Bitcoin Forum

CipherTrace just published their Q2 Cryptocurrency AML Report and found it interesting that Bitcoin still reigns king in dark markets and cybercrime. Most people associate privacy coins even just 4% involve Monero.

Even in the case of malware and ransomware, ETH used in only 1% of instances and BTC used in 98% of cases.


https://ciphertrace.com/q2-2019-cryptocurrency-anti-money-laundering-report/

Strange to see Monero and other privacy coins being so unpopular in darknet markets, is Bitcoin mixing good enough these days, or are privacy coins suffering from some problems? Maybe it's hard to convert them to BTC or fiat without raising suspicion?

There are currently some researches floating around that put Bitcoin illegal use at 1-2%, but the fact that Bitcoin is so popular sure means that something is wrong with those researches.

They should try using monero and other privacy coins. I believe they are not as hot in the eyes of the scrutinizing public as compared to bitcoin. Most people wanted to trace where bitcoin goes while other altcoins are just being ignored. Why not try those other privacy coins?  :P

Perhaps they trust Bitcoin more, perhaps they fear a hidden surprise in the "privacy" altcoins, or perhaps the fact that only the cli Monero wallet can actually do anonymized transactions (which shouldn't be a problem for a "hacker", of course).

If you ever used Monero, but didn't use the Command Line Interface wallet with that specific option, your transactions are pretty much in the clear. Surprising?

I don't think privacy coins are suffering from problems, but it's more so that not many are willing to accept them with how it becomes more difficult to convert them back to actual dollars.

Another aspect that contributes to lower popularity of privacy coins and altcoins in general, is that most reputable platforms now require you to verify yourself. People for that reason are less interested in accepting altcoins.

Bitcoin is the household brand that everybody knows and is the easiest crypto to convert to actual dollars without touching an exchange. For most people there is always enough liquidity to exit, which can't be said about altcoins.

I'm not sure how these people work around the poor privacy of Bitcoin, but the most likely route seems indeed the use of a mixer.

consider the source and you should get your answer.
it is yet another blockchain analysis company trying to advertise their services and convince the world that they need their services so that they could sell it to them!
otherwise usage of bitcoin in dark markets was in that percentage back in 2011 and has been dropping ever since. nowadays i would be surprised if it were any negligible percentage.

And you can't just track all of dark market as most of the transaction occurs personally and the markets and trades are itself untracable. It seems like a logical guess and similar could be the actual results. Surely bitcoin would be the major coin for transactions in deep web markets other payment options too are popular there.

That does seem odd that a coin with ostensibly more privacy than bitcoin wouldn't find its niche in the dark markets.  Perhaps vendors over on the dark side are more familiar with bitcoin than a coin like Monero.  Don't know, as I have never even visited the dark web and do not plan to.  I do think that they probably think bitcoin is simply good enough for their purposes.

Ah, that could be true as well.  It's more of a pain in the butt to do so, but wouldn't you think the benefits would outweigh the inconvenience?

Any coins can be use in dark market, but since bitcoin is the leading coin the focus of people is to bitcoin. This might be another article to ruin bitcoin's reputation though its happening but we can't put everything to bitcoin. AML might be speculating this thing but I know its not accurate, they can't prevent this thing because this is a Decentralized market, cryptocurrency is still consider as a dark market after all.

I thought so too. I thought Monero is taking over the dark market because of its anonymous features. Maybe it's most likely trust issues. They trust Bitcoin more than Monero because Bitcoin has been around the most and that it's easier to convert into fiat than all of altcoins without the need of exchange. Not to mention that mixer exist.

Whether ETH or Bitcoin, the fact remains that people will always use whatever means that's simple and functional to get whatever they want out of something. I don't think criminalizing Bitcoin just to give it a bad name with the darknet stuff helps the entire crypto industry. Mind you, if Bitcoin goes down all other coins follow too. We have to make it a point to highlight those articles that advance Bitcoin so as to aid this industry.

Where are these stats from? I've seen previously that fiat is much more popular then BTC or other cryptocurrencies for money laundering, but I didn't know it would be so popular in the darknet.

Then again, it does make sense. With smaller transactions, it'll be pretty hard to track the ones related to criminal activity and which ones are regular transactions.

The technology behind the privacy coins is definitely there. Monero, Grin, and other privacy coins are very safe and hard to track - but the problem here is adoption. BTC is still king when it comes to cryptocurrencies and people don't like change, even if it is for the better sometimes.

