Bitcoin Forum

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-criminal-dark-web-activities-after-globally-coordinated-operation

So Alphabay is a well known goner. As above the Dutch police took control of Hansa for a while before nabbing as many details as possible and closing it down.

Is this going to majorly disrupt dark markets or will it be an endless game of cat and mouse? Is there a decentralised one yet?

This is no issue, when two of these sites close down, four pop up... With some "luck" even these websites pop up with the same name again in a few days or their staff create another one. Pretty usual in these kinds of things, just have a look at Silk Road and its numerous spinoffs.

Anyways, I don't really think this is Bitcoin discussion or that it will have an effect on Bitcoin...

I think it is relevant. Even though they're a lot quieter than they once were, and wisely so, they must still be driving a fair amount of BTC volume. Somewhere like Alphabay must've had several hundred thousand users and that means Bitcoin users.

All there is a black market to be discussed by bitcoin, because there is an effect that approximates bitcoin

When silkroad was taken down alphabay pops up to be the number one marketplace on darkweb. And now when it also got turned off there will be few more that will take place of alphabay soon.

I think it is endless chase between cat and mouse.  ;D

You are quite right. I think too, that it will not effect BTC Price, but actually this thread can be discussed here, cause even through BTC is still much used at black markets. So it is relevant

And here's an interesting titbit -

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/business/dealbook/alphabay-dark-web-opioids.html?mcubz=1

'Officials said they had found Mr. Cazes because he posted his personal email address, Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com, in some early messages from AlphaBay.'

Exactly the same balls up as Ross Ulbricht. What is it with these people?

Yeah, well I say there's not enough bullshit tokens made on the Ethereum blockchain, so we need a decentralised dark net market on it.  We should raise about $100 million dollars for the ICO, then mysteriously disappear under the guise of being taken down by law enforcement.
A large amount of BTC adoption is on dark net markets.  It's not all of BTC's adoption, but that's the only major place I can think of where everyone accepts BTC and no one accepts fiat.

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The "war on drugs" doesn't work anyway.  All this means is that more people move over to Dream Market (https://www.reddit.com/r/Dream_Market/) or something.  Then if Dream Market gets taken down, they'll go somewhere else.

If the situation for dark net market users becomes so dire that they have to leap between markets ten times a day, that's when a decentralised market will pop up.  I'm sure it's possible if people are desperate enough.  In the meantime, dark net markets will just be losing credibility because of states seizing everyone's coins.

there will always be a cat and mouse game between the feds and people who need to buy drugs and other stuff. while I don't get how people order drugs on the web... I mean the records eventually stay and you always have to worry about the feds kicking your door in, but well as long there is demand people will try to create a webshop for it

Ulbricht was slightly different.They found one of his achived messages.Who checks every site and archive services for their private information? But this guy signed up on AlphaBay with his e-mail and I guess he noticed after months that password recovery pages sends a mail with an header includes his adress. I mean both should have been more carefull ofcourse but Ulbricht was unlucky, Cazes was stupid ( the guy's email adress is Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com which it speaks for it self.).

Definitely an endless game of cat and mouse.
Compare it to a hydra, you cut one of its heads off and multiple ones will appear in its place.

I was already thinking that the current markets have been around for too long, you just can't expect to avoid justice forever.

Agora did it the right way, they stayed for a couple of months, maybe a year and made a gracious exit without scamming anyone.
That's how it should be done, don't stay in the game too long!

Openbazaar? Wouldn't that be suitable for illicit purposes? Is TOR support already implemented? Sorry haven't really been following development for the last couple of months.

Don't think it is a problem since whenever silk road v7 gets shut down more just pop up and the police have to waste time pretending to be buyers and ty and nab the guys. It seems no matter what the police will never completely shut down alll those sites except by shutting down the dark net which seems to be impossible.

Also this does bring a bad view to bitcoin and a lot of cryptocurrencies since a lot of people who don't know that much about bitcoin still think the only reason why bitcoin is so successful is due to the dark net.

BTC value would worth around of 10 usd without the black market. the so called "traders", are "few".

Looking at the daily trading volumes of bitcoin on the exchanges I would say that the darkweb would account for a very small percentage of it. Considering most of the shut down sites are renamed and up and running shortly after, I would say the total affect on the bitcoin price would be negligible. 

the volumes are fake. they are pump by using the "willy" bot in order to appear that they have many orders and to manipulate the price. :)

so, do not believe what you see on their websites.

Have SYSCOIN (really working blockchain market), still possible use it for free:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2022288.msg20148742#msg20148742

I often wonder about the legality and morality of this (not that they really care about either). Seeing as they're taking in money by allowing the site to operate they're essentially running it and I'm guessing they seize the funds for themselves so seems pretty unethical to me.


It'll disrupt the marketplace in as much as the users will just flock to another one as what happened when alpha bay went down people just emigrated over to Dream and Hansa. When you take a marketplace down at least one more will pop up to replace it and they know this but continue with the charade any way. The only way they'll ever win this war is by legalising or decriminalise drugs or these sorts of marketplaces but can't see that ever happening.

