Monero Challenges Bitcoin's Dark Web Market Position, but Bitcoin Benefits, Getting Rid of Its "Crime Currency" Identity

A new cryptocurrency is challenging Bitcoin’s title as the most popular dark web currency.

This new cryptocurrency is Monero, which is gaining more and more recognition because of its better privacy features than Bitcoin. Bitcoin's blockchain is public and transparent, and users can be easily tracked based on their wallet addresses. Unlike Bitcoin, Monero generates a new address for each transaction. In addition, transactions on the Monero blockchain are not public but private, and can only be accessed by obtaining a private viewing key.

Monero’s popularity has been further confirmed by the increase in its use on the dark web. Alphabay, a well-known deep web marketplace for drugs, contraband, and other illegal substances, has announced that they will support Monero in September 2016. In addition, the transaction volume of this digital currency has skyrocketed, and end-user usage is also increasing.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin community is relieved to see a new digital currency eat into Bitcoin’s dark web market share. They believe that as this new cryptocurrency gains mainstream status on the dark web, Bitcoin will gradually shed its identity as a ‘criminal currency’.

Tyler Moffitt, a senior threat researcher from the cybersecurity company Webroot, was quoted by the media site as saying,

“It makes perfect sense for darknet auction sites to welcome Monero, which is more secure than Bitcoin because the Bitcoin transaction blockchain is publicly viewable.”

Still, it is disturbing because Monero’s user base is still very small. In this case, huge network transactions cannot be mixed with other transactions of similar size because they would be easily detected. However, as digital currencies based on the CryptoNote protocol gain adoption, this problem should resolve itself.

Once Monero usage increases, law enforcement agencies will have to struggle to find different ways to track the flow of money on the network.