Darknet market plans to accept ETH.

[bbc.reporter]

I have read an article about the darknet market called Alphabay that they will start accepting ETH. The article said that it will start accepting it on May 1. I got curious and made an Alphabay account and I was surprised that there are some vendors already accepting it.

How does the ETH community feel about it? Why would Alphabay start supporting a coin from a smart contract platform? Will they make a transition and build their service on top of Ethereum in the future?

[1714821389]

1714821389

[1714821389]

1714821389

[1714821389]

1714821389

[1714821389]

1714821389

[Jezzy of Jensen]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

The problem faced is simply bitcoin and its confirmation time, which can be solved very easily.

BTC will reign unless something that is hard to predict occurs.

There are too many millions invested in it by parties that have power. Plus, BTC is the only cryptocurrency that people actively pursue ownership of.

Dabbling with ETH, is a way to increase the BTC you hold.

[batang_bitcoin]

Do you have a link for it? I guess they are actually accepting a lot of alt coins that has been in the market already. If the whole ETH community will know this for sure they are going to be happy with it as the price of ETH can possibly increase. But this is also what I'm thinking about it.

but many vendors will not accept them.

[Utrine]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

The problem faced is simply bitcoin and its confirmation time, which can be solved very easily.

BTC will reign unless something that is hard to predict occurs.

There are too many millions invested in it by parties that have power. Plus, BTC is the only cryptocurrency that people actively pursue ownership of.

Dabbling with ETH, is a way to increase the BTC you hold.

That is right. The main problem with bitcoin is the long confirmation time.

[monsanto]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

The problem faced is simply bitcoin and its confirmation time, which can be solved very easily.

BTC will reign unless something that is hard to predict occurs.

There are too many millions invested in it by parties that have power. Plus, BTC is the only cryptocurrency that people actively pursue ownership of.

Dabbling with ETH, is a way to increase the BTC you hold.

That is right. The main problem with bitcoin is the long confirmation time.

People on Darknets probably care the less about fees.  But I could see ETH becoming a popular payment method in those cases, once there are anon options available for ETH transactions.

[Rockie1234]

I wonder if accepting certain altcoins on dark net markets is a very specific attempt to make money. I suspect they buy up a huge amount of the coin (in this case before announcement). After the announcement, their coin shoots up in price. The exact same boost happened with Monero, which makes you wonder.

[kryptqnick]

I have read an article about the darknet market called Alphabay that they will start accepting ETH. The article said that it will start accepting it on May 1. I got curious and made an Alphabay account and I was surprised that there are some vendors already accepting it.

How does the ETH community feel about it? Why would Alphabay start supporting a coin from a smart contract platform? Will they make a transition and build their service on top of Ethereum in the future?

Why not to accept such a currency? I believe on darkmarkets people don't steal money often. They just do the business and have income. I believe smart contract can make the procedure of buying and selling goods easier and even a new seller may become immediately trustworthy since one can't do anything about a smart contract.
For ethereum this will have a positive impact, because the demand will grow along with the price but the reputation might become a bit spoiled as well.

[bbc.reporter]

Do you have a link for it? I guess they are actually accepting a lot of alt coins that has been in the market already. If the whole ETH community will know this for sure they are going to be happy with it as the price of ETH can possibly increase. But this is also what I'm thinking about it.

but many vendors will not accept them.

Alphabay is not accepting a lot of cryptocoins. They accept bitcoin, XMR and the latest is ETH.

A picture tells a thousand words. Look.



@Jezzy. Many vendors will not accept them but there are some that will which is the most important part. If bitcoin's problems with the long confirmations and high fees continue, they will have to.

[TreeAcid]

A Darkweb Shapeshift would be a good idea.

[techmasta93]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

The problem faced is simply bitcoin and its confirmation time, which can be solved very easily.

BTC will reign unless something that is hard to predict occurs.

There are too many millions invested in it by parties that have power. Plus, BTC is the only cryptocurrency that people actively pursue ownership of.

Dabbling with ETH, is a way to increase the BTC you hold.

It's not that simple...

To decrease transaction time, you need to pay a higher fee to get priority over other transactions. The more valuable bitcoin becomes, the more expensive this fee will be.