Not surprising to know because coins like Monero are newer compare to bitcoin. Bitcoin was already used on the majority of transactions there before such coins were born and everything works fine. What I see here is that the dark web already get used to btc and now finding a hard time to adapt on these coins or maybe not planning at all. 

Altcoins may not have enough liquidity for illegal use in large scale.

it seems like every time another one of these blockchain tracing (https://ciphertrace.com/about-us/) sites pop up, the first thing they do is publish a ton of nonsense about how bitcoin is being used for illegal stuff.
just the other day another one of these "mushroom-like" businesses released their guesswork about Binance hacked coins and Chipmixer's services used for mixing those coins!

I think that many people use BTC for payments in the Darkweb just because it is well established in the crypto market.
Since it is at the top, most of the people would be holding BTC hence making it easy for people to make transactions in BTC.
Also, the recent news said that the binance hackers have use Chipmixer to mix over 4800 BTC which means mixing sites are doing well at their jobs.
So bitcoin would be a better option for many than the other coins.

I don't surprise to see the percentage of the dark market using bitcoin because bitcoin can hide the identity of the sender and they can use many wallets to make a transaction. But people can use any other coins in the dark market because the other coin has the same thing as bitcoin. But I don't know if that percentage is true or not because we don't know how they can determine the percentage so far. Besides that, we have the other coins which support privacy like monero, zec, and else.

This number is no real shocker to me honestly
Its the same people doing 'gray area' transactions who are the same ones that are into BITCOIN
They go together hand and hand and its a way to do what you need to do without leaving paper trails

The dark market is going bigger and bigger, and it is sure they'll adopt crypto as it helps to hide themselves keeping away from the public. This is how fraud and money laundering at works. They'll know the features of bitcoin already and they take advantage of it.

Ehh, I think they still use Bitcoin just because it might be easier to implement than, say, Monero.
Could purely be because of laziness or perhaps because the end-users still prefer to use Bitcoin over privacy-centric coins.

Still, I'm kinda surprised the percentage is still this high. I would have expected more progress to have been made.

the link is already posted on the op , you can check that out and find your self if its trully a fact or only false info  and why do you say that usd is the most use on the dark market ? that will be a hassel and you can possibly be traced if you use usd  .

ever since darknet/depweeb becomes popular , this were also the time that bitcoin shows up . that only means that bitcoin is the number one medium that is being used thier  .

Oh, I'm so happy seeing that more and more people are starting to call out these bs analysts.
If CNN writes something is fake news, if it's a blockchain company...it must be true  ;D
Really getting tired of all the experts that know for certain to the last satoshi who bought what when.

In 4 f years, they haven't been able to trace 200k coins from Mt Gox but they know that Michele is buying meth worth 1.5 bucks from Rogers over the deep dark long black market.  ;D

A lot of people stop using the actual market system once they make a lot of sales with trusted vendors, a lot of those transactions happen without escrows, really p2p, just as people here in the collectible area deal with old-timers.
But yeah, cipher trace can track everything!

I know bitcoin has a higher trust here, but this is quite worrying for me because a few times ago I heard the news that bitcoin hackers were mixing bitcoin on chipmixers (http://"https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-hackers-bombard-chipmixer-to-launder-at-least-4-836-btc"). And here I also know that this is not entirely the fault of bitcoin, but it is the fault of those who abuse it.

Especially now that there is news from CipherTrace that makes the state of bitcoin cornered, even though they are just a blockchain analysis company, but they have a considerable influence in crypto. I'm just worried that the news will be acted upon by the government, I don't expect bad things to happen to bitcoin.

It seems they dont need to use monero or another stealth coins to stay in shadow.its not surprise because more than %80 of crimes using usd :) so its not a big deal for illegal actvities if you have power

What ever reason or techniques used to discover that is not a major issue but when fiat was also the only means of transaction or exchange in the market , we still have lots of crime out there too and none never discovered to the let of making it look like USD was the major way many countries used to launder money as easy way , so nothing new to me regard this.

The number " 76% " is interesting , I agree.
But I did not found what was the absolute value of the dark web turnover in the article.
I suppose that BTC is still the king because monero is harder to implement and maybe because it is harder for those who are buying stuff there to buy it - Monero is not sold in regulated exchanges , at least what i have noticed

I am not very surprised. First of all, it is not that easy to get Monero (XMR). You need to purchase XMR from the exchanges and nowadays almost all of them have KYC as a mandatory requirement. And they are keeping a close watch on anyone who withdraws XMR from these exchanges. For many of the users, opting for a Bitcoin mixer is a more anonymous route.