Well, with this dark net sites such as silk road and Alphabay, it is pretty much the hydra. You take down 1 site, 2 more sites pop up. I don't think that the police will ever be able to take them all down and it does seem to be an endless game of cat and mouse.

Taking down websites like these will have an effect on bitcoin, since I think the hard truth is that bitcoin is used for most underworld transactions, especially on the dark net. I wouldn't expect a huge dump though, since some people may panic, but the smart ones will just wait for a new site to pop up and business will be as usual. If the police did take down the entire dark net, I would expect a dump in price for bitcoin then.

It looks like the Dutch police got on Reddit and elsewhere and actively encouraged Alphabay lost souls to join Hansa so they could be nailed. Perhaps they've fatally holed trust in the concept until something P2P comes along.

Do you have any evidence of that or is it just speculation from conspiracy theorists because that would almost certainly be entrapment.

After the fall of Silk Road and Black Market Reloaded, Alphabay was the largest dark market out there. I never thought that they could be taken down, as there were rumors that the servers were hosted in Russia. Anyway... Agora Market Place is still there, right?

Bitcoin is used for buying illegal stuff on the dark web no doubt but whenever one of these sites gets shut down a new one just pops up so I don't think that this will have much of a impact on the price of bitcoin since if so, it would already have.

If the entire dark net was shut down that would be different and there would be a dump in the price of bitcoin.

Dark markets will never fade away. After Silk Road, there have been several solid ones like Evolution, Black Market Reloaded, Alphabay, Hansa Market, Sheep Market Place and many others. It's a lucrative industry for the founders. Where there's a ton of money to be made, expect a never ending cat and mouse game with the authorities.

Monero rocks according to the law enforcement files ,it's the only coin they could not figure out how much did the owner had  ;D

The authorities openly said that they had control over Hansa Market for a month.

When Alpha Bay closed down, Hansa stopped accepting the creation of new accounts, but large numbers of unused or barely used accounts were being sold on Reddit.  So it's possible (not proven) that the authorities were trying to market to Alpha Bay refugees, either to dig out as many personal details from them as possible, to gain money or both.

There's no solid evidence that they did this, but there's certainly logic behind the theory.  It's not completely unfounded.

Probably won't do a ton to the dark net markets as they're just going to keep on moving, as they always have. It's hard to really get at something like a marketplace on the dark net and actually shut it down permanently, as you can see they went after SR and it got shut down, then SR2, then there was another I seem to be forgetting, and now these two. They'll keep moving and it won't really change.

As for a decentralized market, I don't think they'll be using OpenBazzar for dark net goods, so I don't think they have one in use yet.

I will tell you in a simple words. Try to stay a ways from blackmarkets because it can harm your life. Even it is not protect if FIA or other agency arrest you by using or dealing in black market you will go to jail for many years and there would be a lot of charges charge on you. So stay away don't even discuss this type of discussion with people and neither on forum.

The European Union law enforcement agency, Europol, has for the first time published a cyber crime report examining the growing role of Zcash, Monero and Ethereum in the deep web. Europol also made an assessment of Ethereum and said it had major concerns about smart contracts that could be used to formalize payments between cybercriminals. In addition, the document cites a case about a decentralized marketplace planned to operate in Ethereum's blockchain.
What we can analyze in these cases is that, if some crypto-coin can challenge the role of Bitcoin in terms of criminal use, it will be Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) because it certainly has more to offer to the curious who wish to operate with greater anonymity.

Because of both cops & scammers, dark market deals are no more fueling the BTC growth..

But:
"On Wednesday afternoon the price of one Bitcoin (BTC) was $145.70 on Mt Gox, one of the largest exchanges for the currency.
After the news that Ross Ulbricht had been arrested and the Silk Road site seized, the exchange rate plummeted to a low of $109.76, before recovering to $124.00 late on Thursday."
(https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/03/bitcoin-price-silk-road-ulbricht-value)

That was just ( ;D) 4 years ago.
24% instant drop for only this reason!! Can you believe or remember?))

I vote for the endless-cat-and-mouse-game option, because that's all it ever is when
illegal markets get shut down.  Just look at the US's failed war on drugs for an example.
It's all a big game of Wack-a-Mole, and it's never going to be anything other than that.
There's too much money to be made, and the powerful players who are in the drugs
game are just too powerful to stop.  Nor do I really think governments want to stop
drugs or illegal markets, and even if they did, they don't have enough manpower. There
will be busts here and there that the FBI will hold up as examples that they're doing
something, but all of that is a drop in the bucket.  Better to legalize drugs.

And that's fine. If people don't like Bitcoin because they think it's being used by criminals maybe this will change their mind. There are already coins that can do it better.


Europol I guess  ::)


You can't figure it out even with Bitcoin. You only have to remember to keep multiple wallets and never link them together in any way.
The most important thing is who you are not how much you have. If they get your name they will make you talk ;)