76% of dark market using Bitcoin

[jdarren]

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/

[hatshepsut93]

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.

[tippytoes]

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? 

[Artemis3]

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? 

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?

[BitHodler]

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?

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.

[BrewMaster]

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?

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.

[Tipstar]

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?

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.

[Pearls Before Swine]

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?

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.

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.

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?

[samcrypto]

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.

[meanwords]

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.

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.

[Mpamaegbu]

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.

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.

[timerland]

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.

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? 

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.

[NavI_027]

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?

That does seem odd that a coin with ostensibly more privacy than bitcoin wouldn't find its niche in the dark markets. 

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. 

[Saltius]

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.

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

[pooya87]

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?

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.

it seems like every time another one of these blockchain tracing 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!

[pawanjain]

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.

[michellee]

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.

[mich]

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/

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

[Yamifoud]

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.

[eternalgloom]

Dark market is much related to Bitcoin as it was the source that once got its usage in large scale. Some even have a thinking that it is the one that is developed for illegal and dark market needs. Now it has got a big transformation from the early days to a valuable investment surpassing more common investments.

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.