just trying to learn code" ....silence..."For a game I'm making"
Sigh. I made a game once when I was his age. With cardboard, index cards and markers. Was probably the worst game ever.
First of all, to answer some of your questions.
1) Age is not a factor while learning about bitcoins. You can learn everything here that you need to know. There is no language, sometimes it's just tech talk but it can be explained in many different ways.
For instance, in bitcoin mining there's these things called hash pools. So in your mind, imagine small pools of lakes all in one area which contain a few boulders inside of them. The miners will search for the pool that has the most boulders and start mining them saving all the chippings that come off, those would represent the bitcoin earnings. After the boulder is depleted, they move on to the next boulder in the pool - if there's no boulders left they move to the next one.
It's pretty much as simple as that to sum up, if you have any questions just feel free to ask and we'll explain it in a user-friendly way!
2) You shouldn't access the DarkWeb or use Tor without knowing what you're getting yourself into. You connect to a peer-to-peer network to assure that everyone is anonymous, however that does not assure your safety. Why would you need safety on the DarkWeb? That's where the dark side of the internet comes into play. Hitmen (yes, they're real), pedophilia content, snuff/death videos for pleasure, you name it then it most likely has it. However, you won't have to worry about that because the chances of anyone randomly stumbling upon a "real" version of these .onion fingerprints (they're called fingerprints because each one is unique just like a fingerprint) are slim to none. Most you'd need to know somebody to get in kinda thing but if you do stumble upon it you might get yourself in a mess you don't want to get into.
Now I am not encouraging you to go there! I'm letting you know with a few examples of what's on there...it's dangerous stuff to be around and I'm sure you don't want to see that kind of stuff. I'd suggest keeping your children away from TOR and the DarkWeb. If the address is a .onion site, that's most likely TOR. They need to stay away from this unless they absolutely know what they're doing (if they're adults) if they're under 18 years of age, prohibit them from accessing such sites. You can't really control what an adult does even if it's your child, but if they're under your roof...I'd highly HIGHLY suggest that they simply stay away from it.
3) Your son was into a gaming black market. That isn't as bad as it sounds actually because when I was younger I too was someone who sold virtual gaming goods to others to make money seeing I had no money growing up, I decided to make my own. Mowing lawns didn't do it for me, barely made ends meet on my end as a kid with the price of gas and how much of the yard I was going to mow, that and barely getting offers. So, I sold RuneScape gold and accounts. What he was doing is putting his money into bitcoin, it must of dropped so he sold it to get money back but lost most of it in the process. Bitcoin trading is risky, it's like stocks if you don't know what you're doing there's a high percent chance of you loosing money. So it sounds like he was selling these accounts or gold/virtual goods online to try again on the bitcoin market. However people used to buy such accounts to use scripts with to automate the gameplay to make in-game gold to sell, so it was profitable to the buyer and seller of the account. There's barely anything to buy or sell on that market now-a-days from what I've heard so I wouldn't worry about it.
Harmless stuff even though the term "black market" was used. I mean you can go to sites that sell gold/in-game goods just to look at what people sell and people actually buy it seeing they're impatient to make the items or obtain the gold on their own in the game. When it comes to accounts, maybe somebody got their account banned somehow and they want to play again but with one that's already pre-made and ready to play with some starting stuff, that's what your son was probably selling. You can't technically go to jail for that so don't worry. The worst that could happen is the game company bans your IP address (internet ID that you use to access the internet) so you cannot make anymore accounts. However, that was in the past so I wouldn't worry about it too much. What I'd be worried about is the bitcoin trading.
4) Hats in TF2 are basically the currency for the game. It's completely free to play but hats allow you to customize your character that you're playing. The mystery boxes or crates as they're called have a chance of giving a hat at random but the percentile chance is so low it's basically 1/1000-10,000 for a decently priced one. There's some that go up to nearly a thousand dollars due to the rarity. Now remember, these crates are based around micro-transactions! You have to buy a "key" for $2.50 to open the crate. You generally never break even 80%+ of the time.
Regarding the name you described, that's their username. Most children make usernames like that to seem cool seeing it's the cool thing to do now apparently. It's good that your son wants to learn to code, it's a very good job that pays very well if he gets in the right field. Even if it's self-taught you can get a fantastic job coding for a company but you do NOT need to provide funds for coding, that's most likely going to the TF2 cosmetic items.
And the conclusion, I'm not going to tell you how to raise you children or how to treat them out of full respect of being a good mother (which I know you are) but I will provide you with some advice. I wouldn't advise anyone in your household use TOR or any similar browser that can open these .onion sites - you don't want them to stumble upon the wrong thing and end up in big trouble by an accident. I also wouldn't advise "funding" for these hats or crates, they're just cosmetic items in a game and let's say the Steam platform (the gaming service) shuts down for some reason all of it vanishes as if it was never there.
I don't want to scare you, but you need to be aware of what's going on here if they're not being completely honest about what they're doing. There's no logical excuse to go on the DarkWeb though, most generally go there for fake ID's/passports, counterfeit money, or weapons which are the three most commonly bought and sold things on the DeepWeb. None of which are good, if you're caught with fake money, ID's, or passports you go to jail for a long time. If someone finds out you have an illegal weapon, well that's just as bad. Not saying this is the case, but could only be my speculation on why he's there.
Scares me to know what is actually out there that's real...stuff you see in movies and what not. Just stay safe, keep your kids safe like you've always done and you'll be fine. Just remember this is not me trying to tell you how to raise your kids, I'm simply informing you off what this stuff is and my advice towards it. I hope you found this helpful.
Never be afraid to ask questions, as I've always said in the past there's no such thing as a dumb question, only thing dumb is not asking the question that you need/want answers for. So by all means, if you need anything answered we're all here for you to provide you with the information you need to understand what's going on. If something that I said while clarifying what was actually going on or most likely going on feel free to ask further. You can never be too informed.
As a note, things in this message may of been autocorrected...my apologies if something is not written properly.
Now, for everyone else. I,
@VII, am not encouraging any of this behavior to anyone on these forums. This is merely for educational purposes's only. I am not endorsed nor am I affiliated from a third-party source or site to provide this information. I do not approve nor would I suggest doing anything stated above. Stay safe DBG, knowledge is power.
