Bitcoin robot working under alias Random Darknet Shopper stopped buying drugs online after having served his time in Swiss police office. This year robot moved to London – and is buying fake brand T-shirts and firecrackers.

According to Random Darknet Shopper’s personal web page, about a week ago the robot resumed buying things online, working from an art gallery in London. However, this time they are not ecstasy pills. Among his new acquisitions are fake Lacoste T-shirt ordered from Thailand and a box of firecrackers.

Besides it, the shopping bot decided to try bitcoin mining and acquired two usb mining devices for $25 each.

The bot was created by two Swiss artists, Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smojlo, known under the alias !Mediengruppe Bitnik, and set up to acquire things on the dark web marketplace Agora.

“The Random Darknet Shopper is an automated online shopping bot which we provide with a budget of $100 in Bitcoins per week. Once a week the bot goes shopping in the deep web where it randomly choses and purchases one item and has it mailed directly to the exhibition space. Once the items arrive they are unpacked and displayed, each new object adding to a landscape of traded goods from the Darknet.”

The project started at Kunst Halle gallery in St Gallen, Switzerland, in 2014. Random Darknet Shopper bought a copy of Hungarian passport, a pair of jeans and a pack of ecstasy pills, which attracted the attention of Swiss authorities. The officers destroyed the ecstasy pills and ‘arrested’ the robot, retaining it in police office for some time.

This autumn Random Darknet Shopper visited the Russian city of Ekaterinburg to take part in a governmental-sponsored technical fair. A few weeks ago it moved to London and had to change the shopping venue. Instead of shut down Agora, the robot now uses Alpha Bay.

Currently the robot resides at Horatio Junior Gallery. The shopping will continue soon. It is not clear what the robot is up to buying next, because randomiser makes his choices hardly predictable.

Roman Korizky