A January 18, 2019, report from has revealed that the amount of spent daily on the darknet doubled in 2018 despite the crash in crypto markets.
The Crypto Dealings of the Darknet
Many internet users are familiar with or have at least heard of the . The darknet is a section of the Internet that is difficult to trace and can only be accessed by the use of special browsers that aren’t readily available in the open market.
On the dark web, many illegal activities take place seemingly in the open. There has been speculation of the sale of weapons, drugs, and even reports of human trafficking. Naturally, because there is so much illegal activity going on, the payments that take place on these platforms need to be done discreetly. One method of payment that has caught on in recent times, however, is the use of bitcoin BTC which doubled in 2018.
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This information comes via a form Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm, which states that by the end of 2018, the daily bitcoin BTC transaction on the darknet was $2 million, twice what it was at the beginning of the year. Even more interesting is that the volume of bitcoin BTC usage was largely unaffected by the late-2018 crash in price.
The Effects of Law Enforcement
While the daily transaction volume of bitcoin BTC to the darknet increased, there was a noticeable decrease in the total amount of bitcoin BTC that entered these websites that year.
In 2017, the total amount spent in on the darknet was $700 million. However, this figure dropped to $600 million by 2018. Despite this, the analysis clarifies that the reason for the drop is not the bitcoin BTC price but the effects of law enforcement. In 2017, and , two prominent marketplaces on the darknet, were closed down which affected users’ ability to make purchases overall.
“The reason for that drop is more law enforcement activity,” Kim Grauer, a senior economist at Chainalysis . “It would be misleading to think that this year it will go down.”
Generally, cryptocurrency is a tool of choice for darknet users who want to make payment because they are largely untraceable. This doesn’t apply only to online as cryptocurrency has steadily become a more preferred method of demands by criminals.
As a result, the price of bitcoin BTC has little effect on the level of activity.“For someone who wants to buy something on a dark marketplace, the fact that bitcoin BTC price is fluctuating doesn’t really matter,” Grauer .
Published at Fri, 25 Jan 2019 03:00:18 +0000