I paid more attention to this passage:


I went to google and researched the following: " where to buy and sell monero? "

and that's what I found:

https://www.google.com/search?q=where+to+buy+and+sell+monero%3F&oq=where+to+buy+and+sell+monero%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

There are many places to buy and sell anonymous coins, this kind of search seems to be done to destroy bitcoin image

It's inevitable. But the percentage is quite high maybe because, having the same perks, they would prefer something that is more trusted by people.
Anything that has value are vulnerable for criminal or illegal transaction

Is it every news that you guys must carry, now having this news here, what do you intend gaining from people reading it, just post to get merit when you are indirectly discrediting bitcoin and making it already serve like an FUD news for those who would think bitcoin is strictly being used for crime purpose.

Among, all the fiats that we have in the whole world, which fiat is mostly used and which fiat is also mostly used for crime purpose, is it not the USD?, but that does not mean that USD was created for that, but because it is the most popular fiat, that is why it had such high record in the crime report, so same way that bitcoin too has this record because it is the number one crypto generally and which is still mostly used than every other coins.

Stated in the manner it is in the OP, the reading is that 76% of the Dark Market TXs take place involving Bitcoin, which is not the case. The article referenced in the OP talks about BTC dominance of 76% over crypto TXs used in the Black Market, but does not quantify those shares vs the complete pool of TXs including FIAT.

I tried to find the information quantifies, but only managed to come across a Medium article (see https://medium.com/@tokenmeister.social/what-is-the-black-market-worth-and-how-much-of-it-is-crypto-daf46e420d8d) that stated right at the end of the text the following:
Unfortunately, the source for the data (DarkWebNews) is now inaccessible, but if the data is anywhere near being true, the 76% in the title really should be properly contextualized ...

Most probably. Anon coins looks not very much needed there in the dark market. I guess during bear market those guys in that dark market realizes USD is what matters the most, not even BTC. When its only BTC that is rising among all the cryptocurency everyone even those altcoin developers lost its loyalty to their own coin, sells them all for BTC.

I think that situation will change than btc will face regulation. Monero or other privacy coin will be the king of dark market. For now admins just to lazy to implement support of it

This really seems to conflict with past reports that dark market crypto use steadily transferred away from Bitcoin and into Ether and Monero. Strangely enough, can't really find these older reports online, but it was in 2016 when I first really started reading reports from these analytics.

Is it because blockchain analysis is getting better and these were underreported?

But good find on that fiat still dominates... I think that's more black market than the specific darkweb markets that only use crypto... Or have I really lost touch with the scene? Don't recall ever seeing one of those marketplaces that accepted fiat.

It has to do with ciphertrace's crypto tracing technology

Most individuals still prefer using BTC for transactions, either for legitimate or illegitimate purposes because of the relative price security in terms of market cap. Users would not mind using an mixing/anonymization service instead of using  privacy coins.

I read somewhere that companies like Ciphertrace that do blockchain forensics are able to track funds even if after they run through a mixing service. How legitimate do we think these mixers are for btc?

I don't really find it surprising since it is like that with most crypto transactions. Bitcoin is still the king. Maybe the will make a darknetcoin ICO soon ^^


Chipmixer recently handled some stolen bitcoins and it seems untraceable so who knows.

I've always thought more people who dealt with dark markets didn't adopt Monero because they wanted to be able to cash out as quickly as possible.

If absolute privacy is important, it seems like a fair tradeoff to me.

I think so, there isn't just bitcoin which is the main center of use for the dark market. Moreover, the focus of bitcoin is not on privacy and anonymous transactions, there are many other altcoins that are far more anonymous that focus on the privacy of its users.

For mixer itself, it is more likely to be used for money laundering, not for darkmarket transactions.

We have knew that since the beginning. Since bitcoin transactions are private and anonymous, illegal activities has risen using dark markets. The law abiders like to deal their fraud actions, dealing with illegal things in the dark market to untraced their transactions. We can not deny the fact that bitcoin or crypto transactions can keep and hide the shady settlements or transactions and can be used as a powerful tool in a crime.

Lol, the problem is that most of dark market transactions are still performed via fiat, not via crypto.