The other problem is anonymity. Before sending your coins to the market you would need to, at the very least, tumble them using a tumbling service... Which again, isn't free. The service will cost you a small percent of your coins.

Transaction time, tumbling, combined with the time it takes for the market to credit your coins to your account makes the total wait time close to an hour or so. :/

This is the part where I shamelessly plug my favorite coin... XMR You don't need to waste money to tumble it, as it has true anonymity built in so your transactions are completely secure and private. Transaction time is generally less than a minute, much faster than BTC, and it's got great devs supporting it... Although, it is true that not all vendors take XMR, but a large number already do and are reporting an increasing trend of transactions using the coin. If there were ever a coin designed specifically for the darknet, that would be it, IMO.

[bbc.reporter]

ETH will be formally available to use starting on May 1. It was clearly said that deposit and withdrawals will begin on that date but buyers and vendors can have the option and declare for ETH acceptance right now in the settings of their account.

@Jeffbrad. Yes the argument of Ethereum censoring and changing transaction history still holds true. If you are a darknet vendor it would be safe to avoid using it. Why did Alphabay decide to use ETH instead of an immutable blockchain like ETC?

Almost two weeks ago, AlphaBay (a prominent dark web market) declared it will spearhead the acceptance of Ether as supported virtual currency. It joins Bitcoin and Monero in this category. This formally takes place on May 1, 2017.

Ether has reached its peak. Announcement of this acceptance as large merchant elevates Ether to new altitude. WIRED Digital Magazine published an article on the enormous growth of Monero after it was made public that AlphaBay and Oasis markets will begin to accept Monero. This site displays an option to use ETH with Bitcoin and Monero in user-settings. However, it is clearly said deposits and withdrawals for Ethereum will only commence in May.

You can read the full article here https://www.crypto-news.net/ether-is-added-as-third-crypto-currency-on-alphabay/

[str4wm4n]

I believe it was added because Ethereum plans to add Zk-SNARKs soon, thus making Ether the ultimate anonymous currency and smart contract platform to rule them all no?

[dihari]

Glad to hear news like this. Not just for eth, if more market start to accept cryptocurrencies as their payment, it will a good ecosystem for currency it self and for the community. Deepweb have a big market, but i think, to make something grow popular, deepweb is not enough. Not everyone can easily access it. So I hope someday there will be more online market accept bitcoin, eth, or any cryptocurrencies to make peoples know about it. To make it familiar.

[mining1]

Well, few more days for raiden's implementation. Alphabay will most likely host a raiden node aswell. Raiden's capacity scales with the number of participants, therefore alphabay's market will depend entirely on ethereum's raiden for transactions in the future. Imagine them having a volume of hundreds of thousands of transactions each second, that's a game changer.

[alyssa85]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

Do we have any data on how many vendors are seeing sales in Monero and Eth?

[bbc.reporter]

Glad to hear news like this. Not just for eth, if more market start to accept cryptocurrencies as their payment, it will a good ecosystem for currency it self and for the community. Deepweb have a big market, but i think, to make something grow popular, deepweb is not enough. Not everyone can easily access it. So I hope someday there will be more online market accept bitcoin, eth, or any cryptocurrencies to make peoples know about it. To make it familiar.

That is a welcome surprise if you are an ETH holder. But is it really good for the vendors to start using it? The Ethereum Foundation are known to censor what they do not want to be included in the blockchain. What if there is a crime big enough that utilized ETH that the foundation wants out of the platform? Will you agree that it should be censored by another hardfork?

@alyssa85. Read the article I posted.

[monsanto]

They are accepting it, and have been for a few days. They accept bitcoin and monero, too.

They will build the platform on bitcoin,with  eth and xmr as alternatives, but many vendors will not accept them.

Do we have any data on how many vendors are seeing sales in Monero and Eth?

Yeah, I'd like to see this too, although my guess is the figure is somewhere between very little and zero. While btc fees are high, if you factor in the variance of day-to-day crypto prices, I doubt it's a main concern of many darknet customers.  If it continues though then maybe we could see a shift. Especially if prediction markets and other wager/gambling focused Ethereum projects are successful.