The unknown side of Bitcoin in the dark web market

According to the FBI, Silk Road handled $ 1.2 billion in transactions between 2011 and 2013. While this market is widely considered to be Bitcoin’s first killer app, drug trafficking still accounts for a large portion of digital currency transactions.

(In 2014 , the average daily transaction volume of Bitcoin in six black markets reached $ 650,000 , while the average daily transaction volume of Bitcoin processed by Bitpay , the world's top Bitcoin payment provider, was only $ 435,000 )

Although Silk Road was dramatically shut down in 2013 , a large number of copycat websites have emerged in its wake, trying to fill the market gap left by the collapse of Silk Road, and they are more daring and dangerous.

The black market Sheep Marketplace, which was launched during this period , grew by nearly 400% . This data comes from the Digital Citizens Alliance.

When Silk Road was shut down, it was selling 13,000 drugs, accounting for about 71% of the market share . The following chart shows the sales volume of the five largest black markets.

" Because they often disappear for some unclear reason, they can't really dominate the market, " said Nathan Jessop, an analyst at Elliptic.

Sheep Marketplace lost 5,400 bitcoins after being hacked; Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

When Silk Road was shut down in October 2013 , the site had 1,400 suppliers. In the last two years, the number has grown significantly, with experts now putting the number at 9,300.

A huge divergence in the sales of 35 black markets over the past two years is the profit of sellers. The top 1% of sellers account for more than half of the total sales, while 70% of sellers never make more than $ 1,000 . You can see that the profit share of these sellers is above 100 .

About 6% of 100,000 consumers who participated in the 2015 Global Drug Survey admitted to buying drugs on the dark web in the past 12 months. The UK survey found that the number was twice that high.

Purchasing what you need through the dark web in a simple way will have a chain reaction on consumers and affect their purchasing habits.

Half of the respondents said that they spent the same or less on dark web shopping, and 49% said that the dark web gave them a better experience than their previous offline shopping experience.

For just 50 euros in Bitcoin, Spanish nonprofit Energy Control will analyze the purity of drugs for dark web users - no problem.

The service already allows users to buy drugs on the dark web with the same ingredients as those purchased offline.

84% of MDMA lab samples received in 2014 were pure crystal meth. Meanwhile, 266 processed samples were found to be a new psychoactive substance, also known as a " legal high . "

" High-quality medicines can be used by good people or bad people. For example, high-quality coke is more harmful to the human heart than ordinary coke.

Dr Adam R Winstock, founder of the Global Drug Survey , said:

The following chart shows the sales share of various drugs on the dark web, in three-month intervals, from 2013 to 2015. Each color represents a category.

Marijuana and ecstasy account for about 25% of the market share , followed by stimulants. Consumer surveys seem to match this data. They are more willing to buy drugs they are familiar with on the dark web.

The survey data also tells us that the prices of drugs on the dark web market vary greatly. The price list of a type of cocaine on the dark web market tracked by Quartz is as follows:

Although drugs are still one of the most common commodities in the dark web market, more and more other illegal commodities have also appeared in the dark web market, such as hacking services , counterfeit money , weapons , surveillance equipment, passports and various IDs , etc. At the same time, a number of legal commodities have also appeared in the dark web market, such as cigarettes, artworks and olive oil.