However, nobody ever thought about banning fiat for this. But when it comes to Bitcoin, it is bad, evel ... c'mon :)

The rise in Monero prices was approved by the adoption of digital currencies on several dark markets. The black market became a large part of the culture that still adheres to the wider community after the Silk Road case, which relies on Bitcoin so that customers can buy digital currencies. followed by Ethereum which can be used in only about 7% and Monero 4% of crypto use cases involved on the dark market.

That might true .the solution is simple, people who using dark market, they better use monero :) so bitcoin cant blame by illegal activities.

This might be a reason for last conversion as most of privacy coin are not that pair with USD or fiat and they can easy be convert to BTC for easy that or USD transaction which brought about the high side on btc as most used in darknet .

I find it strange XMR isn't more widely used. Even if liquidity isn't all that you'd think the baked in anonymity would be very attractive. Perhaps not enough users believe it truly is as anon as it claims.

No way in this day and age would I be dicking around with Bitcoin. We've no idea how good law enforcement has become in coin tracking. I presume convenience is the prime factor in its continued use but I certainly would be prioritising security instead.

Since it's existence bitcoin is getting used on dark market. Even a small transaction counts, and over the entire dark market 76% of services use bitcoin and not 76% of transactions were happening with bitcoin. This way I see this as a common thing, because bitcoin gives the safest way for transactions in large volumes which requires complicated process with banking.

I think they use bitcoin because of its ease of acceptance and its price and market dominance showing bitcoin as the most trusted of any coin. Monero at 4% is very low despite been a privacy coin.

If it is indeed an analysis that the use of bitcoin is very large on the black market, it is also very frightening because it could be that countries that feel unable to control will tighten up by not being allowed to be used as a transaction tool. but I believe that blaming is only 1 to 2%. so it's just relatively not large.

I think it's because bitcoin is more popular and well known, and also those people had bitcoin only instead of other coin. And i don't find it weird, because people will choose a currency with perfect anonymity and trust worthy to trade in dark market. Maybe they're not really sure and trust other coins as much as they trust bitcoin. But this kinda makes me sad because people will surely think negatively about bitcoin again if they found out bitcoin is used often in black market.

Bitcoin is a universal payment method that can easily be used by all persons in the world. People always want to use the easy means to get what they want and the transaction fees that is associated with bitcoin payment is relatively cheaper compared to other payments methods we have around such as PayPal.

Or perhaps there is less demand for shady activity currencies than people think. Most people aren't drug dealers or scammers so using Bitcoin in combination with a mixer is more than enough privacy for them.

Most of the demand comes from people wanting to get rid of their exchange taint, which is what mixers allow you to do perfectly fine. People always assume there is so much dark web demand while that isn't true at all.

XMR and some other privacy coins have seen some uptick in use, but the prices have been quite volatile lately so it might have been the speculative side of crypto that drove the use up slightly.

Monero offers additional anonymity, but it lacks the liquidity that Bitcoin possesses. It is not very easy to convert Bitcoins to Monero in an anonymous manner. Cashing out Monero is even more difficult, if you don't want to reveal your real identity. ETH is more liquid, but if anonymity is considered it ranks much lower than BTC and XMR. 

I'm starting to this this is a statistic overtime rather than the current state.

I see this as a vague report and i am not sure how they got these estimates which is being written in that article, there is no specification about how many sites they conducted their survey in the dark markets to come to a conclusion that bitcoin is still reigning in dealing illegal substances including drugs. If there is a detailed report on the amount of case reported or the study they made then we can make a conclusion other than that it is just a fake report :P.

That's an interesting thought. I don't see how a reputable company would put out a 'fake report'. I feel like Ciphertrace isn't legally allowed to disclose the names of the markets and the sources because ultimately they are trying to find a balance between privacy and protecting people.

This is hardly true,but nevertheless, if we agree with the fact that 98% of all transactions in the bitcoin network are criminal-then why the hell is the Bitmain mining equipment plant still operating? ::)

Read the post again. He is saying that out of the transactions related to ransomware/malware (not all the transactions), Bitcoin is being used 98% of the time. According to various studies, 1% to 2% of all the Bitcoin transactions can be classified as illegal. This 98% share from ransomware is included in that figure. Vast majority of Bitcoin transactions are perfectly legal.

The dark market has existed before bitcoin and has been booming well without government been able to completely lay it down because there are so many technology they were also using to operate before bitcoin, so I don’t think bitcoin contributed to major part of it although it has its own little contribution which the contribution should have even been eliminated long time ago if government had agreed to regulate the bitcoin.

Monero is also a good privacy coin, and they are taking advantage of the privacy of it to operate in the dark world but that was not the main intention of monero, so we cannot leave monero also to be lost in the darknet and get its name tarnished, all I see for in this cryptocurrency market is regulation and that would put an end to those challenges.

Bitcoin sure is well known and most widely used cryptocurrency but it's not that hard to exchange it to any other coin. If people want then they can exchange it to other coins as easy as buying a chocolate.
Apart from that bitcoin does not have the perfect anonymity as it is not fully anonymous. There are better coins than bitcoin which can provide better anonymity than bitcoin. Eg. Monero.

FIAT currency (CASH) was/is and will remain the king regarding illegal transactions. The fact that many bitcoins are being used on illegal transactions, has nothing to do with bitcoin itself. Bitcoin is something revolutionary and it will depend on how people will use it.

So, how and where do they actually conduct this research to get this figures?
I feel this article is another way to paint Bitcoin black indirectly.
Truth is, those in the dark web have always preferred Monero to Bitcoin. Reason? It's because they believe that Bitcoin is traceable unlike Bitcoin. Monero has nor privacy than Bitcoin an it's difficult for an outside observer to trace the source.
Those criminals are very smart. Why would they want to risk it?

i dont think we need to trust those figures as we dont know the authenticity of their source. another black propaganda for bitcoin? who knows? but in any case, they cant bring down the popularity of bitcoin or the usage of it.
we already passed so many struggles of adoption yet crypto or btc users are growing everyday...

If it is so private, then how come they can still tell how much percentage it is.
From holders and also the circulating bitcoin outside this forum? That is a large quantity if you will keep on monitoring it all.
It wont be that easy.

They are just guessing it all. There is no way to trace it. There is no information about some holders and some left their wallet and other in their computer.
It cannot be accurate.

We might say this as another black propaganda but we can't deny that some big transactions are using crypto not to find it not traceable with the other. Yes, there is a transaction record in the blockchain but can we know whos that guy doing such transaction? Of course not and we can't halt such transactions.

We are in the wide market adoption and it was sad that crypto is used to spread and continue illegal activities which ruin the reputation of Bitcoin.

I think if the government act on this problem, they can lessen that 76%. They don't have to focus on the modes of payment of the illegal things but instead, they must intercept the people and the products outside the dark web. I'm pretty sure they can't use internet if they are behind the bars.

We are in the wide market adoption and it was sad that crypto is used to spread and continue illegal activities which ruin the reputation of Bitcoin.
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you are right there but many people use bitcoin or crypto currency for the right purpose. but we cannot prevent the use of bitcoin illegally, because it is difficult to identify the identity of its creator, especially for people with malicious intent because bitcoin is anonymous currency that's one of the reason want government regulate the bitcoin because the want to avoid use it into crime by using kyc.

One way or another, coins will eventually be sold on the market for fiat. In most cases it doesn't pay off for authorities to chase down those who had these coins in their possession before the person who sold them, but when the crime is severe enough, or there is a whole network they can shut down at once, they will definitely go for it.

The fact of the matter is that the authorities are more adapted to the workings of crypto and how to analyze value movements than most of the people here.

And of course, no one can halt transactions, which is why Bitcoin is such a powerful tool, but authorities don't need the ability to halt transactions when they with a high degree of certainty eventually find out who you are anyway.

If you ever wonder how it is being popular on the black market you might wanna know the silkroad story. Bitcoin has been used already in the black market as a way of transaction since no one could ever trace the owner of the said funds. Unlike banks where you have to put your complete details so that the authorities can trace you back if there is something wrong.

People in the dark market also wants privacy and if they are using Monero what is wrong in that  :P, not every market is about drugs and weapons sale and all sort of things, but majority are made to sell those and if they select Monero as their main currency, no one can stop that, the regulators will force exchanges to stop all these privacy coins not because it will be used in dark markets but the authorities does not like privacy in general.

The owner of the dark web site is anonymous, we don't know who is behind it. It's the same when we trade Bitcoin with other people we don't know who he really is. I think the government will be difficult to find them.
There are many types of the dark web such as buying and selling drugs, other illegal products, and criminal services. It is impossible for the owner of the dark web to give out their identity easily because they will deal with the law.

Could blockchain forensic companies like Ciphertrace be able to track this info with their tech?

It should be noted that the fact that they are operating there does not mean that everything is for crimes or bad things, the site is very diverse, one of the reasons why Bitcoin sometimes rises in December is because the demand increases in the DeepWeb , and it is because they make many purchases, but currently this increase may be given to ensure anonymity and privacy.

Monero is a currency that is impossible to track and in the DeepWeb or dark market there will always be quick solutions to the complications offered by some traditional markets while maintaining privacy.

At the same.time you should understand that now wallets are strictly giving orders to get your KYC done and due to that that number is gonna fall drastically.
Yes 76% of the dark market may use it .. but if we use the right brains we could actually track them down using bitcoins only ... Let's be honest ...it's not private... It only hides your identity 50% , if someone is intelligent enough he could actually reverse track everything and it could actually bring the market down ... .
There is no way that I see if people deal in cash ... No way unless every single note and coin is equipped with tracker.

I'm not surprised that crypto has been used in dark market but to use Bitcoin instead of some privacy coins like Monero, maybe most of them only knows Bitcoin and not those privacy coins that is why they are only using Bitcoin.


Not surprising because anything that has value can be use in good or bad things. This will increase in the next years for sure.

Using Bitcoin becomes almost a traditional form of all financial operations, and certainly, the dark market uses it to stay anonymous. Those countries, which ban BTC to stop illegal operations, do not get the needed results. On the contrary, criminals and hackers become too inventive.

Besides, the dollar is still the #1 currency for all operations, including the activity of dark market representatives.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin has become indispensable for the black business. Using Bitcoin, criminals protect themselves but, I think that in any case, the Dark Web will live whether Bitcoin exists or not, so you need to take it for granted

I do not think that these statistics are real. In the USA and the European Union, studies have already been conducted on this subject and it has been established that up to ten percent of bitcoin was used for illegal purposes. The reason for this is only the relative anonymity of bitcoin. But coins with a high degree of anonymity - Monero, Zcash, Dash were used much more often. Therefore, the Japanese government has long banned the use of these coins.

Bitcoin is not that anonymous though, it is pseudo-anonymous.

Despite the fact that it is one, it can still be tracked. People can still find ways to track its users as long as you know what you are doing. As a proof of that, there are some people that is caught transacting Bitcoin in the Dark Web. They have their ways to hide their identity but they can still be tracked.

I think this is a common thing. even people are always exaggerating it. in the real world, fiat is also used as a tool for transactions, even for illegal transactions. however, you can still track the use of bitcoin even though it is used for the dark web.

besides, it is natural that people use bitcoin as a transaction tool, because it results in transactions that are very fast, and cannot be manipulated. if 76% uses bitcoin, the rest can use other currencies.

Well, as long as it's valuable and valuable, there will be opportunities for people to use it as a transaction tool even on the dark web.

Of course there are difficulties from the government to be able to control overall if the government itself does not facilitate and can accept bitcoin. then there will be more people who want to go beyond the rules made. there must be a role for the government so as not to multiply.

BTC most popular in dark web . If anyone want to buy something u most be pay in BTC

Multiposting is not encouraged on this forum. You could have simply posted both of your posts in a single post.

Bitcoin is popular because even the dark market knows that it will have the highest fiat value than any other crypto in the near future. That gives me another reason to HODL my Bitcoin.

Interestingly Privacy coin only involves 4% of the total transaction. I guess they also do not believe in any other currency than Bitcoin.

One thing can have both good and bad aspects. But it does not make an impact. Smugglers may be using technology. But the government of a country can control them if they want.

That is right bro, Dark web has been in existence far before bitcoin was created and it’s been a thriving business for the criminal, so for the fact that they use bitcoin for illegal activities does not mean that is the only source of their money. Even if they stop bitcoin today, that would not stop it, so rather than the securities giving excuses not to apprehend their culprits, they need to work more.

After all the man that developed bitcoin system is not a special being, he is also human being like us, and nobody can tell me that he is the only human genius that we have, if he has created bitcoin system, they should also create a system that will block the activities of these dark web criminals, I believe it is something that a guru can come up with to always trace them.

I think that Bitcoin is so linked to darknet now that a Bitcoin with zero value will not come till another protected and anonymous currency appears. Bitcoin will be big for sure, illegal activities are also present in FIAT but everyone live with FIAT so the percent of illegal use is less.